Context No. 807 of 4322 · Luke
Context · Reflection
Luke 12:13-19: in context
13One of the multitude said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” 14But he said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or an arbitrator over you?” 15He said to them, “Beware! Keep yourselves from covetousness, for a man’s life doesn’t consist of the abundance of the things which he possesses.” 16He spoke a parable to them, saying, “The ground of a certain rich man produced abundantly. 17He reasoned within himself, saying, ‘What will I do, because I don’t have room to store my crops?’ 18He said, ‘This is what I will do. I will pull down my barns, build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19I will tell my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years. Take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry.”’
Someone in the crowd tries to pull Jesus into a family money fight: teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me. Jesus refuses the role of arbiter and goes after the thing underneath the request. Watch out, he says, and be on guard against all greed, for a person's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. Then he tells a story about a rich man whose land produced a bumper crop, so much that he had nowhere to put it all.
Listen to how the man thinks, because Luke lets us overhear the whole thing, and the striking feature is that there is no one else in it. He reasoned within himself, saying, what shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops? This is what I will do: I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and store all my grain and my goods, and I will say to my soul, soul, you have plenty laid up for many years; take your ease, eat, drink, be merry. It is a soliloquy of I and my and myself, start to finish. God never appears in it. No neighbor, no poor man at the gate, no one he might share the surplus with, ever crosses his mind. Greed has quietly shrunk his entire world down to the size of himself, until the only one left to talk to is his own soul, and even that conversation, the next verse reveals, he has badly misjudged, because he does not have the many years he is counting on.
The rich fool made his whole plan in a conversation with himself, with no God and no neighbor anywhere in it. When I picture my future, who else is in the frame, or is it all I and my and mine?
Sources
- Luke 12:20-21: fool, this night your soul is required of you, and the one not rich toward God
- Ecclesiastes 2:18-23: the goods left to another, the vanity of hoarding
- 1 Timothy 6:17-19: charge the rich to be generous and rich in good works