Today’s Parable (from Luke 12.13-21) is the famous one about the “Rich Fool.” Everyone knows the frightening line, where God says “You fool! Tonight your soul is required of you.” A successful farmer had laid up “ample goods” for his retirement, and he had the foolishness to say “Soul, take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry!”
The Lord gave the moral of the story: He who lays up treasure for himself is going to find out, at the end, that these things have no value.
I think we’ve heard this already, that we need to be “rich toward God,” instead of relying on worldly riches.
We can look more deeply at this parable by looking at the question that started this parable in the first place.
As the Lord was teaching a large crowd, one of the attendees asked Him to solve a family problem. He and his brother were fighting over their father’s inheritance. Apparently, his brother had either had received, or had taken, a larger share.
So the aggrieved brother asked Jesus to adjudicate in this matter, and to command an equal distribution of assets. This was an understandable request, as Jesus was well-known to be of “unimpeachable” character and authority.
But the Lord’s response was surprising: “Man, who made me a judge or divider over you?” In other words, “I am not your referee or arbiter … I will not preside over the division of your father’s estate.”
And He explained: “Watch yourself. Beware of all covetousness. Life is not having a lot of possessions.”
“Covetousness” is a strong, inordinate desire for material goods. Sometimes it is called “avarice.” Sometimes, “greed.” In any case, the Lord said that life is not made up of material wealth.
This is an obvious, simple truth. But it is a truth that is ignored, especially in a culture where so much energy and attention is given to “wealth protection.” After all, if you have a lot of stuff, you need to “build barns” to hold your stuff. This is indeed what the Rich Fool did -- in fact, he chose to pull down his old barns because they were not big enough.
St Basil the Great said that the Rich Fool should not have built any barns. The excess wealth he gained should have been given to the poor.
In our day, more such “barns” have been built than at any other time in history. “Wealth protection” has become an even bigger problem. According to the New York Times, the richest 1 percent in the United States now own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. The Washington Post reports that the wealthiest 1 percent of American households owns 40 percent of the country's wealth.
The Orthodox Fathers were never shy about criticizing this “rich foolishness.” St Ambrose of Milan preached that “You are not making a gift of what is yours to the poor man, but you are giving him back what is his. You have been appropriating things that are meant to be for the common use of everyone. The earth belongs to everyone, not just to the rich.”
St John Chrysostom (along with several other Fathers) proclaimed that there really shouldn’t be any poor in the world. If everyone shared what they had in abundance to those who were in need, then there wouldn’t be any poverty -- just as the Apostle Paul had written in 1 Corinthians 9.8: “And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that you may always have enough of everything and may provide in abundance for every good work.”
Here are Chrysostom’s words on the responsibility of the rich toward the poor: “It isn’t because the affluent are unable to provide food easily that men go hungry; it is because the affluent are cruel and inhuman. Every day, the Church here [in Antioch] feeds 3,000 people. Besides this, the Church daily helps provide food and clothes for prisoners, the hospitalized, pilgrims, cripples, churchmen, and others. If only ten people were willing to do this, there wouldn’t be a single poor man left in town.”
I should note that St Basil the Great, a few decades earlier, was probably the first to establish a “comprehensive Christian welfare center,” which was called the “Basiliad.” In his town of Caesaria in Cappadocia, he constructed a large facility that provided food and shelter for the poor and a hospital for the sick. This was the proper work of monastics -- not only did they pray, but they cared for the ill in body and ill in the soul.
As you can see, Chrysostom was convinced that if everyone who had the means answered the call to care for the poor, then there would be no one who is poor.
Of course, we’re talking about an “economy model” that has nothing to do with the hyper-finance that operates in Wall Street (and in the globalized economy). That economy is based profoundly on interest, to the point where most of the profits in the system is produced by interest, not in the production of real goods. I am quite sure that Chrysostom and St Basil and the Apostle Paul would wince at our “interest-based” wealth protection system (they condemned any interest, or usury, at all). They would call it a lot worse than “barn building.”
The economy of the Rich Fool is the business of bottom-line thinking, of commercializing and commodifying all of Creation, of making sure that big profits are reported to stockholders.
The Rich Fool wouldn’t have had any problem in answering the original man’s request: “Please divide up our inheritance, so I can get what’s coming to me.”
But the Lord doesn’t mess around with this “lower order” economy. Recall that He said, “Do not be anxious about your life” (Matthew 6.25). And Christians should not turn their attention away from higher things (like the Kingdom of heaven and its righteousness), and downwards toward lower things (like mucking around in the lower, muddy anxieties of barn-building).
In this spirit, the Righteous (and Psalmist) David composed this intriguing verse: “My mouth shall proclaim Your righteousness, Your salvation all the day long, for I know nothing about the worldly business of men.” This is kind of a “virtuous incompetence,” or at least a recognition that the misplaced trust on the things of the world will always disappoint, and that the lower economy of “barn-building” is foolish indeed. The Apostle Paul wrote “To have lawsuits at all with one another is defeat for you. Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded?” (1 Corinthians 6.7).
That sounds utterly foolish in this day and age. But the Fathers would quickly say that we have this backward: it’s this day and age that are foolish — “virtuous incompetence” is heavenly wisdom.
The Apostle Paul also wrote these beautiful words: “Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4.6-7).
Anxiety is deeply rooted in the barn-building project, or trying to obtain the false comfort of material possessions, of “wealth protection.”
The peace of God, which is the presence of the Comforter Himself (i.e., the Holy Spirit) is offered infinitely -- without reserve -- to every human being. It is the richness of God:
Your righteousness is like
the high mountains of God,
Your judgment is a great deep; O Lord,
You will save man and beast.
You have multiplied Your mercy, O God.
The sons of men shall have hope
beneath the shelter of Your wings.
They shall be drunk on the richness of Your house,
You will have them drink deeply
from the torrents of Your delights.
For with You is the fountain of life,
in Your light we shall see light”
(Psalm 35.6-9 LXX).
But the riches of God can’t be stuck in a barn, it can’t be kept to yourself. The riches of God are for those who are “rich toward God” (Luke 12.21).
Let us share then with our poor neighbors: money, food, kindness, assistance. Especially when it’s cold outside, and the cost of living rises. Remember: it is expensive to be poor.
As St Gregory of Nyssa said: “All things belong to God, who is our Father and the Father of all things. We are all of the same family; all of us are brothers. Amongst brothers, it is best that all inherit equal portions.”
Now that kind of economy, that “virtuous incompetence,” is utterly anxiety-free.
The “equal portions” are infinitely good, “torrents of delight,” a “peace that passes all understanding” indeed.
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