Luke 12
I started to write this one a while ago, and didn’t get very far. Chapter twelve presents a challenging mix of ideas: Repeatedly, Jesus commands his disciples not to worry (verses 6, 11, 22 and 32), yet the chapter is also filled with a string of harsh warnings (verses 5, 8, 21, 46, and 51). I was in a very different place when I read the chapter again, and I found something very different.
Jesus addresses the crowd: “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” The statement is innocent enough. Nearly everyone on this planet would nod their head in agreement, even if their lives suggest otherwise. But then Jesus continues with a short parable.
The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. He thought to himself, “I have no place to store my crops.” Then he said, “This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I’ll say to myself, ‘You have good things laid up for many years. Take life easy: eat, drink, and be merry.’”
This is a picture-perfect description of the retirement nearly every working person dreams of. Since crops and barns don’t represent wealth for most Americans, allow me to modernize the parable:
The job of a certain well-off man provided him a healthy paycheck. He thought to himself, “I don’t need all this money.” Then he said, “This is what I’ll do. I’ll open a tax-deferred 401(k), and there I will save my extra money. And when I’m sixty-five, I’ll say to myself, ‘You have good things laid up for many years. Take a cruise, buy an RV, and treat yourself at some fine restaurants.”
Unfortunately, the parable doesn’t end there.
God said to him: “You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?” This is how it will be for anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.
Yikes. That’s not how I want to retire.
What is the man’s problem? What did he do wrong? My first reaction is that he failed to be “rich toward God”, and so he was punished. The wealth wasn’t really the problem, his unrightousness was.
A second reading casts a shadow on this theory. In context, the passage is clearly about the man’s money. In fact, the man doesn’t commit an explicit sin, and God doesn’t say anything that implies punishment. Instead, Jesus is making an emphatic point about the transience of wealth, a point that he brings into sharp focus in the next section [1]:
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. Life is more than food, and the body more than clothes… But seek his kingdom and his righteousness and these things will be given to you as well.
Read by itself, this passage stands in the positive sense, something like, “Don’t worry. Be happy.” Standing after the parable of the rich fool, it carries a much heavier tone. Christ calls us away from the distractions of the material, telling us that time spent worrying about food and clothing is time wasted.
Jesus ends by saying, “Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Jesus offers freedom from worry. This freedom comes not because Jesus will meet every desire that causes me anxiety. On the contrary, the freedom comes because my hope is in Christ and my treasure is no longer in the world. It comes when I am willing to “consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus”. Only when I seek his kingdom and his righteousness can “all these things” be given to me as well.
[1] This is one place where the editors have done us a major injustice by inserting a section heading. In Matthew, this passage is part of the Sermon on the Mount, but Luke places it here as part of the discussion about wealth.
