Luke 12:13-21
“Treasured”
July 31, 2022
I couldn’t make it, but if you happened to be in Palm Beach, Florida this past March you could have had your pick of them.
If your budget was relatively modest, you could get a 203-foot used one named Sea Owl that included furniture, a Steinway piano, some valuable art and a fingerprint recognition security package all for only $90 million.
Or maybe if you needed a bit more space, the one named Bold is 280 feet and comes with its own helicopter hangar, 3 Sea-Doos, and 2 sailboats.
For the vast majority of us who would be considered “ineligible visitors” at the yacht show, the world of super yachts is the stuff of those folks who have more money than they know what to do with.
As a working definition, a yacht is a boat with a crew aboard while a super yacht is a yacht that is longer than 98 feet.
If its more than 230 feet, it’s considered a mega yacht and one more than 290 feet in length would be known as a giga yacht.
There are currently about 5400 superyachts and 100 giga yachts in the world which may sound astounding unless we remember that in the United States alone in 1990 there were only 66 billionaires. Today the number of billionaires in the U.S. is more than 700 – a number that grew higher with the pandemic.
And maybe you, like me and 23 of my extended family who went in on 24 tickets together, had that nearly impossible dream, if only for a few fleeting moments of joining the ranks of the American billionaires with Friday’s Mega Millions’ 1.1 billion dollar jackpot.
Granted, if any of our numbers had won we would be splitting it 24 ways but 25 million dollars after taxes would change our lives.
But would it make me and my family rich toward God?
That is what Jesus has God teaching the man who wants to build bigger barns so that he can hold onto his all his stuff.
What is demanded of his life right now?
What is demanded of ours?
The conversation with himself that the rich man has is entirely self-centered.
He says:
I have no place to store my crops
I will do this
I will knock down my barns and builder bigger ones
I will put all my stuff in them
I will say to my soul that after I’ve done this, I need to stay rich, I can eat, drink and be merry.
Many of us who are willing to talk about almost any topic – even those we know little to nothing about – avoid talking about money directly.
I had no idea growing up how much money my parents had or any specific idea of what it took to feed, clothe and house 9 people back in the 60s and 70s.
One of my only memories of storing up then was seeing my dad take the savings bonds that would be taken from his paychecks and putting them in a special metal box, always emphasizing that these were going to be used to help send my siblings and I to college when the time came.
Oh, and also once I started babysitting for neighborhood families beginning at the age of 10 (no way would I have let my daughter stay alone with a 10 year old but those were different times), my parents expected me to use the money earned for things I wanted and encouraged saving up for them instead of splurging on sweets or 45 records.
Jesus is warning about greed here as he intervenes with the self-centered rich man who naively would look to Jesus to come out on his side of the family feud happening over inheritance.
We already know he’s rich and this is not enough.
The rich man only wants what he considers his fair share.
Our earthly culture tells us to be concerned about planning ahead, saving for any possibility, having a plan for retirement or disability but interestingly we are supposed to care about these things but not talk about them with others. Salary discussions are a no-no in many places. And we pay professional financial experts to help us hold onto as much of our money as possible and pay as little as we can get away with in taxes.
The rich man in this parable is so focused on his economic status and greed that he can’t see that it is his inner life, not the life he can buy, that Jesus is concerned with.
His greedy self, as one writer describes it, “reduces the Son of God to an estate lawyer.” (“Rich Toward God,” Journey with Jesus, 7/28/19)
As much as we might not like talking about money, Jesus has no such problem.
Jesus talks more about money and possessions than almost anything else.
Why is that?
Could it be that he knew our human tendency to spend a high percentage of our lives worrying about how much money we have, how to get more and how to keep what we’ve got?
When it comes to how much we think about money, many of us can get defensive.
When we offer up The Lord’s Prayer, we say the words “Give us this day our daily bread” and yet many of us have cupboards and refrigerators and freezers and pantries filled with not daily “bread” but “bread” that can last us weeks or months.
As I look to the next year, I am a bit overwhelmed at the prospect of moving with one of the most challenging aspects being how much stuff I need to get rid of.
Rather than being offended by Jesus, who is talking to me and you with this parable on greed, maybe we’re supposed to look at the other kind of riches he refers to.
What does being “rich toward God” look like?
We might have to wrestle, each of us, with what that says to us.
Acknowledging our interconnectedness might be a start.
Recognizing that everything we are comes from God.
Maybe instead of using “I” and “me” statements like the rich man, we might give more weight to “we” and “ours” in considering how we honor and serve God.
As we continue to listen to our still-speaking God, let us lift in prayer these words from our New England Conference UMC Bishop: