Psalm 49:1-12; Luke 12:13-21

Years ago, while I was watching my kids in their karate class, I thought it would be interesting to join karate myself. I had tried a karate mini class through the Parks and Rec department of our town when I was maybe 7-8 years old, and I enjoyed it, but it’s much scarier beginning these kinds of things as an adult. When my kids’s class ended, I watched the adults gather for their class. All men, except one female student who had already achieved a pretty high rank. The teacher was a woman, but as the students put their sparring gear on and paired off against each other, I got nervous. Even though the instructor always insisted on light contact and she demanded discipline and order, I was afraid to do what I wanted to do – join the class.

As a kid, you could have accurately described me as “extremely risk avoidant.” If there was risk involved, you could find me as far away as possible. On the Fourth of July, if anyone was setting off fireworks, you would find me inside the house watching from the window. If friends wanted to jump into the deep end of the pool, you would find me high-tailing it to the shower room instead. I used to think that if I was afraid of risk and hid from it, that I could keep myself from getting hurt. The older I got, the more I realized risk and heartache were unavoidable, but even still I tried my hardest to make sure I escaped as unscathed as possible.

Anyway, back to this karate class. As I was watching the adult students, I accidentally said my inner thought out loud, “I wish I could join that class.” Another mom who was watching said, “Really? Me, too, but I was afraid.” We decided in that moment to join together. The next week, we both got our uniforms and white belts. We showed up faithfully to class and learned. 

One day, after I had been a student for a few months, our instructor decided our class needed to learn some classic self-defense moves. She showed the students who were more advanced in rank how to be the “attacker.” She taught them how to approach the rest of us. And then she taught the newer students how to fend off the attack. When an attacker approached, instinct made the other person want to pull away. Similar to being in a boxing ring. If a punch comes your way, you try to avoid it. It’s an instinct. And so, our teacher started training us to work against that instinct. The first step of each self-defense move was always to lean into the attack, to step toward it. Stepping toward the attack allowed us to lessen the intensity of the attack, even if just a little bit. It also committed our minds towards the work of defending ourselves, rather than just avoiding all risk entirely. Leaning in, or stepping toward, what was happening was a step toward being engaged in the work that was necessary for our own survival. 

As I was reading and researching Luke 12:13-21 for this morning, I stopped on the phrase at the very end: “rich toward God.” I know I’ve read this passage of Scripture many times before. I know I’ve internalized the teaching of the story that hoarding an abundance for ourselves doesn’t guarantee us a tomorrow. But for some reason, I never paid much attention to the phrase “rich toward God” before. The longer I’ve reflected on this passage, and the more I’ve allowed that phrase to echo within my heart, the more convinced I have become that this phrase is the key to the entire parable. Let’s start back at the beginning.

Jesus tells this story because a man comes to him with a family dispute. The man says to Jesus, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” Jesus knew what the law said about inheritance and how family assets should be divided among the sons of the father, but he does not ask questions of this man or hear out the dispute. Jesus sets a boundary–a beautiful lesson for those of us who try to be all things to all people–by telling the man this isn’t his role. He’s not the one to judge family law. There are judges for that purpose. 

Instead of making himself the judge over the case, Jesus cuts through to the heart of the matter. You see, it seems that the man isn’t just wanting what is owed him per inheritance laws. He is trying to secure his future well-being. He’s trying to protect himself and set himself up for life. So, Jesus tells him a story about a farmer whose crop did amazingly well, so well, in fact, that his barns weren’t big enough to hold the harvest. Luke says his land produced an abundant harvest, but the Greek says it produced healthily, or it bore fruit well – using the word euphoreó, the word that gives us our word “euphoria.” The man sees this really good problem–he’s got too much–and makes a plan. Jesus tells us the man’s thoughts as he thinks through what to do, and ultimately, the man decides the only logical solution is to tear down his existing barns and build bigger ones so that he can hang onto everything the land produced. He thought to himself, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” In other words, “I’m set for life.”

Sounds great, right? There’s only one problem. He doesn’t have all the time he thinks he does. God says to the man, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” Jesus explains the story, “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.” 

This parable is unusual because Jesus explains it both at the beginning and the end. He doesn’t want anyone to miss the point. He starts the story with this warning: “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” And he ends with a warning against storing up for ourselves rather than being rich toward God. So, what does it look like to be on guard against all kinds of greed? What does it mean to be rich toward God?

As we look at the example of the man with more crops than he can store, I see three ways we can lean, some more faithful than others. Let’s focus on these three today: Leaning into Self, Leaning into Security, and Leaning into God. 

First, Leaning into Self. The first comes in what David Lose, Senior Pastor at Mount Olivet Lutheran Church, called the rich man’s “relentless use of the first person pronouns ‘I’ and ‘my.” In just three verses, the man in Jesus’s parable uses the words “I” and “my” eleven times. Eleven. In addition to that, when he thinks to himself, he calls himself, “Soul.” On the one hand, this is similar to us saying, “I said to myself, ‘Self…’” On the other hand, this word for “soul” is a very important word in the Greek. It is the word psyche, which is where we get the words psyche and psychology. This word literally means “breath,” but it also refers to our heart’s desire, our passion, what makes us us. As he looks at the wonderful problem of having an abundant harvest, he is fixated on himself and what he wants. I notice that he doesn’t express any gratitude. He doesn’t ask God how he might use this unexpected abundance. He turns inward and thinks, “I’m set!” What he doesn’t realize is that as he leans into himself, he is leaning away from God and his neighbor. Or, as David Lose put it, “The farmer has fallen prey to worshiping the most popular of gods: the Unholy Trinity of ‘me, myself, and I.’”

The man in the story was leaning into himself, and he was also Leaning into Security. It’s important that Jesus never says the man shouldn’t have kept any of his harvest. Jesus never condemns the man for being wealthy. Instead, he points out the fleeting, temporary nature of wealth. The man thought that by holding onto his abundance, he would make sure he was set for life. He saw in his abundance security for his future, much like the person who asked Jesus to make his brother give him his share of the inheritance. If he got his inheritance, he would be set for life. 

I am reminded of a children’s book I checked out from the library for my kids years ago: Alfie Runs Away by Kenneth M. Cadow. In the story, little Alfie’s favorite pair of shoes have become too small for his feet, but he can’t bear to part with them. When mom insists he stop wearing the too-small shoes, Alfie decides to run away from home. In a strange twist, rather than try to talk him out of running away, his mom starts helping him pack his bag. She reminds him he’ll probably get thirsty and hungry, and helps him pack a snack and something to drink. She encourages him to bring his bear, and she offers to pack him a hug. Alfie runs away to the backyard, but he doesn’t get far before he starts needing the items in his bag. Eventually, he realizes what he really needs is that hug from his mom. When he decides to come home, Mom is waiting there with the hug for him. Growing up is hard, and even when we think we know what’s best for our futures, we don’t always. But what we always need is the embrace of the God who made us. 

The man in the story, just like Alfie, wanted to Lean into Security, into the idea that he could take care of himself and not need anything from anyone else. But life is beautiful, and also unpredictable and hard. We make plans, and they fall apart. We set aside wealth, we stockpile items, we worry about the stock market, but our hard work and good intentions get undone. Even if we do everything right, and nothing goes wrong, by leaning into security rather than into God, we lose out on gratitude, on opportunities to share, on the truth that God is the one holding all things together, and not us.

The man in the parable was Leaning into Self, and Leaning into Security. Jesus calls us, instead, to Lean into God. The last verse of this passage is very interesting. The NRSV translates it: “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.” This translation includes the word “treasures,” but this word is not in the Greek. It is added to help the sentence make sense. A more literal translation would be, “So it is with those who store up for themselves but are not rich toward God.” Are we doing what we do for ourselves, or are we leaning into what God is doing in us and in the world? 

Jesus tells us to be rich toward God, using a little preposition “eis.” This word implies direction and purpose. Remember when the man was thinking to himself, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years”? That little word “Soul” is about his breath, his life, his purpose, his desires. Our truly human selves, our true “soul” is designed to lean into God and God’s purpose and not our own. This is what it means to be rich toward God, to love God “with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” like it says in Matthew 22. 

In my karate class, I learned to lean into the attack. When you lean in, you commit to what comes next. You say with your body and your mind, “I’m in this and I’m going to give it everything I have.” When we lean into God, when we are rich toward God, we are committing ourselves to the kingdom work God is already doing in this world–work that won’t be easy, but work that will enrich and restore our lives.