Practical Atheism
or
A Lesson On Abundance
August 1, 2004 (Ninth Sunday after Pentecost -- Proper 13)
By
The Rev. Benjamin J. Newland
It is a bit of lectionary synchronicity that today’s reading from the Gospel of Luke comes at a time when we are worshipping in Founders’ Hall, a fifty yard exile from our beautiful sanctuary. The synchronicity of it all is that Luke’s story is about abundance, and we are here this morning, in our back-up worship site, which is more beautiful, more spacious, and more full of beautiful furniture and musical instruments than most churches’ primary worship sites are. We are met in abundance, to hear from Jesus about abundance.
Today we are presented with the parable of the Rich Fool. This story, told by Luke and not by any of the other Gospel writers, has all of the classic elements of Jesus’ teaching. There is a crowd, from which someone emerges to challenge Jesus on some point of Jewish law or tradition. There is the response from Jesus, which usually begins to turn the challenge on its head. Then there is the parable, that essential part of Jesus’ teaching style, which leaves so much room for interpretation but nonetheless manages to be pointed enough give Jesus a reputation as a troublemaker amongst the Roman and Jewish authorities. Let’s look at Luke’s story in two parts: First, Jesus’ exchange with the crowd, and second, the parable itself.
A crowd was gathered to hear Jesus teach, and from that crowd comes a person who asks Jesus to arbitrate an inheritance dispute. And right away I need to say something about what is going on here. It might seem a bit jarring on our modern ears, but for someone to approach a teacher about a question of inheritance in a situation like this would likely have been pretty normal. Part of what Jesus was doing was interpreting the Jewish Law. And part of interpreting the Jewish Law would be for people to come to him for help in interpreting that Law, and if necessary, advocacy in applying the Law.
And Jewish Law had plenty to say about issues of inheritance. In Deuteronomy 21:17 it is recorded that the firstborn son is to receive a double portion of the inheritance from his father. In Numbers 27:1-11 is recorded the order of inheritance if a man should have no sons, or no brothers, or no uncles. Later in Numbers 36:7-9 is recorded a provision that should no male heirs be available, daughters too could inherit, to avoid land being transferred from one tribe to another. Both in Numbers and in Exodus Moses serves as an advocate for Israel to God on these issues of justice that have to do with inheritance of the Land given to Israel by God. Jesus had plenty to work with in inheritance law.
It would not have been unusual for someone to approach Jesus, a man with the reputation of being a great teacher of the law, with a question of Law. In fact, what is unusual is that Jesus would reply as he does, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” If the someone from the crowd had been more of a smart-aleck he would have replied, “Well, you did!” By teaching and interpreting the Law Jesus was doing exactly what people would expect someone who wanted to be a judge or arbitrator to do. But as you and I know, Jesus wasn’t about doing things in the normal way.
Jesus warns the crowd that things are about to get different by responding to the questioner from the crowd not in terms of Law or Justice or Fairness, but in terms of Greed. There must have been something in the question, or something in the crowd, that made Jesus believe that they didn’t want to know how to interpret the Law, but how to get as much as they could get. So Jesus warns them that the Law of God is not Greed, but about abundance of life, which is not to be found in abundance of possessions.
Then Jesus tells his parable. It seems there was a Rich Man. Again, right away, I need to say something about what is going on here. It is true now, and it was true then, that very often being wealthy is seen as being favored by God. We’re a bit more sophisticated about it these days I suppose, but still we are much quicker to see the evil in a poor man than we are in a rich man. At any rate, when Jesus starts his story out with a rich man, it is likely that his listeners would assume that the man was righteous and just and favored by God. How else would he have become rich?
Then one year the land of the Rich Man produces a particularly large abundance of grain. This was a problem for the Rich Man, because while he was happy to have more grain and wealth, he had not enough room to store it all. So the Rich Man has a conversation with himself, and decides that he will tear down the barns he has and build larger ones, so that he can store all of his grain and other possessions.
Now you and I are starting to think this Rich Man might be a bit greedy. He’s not talking to anyone else, but is focused entirely on himself and what he is going to do with all of his stuff. It was even worse amongst the crowd Jesus was addressing I imagine. They all knew, whether we remember it or not just now, that in addition to having rules about inheritance, the Jewish Law had rules about harvesting. You will probably remember, now that I mention it, that when crops were gathered at harvest time, some was to be left for the poor to gather up and feed themselves with. Gleanings, they called it, and for some of the people listening to Jesus it might have been how they managed to eat through the winter.
The Rich Man, however, is concerned only with himself, and how he will manage to harvest and store all of his bounty. The problem is not that the crop is so bountiful, but that the Rich Man insists on harvesting all of it and keeping all of it for himself. If he were to decide to give, oh I don’t know, say ten percent, away, perhaps he would find that he had enough room to store what he had left.
Yet other people do not figure into the Rich Man’s inner dialogue. He is alone with his thoughts about his possessions, and he can imagine no better life than one of maximizing his own pleasure through an abundance of material wealth. That is, until God interjects a voice into this inner monologue, calling him the fool that we can all see he is by now, and demanding to know what good will all of these possessions do him when his life is demanded of him, perhaps that very night. This is Luke’s parable version of his statement at 9:25: “What does it profit them if they gain the whole world but lose themselves?”
And that is Jesus’ story of the Rich Man and his possessions. What is the moral of the story you ask? Well, Jesus is a bit harder to interpret than Mother Goose, but I’ll give it a try. I think this story is about Practical Atheism. Practical Atheism is not a class in how to not believe in God. Rather, it is the state of saying you believe in God, maybe even really believing in God, but going about your life as if there were no God.
The Rich Man believes in God. Jesus doesn’t say that outright, but there’s no other good reason for him to be rich. The parable works with anyone who all of a sudden has an abundance of wealth. Jesus called him the Rich Man because he knew his listeners would then assume that the Rich Man was a believer, one who acknowledged God in his words and seemed to be rewarded accordingly.
But Jesus is asking for something more than a verbal, or even ritual, acknowledgement of God. Jesus is asking for actions: concrete, visible, impact-making faith. Jesus doesn’t care that the Rich Man says he believes in God. Jesus doesn’t care that the Rich Man goes to church. Jesus doesn’t care how many times per day the Rich Man prays. Jesus only cares that when all of a sudden given far more than he needed, his first thought was how he could hang on to all of it. That is Practical Atheism. Jesus doesn’t care if you say you believe in him. Jesus cares if you act like you believe in him. We have been given far more than we need or can even use. Is our first thought how to keep it all, or how to share it?