The Wisdom of Wealth
The Wisdom of Wealth by Rev. L. John Gable
October 24, 2021
I don’t know if you are aware of this or not, but we have not called for an offering, nor have I preached or taught on the importance of stewardship, since March 8, 2020, over 20 months ago, and I want to apologize to you for that. As with other aspects of worship, such as how best to serve communion and whether or not to pass the friendship pads, the collecting of the morning offering by passing the plates became problematic, so we simply eliminated it from our worship services.
So what has been the result of this? Over the past year and a half, your giving in support of Tab’s ministry and mission has stayed right on track, for which we are grateful, and our spending has been down, so from a balance sheet perspective all is well. So, I can almost hear you asking, then why apologize for not taking up an offering? Simply put, balancing assets and liabilities is not the business we are in, is it? There is other, more important, more eternal business, we are called to tend to.
Years ago I heard a pastor say, “Even if this church did not need your money to run this ministry I would still owe it to you as your pastor to teach on Christian stewardship as a part of Christian discipleship because it helps us keep our priorities straight.” Tab has a long history of faithful stewards who understand the importance of the discipline of giving, and I believe those have been raised and nurtured over the years and are not innately born with it. We who get it, give, faithfully and generously, because we recognize the importance of sharing a portion of all we have been so graciously given as an act of Christian discipleship and witness, and we are blessed to be able to see the good that it does for the Kingdom work to which we are committed. Peter Lee writes, “As Christians we give because we have first been given to. We are the recipients of a lavish love. Giving is at the heart of the Christian life. Our need to give is more than a duty, more than a response to need, it is a sign of our understanding of what life is all about.” Our generosity is a sign of God’s grace. Behind every gift we give is a greater gift which we have been given.
Are you aware that Jesus talked more about issues of money than He did any other topic? He understood what a stranglehold it can have on us. And whenever He discussed it He did so with the understanding that all material things belong to God, “The earth is the Lord’s and fullness thereof”. (Ps 24) The consistent message of Scripture is that we are stewards, caretakers, not owners, of all our possessions which makes us responsible to God in what we do with them because all that we have, including our very lives themselves, will one day be returned to Him.
So, very much like the Proverbs of the Old Testament, life lessons, words of wisdom intended to be passed from parent to child, one generation to the next, that we would do well to hear and heed, Jesus also taught on the wisdom of wealth most often using His classic teaching style, the parable, such as the one we read this morning. Simply put, He teaches that there is much that money can do and much that money cannot do, and the wisdom of wealth comes in knowing the difference.
Perhaps you’ve heard the saying, “Money can buy a house, but not a home; medicine but not health; a bed but not sleep; companionship but not friends; entertainment but not happiness; food but not an appetite. Money can buy a cross but not a Savior; the good life but not eternal life.”
This is what Jesus was getting at in our Gospel lesson this morning. Luke writes, as He was teaching “Someone in the crowd said to Him, ‘Teacher/Rabbi, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” Imagine the audacity of that one, most likely some younger brother who didn’t like the way his older brother was unwilling to more equitably divide the family estate, who dared to call out and insist that Jesus get involved in his sibling squabble. Jesus’ response and refusal to get involved was interesting though and not for the reasons we might think. He answered, “Friend”, perhaps the better translation is, “Man, who made me to be a judge and arbitrator over you?” Admittedly Jesus is the only One who is rightly judge and arbitrator over us, but in this case, He saw that this young man was not seeking reconciliation with his older brother; this was just a money grab and Jesus wanted no part in that. Perhaps if he had said, “Jesus, my brother and I have had a falling out after our father’s death, can you help us?” He would have been all in. We’ve all witnessed families who get along really well until it comes time to divide the inheritance, haven’t we? Jesus very efficiently says, “I am a uniter not a divider, so I am not going to be the decider between you and your brother” and then quite unexpectedly offers this warning which gets at the real issue this young man was dealing with. “So be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Those words of Jesus sound like a proverb, don’t they? He is offering the wisdom of wealth which debunks the modern myth that we can somehow buy happiness and contentment. It is the clear reminder that dreams of the abundant life will never be achieved through our accumulation of stuff. While it is true that a certain measure of material goods is necessary for life; it is not true that a great abundance of goods means a greater abundance of life. To illustrate this truth Jesus tells him and them and us a parable.
“The land of a rich man produced abundantly.” Note there is no suggestion of graft or theft or shady business dealings here, simply, this man who was already sufficiently wealthy was blessed with a bumper crop. As is often the case, in good times, the rich get richer. So he thought to himself, “What should I do for I have no place to store my crops?” That is a first-world problem, isn’t it? Then he said to himself, “I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods.” And then I will say, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink and be merry.” Now, a first century listener would have heard something in Jesus’ telling that we would likely miss. This man was only talking to himself instead of talking with others about his “problem” of over-supply. In first century Palestine it would have been customary for him instead to go to the city gate and talk with his friends about what to do with this good problem he was faced with, seeking the good counsel of others, and they would have talked and debated on it for hours, maybe days. But he didn’t, he talked only with himself and the problem with that is we always agree with ourselves and we most often rationalize in ways that work to our own benefit. Such is the nature of greed and covetousness, which you recall is number ten on the list of the Top Ten. This man spoke of: My crops. My barns. My goods. My soul. He had no one outside himself to talk with him about what he could do with his surplus supply; no one to share with him any wisdom of wealth and what best to do with it. Mind you, this man was already rich. His barns were already full. He was already lacking for nothing in a material sense, so this bonus crop was simply icing on an already very rich cake. He would have been in agreement with the elder Rockefeller who when asked, “How much is enough?” answered, “Just a little bit more.” However had St. Ambrose or his student St. Augustine been in his company that day they would have told him he didn’t need bigger barns; that he had ample storage available in the mouths of the needy. The bellies of the poor were much safer storerooms than the barns he was going to build. Just think of the good this man could have done with all the excess he had that he did not need? And lest we think that this is this man’s issue alone, think of the good that we can do with the excess we have in our already full storehouses? When Jesus was telling this parable, He was not just speaking to them then, but to us now. “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed” is a timeless word of wisdom about wealth that applies to us all.
The man in the parable thought what he was doing with his excess wealth was wise and prudent, but God called him “a fool”. “You fool, this very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” God was calling in the loan he had been given; the very gift of his life, as He one day will with each of us. The parable which begins with such bounty and blessing ends on a note of tragedy, which unfortunately we too perhaps have seen played out in the lives of those we have known. I have known several people or families over the years who planned and saved and built bigger storehouses in order to “relax, eat, drink and be merry” only to be unexpectedly struck down by disease or disaster or even death.
Is the point of Jesus’ parable then that we shouldn’t plan ahead; that we should live only for the day? Not at all. In fact, the issue which prompted this teaching in the first place is most likely that the father hadn’t written out a will thus leaving his two sons to fight over the inheritance. No, the point of Jesus’ teaching is summarized in the very last verse when He says, “So it is for those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”
All this man in the parable had ever desired was fulfilled! He had achieved the good life. Yet still he was called “foolish” because he had become rich in the things of this world without becoming rich in the things of God. So be careful what you wish for because you just might get it.
What is interesting about this teaching is that Jesus is not forcing a binary decision; an either/or: this world or the next. Unlike the instructions He gave to the rich young ruler, “Give it all away”; Jesus gives a very different message here. The question this parable asks and begs us to answer for ourselves is, what do we do with the surplus, the abundance, the more than enough, once we know that our needs, and that of our families and our futures, are reasonably well met? Be aware, we don’t need to wait for the former to be satisfied before we start on the latter, our storehouses do not need to be full before we start investing in the things of God and the sooner we learn that the better because it helps us keep our priorities straight. We, who are admittedly rich in the things of this world, must also ensure that we have also invested in the things of God. Rather than building bigger barns we need to be asking, “In what ways can we invest in God’s Kingdom building?” For “What does it profit us to gain the whole world but lose ourselves?” (Luke 9:25). As C.S. Lewis put it, “All that is not eternal is eternally useless.”
What a privilege we have, as individuals, as families, as a church, to be able to invest the resources God has so graciously entrusted to us in ways which help meet our needs, our neighbor’s needs and God’s Kingdom needs, both now and for eternity.
We aren’t told, but I wonder what this younger brother thought as he walked away from this conversation with Jesus? Did he think, “He didn’t help me at all? He refused to get involved, to answer my question?” Or did he think, “Thank you, Jesus, for helping me to think about something far more important than how much I was going to get out of my father’s estate?” And what of us? How do we respond to Jesus’ teaching? Do we think His words don’t really apply to me, or have they hit the mark of our real relationship with money, possessions, stuff?
Without question, there is much that money can do; but there is also much that money can never do. The wisdom of wealth comes in knowing the difference.
Rev. L. John Gable
Tabernacle Presbyterian Church
Indianapolis, IN