Out of Proportion - Rev. Ann Slade

John Ruskin told the story of a man who was in the gold business and he was transporting his gold from one place to another by boat. The boat developed a leak and was about to sink. The man reached for his gold, strapped as much of it as he could around his waist, leaped overboard, and attempted to swim to the shore. He did not make it! He sank like a rock and drowned. Ruskin raised the essential question: “ As he was sinking did he have his gold, or did his gold have him?

Question: What do you do with a bumper crop, the kind of crop that happens every twenty years or so? What do you do with prosperity? Answer: You become a capitalist, which is what the farmer in the parable did. We Americans tend to admire the man; he was an entrepreneur, tearing down in order to build bigger barns for bigger crops for bigger profits. And what’s the motive? You don’t have to have an MBA to figure out the motive; self-interest. He was providing for his own security. It’s like a sign on a wall of a library of a management school that read “Self -interest Makes the World Go round.” In an age of downsizing, a future free from money worries sounds pretty good - eat, drink, and enjoy! Could anyone describe the American dream any sweeter? Food, enough, wine on the table, and time-for ourselves. What do you do with a bumper crop? Easy, you become a capitalist.

But what does God say? This morning I would like us to think a few moments about our money and our life….our possessions and our spiritual well-being. Is it all out of proportion? Could that be what this parable is addressing?

One of the common mistakes made in referring to what people think it says in the Bible…is to say: Money is the root of all evil. The correct quote is the LOVE of money is the root of all evil. However, when one begins to be obsessed with accumulating, building bigger barns or houses or storage sheds to hold all we possess, it’s time for a “heads up” and time to look at any one of numerous passages in the Bible dealing with wealth and generosity and keeping thing in proportion.

Yes, the Bible has a great deal to say about wealth and the people who build up great wealth. This parable of Jesus’ for example. The usual interpretation of this parable speaks of it as a teaching concerning the folly of a life devoted to the accumulation of wealth, saying it is ridiculous to seek security through riches. The foolishness becomes obvious, so the interpretation goes, when suddenly one night the man dies and stands before God. Then he sees with tragic clarity the utter folly of it all. It was stupid, if not downright sinful, to amass such riches. What had it gained him when he was economically rich and spiritually poor? Life was completely out of proportion.

Earlier I read the parable of the Rich Fool from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. Listen now as I read The Story of The Greedy Farmer from The Message, The Bible in contemporary Language written by Eugene H. Peterson. 

Someone out of the crowd said, “Teacher, order my brother to give me a fair share of the family inheritance.”  He replied, “Mister, What makes you think it’s any of my business to be a judge or mediator for you?” Speaking to the people, he went on, “Take care! Protect yourself against the least bit of greed. Life is not defined by what you have, even when you have a lot.”

Then he told them this story: “The farm of a certain rich man produced a terrific crop. He talked to himself: “What can I do? My barn isn’t big enough for this harvest.” Then he said, “here’s what I ‘ll do: I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. Then I’ll gather in all my grain and goods, and I’ll say to myself, Self, you”ve done well! You’ve got it made and can now retire. Take it easy and have the time of your life!“Just then God showed up and said, “Fool! Tonight you die. And your barn full of goods-- who gets it?” “That’s what happens when you fill your barn with Self and not with God.”

Because our experience does not square with the traditional understanding of Jesus’ parable, we fail to take it seriously. We manage to feel guilty sometimes because most of us are affluent by the world’s standards and assume the bony finger of accusation is pointed at us by Jesus, but we do not really believe that riches are evil or the satisfaction that we derive from our work is blasphemous. Consequently when we give money to the church or charitable causes we do so dutifully, perhaps grudgingly, or out of a sense of obligation and guilt. How often do we give out of gratitude in response to God’s gifts to us?

Our failure to take the parable seriously, however’, may not be an indication of our waywardness as much as an indication born of our experience, that the conventional interpretation misses the point.

The most memorable line in this story is the oft spoken admonition to “Eat, drink, and be merry, “for tomorrow you may die. The underlying assumption among many believers is that there is something wrong about eating, drinking, and being merry in the face of death’s certainty.. Such a conclusion flied in the face of the religious tradition out of which Jesus came. Clearly Jesus enjoyed a good party, and as long as it wasn’t out of proportion to the totality of life’s experiences, he encouraged it.

So what was Jesus’ parable saying when he called the man, “Fool?” The man was called foolish for building bigger barns. He was planning to store more of his wealth than he needed to eat, drink, and be merry. Hear again the words of this story. The man says, “What shall I do for I have nowhere to store my crops?” Not true ! He has barns. His problem is that his harvest has been so great that his present storage facilities will not hold all of the grain. So he decides, “I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store my grain, Then and only then will I have ample goods to eat, drink and be merry.” Again, not true! He already has ample goods. He does not have to live in the moment - hand to mouth. He has barns for his future. Fortune has smiled on him and he has been able to accumulate a sizeable portion of worldly goods.

This story is not a teaching condemning the foolishness of gathering wealth. It is rather a parable that challenges us to discern how much is enough to draw the line between necessity and comfort and to discover how and eith whom we may share our wealth. What a joy it is to give to others out of gratitude to God!

You and I are, by any world measure of wealth, affluent people. We may not have great wealth but measured by this world’s standard, we have much wealth than enables us to eat, drink and be merry most of the time. We are able to have a sense of well-being that poverty doesn’t allow. Nothing brings shalom like a roof over our heads and three square meals a day. Yet, we can eat only so much. Our closets can hold only so many clothes. We can live only one place at a time. It is possible to draw the line at some point and say, “We have enough.”

Our society has moved beyond the production of basic human needs to become a “consumer society” whose vitality and growth is maintained by convincing us we need everything. We are a nation of bigger barn builders. We comprise only six percent of the world’s population but consume 40 percent of its goods.

Robert Heilbroner, who has written dozens of books on the subject of the economy, suggests that we go through a little mental exercise that will help us count our blessings. Imagine doing the following, and we see how daily life is for more than a billion people in the world.

1. Take out all the furniture in your home except for one table and a couple of chairs. Use blankets and pads for beds.

2. Take away all of your clothing except your oldest dress or suit, shirt or blouse. Leave one pair of shoes.

3. Empty the pantry and refrigerator except for a small bag of flour, some sugar and salt, a few potatoes, some onions, and a dish of dried beans.

4..Dismantle the bathroom, shut off the running water, and remove all the electrical wiring in your house.

5. Take away your “house” and move the family into the tool shed

6. Cancel all subscriptions to newspapers, magazines, and book clubs. This is no great loss because now none of you can read anyway.

7. Throw away bank books, stock certificates, pension plans, and insurance policies. Leave the family a cash hoard of ten dollars

8. Give the head of the family a few acres to cultivate on which he can raise a few hundred dollars of cash crops, of which one third will go to the landlord and one-thenth to the money lenders.

9. Lop off twenty-five or more years in life expectancy.

By comparison how rich we are! And of course, with our wealth comes responsibility Jesus’ parable, therefore, does have relevance. It raises the question, “How am I to regard my wealth, and what am I to do with it? Do I see my possessions as blessings from God? Do I recognize that I do not own them as they are on loan from God? Do I understand that blessing is not something I earn, but something for which I take credit as if I were a part of the cause and effect scheme of things?

In the movie Shenandoah, James Stewart plays a Virginia farmer during the Civil War years. He begins every meal with the same prayer which he delivers in his dry way: “Lord, I planted the seeds, I plowed the ground, I gathered in the harvest. If I hadn’t of put the food on the table it wouldn’t be here. But we thank you anyway.”

Perhaps we all had better understand the role of grace and mystery in life or we too might fall prey to the sin of thinking too highly of ourselves. This parable challenges us to discern how much is enough; to draw the line between necessity and comfort; and to discern how and with whom we may share our wealth. Like the rich farmer, who had much, all that we have is to be received gratefully as a blessing from God. Nevertheless, there is some level of wealth that is ample for us to live - even enough to eat, drink and be merry. Unlike the rich man, however, we must understand ourselves as stewards entrusted with our wealth for a time. We are not merely to store it away but to put it to good use by sharing with others in direct proportion to the abundance of our blessing.

We cannot take what we earn with us on that journey to the next life. We can only carry what we have given away. We cannot go with pockets crammed with cash, with bank books and ledgers. We can only take with us the memories of lives we have touched, of love we have given, of love we have received. We can leave behind great wealth and even be appreciated for that. But we leave nothing behind more valuable, more praiseworthy than a life lived in love of God and neighbor, a life spent in being rich toward all Jesus’ parable invites us to boldly examine our financial resources and what we probably mistakenly call “our possessions” and declare at what level we have enough. We do not have to squirrel more and more of our wealth away in bigger and better barns. There is some level at which each of us can say after cold, somber reflection, “I have ample goods. Thank you, God!” Beyond that level Jesus invites us to grow spiritually by living a simpler life - a life of gratitude and peace and holiness.

There are groups scattered here and there in the United States where simplicity of life is stressed. One whole branch of this is called “Simple Living” and also known as “Voluntary Simplicity.” People meet together and discuss - and challenge each other - to live a simpler, more intentional life. They say, “Simple living is not about living in poverty or self-inflicted deprivation. Rather, it is about living an examined life - one in which you have determined what is important, or “enough“, for you, discarding the rest. WHAT WOULD THAT MEAN FOR YOU?