O God, open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise.

 

Growing up in an agricultural environment I learned just a little about the uncertainties of that life.  Most years the crop is average – you get a sufficient yield, prices are enough to pay the expenses and give you some profit to support your family and maybe even make an improvement or two in the business.  Some years there’s a drought, or perfect conditions send out a swarm of whatever insect it is that most loves your cash crop.  Or the rain comes, but at all the wrong times and the crop either doesn’t thrive or can’t be harvested.  Some years are blessed with a bumper crop.  Farming is such a gamble, but those who do it love it.

I remember two very distinct crops from what amounted to a very large household garden as I was growing up.  I’m the youngest of 11 children, so there were always lots of mouths to be fed around my parent’s house.  A large garden was a necessity.  I remember my dad deciding he’d like to put in just a couple rows of strawberries.  He was pretty good at growing things, so the strawberries did well and do what strawberry plants that are happy do – they produced lots of fruit and they multiplied like crazy.  I’d be sent out to pick the ripe fruit.  One for the basket, two in my mouth, one or two for the basket, several more in my mouth.  As a result I don’t like or eat strawberries today.  Too many tummy aches as a kid.

I also remember the year that just a few bell pepper plants produced so many peppers we couldn’t possibly use them all.  It was the summer after I graduated from high school.  I had a job working at the local hospital in the kitchen.  I took a laundry basket full of those peppers to the head dietician and asked if she wanted to put stuffed peppers on the menu.  She was a bit confused at first and couldn’t figure out how to deal with the peppers.  She didn’t understand that it was a gift being offered, not a request that she purchase them.  Once we had that straightened out stuffed peppers went on the menu.

The vicissitudes of making a living off the land haven’t changed much.  As a society and culture our lives are no longer centered around subsistence farming, but most of us aren’t so far away from it that we don’t understand something about it.  Agriculture still drives our economy, though it is a much smaller part of the whole now.  In other countries it is still the primary driving force.  However, our consumerism does drive the economy and it makes a significant impact on the agri-business of other countries since we import so much of our food.  I suspect Pastor Brian might have a whole lot more to say about that in the weeks and months to come, so I’ll leave that to him.

All of this leads me to our gospel text for today.  The Parable of the Rich Fool as it is known.  A man engaged in agri-business during Biblical times.  It sounds like he’s both a good agricultural manager and a good financial manager.  He’s done well because the land he possesses has been blessed with an abundant crop.  Not just an average crop or even a good crop.  He’s got an over the top, abundant crop.  There’s so much grain to be harvested that it won’t fit in his storage barns.  Something has to be figured out.

It’s the figuring out that gets him.  As you read the description of his thought process you see the only one being taken into account is himself.  “I” and “my” are the pronouns being used – the focus of the problem solving process.  It’s the same focus that the young man who asked Jesus to arbitrate his brother’s management of their inheritance.  The focus is on ‘what’s in it for me?’ and nothing else.  That’s why the story is told.

At no point in this parable does Jesus condemn the rich man for being rich, for being a good business man, for having managed well what has been entrusted to him.  The condemnation is in the man’s focus – what he does with that which was given to him.

At no point does the rich man recognize that the land was given to him in trust from God.  That the seeds of grain, the rain and the sunshine were gifts from God.  The fact that he had the skills to manage those resources and thereby harvest an abundant crop were gifts from God.  Not once did he thank or even acknowledge God.  He did this himself, by gum and by golly.  It was his to hoard and sell later when grain was scarcer and it would bring a higher price.  His and his alone.  No family is mentioned, no community connections.  He’s his own little island.

I’d be willing to bet that if the rich man had made arrangements to tithe from his crops he would still have had a storage problem.  A new, bigger barn would have been needed with the 90% he kept.  However, many widows, orphans and otherwise down-and-out people in the community would also have had what they needed to survive.  All of God’s children would have been cared for instead of just one.  God would have been honored.

Now, in a huge leap to our own times, I’ll share one of my own pet peeves.  I’ve been a rather rabid Bill Gates hater for years.  I disliked Windows when I was forced to switch to it from DOS based computer programs.  More importantly, I hated the way Bill Gates went about conducting his business in the computer software industry.  He went about doing things in such a vicious, antagonistic way that he drove out, beat down or otherwise made life difficult for other software and operating system developers.  He was blatant in his intent to have total domination of the operating system market and in marketing his company’s software.  He was so blatant the federal government finally went after him with anti-trust suits, as did several state governments.  It wasn’t about the quality of his products or his business skills, but about his total self-interest and greed.

In recent years I’ve had to modify my opinion of Bill Gates somewhat.  I credit the ultimate source of that modification to another very wealthy business man, Warren Buffett.  I watched, via the media, the friendship that formed between the two men who have often been number 1 and number 2 on the Forbes list of wealthiest men in America.

Warren Buffett went about accumulating his fortune through good business decisions, too.  However, he seems to never have forgotten the source of his wealth nor lost sight of his obligation to give back to the community.  Is he a Christian? I don’t know.  I just know he has openly stated that his children will not inherit his accumulated wealth.  He figures they’ve had advantages enough and need to make it on their own.  His wealth will pass to a number of charities when he dies.

I credit that attitude with helping Bill Gates to see that he has an obligation to give back to the world that has helped to make him so wealthy.  I applauded when the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was established.   The good that they are doing in third world countries through the medical assistance they make possible is worthy of applause.  I can only wonder if it would have happened without Warren Buffett’s  influence.  Whatever the reason for this foundation’s existence, it has to be pleasing to God.

At one time or another in our lives, most of us act like the rich fool.  In a society that still seems to thrive on the axiom, “He who dies with the most toys wins,” it’s hard to escape.  Those of us who regularly put ourselves in a church pew on Sunday mornings are at least reminded that there’s more to life than the accumulation of wealth and possessing material goods.  We recognize that we are stewards rather than owners and that the one who ultimately provided for us expects us to provide for others.

This summer has been a wonderful example of a community committed to caring for one another.  We cared enough about our Pastor to let him go away from us for a while.  We cared enough about one another to both step up into leadership roles and to be here to support one another as those steps were taken.  We’ve grown together and we’ve grown stronger.  We’ve been enriched in ways that will only be fully known as time passes and the seeds that were planted produce their abundant crop.  We’re a very rich community, and I don’t think there’s a fool among us.  

To God be the Glory.  Amen.

 

Anna Livingston

Associate in Ministry