July 31, 2022
Luke 12:13-21
The Rev. Deborah Hawkins
Title: Bigger barns

Today we hear a parable about a rich farmer. He is a land owner who has had a good crop. We don’t know why. Probably he is a good farmer who works hard and learns from his mistakes. This year, just as it does sometimes, everything has come together, the weather, his timing, his years of good management, and he has had a great crop. He doesn’t waste it, or throw it away or plow it under. He builds bigger barns to store it so it can be used in the future. 

You could argue that he is greedy and should share his wealth with his less fortunate neighbors; that his hoarding is immoral. It is a good argument, but we are never told that he is hoarding. It could well be. We all know Ebenezer Scrooges and I dare say we all have a bit of Ebenezer Scrooge in each of us. The part of us that just wants more for no other reason than we want more. The advertising industry feeds that part of each of us quite regularly so it tends to be an overly robust part of the American psyche. 

But we are not told he is suffering from that kind of acquisitiveness. In fact, he appears to have reached a point where he is satisfied with what he has. What the grain and goods he had gathered give him is a sense of self-sufficiency. As long as they are safely tucked away in the barns he feels safe too. What he thinks is he thinks he is his all in all. What we are told about the rich farmer is he is a fool.  

Wise management of resources, of time, money, energy, materials, is a good thing. But life is not static, no one stands alone, nothing is forever.  You fool, God said to him, all these treasures you have accumulated. “Whose will they be?” Do you think you can insure yourself against your own mortality? Do you think you can control everything with regards to yourself?

Harold Kushner wrote a book titled, When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough.  In it he reflects on the book of Ecclesiastes. The author of Ecclesiastes wonders what all his working and studying and striving is for. There seems to be no way to insure the good prosper and the dishonest are punished. He wants the world to be just, but he keeps finding it isn’t.  He seeks knowledge and gains wisdom but finds the foolish and the wise suffer the same fate.  All eventually die. 

Vanity, all is vanity he cries. Everything he tries to value and hold on to in his life is like vapor that disappears.   Harold Kushner says the author of Ecclesiastes eventually, painfully comes to the conclusion that although life is fleeting and nothing is sure, it has value. There are 3 things that are necessary to a life lived well and faithfully.  Belong to people, accept pain as part of your life, and know that your life has made a difference for others.

An interesting thing about the rich man in this morning’s parable is that he is the only person in the story. He only talks to himself about himself and his stuff, his barns, his grain, his goods, his future, and how, now he is secure, he can relax. Then God breaks in and asks, “who all will this belong too next?”  Suddenly we become aware of others. There are other people involved in the building of the barns, the harvesting of the crops, living with or near the rich farmer. People he hadn’t even noticed. But whether he notices or acknowledges them or not, he is connected to them, and they to him. Some of them may even end up with a nice inheritance.

One of the great problems with the illusion of self-sufficiency is it tends to make us a bit wary of others. The biologist Lewis Thomas says popular science has it wrong when it proclaims survival of the fittest as the fundamental law of nature. He says the principle of cooperation is primary in nature. Plants and animals flourish not through out competing each other but by living in such a way that the whole ecosystem prospers. 

A recent article in the SF Chronicle addressed some of the issues with thinning redwood forests, in part to mitigate fire hazards. The roots of redwoods intertwine so one tree helps stabilize its neighbors. In addition, fungi wrap around or bore into the tree roots forming a mycorrhizal network, which connects individual plants together to transfer water, nitrogen, carbon and other minerals. Cutting down some trees or disturbing the soil around the base of the trees can result in unplanned harm to the rest of the forest.*

It is the blowing of the Spirit through all creation that brings life. By not noticing his life was intertwined with others, past present and future, the rich farmer was missing a critical part of his life and his soul, the only conversation partner he appeared to have, withered.

A few years ago, my daughter came to the house for the day. She specifically asked if she could spend time with her dad and me watching old home videos. We had a wonderful afternoon and evening remembering old times and old friends. There was a lot of laughter. But there were bitter sweet memories as well.  Watching and hearing again grandparents who have since died. Well, those clips are pretty wonderful. There was also footage of a few young people whose lives have been cut tragically short or who have been horribly damaged in some way. 

Some of the memories they brought back were very painful making parts of the videos hard to watch. In fact there came a time when we just didn’t want to watch them so we had put the videos in the cupboard and shut the doors. Sometimes putting stuff away and shutting the doors is the right and proper thing to do. 

The story of Noah teaches us that when the flood waters rise you had better get in the boat and shut the door. There are times when that kind of protection is the only thing that can get you through to the next day. Noah also teaches us the virtue of being prepared, of setting aside something for a rainy day much as the rich farmer did in today’s parable.  But abundant life is not found in sheltering behind doors or in living as if you can protect yourself from anything and everything. That day we had to put the videos away but we brought them back out later and, recognizing there would be pain, we sat together and shared a few tears while remembering what a difference so many had made in our lives and finding anew great joy.

I read a very funny story a while ago about a company that manages a database of contacts. Apparently something went wrong with the software as they were migrating lists of contacts from one place to another and some of the data was corrupted. One of the things that happened was that people who had been removed from lists because they were deceased began showing up on active lists. It was the comment of one of the office managers that was so good. “We had people coming back from the dead!” And then she said, “not our job.”

It is not our job to be our all in all. It is something we can’t do. We can influence the future, but we can’t dictate it. 

There is a story of the Marquis de Lafayette. After helping here during the American revolution, he went home to his vast estates. By all accounts he was a good farmer. One year there was a crop failure in much of his part of France but he managed to fill his barns. Wheat prices soared. One of the workers on the estate said, “time to sell.”  Lafayette replied, “time to give” and he gave wheat to hurting peasants in the villages around him. 

We can not be our all in all. Christ is that. What we can do is belong to people and to the whole earth, live aware of our mortality, and continually build bigger the barns of our hearts.  

*Gregory Thomas, “One California Redwood is 2000 Years Old”, San Francisco Chronicle, July 27, 2022.