The Parable of the Rich Fool, a sermon based on Ruth 2: 1-7 and Luke 12: 16-28, preached on July 28, 2024

As we consider this parable, called the Parable of the Rich Fool, I’d like to start with a question: Why did God call this man a fool? Fool is a strong word. When I was a kid, most of my days were spent either in my own house or in the home of Buck and Cindy Buchanan, and neither my mother nor Mrs. Buchanan would allow that word to be used in her home. We weren’t allowed to call each other “fool.” In our house today, our daughters aren’t allowed to call each other “stupid,” even if the designation is justified. Why would God call this rich man a fool, a strong word that does not typically describe those who take the time to save for that rainy day? Typically, ancient wisdom calls for saving grain, calling those who save wise and those who don’t foolish. In one of Aesop’s Fables, there is the story of the grasshopper who didn’t prepare for winter. That grasshopper who spent his summer bouncing around and relaxing in the sun was left out in the cold starving once the snow fell, while the ants who had spent their summer building their ant hill and accumulating a storeroom of grain were not only warm that winter but also had food that lasted them until the next spring. This rich man was more like an ant than a grasshopper, so why would God call this man a fool? Let me give you the context, which has helped me to understand this parable better. Just before Jesus tells this parable of the rich fool, someone in the crowd said to Jesus: Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me. Think about that. How many relationships have fallen apart when money was involved? Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me, this man says, and Jesus responds by saying: Don’t save up all your grain in barns. Instead, bake a loaf of bread for your brother and tell him that you’re sorry for being a jerk in the lawyer’s office. Why is this man with a barn full of grain called a fool? It is because he put grain before his relationships. He had the chance to send his grandchildren a little bit of money in their birthday cards, but instead, he said to his soul, “Instead of sending them money, I’ll put a little more grain in my barn.” Instead of taking his wife out for dinner, he put a little more grain in his barn. Instead of going on vacation, instead of giving to the church, instead of making a loaf of bread for his neighbor, instead of burying the hatchet, he built for himself a bigger barn. Then, he filled up that new barn with grain. Did he even eat a loaf of bread himself from that stockpile? Maybe he was thinking, “Winter is coming, and no one is going to come take care of me in my old age. I had better get prepared by filling up this barn full of grain so that I don’t have to live on charity when I can’t work.” That’s not a bad way to think, but to plan for the future, we can’t just think about the grain in our barns or the money in our savings account, let’s also pay attention to the people in our families as well as those who are out in the field. In our first Scripture lesson, we read about Ruth. Do you know about Ruth? Ruth is among the hardest books in the Bible to find. I have to go to the table of contents every time. The book of Ruth is an amazing account of love and dedication amid hardship. Ruth and her mother-in-law were reduced to gleaning. Gleaning is as close as the ancient world got to food stamps or welfare. There was no WIC, SNAP, or free and reduced lunch. If you lost the family farm, had a lazy husband who didn’t get the seed in the ground on-time, an early freeze came through, or the locusts swept your field, you could glean in your neighbor’s field, so long a drought didn’t ruin his harvest as well. In the case of Ruth, there was nothing left in Moab, so she went with her mother-in-law, Naomi, to Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus. There were fields in Bethlehem with grain in them, and after the workers went through the field to harvest the grain and had put it in storehouses, the gleaners were permitted to walk through the field to pick up whatever was leftover. That reminds me of going to the yard sale after lunch. Have you ever been to a yard sale after lunch? That’s the time to get the good deals. Once the good stuff has been picked over, you can get a great deal on whatever is left because the owner doesn’t want to bring that old couch back into the house. Likewise, the workers who went through the field once don’t want to go through it again and the owner doesn’t want to pay them to, so the gleaners were allowed to take whatever was left. That was hard work, and likely, the gleaners were both grateful and ashamed to be doing it. It kept them alive, but it was humiliating, and it was dangerous. As it is true today, so it has always been, desperate, migrant people are taken advantage of. As a woman who didn’t speak the language and didn’t have a husband, the men who worked the field had their eyes on Ruth, yet the owner of that field, a man named Boaz, saw her, protected her, cared for her, and as the story goes, eventually married her. Together, they had children, and when we get to the genealogy of Jesus in the first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, we see all these generations. Throughout the generations leading up to the birth of Jesus, four women are mentioned in addition to his mother, Mary. One of the four is Ruth, and as I think about the difference between the Rich Fool who invests in the future by spending all his time storing up a barn full of grain, and this Boaz from the book of Ruth, who notices a young, helpless woman gleaning the field and takes care of her, I realize that one of them left behind a barn full of grain and the other one left behind a legacy that leads to the birth of Jesus, the Savior of the World. Who made the better investment? Who was wise and who was the fool? When we think about the future, we are wise to invest in people, not in barns, so invest in relationships. Mend your fences. Think about the future and consider your legacy in terms of who needs you to invest in them. Warren Buffet is famous for saying, “I want to leave enough money to my kids so that they can do anything they want, but I don’t want to leave them so much that they can do nothing.” How many people have died knowing that they had invested too little time in their children or too little time in their neighborhoods or their churches? Don’t be a fool, filling up your bank account while people need you. The future is at stake. Our legacy hangs in the balance. If the barn is full yet the people are perishing, what kind of a future are we heading towards? Last Sunday, I was complaining about the cameras in here. I was talking about how the camera that records this service hits me right in the bald spot, but what I really wanted to do was to celebrate the impact that our livestream has. Today we’ll be commissioning Jeff Knapp as a chaplain to the Cobb County Jail, where our livestream is viewed. Our livestream goes out into the world. Some people join our church in person after having worshiped with us online for months or even years. When I mentioned all this to you last Sunday, one member of our church came out of the service and volunteered to pay for the new camera that we need to make our livestream better, saying, “I want to recognize the blessings I have received by giving some of what I have away.” This is how we are to live. We are to use what we have to make this world a better place. Only then will we be able to say to our souls, “Soul, you have done so much for the church and for your community and for the people you love. You’ve set the example. You’ve run the race. You’ve loved them all well, and they will be able to continue the work that you showed them to do, so relax, eat, drink, be merry.” Jesus urges us to be mindful of the fact that our days are numbered. That reality doesn’t need to make us afraid. We don’t need a barn full of grain to relax as we face the uncertain future, for He is our hope and our salvation. Trust in Him. Don’t trust in barns. We don’t need to be worried about the end, for when we breathe our last, the One who knows the number of hairs on our heads will receive us fully into that mansion with many rooms. Don’t worry about where you’re going. Instead, worry about how you will leave this earth once you’re gone. Do you want to leave behind a barn full of grain? Or a well-adjusted child? Do you want to leave behind a storage unit full of crystal wrapped in tissue paper? Or a letter to your brother, asking for forgiveness? How many of us have taken the time to fill up a pantry with canned goods, and yet we’ve never made the phone call that we really need to make? How many among us have an attic full of National Geographic, telling the story of people in far off lands, and yet we’ve never sat our friends down to tell them how much they mean to us? Have you been investing in people, or have you been filling up a barn full of grain? Have you asked for forgiveness? Have you mended your fences? Are you filling up your barn without dealing with the skeletons in your closet? We’re running out of time, so don’t wast the time that you have filling up a barn full of grain that you’re never going to eat. My friends, yesterday I tended bar for the third time in my life. If you’re not used to coming to church here, let me tell you what this place is like. Last night, someone just getting to know our church said, “So we can’t clap during the worship service, but the pastors serve beer. How does that make sense?” Yesterday, I worked the bar at Two Birds Taphouse for the third year in a row. Last night, a Saturday night, the whole place was dedicated to a fundraiser for our food distribution ministry. Not only were all the profits going to our Pantry on Church, but this was a Saturday night. Most restaurants are trying to make money on a Saturday night, but not Two Birds. All the money that might have gone in their barn was coming here, to feed hungry people, and when we left that place last night, I looked at the face of the two owners, Jeff and Rachel Byrd, and there were smiles on both their faces. You have time left, so how will you use it? When we use our treasure to invest in people, we will change the world. But should we store up our treasure in barns, what will happen when we’re gone? Amen.