The Price of Financial Freedom

Money is not the root of all evil, but it accounts for a lot of it. How might we live into the wisdom found in today’s parable?

This service was not recorded as Brian was away.  Here is the sermon that was read during worship.

Today’s Gospel reading is a parable that’s meant to be common or familiar.  But, I’m not sure that this parable is either, so we’ll start by exploring it in a bit more detail before trying to apply it to our own lives.

The parable begins, “the land of a rich man produced abundantly.”  Who is this man, exactly?  Technically, a farmer, but in Jesus time the reality was that land owners were the rich folk.  It’s a sentiment that’s still alive today, even though many of you who own your home may wonder, with repair and energy costs going up.  The man in our parable though is rich because he owns land that is producing.  Each harvest amounts to profit, after his laborers are paid, and if that land is producing abundantly, then this man is profiting abundantly as well.

What does this man decide to do with his harvest?  Well, he needs to store it somewhere and his barns aren’t big enough, so he tears down his barns to store this large harvest.  So far, everything he has done makes sense.  Big harvests need big barns, so get some big barns.  But, this is not where the problem lies in our parable.

In verse 19, the rich man says to himself, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”  This is the moment that ties the parable back to the encounter with Jesus at the beginning of our reading.  “Make my brother split the inheritance with me.” It’s a kind of greed that is problematic because it makes sense.  There are two of them, so the inheritance needs to be divided between them, right?

Except Jesus doesn’t know the context anymore than we do.  This brother could well have inspired the parable of the prodigal son for all we know.  “Who set me to be a judge or arbiter over you?”  The only thing that is clear is that this man wants half, and the wanting, the greed is the problem.

There is one important piece of context for this parable before we can proceed.  It comes down to scarcity or abundance.  In Jesus time, in the Middle East, it was believed that the land produced enough for everyone, but only barely.  In a scarcity economy, if there is just enough for everyone, and someone has more than enough… it means someone else received less than enough.  In short, you could not be both rich and a good person.

Today we live in an economy of abundance.  There is more than enough produced to meet the basic needs of life for everyone on the planet.  There are some logistical challenges, like getting grain from the prairies to the Gaza strip, but there is more than enough food on planet for the people on the planet.  This actually makes this parable worse rather than better though.

If people were starving in Jesus’ time, it was because there was enough, but only just enough.  If the supply chain problems are hard today, imagine what that was like in a time before cargo ships and airplanes.  Someone might be excused if there was a famine somewhere far away.  But we have cargo ships and airplanes so there’s no excuse for people to be hungry.

Who is the modern equivalent of this rich landowner?  It’s not me, and it’s probably not you either if you’re hearing this or reading it online.  The landowner in Jesus’ time was someone who made money just by owning stuff.  He doesn’t necessarily add any value to what he owns as he hires laborers to do the physical work, accountants to do the paperwork, and lawyers to handle the legal work.  Chances are, he inherited his land from his father who inherited it in turn from his father.  He probably sees himself as entitled to that inheritance, like the man who would have Jesus act as probate court against his brother, as if he earned it instead of winning the parental lottery.  Sound like anyone in our modern society?

Of course I’m talking about billionaires.  There’s a pattern that happens when a person has more money than they can spend.  They will invest their excess, for the future, in a way that makes more money for them.  Sometimes that will be in the form of real estate or rental properties.  Sometimes they will invest in local startup companies.  Sometimes though they will invest in the stock market.  When that happens, the investment will increase in one of two ways, sometimes both.  Dividends and increases in stock value.  The market has been topsy turvy for months now and millions of dollars have been lost, and gained, with every closing bell.  All the while, the billionaire class talks as if they are adding value to the economy.

This is not without notice even amongst the billionaires.  Two of note are Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.  Both have committed to spend their fortunes in ways that benefit people as they know they cannot take it with them.  They can spend multiple fortunes and still leave more than enough for an inheritance for their children.  Let’s be clear, the fact they have this money to spend is evidence of a deeper problem.  We live in an abundance economy where there is more than enough, they have more than enough, and yet people go hungry… but at least they try.

While I’m confident that there are no billionaires listening to this message, even those of us with less need to pay attention to the lesson.  If we want to live in a society where the abundance we clearly have benefits everyone, and not just those who started the Monopoly game early enough to control the board, we need to convince our politicians to reset the game.  The game of Monopoly always ends, either by choice or when everyone who isn’t winning quits.  Essentially, we can change the rules or wait for the revolution… and the last time people tried Option B it was Marxism, the communism, and we’re still dealing with that mess.

Additionally, you do not need to be rich to fall into this pattern of behaviour, it’s just more obvious.  Some of you may have investments as part of your retirement savings in mutual or index funds.  It’s easier said, than done, but it is worth asking if your investments are acting in ways that are consistent with your faith.  There may be ways to better align the two.

And that’s the crux of the greed that Jesus is talking about.  While this rich man is living it up with enough food and drink for years, someone else is going hungry. The fact that this fool only has days to live is just to drive the point home.  The very thing this man in the parable was hoping to accomplish, security for the next several years, turns out to be a useless venture, a waste of his time.  He was too focused on himself to notice the good that he could have done.  This is a concern for the rich, and most of us would not consider ourselves part of that group, but the thought exercise is worth the effort.  Rich and poor is often a matter of degree.  How might we make better choices than just storing up for ourselves?  And how might we change the world we live in so billionaires cannot coexist with the poor?

Lots of questions, but no easy answers.  Let us wrestle with the questions together, by the Spirit, in Jesus name, and in search of God’s kingdom.  Amen.