Building Bigger Barns

What is wrong with this picture? Imagine that you are in the audience that long-ago day in Judea, listening to Jesus preach. There are thousands in the crowd, but you got there early. In fact, you waited all night to get a good seat. Jesus’ reputation has grown all over Palestine, and people have come from miles away to hang on his every word, maybe to learn about God, maybe to get healed, maybe just to go home and brag to their neighbors that they had seen the famous rabbi. What does he talk about?

In this chapter, Jesus gives his listeners a number of very serious warnings. There is a warning against hypocrisy. There is a warning against giving in to fear. There is a warning against blasphemy. Jesus is trying to focus his hearers’ attention on what is really important, what is really important to God and therefore what should be really important to them. And even though Jesus is undoubtedly the greatest preacher the world has ever known - better than Billy Graham or Chuck Swindoll or James Montgomery Boyce or Tony Campolo - there are people in his audience who can’t hear a word he is saying because they’re so caught up in their own stuff. Even though what Jesus is saying is God’s word to them, they don’t want to hear what God has to say. They haven’t come to hear God, they have come to get a problem fixed.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with coming to Jesus, coming to God, with your problems. As a matter of fact, we’re told to do just that: “Cast all your anxiety on him,” says Peter to the church some decades later, “because he cares for you.” [1 Pe 5:7] The trouble with this particular fellow was that he wanted the wrong thing. He had the wrong priorities. And he had the wrong idea about what God’s interest in all of this was.

And so when he shouts out, “Teacher, get my brother to divide my inheritance with me,” Jesus is not pleased. Now, rabbis were often asked to mediate legal disputes. And this fellow may have had a valid claim; his brother might in fact have been playing legal games to avoid settling the estate. We don’t know. But Jesus responds, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” [v. 14] Well, if anyone is suited to be a judge or arbitrator, it’s Jesus. And not only is he going to be our judge on the last day, in fact he makes judgments all the time even in his first tour of duty on earth. In fact, just a couple of weeks before, Jesus was asked to take sides in a different kind of family disagreement. Remember Martha complaining about Mary leaving her to do all the work? And wanting Jesus to get Mary to behave in the “right” way? In that case, Jesus made a judgment that Mary had made the right choice. Now it’s a dispute between two brothers, but this time it’s about money. What’s the difference between these two cases? Why does Jesus appear to be inconsistent?

You won’t be surprised to hear that I don’t think Jesus is being inconsistent. Jesus is saying to this petitioner exactly what he said to Martha - just using slightly different words. He’s saying, “You’ve got your priorities upside down. Don’t worry about things, or about time, or about whether or not life is fair. I’m not here to make sure that everything is fair, I’m not here to monitor the laws of inheritance or to establish fair labor standards, I’m here to bring you back to God.”

But instead of answering him directly, Jesus tells a story. We may think it’s about rich people in general, people like Bill Gates or Warren Buffett, or maybe about dishonest rich people like Bernie Madoff or all the politicians who got rich in office. But that’s not what it’s about. If it were, we could simply ignore the message because none of us are in that boat, are we? We’re all decent hard-working folks who if we happen to have a little set aside for a rainy day or our retirement, why that’s only prudent, isn’t it?

But the main issue in this parable is not wealth. It’s not really about how much you have. Rather, it’s your attitude to wealth. The man in Jesus’ story happens to have a fruitful harvest, and he has to decide what to do with the overflow. He did not acquire his harvest immorally; we have no reason to believe that he exploited his laborers or cheated the merchants or anything of that sort. He simply had a good year. He’s an ant, not a grasshopper, by both habit and inclination, and so as he gazes around on all the season’s bounty, he prudently considers what should be done with the surplus.