2004-08-01 The Best Things in Life.doc Page 2 of 2
Maybe then he would see that 1) he already has enough (he is, after all, rich); and 2) if he
didn’t gather it all his barns would be big enough and 3) that there are other people out there, some
of whom don’t have enough and 4) that maybe he could save himself the trouble of tearing down
the old barns and building some new ones is he could share with them.
He can’t see it, though. For now there is only this man, his possessions, and his thoughts.
Well, no sooner has he gotten done imagining his future with himself and all his stuff—than
God enters the picture. And now he learns what his real future will be. His last word was “be
merry”—God’s first word is “fool.” His presumption was “many years”—God’s announcement is
“this night.” And where he addresses himself as “soul”—God’s judgment is that it will be “taken
from” him.
Now, one assumption I have made in the past is that the man dies that night, but the parable
doesn’t really say that in so many words. That’s one way to read it, and it makes good sense. After
all, we know—at least in our heads—that we stand so close, just a breath, just a heartbeat from this
life to that life. And we know what it is to lose people and things that we cherish—health, jobs,
marriages, a way of life. Of course, this parable speaks to that. No matter what our culture tells us,
the person who dies with the most toys doesn’t win.
But parables have this power that lets us turn them around in our minds and find more each
time we return to them, and I’d like to suggest there is another side to this story.
We don’t know for sure that the rich man dies that very night—only that, God’s words, “this
very night your life is being demanded of you,” may also be translated as “they will demand your
life”—and we don’t know who “they” is, whether it means God will demand his life—but what if
“they” is all his possessions, all that money.
“They” demand his life—his soul—the entity outside himself that he talks to. And maybe
what has happened to this man, as he sits inside his little world, is that his soul is gone—his
innermost self has been lost, lost in the future among all that money and all that stuff. “They”
demanded his life.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about these things, what with some of our members in the
hospital, visits to the Clinton Avenue Soup Kitchen, random calls for help—some real, others
blatant attempts at manipulation—that come in to my office, the report of the 9/11 commission, the
endless war in Iraq, the loss of my cat Simba who had some kind of cardiac attack and slipped away
about an hour later, so quietly that we never knew for sure when he was gone.
We don’t know what happened to the man who came to Jesus with his question. All we
know is Jesus gave him a choice, the same choice, the same gift he offers to us and to all.
But I do know this: God is rich towards us. As Susan Andrews, the former moderator of GA,
said at the opening worship: “God does not sprinkle us with grace; God drenches us with grace.
God’s meal is not a snack to tide us over; it is a feast that can feed us for the rest of our lives.” Life
is too precious and too short to get tangled up in the things we have and the future we may or may
not have with them. Jesus says there’s another way—to be “rich toward God,” which is, I think, to
live each day, each moment, in gratitude for God’s rich blessings to us—the ones we know are
blessings and even the ones that don’t quite feel like blessings at the time—and to love God’s world
and all that is in it—including ourselves—and all with an eye to the future when we will be home—
at the table, blessed beyond our wildest imagination, all of us, with Jesus at the head.
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