Monday in the 29th Week of Ordinary Time, October 21, 2024

Luke 12, 13-21

Someone in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me.” He replied to him, “Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?” Then he said to the crowd, “Take care to guard against all greed, for though one may be rich, one’s life does not consist of possessions.”  Then he told them a parable. “There was a rich man whose land produced a bountiful harvest. He asked himself, ‘What shall I do, for I do not have space to store my harvest?’ And he said, ‘This is what I shall do: I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones. There I shall store all my grain and other goods and I shall say to myself, “Now as for you, you have so many good things stored up for many years, rest, eat, drink, be merry!”’ But God said to him, ‘You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?’ Thus will it be for the one who stores up treasure for himself but is not rich in what matters to God.”

“Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me.”  The Lord Jesus, in his time on earth, was probably besieged with people who wanted him to side with them in disputes.  He did not, however, possess any legal authority, and he points this out to the man who makes this plea to him: “Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?”  The Lord also refuses to act as a moral authority in a matter of this kind.  There were courts for this.  Presumably the man comes to the Lord after he has failed to gain his end through the legal system, and likely for a good reason.  Maybe this is the prodigal son who father has just died, leaving what is left of the estate to his elder son.  The younger son has no title to it or to any of it, and is now dependent for any kind of livelihood on the goodwill of his brother.

Next, according to St. Luke, the Lord launches into a parable illustrating that “one’s life does not consist of possessions.”  In the parable, a man already rich produced a bountiful harvest.  He then considered within himself (not “asked himself”, as in the English here) what he ought to do, since he did not have enough storerooms for his harvest.  The premise of the rich man’s consideration is that he must use this abundance of wealth for himself.  The question is how to do this.  If he sells it all now, he risks lower prices, and perhaps few buyers — if his harvest was prosperous, probably those of others were as well.  At the same time, he is already rich.  His storehouses are already full.  The solution he hits on is: “I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones.”  The solution is a sound one.  The rich man has far and above what he needs or can use.  But there is risk in storing his wealth, for rust and moth may consume what he has stored, or thieves may break in and steal it (cf. Matthew 6, 19).  (“Rust” here refers to a disease infecting plants that may involve fungus.  At any rate, some kind of rot or spoilage.)  As it happens, in the parable, the totally unforeseen occurs: the rich man dies.  As he is about to die, God speaks to him: “You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?”  The Greek word for “fool” here can also be translated as “inconsiderate man”: thus, the man considered, but he did so in an inconsiderate way.  That is, he worked from an ill-conceived premise.  He should not have thought how to keep his over abundance for himself but he rather should have thought: I have more than enough for myself.  I do not need more.  What else can I do with my excess?  And thinking as a Jew he would have remembered that the Lord said in the law, “There will not be wanting poor in the land of thy habitation: therefore I command thee to open thy hand to thy needy and poor brother, that liveth in the land” (Deuteronomy 15, 11).  This command is especially to be noted because its context is the abundance of the land which God is giving to the Israelites.

“Thus will it be for the one who stores up treasure for himself but is not rich in what matters to God.”  The Lord teaches us that when we frame questions of purpose, as, What shall I do?, we must think of God’s purpose, what is God’s will.  The question the rich man should have asked was, What does a God, who has given me this wealth, want me to do with it?  The question we as Christians ought to ask ourselves, especially when we are young, is, What does God, who has given me this life, want me to do with it?  We can also phrase this as, How does God want me to serve him?  The rich man, in his consideration, did not seek any other opinion.  We should avail ourselves in learning the answer to our question with the Scriptures, with wise people, but most importantly, God, in prayer.  If the rich man had asked God what he should do with his wealth, God would not have asked him what he was going to do with it at the end of the parable.