If I were a rich man (yabba, dabba, etc.)...

An audio recording of today's gospel and blog can be accessed here.

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Today's gospel (Luke 12: 13-21) is one of those extracts in which the circumstances of daily life give rise to one of Jesus’ parables. Two brothers are in dispute over their family inheritance; two siblings set in rivalry against one another – and thus it has been since the time of Cain and Abel. But Jesus’ first response is not to underline their inherent hostility to one another but rather to warn against avarice of any kind:

for a man's life is not made secure by what he owns, even when he has more than he needs.

And, in this line, we learn why we should all pay attention to the parable that follows: not because this is a meditation on what we normally think of as avaricious behaviour, but rather because it reaches beyond it, to the kind of avarice that effects even those with modest incomes. On the surface, this is a parable about a rich man, but underneath this is a parable about us all.

Because we are all in search of what will make our lives secure. For the rich man in the parable, the pursuit of security consists in building bigger barns and storing up his goods. In his case, not only does he sin by seeking his security in the wrong place, but also by what he proposes to do next: take things easy, eat, drink, have a good time. Freely, he has received, for the harvest was good; but these goods do not flow freely through his hands to the benefit of others. Goodness wishes to share itself; evil is a cul de sac, and this man's priorities seem like a judgement on his soul, even though eating, drinking and having a good time are all necessary things in their place.

Yet, as I said, this is not just a parable about a rich man who is fixed on enjoying his bounty. It is a parable about the pursuit of security in all the wrong places. It is possible for us all to mistake our vocations and to forget that being rich in the sight of God is our true security. What is it that we are most afraid of? What is it that we perceive as a threat to ourselves? It may be physical suffering, poverty or illness. It could equally be mental suffering of some kind. In our own time and in our western cultures where we enjoy generally speaking an abundance of the things of this world, our mental suffering seems particularly acute. We live in a plague of anxiety, the world of work is wracked by stress, our family relations are poisoned by division; instead of hearing and pursuing our vocations, we hear and pursue unattainable prospects held up to us by the countless adverts we unwittingly drink in every day, or for some the professional demands of performance management. Even our children, exhausted by digitally induced dopamine insensitivity, grow bored and dissatisfied with the narrowness of it all. We have wanted to be rich in our own sight and the sight of others and have made ourselves paupers in the sight of God.

And even the most devout among us can be guilty of this avarice. We seek security when God calls us to intimacy. We seek safety even though salvation is a risky business. We want to treat grace like a currency that can be quantified and counted out, providing us with the warm reassurance of a rising bank balance. Perhaps we think that because Jesus paid the ransom for sin, our own part in the accounts must be traceable to some line in the ledger; it is but we will never know it until the day of judgement. For now, it is enough to know that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. God has not called us to calculate his mercies but to narrate them; to tell their story where we can. His love for us is a gift to be passed on; not a grab bag of merchandise to serve as our comfort blanket.  

For security cannot be reached directly. Like a landing place on the far side of a fast-flowing river, security will only come if we face the adventure of the currents, and cast ourselves upon the mercy of God. And then, to return to Jesus’ metaphor, we can be rich in the sight of God and by His own gifts: rich in love, rich in gratitude, rich in our joy and rich in readiness to say ‘yes’ to Him in every moment of our life.