Reflection by The Rev'd Dr Deborah Broome

Barn Guy Gets it Wrong

Someone in the crowd said to [Jesus], “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Then he told them a parable: “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.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

Luke 12:13-21

The parable tends to get captioned “the rich fool” – and we can see why. There’s that weird internal dialogue that Barn Guy goes in for: “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.” Admit it – you’ve never gone “Soul, this is what I’m doing to do.’” 

This being Luke’s Gospel, we just know the rich guy is not going to turn out the hero – rich people never are the hero in Luke. He talks only to himself, and he thinks only of himself.  There’s no sign of gratitude for the unexpectedly abundant harvest – he doesn’t express any thanks to God, nor to the farm workers who contributed their time, their skills, and their labour, nor even to the soil itself. And his reaction to all that extra harvest, to having more crops than barn space, is to find a way to keep it all for himself. There’s no thought of sharing this bounty with his neighbours. He’s someone who’s storing up treasures for himself, but isn’t rich towards God. Indeed he seems to have forgotten about God – he’s living as if God wasn’t there.

I guess the question is – do we ever do the same thing? Believing in God, but living as if God isn’t there. You know, when we’re worried about something and we give that problem over to God – only God seems to be taking a long time to do something about it so we borrow the problem back. Or when we know that prayer is important – but we never seem to get round to it. 

Jesus is inviting us to leave behind our inner Barn Guy and keep God front and centre of our lives. To get away from wanting to be in control and trying to store up treasures for ourselves, and instead be rich towards God. How might we do this? Obviously building a bigger barn isn’t the answer – but being grateful for all our benefits, seeing them as blessing and not as entitlement, might be a place to start. 

Image taken from https://missionventureministries.wordpress.com/2015/02/16/earthly-riches-are-not-the-answer-to-our-eternal-security-luke-1213-21/