Free to Be Rich

1 Timothy 6:17-19    As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.

Luke 12:13-21           Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

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How much is enough can be a hard thing to figure out.

Years ago, I worked as a server at a place called Hyde Park Bar & Grill.  It was the kind of place where servers would often sit down at the bar after they finished their shift and have a drink before leaving.  There was one young woman, Sue, who had a tendency to sit there a little longer than she should.  One evening while I was working Sue was sitting on a bar stool, as usual; and she asked the man next to her what I assumed was a rhetorical question: “What is my limit?  How much is enough?”  To which another server walking past replied, “Just before you get to too much.”

It was a very truthful and a very useless answer.  Because if that’s the question you are asking, you are never going to know the answer until you get to “too much.”

That question crossed my mind about the rich man in Jesus’ parable – whether he had crossed over from enough to too much.

The story comes on the heels of a conflict.  As he was teaching a great crowd of people, some random person calls out to Jesus, “Make my brother divide the inheritance with me.”  Perhaps he thought this could be classified as a miracle.  I know nothing about his brother; maybe he was such a Scrooge it would take a miracle to get his wallet opened.  Even so, it wasn’t the kind of miracle Jesus usually practiced.  And furthermore, Jesus knew that this was a problem the Law of Moses could handle just fine.  “Who set me to be a judge over you,” is his unsympathetic response.  Then he turns back to the crowd.

But he doesn’t seem to have dismissed the subject.  He says to them all, “Be on your guard against greed.  There was once a rich man …” and he’s off on a parable. 

There once was a rich man who had a problem – so much stuff he had run out of space to store it.  Such difficulties.  These days, we call that sort of thing a “first world problem” – the kind of problem that you are fortunate to have.  Poor Rich Man, his biggest problem was that he needed some bigger storage units.  This is me playing my imaginary violin. 

But this is where we have to be careful.  It’s easy for us to poke fun of the problem of having too much stuff.  Some of us have too much stuff and we know it.

I have friends who raised five children and built a nice big comfortable house for their big family. Then all their children grew up and left their house.  Then these children sent some of their stuff back to their parents’ house because there was room enough for it. You could say my friends are empty nesters, but their nest is not empty – it’s filled with their stuff, and their children’s stuff. 

Some of us have decided that this is how we will solve the problem:  We will just close the door on all the stuff and decline to acknowledge the problem.  And when we die, it will be our children’s problem.  Or, you might say, their inheritance.

We can laugh about the “too much stuff” problem.  But we have to be careful with this story.  Because it might not just about stuff.

The rich man might be thinking about his old age and the need of having enough to see him through what he hopes will be a long life.  This may be a story that speaks to our need to have something put away for the golden years.  And that is a more serious matter.

We all have to think about having enough laid up for the years of retirement.  It’s a worthy pursuit; none of us wants to be a burden on society or a burden on our children and grandchildren.  We want to be able to take care of ourselves for as long as we will be here.  We don’t have barns for grain storage, we have 401k’s.  And we think about how much will be enough.

Money managers and financial advisors like to talk about how much is enough.  There used to be a commercial that showed people walking around with giant numbers over their heads – the message was the importance of knowing how much you were going to need in your retirement account, and the greater sense of security you can have by knowing what that number is – and apparently carrying it around with you 24/7.

Sounds simple, I guess.  But I don’t think it really is so simple.  What do people do when they reach the point they have decided is enough?  Sometimes they change the number, move the goal post, because they don’t really believe there is such a thing as too much when it comes to savings.  Do they stop putting away, like they had planned to do?  That would be like Sue figuring out how much was enough and walking away from the bar before it became too much.  It would be nice, but it didn’t often happen.

The Rich Man might have had the same problem.  He might have recognized that he had enough, but what would he do next? 

He looks at his barns full of grain and says to himself, you have ample goods.  Relax.  Eat, drink, and be merry – not a bad response to the good generosity of God.  The land had produced abundantly; and the land is likely to continue to produce for him.  Clearly, Jesus is saying this man’s wealth is a gift from God.  It is certainly appropriate to appreciate God’s blessings, eat drink and be merry.  But there is something missing in this rich man’s response.

Is it enough to be rich toward oneself if one is not rich toward others?  That seems to be the message in Jesus’ story – that this man, in his concern for setting up enough provisions for himself, has failed to be generous with others.  And according to Jesus, that failure is essentially a failure to live richly toward God.

This is a story about greed – one of the Seven Deadly Sins.  We know greed is bad, in spite of what Gordon Gekko said.  We know it’s bad but we don’t always recognize it.  It disguises itself as something good, for a while, but one day you may notice you have this inexplicable sickness.  The Avett Brothers sing about it in a song called Ill With Want.

I am sick with wanting

And it’s evil how it’s got me,

Every day is worse than the one before.

The more I have the more I think:

I'm almost where I need to be

If only I could get a little more.

You see the trickiness of it?  It is wonderful to work and reap the fruit of one’s labor, to enjoy the goodness of God’s gifts.  But at a certain point it crosses a line; it stops being a force for good and starts being a cause of harm. People will differ in their opinions about where the line should be drawn.  Jesus draws the line at the place where you fail to live richly toward others, because that is the same as failing to live richly toward God.

The letter to Timothy holds a warning to rich people against putting their hopes in the uncertainty of riches, but instead in the certainty of God’s provision.  To store up the treasure of a good foundation not by building bigger barns, but by generosity toward others.  This is how one takes hold of the life that really is life.

We have a choice.  It’s a choice between being enslaved to greed, to our fears about having enough, and being free to live richly in generosity and good works, in love toward others.  We have a choice between the false freedom that material riches offer us and the real freedom Jesus offers us.

Maybe you can think of someone you have known who lived this kind of freedom.  Someone who lived simply, with gratitude.  Someone who took pleasure in giving to others without expecting something back.  Someone who just seemed to be on to something, some secret about peace and contentment and fulfillment.  These are the people to watch, and go and do likewise.

Last week we focused on remembering who is the Lord of our life, an awareness that frees us to live.  Today we think about how the concept of “enough” can free us to live richly in the ways that really matter – free us from worry, free us for blessing.  Next week we will turn our attention to the possibility of being free to make choices that will truly bring us joy and contentment – a transformative freedom.

Until then, in your daily prayers let this question guide you:  who are the people in our world who are living rich toward God?