A clergy friend of mine told me about a member of his church who was very wealthy, or at least everyone thought he was very wealthy. That was the rumor, although no one was really sure if it was true, and there was much speculation as to his true worth. Well, one day he died, and as the ladies of the church were gathering to prepare a reception at his funeral, one of them said, sort of casually, “I wonder how much he left behind.” There was sort of an awkward pause, and then one of the other women responded, “all of it. He left all of it behind.” Although you don’t see it much anymore, there was a time, and many of you remember it, when you were prone to see the bumper sticker that said, “He who dies with the most toys wins.” What they won was never really clear, and I think part of the reason you don’t see that anymore is because people came to realize that you didn’t really win anything, because, in fact, you did leave it all behind. That you can’t take it with you, and so while it might help here in this life, and we might argue about the true merits of that, it doesn’t matter in the next life. And so perhaps the other bumper sticker that says, “we are spending our children’s inheritance” might be a better way to think about it, and yet we are also called to be good stewards of the resources with which we have been entrusted, and what we hear in Proverbs is that the good leave an inheritance for their children’s children. But simultaneously, Jesus tells us not to save earthly treasurers were moth and rust can eat them, and don’t worry about tomorrow, so which are we to do?
With those questions in mind, we continue in our series on the money rules of John Wesley, which are to earn all you can, which we covered last week, to give all you can, which we will cover next week, and today we discuss his rule to save all you can. As I’ve been saying for the past few weeks, when the Methodist movement began, John Wesley laid down some rules, three of them, that people had to agree to abide by if they were going to become a Methodist. They were to first do no harm, second was to do good and the third was to attend upon all the ordinances of God, which Bishop Job changed to stay in love with God. Among the things that it meant to do no harm, which was not just to others, but also to yourself, was not to buy spiritous liquors, love that phrasing, or to drink them, which sort of closes the loophole of someone else buying it for you. Not buying things on interest, that is not buying anything you can’t afford to pay cash for, and not wearing gold or expensive clothing. What Wesley, and those in the church found, was that when people started doing these things, especially not wasting money on alcohol, which is still an enormous amount of money, that people then had more disposable income which could then be used for other things, like education, which then allowed people to get better jobs, which paid better, and thus more income, and so that was the reason why Wesley then established his rules
The passage we heard from Luke today is known as the parable of the rich fool. It begins with a man seeking Jesus’ help to intervene in a dispute over inheritance, the more things change the more they stay the same, and one way to help alleviate some of the fighting after your death is to make sure that your wishes are clearly stipulated about what you want to happen with your estate, and this coming week is national estate planning week, so a good time to take a look at what you have in place, or begin putting something in place. But the man wants Jesus to tell his brother to divide the inheritance with him. Presumably this man is the younger brother, as in the ancient world the oldest son was in control, and would normally get double the amount as the younger brothers. I should point out that this is not someone who is trying to test Jesus or try and trap him, as is often the case when he is being questioned, but instead this is just someone from the crowd asking for help. And so, it’s not clear if the brother is cheating him or if he is trying to argue about fairness or if he just wants more. But Jesus, perhaps sensing the man’s ulterior motive is more about greed, then fairness, wants against greed of all sorts, that is we can be greedy for more than just money, and says that our lives do not consist in the abundance of possessions.”
But, as we think of that instruction and about the parable of this man building bigger barns, is Jesus’ saying that saving things, or building bigger barns, is a problem? No, but it’s dependent upon what we are doing with it and why we are doing it. It starts with the first line about the man. First is that we are told that he is rich, which normally doesn’t follow with positive things. But more importantly, we are told that his land produced abundantly. That means we know right from the start that the man’s abundance is not dependent only upon him, that at the very least he should be giving praise to God for the rain and good weather that allowed for him to produce abundant crops, to see it as a blessing from God, but he doesn’t do that. Instead everything is about him. Let’s reread this passage, “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.”
Notice how everything is about the man. It’s what he will do, and about his crops, his barns, even his soul. No one else has anything to do with this, apparently. God is not responsible, he has no employees, or people who help him. Everything is his possession and responsibility, again, even his own soul. He owes no one anything. And then, to top it off, he tells his soul that he is now set for life and so he should eat, drink and be merry. And then, God speaks, and everything changes. The word fool is used 9 times in the gospel, usually in reference to someone being foolish. Two times Jesus calls the scribes and Pharisees fools when he is chastising them, but only once does God call someone a fool, and it’s here in this story. Because the man’s foolishness is in believing that he is in such control of his life that not only is he responsible for everything, that he is a self-made man, but that he can even plan out the length of it. There is no one else even in the story until God appears. But, the man is then quickly reminded that he doesn’t have that control, and God demands his life and asks him what all of his stuff has earned him, which is, of course, nothing, and God dismisses the man’s notion of autonomy and reminds him that life and breath are given by divine gift. And then Jesus concludes by saying “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.” Or as he says at little earlier, what use is it if you gain the whole world but lose your soul?
So, with that conclusion it becomes immediately clear that storing up treasure in and of itself is not the problem, but instead why it’s being done. In Genesis we have the story of Joseph who orders grain to be stored up during seven years of good harvests, which is similar to what this man might be doing, except why does Joseph store it? In order to protect for the seven years of famine that are coming, so that it can be used to help in times of need. It’s saving for a rainy day. So those who say that the Bible is opposed to saving up treasure are not seeing the whole story. Now, just to point out one thing, there’s a difference between saving and hoarding. Hoarding is part of what Jesus originally is talking about of that our lives do not consist in the abundance of our possessions, and you can hoard just about anything. As the son of a hoarder I can tell you that it is in possessing thing that my father finds a sense of identity and purpose, even things that are worthless. But, our identity has to start, and our understanding of ourselves has to start, that we are children of God. It’s not what we possess that gives us worth. It’s the fact that God loves us that gives us worth.
The second thing we have to understand is that we are not owners of our things, but instead we are trustees, or stewards. A steward does not own the things they have, instead they are owned by someone else and are placed in trust to the steward. That means the steward cannot do whatever they want with the items, instead they do with it what the master wants and will be held accountable for how they have used those resources. That’s what happens in the parable we heard last week in that the owner comes back and the servants have to give an accounting for what they did with the money they had been given. We believe the same thing will happen with us. How have we used the resources with which God has entrusted us? Have we used them wisely? Or have we squandered them? Are we storing up riches, or wasting riches, for ourselves? Or are we being rich towards God?
Now this is where I think all of us have room to make a difference in our lives, that all of us probably have areas in our budgets in which there are places to save, no matter how tight you might think your budget is. The first step, and we talked about this when we discussed Proverbs, and that is to know the condition and location of our flocks. We need to account for every dollar that comes in and account for every dollar that goes out. Wesley’s injunction then is that we are to supply for our reasonable wants for ourselves and our families, and then to save the rest to be rich towards God, which is where we will head next week. But in seeking to know our economic condition and in deciding what is a reasonable want, we are sure to find places in which, as Wesley says, we are throwing our precious talent into the sea. For Wesley this included buying expensive or superfluous apparel or ornaments, adorning our houses with expensive furniture and pictures, and doing things simply for vanity sake.
But, let’s put it in a little more practical terms. Americans waste $165 billion annually in throwing away meals and snacks they either didn’t use or finish. That’s $529 per person. We will spend 2.8 billion on Halloween candy, and I’m willing to guess that at least 1 billion of that gets eaten not by trick or treaters but by those who bought it. 1% of all spending in the US is spent on alcohol, and I know some people will say, well I don’t drink much and I only do it when we go out to eat, which averages $3000 per household, but alcohol is routinely marked up 200-300 percent, if not more. Casinos will bring in $125 billion in revenue each year, not including the 66.5 billion on the lottery. Americans who buy coffee at a coffee shop will spend on average $1092 a year. And Business Insider says we waste $443 billion on energy every year, but using energy star products and following other recommendations could cut this by 1/3. And what about the gym membership that never gets used, or the magazine subscription that never gets read, or the deluxe cable package that costs hundreds of dollars a month, when Netflix could replace it for $20, and that doesn’t even begin to talk about what we spend in interest payments, which, as I said a few weeks ago, is sending our sheep our of out pasture to go and make new sheep in someone else’s pasture. And let me point out there is a difference between being frugal and being cheap. Being frugal means prioritizing and being wise about your spending so that you can have more of the things you care about, including money. Being cheap is about spending less, but also sacrificing quality, value, time and even enjoyment, to save money in the short-term. And on the same strain, buying something that you didn’t need because it was on sale does not mean that you saved money.
Proverbs says, “Precious treasure remains in the house of the wise, but the fool devours it.” (21:20) we should be saving money in order to save for emergencies, to save for a rainy day. We should be saving money in order to make purchases, not just for the things we might want, but for expenses we know are going to occur regularly, and in case no one told you, Christmas is on December 25th this year, so just a few months away, and we should be saving in order to build wealth, to keep those sheep in our pastures making more sheep, and we should be saving so that we can be rich towards God, which we will encounter next week as we complete our series and learn how we are to build on earning all we can and saving all we can so that we can give all we can, and I know you’re all excited about that message.
But, in order to begin to do anything of these things we have start with the idea first that we are beloved children of God, and that our value comes from God not from things, and secondly that nothing belongs to us, instead it belongs to God. That we are blessed by God in many ways, and God calls for us to use our talents in order to invest in the Kingdom of God. That God has entrusted with money and possessions not so that we can hoard them or use them for our own purposes, to be rich for ourselves, but instead to be rich towards God. I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters. Amen.
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