October 28

A Moment about Riches

An old Jack Benny skit has Jack walking along when suddenly an armed robber approaches him and demands, "Your money or your life!" There is a long pause. Finally the robber impatiently asks, "Well?" "Don't rush me," Benny replies. "I'm thinking about it." We laugh at the joke but it represents a very real picture of many people's priorities. For some, money has become more important than life itself.
We can summarize American Values on money by this phrase: “Get all you can, can all you get, and sit on the can.” What is amazing is that Jesus had more to say on money then heaven and hell combined. In our reading today he tells a parable about money.

It is hard to decide whether we should cry or laugh at the situation Jesus finds himself in. The crowd is described as in the thousands and it says that the people were “trampling” on one another. Then in the middle of the sermon, one man rumbles up to the front row and blurts out, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance." His face flushed, his voice anxious and his spirit is insistent. This man is so worried he won't get his snout into feeding trough of the family's estate that nothing else matters in life. He doesn't care about point Jesus is making, or about people gathered hear Jesus, all he cares about is himself.

Jesus shows no sympathy for the request but decides to make this a teaching moment and sternly warns the man, "Watch Out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." Then he tells the story about a man who struck gold in the commodities market. This guy worked hard. He spent his days making his dream come true. He had it all figured out. If I can make just a little more money, then I will be happy and get ready for retirement. Then it happened.... bumper crop... windfall so great, so massive his barns couldn't contain it. So he sketched the blueprints for one last building project, and right beside it he unrolled his plans for retirement. Yes, he finally arrived. Everything in life has worked out. The dream had come true. Tomorrow I will tear down barns. Build new barns and then I will retire to a nice vacation home in the South Florida. But that night a dark figure came into his bedroom. Cloaked in darkness, death comes to him without so much as a whisper or warning. In an instant the Grim Reaper appears, the rich man is taken away. But not one grain of his wealth goes with him. All that he has stored away for himself is left to be dispersed among his heirs. It will be fought over in the same way that the man in the crowd fought with his brother over the inheritance their father had left.

Jesus concludes with this editorial comment – “You Fool. This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.”

Do an exercise for me right now. Go to globalrichlist.com and see where you rank on the list of the world’s wealthiest people. Then ask yourself this question, am I rich on earth or am I rich toward God?

You will have to come up with a definition of what it means to be rich towards God.

If you don’t do this exercise Jesus might say to you one day, “You fool.” Don’t waste your life getting rich in the wrong place.