August 3, 2025 Sermon
Title: “Don’t Be Greedy!”
Scripture: Luke 12:3-21
(Other lectionary suggestions include Hosea 11:1-11, Psalm 107:1-9, and Colossians 3:1-11.)
Luke 12:13-21
The Parable of the Rich Fool
13Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” 14But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” 15And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” 16Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. 17And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ 18Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ 20But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ 21So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”
The Roman Catholic church has for the longest time had a list of deadly sins. One of them happens to be GREED, so I titled this sermon “Don’t Be Greedy!” Even Jesus seemed especially irked at this farmer who didn’t thank God for his abundance. All he wanted to do was build bigger barns to hold his extra crops, and I’m guessing that one of his sins was that he didn’t think of sharing with those less fortunate. Says the Lutheran Pastor Amy Elizabeth Hessel, whom I have quoted before, “Maybe he wasn’t so much greedy as he was fearful and insecure - not trusting God to provide his daily bread. Or, maybe he did it for the love of the game. Or, maybe he really liked to win, and he enjoyed beating his fellow farmers in the Biggest Crop of the Year competition. Whichever of those three scenarios may be the case. Jesus makes it clear that this farmer’s life is at odds with what God regards as a meaningful and substantial life.”
Something else: it’s a pretty terrible thing to call somebody a fool. And yet Jesus calls him that. Says Amy Hessel, “This is arguably the strongest condemnation that Jesus renders in all of the Gospels.” Jesus’s condemnation goes way back to the Wisdom Tradition in the Old Testament.
In that tradition, the intention is “to teach about nature, reality, virtue, and the divine.” Being a fool didn’t really mean one was stupid. or thoughtless or unwise. “To be a fool was to be one who failed to comprehend the power and purpose of God in all things.”
Says the Rev. Amy, “The farmer in the parable is a fool because he seems little concerned or aware of the fact that he is not in full control of his own destiny and welfare.” This guy doesn’t realize that his days are numbered. “He acts as if he has all the time in the world, when in truth only God knows the number of any of our days.”
This farmer has benefited from good luck and good weather. But he fails to acknowledge that GOD’s abundance has been poured out for anyone other than himself. “His life is about what he can create, what he can consume, and what he can accomplish.....He has no awareness of how sluggish, flabby, and poorly fed his soul has become.” He is obviously not worried about the things of God. There is always TOMORROW. The flabby farmer thinks God’s stuff can wait, even if he never thinks of the things of God. He thinks, “The things of MY world need attention. God’s business can wait.” This guy does not realize that his own special kind of “heart disease” has set in.
Let me close with this thought by Rohinton Mistry, who said, “The worst part of great poverty is that you become blind to it.” Let us hope that we do not.
Pastor Skip
