Threading the Needle: The Parable of the Rich Fool

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What is your “money mindset?” I share a few examples.  First, from Leonardo DiCaprio as Jordan Belfort in the movie The Wolf of Wall Street:

My name is Jordan Belfort. I’m a former member of the middle class raised by two accountants in a tiny apartment in Bayside, Queens. The year I turned 26, as the head of my own brokerage firm, I made $49 million, which really pissed me off because it was three shy of a million a week.

Next, from Tom Hanks as Sherman McCoy in Bonfire of the Vanities:

Money can’t buy happiness, but it sure can buy a lot of things that make you happy.

And finally, Michael Douglas as Gordon Gecko in the movie Wall Street:

The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed in all of its forms. Greed for life, money, love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind….

I find it interesting how Hollywood often portrays the imagine of the rich and powerful. On one hand, they often end up as tragic stories of greed gone too far. There is a narrative that the rich and greedy will inevitably one day fall. But the message that often sneaks in and around these characters and these movies is “maybe so, but wouldn’t it be fun until then?”

This idea that greed is good, that money really can buy you happiness, that the love of money is the root of all joy, is one deeply engrained in our culture and perhaps especially in our nation. After all, the story is often told of the reporter who once asked the first American billionaire, John D. Rockefeller, “So how much is enough?” And Rockefeller’s answer? “Just a little bit more.”

This concept makes its way into today’s story, as Jesus treated these ideas, head on. There is a word in the Greek: pleonexia. It is sometimes translated as covetousness, or wickedness, or often greed. Its root is the Greek word pleiōn, meaning “more.” Jesus seems to be responding to this Rockefellerian idea that to have enough you always need “just a little bit more.”

This idea comes to play in the interaction that Jesus has in today’s text. A brother comes asking Jesus to arbitrate in a dispute between him and his brother about their inheritance. Jesus refuses, and in response tells a parable of a man building barns to hold his bumper crop. Now, I would suggest that there is nothing inherently wrong with the actions of both of these men. In some cases, it might be very well possible that an injustice between two brothers has taken place, and the only way to right that wrong is to stand up to the offending brother and make him do what is right. The question is not the problem. Meanwhile, there is nothing technically wrong about building barns to store crops. That’s what you do with crops. Barn-building keeps the crops dry and ready to eat. It keeps them protected from rain and bugs and the elements. The barn is not the problem.

So what is the problem? If not their actions, perhaps the problem is the inherent foolishness of their mentality. This pleonexia mentality is what Jesus has recognized as the man’s problem. We have to assume that he was able to intuit what was really behind this man’s question, that his mentality was not one of justice, but greed. “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

There are some who have even suggested that Rockefeller was actually pretty self-aware and recognized the irony about his “little bit more” comment. He was a pretty smart guy and maybe he realized the foolishness of adopting a greed mentality that can never be satisfied. It would be like someone trying to slake their thirst with salt water. Every sip just makes it worse. Those who use money and possessions to achieve happiness never quite get there. Eugene Peterson has a similar metaphor:

Greed is a nearly invisible sin, a tiny parasite that makes its home in the intestines of wealth…There is no avoiding this condition of wealth, whether we conceive it as a spiritual blessing from God or the material results of a capitalistic economy. And all the time the greed virus is in our bloodstream. Sometimes there are enough Scripture antibodies (commandments, proverbs, parables) to protect us against infection. But there are times when our defenses are lowered and our whole system is fatigued. We get the fever and a runny nose of greed. It isn’t long before we start thinking about building a bigger barn….Building barns, which is so obviously a good thing, doesn’t leave much energy for the time-consuming work of loving our neighbors, let alone our God.

Jesus provides an alternative to pleonexia, in fact another p-word in the Greek: pluteo. This word in its simplest form means to be rich. It can mean rich financially or with material wealth. It implies abundance. Again, this is a Biblical concept. Scripture is full of examples of abundance:

• Genesis begins with an Eden that is filled with the richness and abundance of God’s creation

• God describes the Promised Land as the land of milk and honey.

• The Psalms are full of images of green pastures, and overflowing vineyards and winepresses.

• Jesus told stories of a Great Banquet where there were tables filled to overflowing with food.

• Remember the story where Jesus’s disciples are fishing and Jesus shows up, and all of a sudden they catch more fish than the boat can even hold?

• And the end of Scripture is the new heaven and new earth of Revelation, where the tree of life is rich and has 12 kinds of fruit.

Stories of abundance in Scripture are…well, abundant. This is the pluteo of God and God’s creation. Can you imagine anyone in those stories saying, “It is not enough. We need just a little bit more!”? Even in the story in today’s text, the parable begins with abundance, as the man receives a bumper crop. But not, Jesus clarifies, abundance of possessions. You cannot possess God’s abundance. Cannot stuff the banquet into your pockets. Cannot fence off Eden from your neighbors. Cannot take the boat full of fish and paddle off by yourself to hide it. Cannot build bigger barns just for the sake of having bigger barns. That’s when you get into trouble. That’s when pluteo turns into pleonexia. Abundance into greed. When we look at God’s overflowing abundance and try to possess it for ourselves.

That’s why Jesus ends the text with this phrase “pluteo eis theo.” “Rich toward God.” Our response to the abundance of God is to respond in kind. Those are the antibodies that Peterson was talking about. Commandments. Proverbs. Parables. When we read these Scriptural antidotes, they can become an antivirus to the disease of greed. Again, Peterson reminds us what those antibodies do:

The parable of the barn builder is an expose of greed: using what we have to get more instead of giving away more; using our position or goods as a means for getting impersonal power rather than giving away love…..All our wealth is grace-wealth. We are never power-wealthy, money-wealthy, influence-wealthy. We are love-wealthy.

See the difference in mindset? Living out of the abundance of God’s grace and love is totally different than the “a little bit more” of pleonexia.

So, how do we get there? Especially in a world of pleonexia, how do we receive this mentality of pluteo? Margaret Marcuson suggests four ways. Throughout this series, you are going to hear the name Margaret Marcuson a lot. She is an American Baptist pastor and author and clergy coach, and kind of our denominational guru about money, and the spirituality of money, and the systemic nature of money especially in our churches. In her book, Money and Your Ministry, her first chapter is titled “Know What you Believe About Money.”  In the chapter, she invites us to ask ourselves seven questions. In the metaphor of antibodies and greed-sickness, these questions become like our diagnosis. I think that Marcuson would suggest that before you try to change your behavior, you ask questions like these about your mindset about money. At the beginning of the sermon, I quoted a handful of “money mindsets,” how these characters viewed money and possessions. What would yours be? Similar? Pretty different? These questions might help you create that for yourself:

1. How would you describe your relationship with money?

2. What is your current biggest challenge in regard to money?

3. What do you want for yourself in this relationship with money?

4. What are some ways money might be a blessing?

5. Is there something in regard to money you would like to let go of?

6. How does your faith affect your money choices?

7. What is enough for you? For your church?

After our mindset is diagnosed, Marcuson suggests three more mindset strategies to consider:

One, put your total trust in God. Remember that all of the money that you have is actually God’s money in the first place. When we talk about the metaphor of stewardship, God is the owner, and we are given money and possessions to care for them in the way that the owner wants. It isn’t your money, anyway. A shift in mindset for a lot of us.

Two, put money in its place. Marcuson warns of the problems of BOTH extreme greed OR extreme asceticism. We can love money so much that it becomes a distraction, or we can hate or be afraid of money so much that we fail to use it as a tool for ministry. The place of money is not to be worshipped or feared. It is a tool that God uses for gospel work, as should we. 

Finally, she reminds us of the power of sacrificial giving. Remember Peterson’s language of Scriptural antibodies? Throughout Scripture, there are these models for giving that help us change our mindset. This won’t be the last time you hear about these, but put a pin in them for later.

• The Bible teaches us about the antibody of “first fruits.” For those with a more predictable income, giving the first ten percent of that income is a simple and elegant practice to remind ourselves that none of it is our money. Kimberly and I have for a long time given our first fruits to First Baptist in a way that keeps it from feeling like a leftover or afterthought.

• The Bible teaches us about the antibody of the “tithe.” Some folks may not have as predictable an income, but they have a certain amount set aside that they use for whatever projects when the Spirit leads: what you might call a “cobbled tithe.” It may still be that ten percent, but they pray for God to open their hearts to how they might use it, and when a need comes up, over the course of the month or the year, they give to those projects, in kind of a Spirit-led, responsive way.

• Or some folks may not be able to give ten percent, so they “grow to tithe.” Maybe they can set aside a hundred dollars a month, or five dollars a month, and while it may not be ten percent yet, they are staking their claim and growing toward it. For the moment, that is the abundance that they can offer, and so they do it joyfully and prayerfully.

 

One final money mentality. This one quite a bit different than the first ones I shared. Preached July 19, 1953, by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Choose which ye will serve. Will you serve the transitory god of money which is here today and gone tomorrow or will you serve the eternal God of the universe who is the same yesterday, today and forever. Will you serve the god who is with us only in moments of prosperity or will you serve the God who walks with us through the valley of the shadow of death and causes us to fear no evil. Will you serve the god whose power is limited to stacking up stocks and bonds or will you serve the God whose creative power stacked up the gigantic mountains as if to kiss the skies and set forth the stars to bedect [bedeck?] the heavens like swinging lanterns of eternity. Choose ye this day whom ye shall serve, the god of money or the eternal God of the universe.