Be Rich Toward God

Luke 12.13-21


“One’s life does not consist in the abundance of your possessions.”

Absolutely. Can everybody say “Amen.” Okay, now what I would like to do, what I would like to do, is give you an assignment for next week. Call a moving company, call U-haul, rent whatever trucks you need and haul your possessions in here for next Sunday. We’ve got a lot of room here. We can line up everything on the floors and the pews. It really shouldn’t be that difficult., you know, since our lives really aren’t about the abundance of our possessions. That would be an interesting scene wouldn’t it?

We may need to get a bigger building.

That was this man’s dilemma in Jesus’ parable. He didn’t know what to do with all the stuff he had. He needed a bigger building. Here’s an interesting sidenote: to be a Jewish man in those days was to be a member of a tight-knit and gregarious community. Usually, you had a wife and kids, parents, aunts and uncles, cousins, nephews and nieces, and friends and acquaintances. You had people all around you. You belonged. Your evening activity after a days work and a good meal was to go out to the village gates and talk with your friends over the events of the day and the doings of your families. You had plenty of counselors and opinions.

So when this man needed counsel, when he had this big decision in his life to build or not to build, who did he talk to?

No one. Himself. Because he had no one else to talk to. If he had a family, he was so far removed emotionally and spiritually that it didn’t occur to him to have that conversation. If he had friends, well. . .let’s face it, he didn’t have friends.


“So he said to himself – this is what I will do: I will build bigger storage houses. I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have enough for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’”


There is an article in yesterday’s paper about a new book of theology and spiritual truth that I want to recommend to you. I haven’t read it but it sounds very promising. In the very title of the book is expressed a deep theological truth.

The title of the book is Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat? The theme of the book is expressed by its author Peter Walsh, who says, “Many people have filled their homes with stuff and are now looking at the stuff they own and realizing it’s not delivering on the happiness they had expected it would.”

Walsh specializes in clutter intervention. He goes to people’s homes and like any good leader, “Defines the reality.” He gets folks to see their clutter for what it is – the clutter is controlling their lives. And gets them to begin to take physical control over their space.

Again Walsh says that once they remove some of it and open up space in their homes, “What flows back into that space is a sense of calm and peace. . .they’re able to focus far more clearly on their relationships, their spiritual lives, their work.”

I’m wondering how many of us would admit that our stuff is out of our control?

One indirect way to answer this question might be to think about that yearly local intervention that we call the Duncansville Spring Fling. This is the weekend ( not a day, because that’s not long enough, we need a weekend to do this) that we haul stuff out of our homes onto our front yards, sidewalks and streets. We “fling” it out there to our neighbors and community and hope that some of it might stick to someone else. There is stuff and people everywhere along the streets of fair Duncansville that weekend. It’s a flea market orgy.

And remember, this is only the stuff we really don’t want anymore. It’s our junk. It’s just us skimming off the top of our piles.

“No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and wealth.” Luke 16.13

I wonder, who do we love and who do we hate?

Here’s a more direct way to answer the question of whether “stuff” is a problem for us – get out your car keys. Get them out right now, please. And pass them to the person in the pew in front of you. How does that feel?

Maybe that’s too easy. Let’s try something else. Get our your wallets and your purses. Pass them to the person next to you, unless you are married or related to them and you know for a fact that they are less generous than you are. Pass your wallet then, to someone else.

How would it be if we took the offering right now? Would you be okay with that? Or are we kidding ourselves?

The rich man in the parable is kidding himself. He tells his soul that he is at ease, he has enough. What a joke. He makes a list of things to do – eat, drink, be merry. But he leaves one thing off of his list – remember not to die. That’s the most important one. It’s the hardest one to do of course. And what does God say about him – he doesn’t call him evil or bad. God chooses one word to summarize this wealthy, busy, respectable, successful man’s life – fool.

The man is a fool because he never learned what the object of life is. Jesus makes the point quite clearly:

“So it is with everyone who stores up treasures for themselves but is not rich toward God.”

Being rich toward God means growing a soul that is increasingly healthy and good.

Being rich toward God means loving and enjoying the people around you.

Being rich toward God means learning about your gifts and passions and doing good work to help improve the world.

Being rich toward God means becoming generous with your stuff.

Being rich toward God means making that which is temporary become the servant of that which is eternal.


Let’s think for a moment about what in our lives is temporary and what is eternal?
What can we take with us into eternity and what must we leave behind? Put a red sticker on everything that is temporary. We can start with those car keys and those wallets I asked you to pass over. You won’t be needing those. You won’t need the cars those keys go to, you won’t need the garage they are parked in, you won’t need the house that’s attached to the garage – put a red tag on all those. All those clothes in your closet, your ipod, your tv, your computer – those are red tag. The treadmill, the barbeque, the boat, the atv, bike, the checkbook, the 401k, the stock options - those are all red tags too.

Let’s a put green tag on everything in your life that is eternal. Put them on your family. Put them on your friends. Put one on your boss at work. Put one on your teacher. Put one on the kid that works behind the counter. Put one on the person you most dislike in the world. Don’t forget to put one on yourself.

What will make us rich in the eyes of God? All the eternal people we help bring there. That’s what God loves, that’s what heaven wants. Our stuff, it can stay here. Give it to the Spring Fling.