August 3, 2025
The farmer in Jesus’ parable was quite content. He had a bumper crop that year. The harvest yielded more, much more, than what he needed. It was such a good year that he wondered what he would do with all that abundance.
So, it led him to have a conversation. A conversation with himself. “What shall I do?” he asked himself. He then decided what he would do and with an eye to the future he had a conversation talking to his own soul. In his soliloquy the farmer decided he would tear down his barns and build bigger barns to store all the produce so that in the years to come he would have all he needs. Then, for the rest of his life he could relax, eat, drink, and be merry.
Have you ever talked to yourself? It is not uncommon. Once in a while, I talk to myself, usually not our loud, though I do know people who do talk to themselves out loud. Often, when I do talk to myself, the internal conversation arrives at some great, grand, and glorious idea about how to address not only my personal challenges but how to solve the problems of the world. I can build all kinds of utopian worlds in my imagination.
The difficulty is that often they don’t usually translate into the world as it really is.
I once read some advice for introverts like me: “Avoid long conversations in your imagination today, conversations like these can become negative or stir up resentment or may be super idealistic. Conversations like these are essentially unreal.”
Indeed!
The rich farmer talked to himself because there was no one in his life to have a conversation with other than himself. It not as though someone like him wasn’t aware of other people. In the ancient Mediterranean world where Jesus taught and preached, a farmer like him would have a lot of people working for him. Yielding an abundant crop does not come from a small piece of land. An abundant crop came at the expense of laborers who were likely poor. It was the protocol of the ancient Mediterranean world that in villages, and farms, countryside’s and culture, to share with your neighbor. Sharing was expected and usually too place. Instead of viewing wealth for one’s self, wealth was shared broadly with your neighbors. To hoard wealth was not considered wise. There was not enough to save for tomorrow. The idea was to have just enough. To save the harvest only for one’s self was to ensure the impoverishment of others and an incredible waste of God’s good gifts.
You see, when you spend too much time talking to yourself, the world can become very small. Downright puny. And the longer you have those conversations in your head, the more you come to believe that what you’ve constructed in your head is true. For the rich foolish farmer, the great allure of saving and keeping all he had harvested seemed to be the ticket to a secure and happy life but what he thought to be wise was foolish. In his foolishness, he tore down his barns and built bigger ones.
Building bigger barns only brought more work and more stress. Sound familiar? It is the familiar story of unchecked greed, isn’t it? In an endless quest for more and more and more, we cannot rest enough to recognize the trap we’ve created for ourselves. Acquiring more leads to an insatiable desire for more. We cannot get enough. What we think is abundance is actually an attitude of scarcity.
God’s call is not to abandon our barns or resist planning for the future or even wealth itself. God’s call is to steward wealth and possessions and we steward them not through internal conversations but in conversation with Jesus. With Jesus as our coach we begin to understand that the primary call of the Christians is to share and to give money away.
Jesus is rather clear: “Be on guard for all kinds of greed. One’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” In today’s reading from Colossians we hear: “Put to death [things like] greed which is idolatry.”
So God calls us, again and again, to reshape our world views. To see what we have been given as gift. To see the earth as gift. To see our neighbors as gift. To view all as gift. A steward is someone entrusted to take care of something that belongs to someone else. When we recognize that all we have is from God, we discover that we are stewards of what belongs to God. Instead of exploiting the good earth for personal gain, we steward the lands and the sea and the creatures of the earth. They belong to God. Instead of seeing everything as “mine and mine alone,” we discover that money and possessions do not belong to us after all. They belong to God.
The rich fool in the parable is devoid of wisdom. He lost touch with reality. Chock it up to all those conversations he had in his head. He played the fool to the very end. Finally, God said to him, “You fool! Tonight you will die and all these things you have stored up, what good will they do you?” Or, as the old sayings go, “you can’t take it with you” or, as I once heard someone say, you never see a hearts hauling a U-Haul trailer.
What we think to be wise is often foolish, and what we consider foolish may, in fact, be wisdom.
How do we sort all of this out? There is a strand of literature in the Bible that we call wisdom literature. These are books like Proverbs, some of the Psalms and Ecclesiastes. These works come under the rubric of a quest for meaning. What is life for? As we heard in the first reading today from Ecclesiastes, the writer concludes that “all is vanity.” Vanity means vapor, something that disappears in a minute. Life is fleeting. The big question is how best do we live? Do we sit back and let the world go by or do we somehow engage our neighbors even if all is vanity? Ecclesiastes doesn’t give easy answers but it does lead us to struggle faithfully. If you want to go deeper with this book it will be the first topic in our Adult formation classes beginning September 28.
Do we despair? Do we embrace hope?
If we are honest, we can relate to the writer’s observations. Just read or listen to the news and it’s pretty clear that this nation is in chaos as is much of the world. We dare not ignore what’s going on and be like the proverbial ostrich whose head is buried in sand. Jesus calls us to notice what is really happening and to pray for the neighbor, the church, and the nations of the world and prayer or discernment leads us to respond by loving others and embracing hope even if all seems hopeless.
Honestly, we often want to throw up our hands and conclude that all is vanity. What is the point of life after all? But God’s call is to live our lives as they are and live in the world of the neighbor as it is will resilient hope.
This hope is grounded in the kingdom of God. It is a contradiction to the blustery exploits of unchecked greed. Yet, we dare to hope. This hope and embrace gratitude.
Gratitude is the powerful antidote to pervasive greed. To see life as gift, in spite of evidence to the contrary, and to live as followers of Jesus who, by his life, death and resurrection gave us the greatest gift we could ever imagine.
I spoke with someone the other day who keeps a gratitude journal. I thought that sounded pretty cool. A gratitude journal, as my friend described it, is an attempt to see beneath the surface and to search for those people or events for which you are grateful. Gratitude forms a world view and begets the practice of generosity.
I have a friend and mentor who likes to say, “Never resist a generous impulse.” He used that quite a bit in his teaching and preaching as a parish pastor. It is wisdom at its best. The generous impulse means we will use what God has given us for the good of others, especially when we see a neighbor in need. Such an antidote to greed is a faith practice. A practice that deepens our trust in God.
It takes very little to notice the specter of greed. People with means continue to build bigger barns for themselves while most of the world struggles to make ends meat or lives in poverty. Greed is like an addiction. Once you’re in it, it’s hard to let it go. So we enlarge the conversation we have with self to include God and each other in the community of Christ.
We continue to show up together at this celebration of Holy Communion, the Eucharist. Eucharist is a word that means “thanksgiving.” The Great Thanksgiving at the table is certainly central but all of the liturgy, really, sounds the note of thanksgiving or gratitude. We gather as people who worship. Worship is our grateful response to God.
Yes, we show up to give thanks but ironically the greatest actor in this drama isn’t us but God who gives us what we need to lead grateful lives. God gives us himself in the community, in God’s word, in the gifts of bread and wine. Our true food and drink.
These go together, for in living lives of gratitude we discover again and again that at the core of our gratitude is God. So, we keep on praying, “We offer with joy and thanksgiving what you have first given us – ourselves, our time, and our possessions, signs of your gracious love. Receive them for the sake of him who offered himself for us, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”