Sermon for the 7th Sunday after Trinity: Rich & Foolish?

Colossians 3: 1-11

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

5 Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. 6 Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. 7 You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. 8 But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. 9 Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. 11 Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.

Luke 12:13-21

13 Someone in the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.’

14 Jesus replied, ‘Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?’ 15 Then he said to them, ‘Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.’

16 And he told them this parable: ‘The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. 17 He thought to himself, “What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.”

18 ‘Then he said, “This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. 19 And I’ll say to myself, ‘You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.’”

20 ‘But 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?”

21 ‘This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich towards God.’

In our reading from Luke we heard the 'Parable of the Rich Fool', so I guess unless we have any rich fools here, it's not really relevant? Do we have any rich fools in today? Let's see...

According to The World Bank Group, approximately only 15% of the global population earns over $20 a day, so if you earn over $20, that's just over £100 a week, you are among the top 15% of wealthiest people in the world.

I think it is a fairly safe assumption that we all here earn over $20 a day, so perhaps the key factor in determining if we have any rich fools with us today is not wealth, but foolishness?

Are we rich, but foolish?

Or are we rich, but wise?

By the way, if you want to feel poor again, here's a statistic for that - nearly half of the world's net worth is held by the richest 1%. According to Forbes, there's around three thousand billionaires in the world, and their combined wealth is estimated to be over $16 trillion.

That figure is only an estimate as billionaires have very good accountants.

How much wealth should we have? It is a terrible thing if people are in need, but over and above our basic needs, how much more should we have?

A wealthy person can do a lot of good in this world, and people deserve what they earn by honest labour, but is there a point when we say, 'that is enough?'

In the Parable of the Rich Fool Jesus is not critical of wealth, he is critical of greed.

“He said to them, ‘Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.’”

The determinate of wisdom or foolishness is not wealth, but your attitude to wealth.

A poor person can be as greedy as a rich person if they become obsessed with the wealth of others. Is not envy a form of greed?

Here's a story by Anthony De Mello, it is called The Seven Jars of Gold, and illustrates the effect of greed on both the rich and the poor,

“A barber was passing under a haunted tree when he heard a voice say, "Would you like to have the seven jars of gold?" He looked around and saw no one. But his greed was aroused, so he shouted eagerly, "Yes, I certainly would." "Then go home at once," said the voice. "You will find them there."

The barber ran all the way home. Sure enough, there were the seven jars - all full of gold, except for one that was only half full. Now the barber could not bear the thought of having a half-filled jar. He felt a violent urge to fill it or he simply would not be happy. So he had all the jewellery of his family melted into coins and poured them into the half-filled jar. But the jar remained as half-filled as before. This was exasperating! He saved and skimped and starved himself and his family. To no avail. No matter how much gold he put into the jar it remained half-filled.

So one day be begged the king to increase his salary. His salary was doubled. Again the fight to fill the jar was on. He even took to begging. The jar devoured every gold coin thrown into it but remained stubbornly half-filled.

The king now noticed how starved the barber looked. "What is wrong with you?" he asked. "You were so happy and contented when your salary was smaller. Now it has been doubled and you are so worn out and dejected. Can it be that you have the seven jars of of gold with you?"

The barber was astonished, "Who told you this, Your Majesty?" he asked.

The king laughed. "But these are obviously the symptoms of the person to who the ghost has given the seven jars. He once offered them to me. When I asked if this money could be spent or was merely to be hoarded he vanished without a word. That money cannot be spent. It only brings with it the compulsion to hoard. Go and give it back to the ghost this minute and you will be happy again.”

Despite holding out the promise of making you happy greed actually makes you miserable. We measure wealth in dollars, but that's not how God measures wealth. Count wealth in family and friends, count wealth in community and faith, count wealth in health and happiness, count wealth in loving and being loved, count wealth in moments of joy, and in passions fulfilled, count wealth in doing the right thing and performing your duty, and count wealth in making others richer in all of these ways.

How many people are fooled by greed in our society? Christians should be wiser, but it is easy to be caught up in the way of the world, to count our wealth in dollars, and hoard up our surplus instead of sharing it.

‘What we need’, we say to ourselves, ‘is bigger barns!’

Better storage solutions! More cupboards!

More shelves for my Cds ( anyone who has seen my office will know what I mean)

There is another deception Christians sometimes are fooled by, we can exchange greed for guilt. Weighed down by guilty feelings about our good fortune we become unable to enjoy God’s good gifts. Our heavenly Father gives us good gifts as any loving parent gives good gifts to a child, imagine then His disappointment when we contrive to not enjoy them through misplaced guilt, I would imagine it is almost as disappointing for God as seeing His children not sharing.

Both greed and guilt overestimate the importance of the size of our barns.

Jesus came that we might have ‘abundant life’ – which does not mean bigger barns, it means celebrating and enjoying God's good gifts, and learning to be as generous with others as God is with us.

‘Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.’ If only whoever demanded this of Jesus would have listened and answered the question Jesus asks of him, ‘who appointed me a judge … between you?’

God the Father appointed Jesus as judge, in Jesus we see the generosity of God expressed in flesh and blood. If the petitioner had recognised Jesus for who he was, the Son of God, he would have withdrawn his demand, and received in return a far richer inheritance.

As Jesus says, we must be 'rich toward God.' To be rich towards God means loving God with your whole heart, soul, mind, and strength, and loving your neighbour as yourself.

Or as we heard in Colossians, “... set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.”

Setting your mind on things above gives a right priority and ordering to things below.

So do we have any rich fools in today?

Or, are we striving to become rich in the wisdom and wealth of the Kingdom of Heaven?

Amen.