If you remember from last week, we talked with the Lord’s prayer about the way Jesus used to teach. One of the things we noticed about Jesus’s teaching is that it was simple. Jesus made religion accessible to all the people, even to children. He used everyday language that all could understand. Now we also noticed that this teaching, though simple, was far from being shallow. In fact, Jesus always invited people to go deeper in their faith journey, in their questioning. (He said “Ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you”). With the passage of the Gospel we hear today, we actually have a very good example of the way Jesus invited people to go deeper, to question their lives, their hope and expectations, redirecting them always to what truly matters.
This morning, we hear about a man coming to ask Jesus for help in a family conflict. It looks like the man’s brother – probably his elder brother – didn’t want to share their father’s inheritance with him (In Jewish law, the elder brother was the one inheriting the land, it didn’t mean that there should be nothing left for the siblings). It may look a bit surprising to us that the man would ask Jesus to settle this kind of disagreement, but it wasn’t unusual at all in Jesus’ days. Religious authorities were in charge of dealing with “civil matters” and help people figure out what the Law had to say in case of conflict. And yet today we see that when asked for help with settling a conflict, Jesus replies to the man: “Who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?”. Indeed Jesus wasn’t given authority by the Temple, but many people relied on his influence to say the right thing and especially to set things right with people who wronged them. We saw that a few weeks ago with Martha asking Jesus to tell her sister to help her in the kitchen! Considering this, I think, helps us to relate to the story. We don’t rely on the church (most of the times) to settle our personal conflicts, but isn’t it often an expectation of ours that God would be on our side when disagreements arise? It’s easy to believe that we are the “good guy” and that God will justify us.
And yet. Yet we see that Jesus isn’t very interested in dealing with that, in justifying people. He does not say that the man seeking for his inheritance is necessarily wrong, and he does not send him away, but he asks the man to look beyond this conflict to see the real issue: the problem with the human heart. Jesus says: “Take care! Be on your guard against all kind of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions”. Without pointing out at one of the siblings and siding with the other, Jesus redirects to a more fundamental question. In Paul’s terms in the Letter to the Colossians we have just heard this morning, are we “seeking for the things that are on earth”, or are we “seeking for the things that are above”? Greed is connected to all things earthly, Jesus calls them “the abundance of possessions”. When we hear that, we can easily think about “stuff” and money, but greed isn’t only about possessing “things”, it can expand to a desire to possess people by exercising power over them. In this case, with the father’s inheritance, there was obviously greed for land and money, but it was also a power thing, the elder brother trying to dominate the younger one, and the younger fighting back. And so Jesus wants the man to take a break and to think deeper about what’s really going on. Instead of settling the dispute, Jesus tells a story, because stories do not tell us what to do concretely, they invite us to look at things differently, and hopefully the outcome is that we change our behavior. This is also our expectation for today: We don’t know how the story ended up changing the man’s heart – but it’s certainly not too late for us.
So let’s dive it, acknowledging right away that, since the story, as Jesus announces it, is about greed – it’s not going to be very comfortable. I don’t think most of us think of themselves as “greedy” people. Most of the time, we just think that we need to have what we need to have, don’t we? And yet, right away the story Jesus tells cuts us to the heart. Just think about the way we react to it: Jesus says he is going to tell us the story of a greedy man, and yet when we hear it, we probably just think: Well, the man in the story has done all the right things, hasn’t he? His land produces abundantly (it’s his land, he hasn’t stolen anybody), now he is going to have extra crops, he should save them (not letting them out to rot) he’s going to build bigger barns to store the grain (again not stealing anyone) so he will be able to enjoy retirement (a reasonable expectation). To our ears, it probably sounds reasonable. I know it sounds like that to me, as I often feel bad about not saving more for retirement! The thing is that – if we find this man reasonable when Jesus calls him greedy, well maybe we’re greedy too…
Now what is this greed exactly about? Well, I don’t think it’s about making a living by working and making sure we’ll have enough when we’re not able to work anymore. The clue that is lost on us as Christians of the 21st century, but that any Jewish of the 1st century would have heard, is that the first thing the man should have done was to offer the first fruits of the harvest as a sacrifice to God, and he also should have shared his extra with the poor, the widows and the foreigners. If there was one law in the Law that everybody knew about that would be that one. The man’s land was his, but Jewish people knew that the land was borrowed from God, (Think about the promised land) for the nourishment of all of God’s people. The man didn’t steal the land, and yet by hoarding its fruits, he was stealing from God and God’s people.And so, what seems very reasonable is actually very selfish and greedy for Jesus. Now I think this is something that should really speak to us today as we deal with so many environmental problems. How would it be if we were again able to understand that we borrow the land, the soil, the earth from God and from future generations and that we have to be accountable for what we do with it, not hoarding or consuming up its resources, but using them in a way that first honor God and also benefit to our neighbors?
To me, this is the first way Jesus reframes the question with this story he tells to the man asking about his inheritance: Do you want your inheritance to “Relax, eat drink and be merry” as the pagans do, or do you want to honor God and serve your neighbor?
But that’s only the first part of the story. Now the second part goes even deeper than that, it’s actually a little scary as it tells us how God visits the selfish landowner to announce him that he is going to die that very night. I would like to remark first that, from the story, it does not seem that this death is a punishment. God does not say that “because you have done so” or “because you haven’t done that” then “you’re going to die”. It seems that this is just the time for this man to die and death is going to interrupt all his plans. Actually, it could even be an act of mercy on God’s behalf to warn the man of his impending death and therefore of the foolishness of his plans. Foolish not because the landowner is stupid, but because he hasn’t sought the things from above, not thinking of honoring God and serving his neighbor, but also because he hasn’t looked at this life and lived this life in the perspective of Eternity. He has lived as if he weren’t ever going to die. This is the second way in which Jesus wants us to “seek the things that are above”. It’s not about being obsessed with our own death – it’s more about thinking that if really this life is the first chapter of an eternity spent with God, the people we love, the people we have hurt, and every living thing in creation – how are we supposed to live right now? What is it that is really important in the end? And that part of the story, this maybe the lesson for the man Jesus is talking to. Certainly the elder brother who refuses to share his inheritance is a selfish person and a hoarder, but maybe Jesus is also telling the younger brother to let go of his desire to be right, and even to let go of his right to receive his share. Maybe Jesus is saying that in the end a lot of the things we worry for and are upset about are not worth our time and attention from the perspective of Eternity (That’s the rest of Chapter 12). As I listen to Jesus’s parable today, I wonder how it would look like for us to be able to turn away from all the fights that drain our energy, even if it costs us something, even of we have to sacrifice, but so we can devote our precious time to something worth of the kingdom. We don’t have a lot of time to do what really matters, so what will we choose?