The Parable of the Rich Fool (Luke 12:13-21)

One day, when Jesus was speaking to a huge crowd of people, a man came elbowing his way through them until at last he got to the front.  He had not come to hear Jesus’ teaching.  What he wanted was to make use of Jesus in order to get hold of some money.  He had an older brother and they had been left a sum of money, but his brother so far had refused to let him have his fair share.  He had set his heart on getting this money by hook or by crook until quite suddenly he thought of a scheme by which he might do it without the expense of taking the matter to court.  If he could get Jesus, the famous prophet of Nazareth, to tell his brother to hand it over, then his brother could scarcely refuse.

So, having got to the front of the crowd, he said to Jesus, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me” (NRSV, Luke 12:13).  Jesus looked at him, and saw greed written all over his face.  “Friend”, he replied, “who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?..Take care!  Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions” (NRSV, Luke 12:14,15).  And then Jesus told them the Parable of the Rich Fool.  Now one of the worst things about love of money or avarice is that people who are bitten with it can think of nothing else but themselves and their wretched money.  Notice in this Parable of the Rich Fool how the words “I” and “my” keep coming in.

“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 towards God’ “ (NRSV, Luke 12:16-21).

So St Paul drives the lesson home: “…we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it;   But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.  For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains” (NRSV, 1 Timothy 6:7,9,10).