The days are growing shorter. And just as
Jesus is being forced to focus more of His dwindling time on training the
disciples, so He is encouraging the disciples to whittle down their lives to
the basic necessities of faith and prayer.
Someone from the crowd (who clearly doesn’t
“get it”) shouts out, “Oy! Rabbi! You should tell my brother to be merciful and
split his bekorah with me!”
Jesus, mindful of just how divisive
squabbles over inherited assets can get, quickly declines (“I am no judge of
you!”) and then turns the interruption into a lesson for the disciples.
“Take care that your abundance – the gift
of God and a rich blessing – does not become a burden. You need far less than
you actually have and the true quality of your life is not tied to the quantity
of your possessions.”
There was a rich man…
In the parable of the rich fool, Jesus
presents the disciples with a man who is successful in spite of himself. The land has produced plentifully – this is the clear blessing of God,
not the product of the fool’s hard work. The fool is so busy congratulating himself that he does not acknowledge the blessing nor does he present his tithe of the
firstfruits to the temple.
His windfall bounty has no purpose because he
has no plan for it nor does he have a place for it. In fact, this bumper crop
creates a problem: his barns are already full. He doesn’t have anywhere to
store more (and yet the streets are undoubtedly full of the poor and starving
and, again, he has not paid his temple dues).
Finally, the fool is so shortsighted that
he opts to destroy the barns he does have in order to build anew. He is willing to toss aside the old in favor of the new while new barns are being built. Flush with imagined success, he is
already set to kick back to enjoy early retirement when God comes to call.
“You fool!” God says as the workers pull
down the barn – and accidentally collapse the adjacent house on the rich man. “This
night your soul is required of you. What do you have to show for your efforts?
Your bountiful harvest is rotting in the fields. The winter rains are here. You
have nothing. It’s all gone now.”
Jesus is not saying that things are
inherently evil or even that having a lot of things is evil. He’s not even
talking about things. He’s talking about the problem of abundance. In
today’s society, we would consider “the problem of abundance” to be an
oxymoron. We are told to want more, buy more, take more, that we deserve more,
that we are entitled to more! “What could possibly be wrong with having more?”
we ask.
It’s not so much the having, Jesus tells
us, as the getting. There is a tipping point – very hard to find – between bounty
and burden, a point where suddenly whatever blessing you’ve been storing up
becomes so bloated that it turns into a curse.
Take, for example, a roller coaster ride.
It’s exciting to be scared, fun to be flipped upside down and hurled at
alarming speeds down precipitous inclines. But if the seatbelt breaks? Suddenly
that bounty of excitement and fear has become very hard to bear indeed. Imagine
your relief when you finally get off that ride! If you’re smart, you’ll move on
to the log flume or something more pedestrian. But what if you got right back
in line? And if you insisted on sitting in the car with the broken seatbelt,
what does that say about you?
This is the danger of abundance, Jesus
tells us. It becomes a pursuit in and of itself that can easily become an
addiction – to fear, love, drama, sex, food, things, etc. We pursue these external things because we
can use our attraction to and affinity for them to alter our emotional state
for a short time. But external things cannot provide lasting comfort and
security, and we are often left feeling empty and anxious. We make the mistake
of getting back in line in hopes that the next time will do the trick. But each
time is even less satisfying, not more. Soon our lives become the very definition
of insane: doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different
result.
When Jesus fed the 5,000 he gave the
disciples a lesson in both bounty and perfect provision: 5,000 people were fed
to satisfaction and 12 lunch baskets were left over (one for each disciple).
But what if the disciples had eaten first instead of continuing to pass what
they’d been given to the crowd? Because they did not fill their hands with the
bounty that was created, everyone’s needs – including their own – were met. Had
they instead sat down to eat, the dynamic could have quickly shifted from
disciples feeding the multitude to 12 greedy men versus a mob of 5,000 hungry
poor people.
It's been said before: if our hands are overflowing with what we want, how is God to give us what we need?
“Lift your eyes,” says Jesus. “Do you see
the ravens?”
Set aside all the manufactured drama for a
minute, says Jesus, and take a moment for a reality check. You are a child of
the universe (desiderata) and you can learn from other living things by
considering their relationship to the creator. Look at how the birds (the ravens)
are fed with the bounty of creation – just as we should and can be when we are
fed by Our Father.
“You are valuable to God!” Jesus reassures
us.
Jesus knows we are anxious when what we
have does not correspond to what we want, and He warns us that anxiety is a
trap – a no-win situation, “for which of you by being anxious can add a single
hour to his life?”
Instead, says Jesus, look at God’s
creation, look at the way God has set up the natural order and learn from it.
God bestows beauty and bounty according to His grace. Be grateful for it, but
be careful not to obsess over it. God knows your every need and wants to give
you all things. But most of all, God wants to give you Himself. If you want
Him, He will ask you to give up everything for Him. It’s a hard lesson, but it
has a big payoff. When you finally have
nothing but God, you’ll have everything you ever need.
