Abundance, and how we spend it.

The Rev. Alissa Newton

The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

text: Luke 12:13-21

The worst fight I have ever had with my brother in our adult lives was over a set of dishes. The dishes had belonged to our great-grandmother and I wanted them because I remembered them from childhood. My brother wanted them because of all the many sets of dishes left by our paternal grandmothers (and there were many) these were the only set that appealed to his new bride. So we fought, and it lasted a long time and was pretty bitter. I didn't think it was fair for him to have them, because he didn't have any particular or special memories attached to them. I had always imagined that I would be given this particular set of dishes when I got married, and at the time of our fight I wasn't married yet. My brother didn't think it was fair for me to have them, because I liked many of the various sets of dishes, glassware and other things our great-grandmother and grandmother had left behind. Why would I deny him the only ones that he wanted? Looking back on it now, well over a decade later, we both feel pretty foolish about this fight. My brother and his wife have the dishes. I have pretty much all the other stuff my dad had to pass along after his mother died, and my long suffering spouse has to help me find places to put them all. My brother and I are fine - close, even. We love each other. And, of course, the fight was never about the dishes. For me, this fight was about the future I had dreamed about and a lifetime of being the second born child trying to win in competitions with my older brother. It was foolish, but instead of seeing the dishes as a chance to be more connected to our ancestors and each other, my sibling and I used them to drive a wedge that, at least for a while, kept us apart.

In our gospel this morning someone asks Jesus to make their brother split up their family inheritance. (In my imagination they are a second born child, and they have their eye on a particular set of dishes.) And Jesus refuses to even discuss the matter. He instead warns against greed, and offers up a parable that is both a rebuke and a promise to those of us who are tempted to sacrifice our connections to other people in favor of protecting ourselves, and hoarding the blessings that we are given by others.

In the parable, Jesus tells his listeners about a rich man whose land is overly abundant. The man takes much pride in making a plan for his great harvest. His plans involve storing it all for, well, we can only imagine for himself, so that he can continue to be rich and comfortable long into the future. We even see the rich man having a little talk with himself about how great things will be. It is okay, self, he seems to say, we have a plan for this abundance, we will keep it, and live. Except that he isn't a "we." If there is one thing that is striking about this parable it is that the rich man, who most certainly has people to harvest, and tear down small granaries and build new ones, in this parable, the rich man is very, very alone.

Did you notice this? He talks only to himself, and he plans only for himself, and we aren't told about his servants or his family, or even his pets. He has all these blessings, and yet is alone in them. Which begs the question – why this parable, in response to a question about a family matter? And what does Jesus mean, when he talks about storing up riches toward God? How is this different than storing them up for myself?

I want to start with the first question – why this parable in response to a family matter, or a matter of inheritance. Jesus was obviously not interested in becoming an arbitrator of the laws around inheritance, or of any laws. Jesus was about God's kingdom, and bringing it into being here on earth. We see, all over the gospel of Luke, Jesus' desire to connect people to God and each other through his life and words and ministry. We see it in who he spends time with – outcasts, sinners, poor people, lepers, women, even gentiles – all people who his society has cut off from full membership and belonging. We see it in how Jesus interacts with these people – he touches them, he eats with them, he invites them to follow him. These are not people who were traditionally given the blessing of an inheritance. But Jesus did give them an inheritance in his death, a final act of love and connection, God so enmeshed in human life that God submits to death in order to be with us. All this for the love of us, and this world. The greatest inheritance for all, and the greatest blessing. And this is what, in Jewish culture, an inheritance was supposed to be: a blessing to the next generation, a way for those who were gone to stay in connection and relationship with those they loved who were still alive. By demanding their share, the asker of the original question was taking a blessing and turning it into a wall. By demanding legislation instead of seeking reconciliation with their brother, this person was making of this blessing from parents a silo, or worse a weapon, used to compete and disconnect from his brother.

The man in the parable is also given a blessing – a gift of an abundant harvest. This, too, could have been an opportunity to invest in his relationship with God and others. Yet this rich fool doesn't see it that way, and instead makes plans to divert his blessing into a life where he needs no one but himself. He is foolish, not because it is a fundamentally bad idea to make plans, or to seek safety. (It isn't.) He is foolish because he misunderstands the purpose of being blessed with abundance. He is foolish because he thinks that having things means you don't need to love and be loved by people. He spends his life in work for himself, and when his life is over there is no one to be blessed by it. In failing to be connected to God and others, the rich man's life ends when he does. What a waste.

So this morning we are invited to ask ourselves the question – what will we do, with the abundance that God has given us? Maybe, for you, that harvest looks like money or property or wealth. Or maybe it looks like family, love, company, or community. Maybe you have blessings in both. I wonder what you do with those blessings? Do you legislate them, like the man who wanted his share from his brother? Do you put them away, wall them up from other people in case you need them for yourself in the future? Do you use your abundance as an excuse not to be connected to other people, or to keep the poor, outcast, sinners of our culture far away from you?

Our gospel this morning invites us to recognize our blessings as signs of the kingdom of God, as invitations to spend our lives well. This is Jesus calling us to invest our abundance in what will last long after we are gone: the people and the world God has given us to love and be loved by. In God's kingdom conflict with other people is an invitation to love, not to win. In God's kingdom other people, especially people in need, are invitations to become a blessing and to be even more blessed. In God's kingdom we all eat together at the table, and we trust that there will be more food tomorrow. So this morning, consider your blessings, revel in your abundance, and then come and offer it to the world God has given you to love. Do this just as the teller of this parable, Jesus, gave himself for you, that you might have abundant life and the blessing of unending love.