ninth sunday after Trinity

Jesus was addressing the crowd, which by this time numbered many thousands, about how important each one of us is in the sight of God, and not to worry about what to say to the rulers who were going to denounce his disciples, when suddenly out of the blue someone in the crowd shouted, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me”. Clearly someone has not been listening to Jesus, but is worried about money instead.  So worried that he wants Jesus to intervene in what is a family dispute.

Jesus’ story of the rich and foolish farmer is framed by the commandment, “Do not worry”, when he tells them not to worry about what to say when they are brought to trial for his sake, and after the story we hear this morning, he tells them, “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear.  For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing”. But the story of the rich and foolish farmer is about the thing people seem to worry about most, money.

Despite the economic crisis which is gripping our nation we still live in a country which is supposed to be the fourth richest in the world, our economy is quite robust and unemployment is comparatively low compared to some European countries. And whilst we must acknowledge and provide for people who have been badly affected by the economic downturn by losing their jobs and homes, most of us live very comfortable lives. And yet most people worry more about money than most other things.

Some months ago I watched a programme about wealth, looking at some of the richest people in this country.  The point of the programme to me was simple; the more money we make, the more we want, and the more we spend.  Our wants always outpace our income.

So when the person in the crowd asked Jesus to command his brother to divide the inheritance, Jesus responded, “Take care, be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions”. The truth is that the human race is naturally greedy.  Older translations use the word ‘covetous’ instead of ‘greed’.  The two things are different; greed is wanting more than we need, covetousness is looking at what someone else has and wishing that we had what they have. Both are to be avoided.

There is nothing wrong in wanting a nice home, a nice car, nice clothes, a nice holiday, but there is something wrong when we feel incomplete if we don’t have all the things that we would like to have. If we cannot be satisfied with our lives, and crave more and more! We call it keeping up with the Jones’s.  I don’t know who these Jones’s are but they always seem to have more than me!! Yet the economy of the western world is largely based on creating in us the desire for things we don’t need.  Advertisers base their appeals on our insecurities.  ‘Drink this kind of soft drink, buy this type of food, buy this type of car, it will make you happy, attractive and fulfilled’.  But of course it doesn’t.

A social commentator on the Great Depression in America in the 1930’s said it was all down to ‘the general extravagance in the recent era of so called prosperity, creating a vicious circle where our desires are inflamed by clever advertising till we feel we must indulge them for the things we want.  We delude ourselves into thinking we must have the things we crave and that we can afford them’. But all too often people realise afterwards they cannot really afford them and get more and more into debt to banks who are only too ready to lend money to people who cannot afford to repay the loan.  I have lost count of the number of letters I receive each week offering me a credit card or a loan, you are probably the same.

I remember when Sue and I applied for a mortgage to buy our first home, the building society manager would only take into account my salary, not Sue’s, even though she was earning more than I was at the time. ‘You probably will want to start a family’, the building society manager said, ‘and how will you pay then if I take both salaries into account’. Very sensible thinking, which went out of the window when banks and building societies started lending vast amounts of money to people who really could not afford to repay their loans.  Isn’t that what caused the sub-prime collapse in America, isn’t that what caused the economic depression we are still going through? 

Human greed is the cause of our present problems, on our part and on the part of the greedy bankers who paid themselves vast bonuses. Nothing has changed over the past 2000 years since that person in the crowd shouted to Jesus to ask him to make his brother split their inheritance!! And when we look around to what is happening in the developing world, we see western advertising flooding China, India and African countries telling them they really must visit McDonalds, when for most of the people finding money to just eat is a daily chore. Half the world is existing on less than a dollar a day and yet when I was in Tanzania, almost everyone, and I mean that, had a mobile phone, even in remote villages.  What are our priorities now?

But God said to the rich farmer, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you.  And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?”  We have come to understand this to mean that no matter what we own, what wealth we acquire, what material things we gather around us, they doesn’t mean anything really, because its the way we have served God, what good we have done in our lives, how we have loved our neighbours as ourselves, that will count when we have completed our earthly life, and because we don’t know how long our lives will be, when God will call us home, we need to make preparations without delay, and begin to serve God and those around us, as God wants us to.

Actually the original Greek text puts it rather differently, “They have demanded your life”, which could imply that coveting wealth, possessions, things we don’t really need to live a comfortable life, takes over and we no longer own the possessions, the possessions own us. And that is absolutely true if you think about it.  Everything we own also owns a little bit of us.  If we own a house we have to have money to maintain it and keep it in good repair and pay the gas and electricity, if we own a car we have to have money to fill it up with fuel, pay the car tax and insurance.  So we are no longer quite as free as we thought we were.

Jesus went on to say, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear.  For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing….Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”  The answer is of course, no we cannot. The rich farmer made the mistake of believing that he really possessed great wealth, but in reality the great wealth possessed him.

The Hollywood movie maker Sam Goldwyn, on being told he couldn’t take his wealth with him to heaven, firmly replied, “Well then, I just wont go!” but that is not an option, he couldn’t take it with him, and he couldn’t refuse to go when it was his time. So we really don’t possess anything, we only hold it in trust.  Today’s possessions become someone else’s house clearance after we have gone, as blunt as that may seem.

Jesus concluded his parable of the rich farmer by saying, ‘So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God’, the farmer had stored his riches in earthly barns when he should have been storing his riches in heaven.

I do want to make one thing clear though. Wealth is not wrong or sinful in itself, but it is problematical.  The spiritual problem of wealth is that it anchors our hearts too firmly in this world, rather than in God’s kingdom. Our responsibility is to live sensibly in this world and to love God with all our hearts, and with all our souls, and with all our minds, and with all our strength, and to love our neighbour as ourselves. That is the greatest riches and possessions we can ever own, and the greatest legacy to leave our family and friends.  

The story is told that at the funeral of the fabulously wealthy Aristotle Onassis, one of the mourners turned to another and said, “How much did he leave?” and his friend replied, “Everything, he left everything”. Like my grandad said, there are no pockets in shrouds!!  Amen.