The Parable of the Rich Farmer

The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
August 5, 2007

The Reverend Gene Kendall Jr.

August preaching in my past experience has always been a time to lighten up a bit, stay away from anything too heavy or theologically complex. It’s a time to experiment, try something different, or as a friend of mine use to say, “have some good pulpit fun!” After all, people are vacationing, and August is somewhat of an in-between time in the church calendar…. plus it’s just hot, people are generally more irritable, so keep it short, entertain the troops, get in, get out.

So with that mindset I took a look at the lectionary texts for today, hoping for a pitch that would allow me to hit a single or a double, no need to swing for the fence in August. I’ll leave that to Barry Bonds for now.

You can imagine my dismay when I discovered that the lectionary was only throwing “heat” and curve balls…Psalm 49’s language was full of death and decay and the grave…Strike one…Nothing light or entertaining there…I’ll let it pass, and wait for the next lectionary pitch…

So here comes Ecclesiastes, whose pitch could best be described as a sinker, one of the most cynical and depressing texts in all of the Hebrew Bible…hard work, accumulation of things, laughter, pleasure, wisdom…in the end, what’s the point? “All my days are full of pain, even at night my mind finds no rest…its all like chasing after the wind…Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” Ugh…Even in my Little League days I could never hit a sinker.

So I was left hoping that the gospel of Luke would throw me something I could at least take a check swing at in order to get on base…and what do we find? Nothing but “heat”….a fastball parable about inheritance, wealth, things, stuff, money, possession and greed.

Great…such fun and light August topics! It was then that I knew why Paul wanted me to pinch hit today. Paul, you knew who was pitching today, didn’t you? You saw the lectionary lineup and said, hmm…let me give someone else a crack.

Over the past few weeks Paul’s preaching has focused on the theme of faithfulness…and so my hope this morning is to add to that conversation. I do think that these texts lend themselves to that theme, for they weave together a tapestry around a central question; the question of ownership. What belongs to whom? And so if I were to title this sermon, I’d call it something like “Faithfulness in a World of Affluenza.” What does it mean to be faithful, what does it mean to follow Jesus with all our stuff? Our substance, our possessions, our abundance, our surplus, and our occasional windfalls.

If you read the gospel of Luke in its entirety, you will come to see that that Luke paints Jesus with a particular brush…The portrait here when compared to the other Gospels is a Jesus who demonstrates both in word and in deed a particular interest and alignment with the poor. There are a greater number of stories in Luke where Jesus engages those at the bottom of the economic or social barrel…those with few choices, few opportunities, little or no status, and certainly very little in the way of material possessions.

The writer of this particular story frames it through the use of a literary convention in order to get our attention and create the teaching moment…He has an anonymous man from the multitude shout out a Sam Donaldson type of request. It comes out of the blue and is completely out of place. “Rabbi…tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” The topic is one that is close to the listeners hearts….inherited property. “Tell my brother to do the right thing! Tell my brother to quit being so selfish! Tell my brother my brother to give me what is mine!”

Inheritance issues have a way of bringing out behavior that is rarely seen at other times. Ask any experienced ICU nurse at any hospital who gets the most visitors… and they will tell you without flinching that when there is an inheritance at stake, the flow of children, grandchildren, and lesser know relatives that patients did not know they had come in and out on a much more frequent basis.

I share ownership of an inherited vacation property in North Carolina with my four siblings. Throw into that mix four brothers and sisters-in-law, and now twelve nieces and nephews who are growing up and requesting to use the property on their own without “adult supervison”, and you have all the makings of a family drama that brings out the ugly in me. My guess is that many of you could tell similar stories. How many family squabbles and broken relationships have been caused by the question of ownership? What belongs to whom? And who gets what? “ Rabbi…tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”

The inheritance question sets up the rest of this pericope….a parable…..permit me to read it once again, but this time using a translation by Clarence Jordan, in his Cotton Patch Version of Luke and Acts. Clarence Jordan was a Southern Baptist, a farmer, founder of the Koinonia community in Americus, Georgia, which would later evolve into what we know as Habitat for Humanity. He also happened to have a Ph.D. in Greek, and he translates this parable using the familiar idiom of the South. It goes like this….

“A certain rich fellow’s farm produced well. And he held a meeting with himself and he said, “What shall I do? I don’t have room enough to store my crops.” Then he said, “ Here is what I’ll do: I’ll tear down my old barns and build some bigger ones in which I’ll store all my wheat and produce. And I will say to myself, “Self, you’ve got enough stuff stashed away to do you a long time. Recline, dine, wine, and shine!” But God said to him, “You nitwit, at this very moment your goods are putting the screws on your soul. All these things you’ve grubbed for, to whom do they really belong? That’s the way it is with a man who piles up stuff for himself without giving God a thought.”

“Recline, dine, wine and shine!” Anybody here not attracted to that proposal? Isn’t that what we are programmed to work so hard for,the goal one day of taking it easy and enjoy a comfortable retirement? And the sooner the better, yes?

It is worth noting that there is nothing in this story that denigrates wealth. The farmer here has done well, he is not a crook, no story of graft or corruption, no mistreatment of workers or farm animals. He’s the kind of guy you’d want to recruit for the stewardship/canvass committee. You’d count on him to give a large donation to kickoff the next capital campaign.

And in this particular instance, he has experienced an incredible windfall…a harvest beyond even his wildest expectations. A surplus like this was a rare experience, and according to the religious tradition of that time, anyone experiencing such a wonderful extravagant harvest would have been expected to share this windfall with the community. Luke knew that his original audience would be grounded in the belief that land belonged only to God and must be managed for the sake of everyone.^[1] This audience would also have in their memory the familiar Old Testament story of Joseph building new barns to hold the abundant harvests during the “fat” years so that his people would have enough to eat during the lean years.

But our rich farmer, instead of sharing his abundance with those around him, hoards it all… Here is the portrait of a self made man who lacks any awareness of the host of dependencies and conditions beyond his control whereby this windfall could occur. And so God calls this man a fool. The Greek word here for fool is “aphron” and translates as “mindless one, without reflection or intelligence.”^[2]

Its possible to take this parable in a variety of directions, and the temptation is to go for the obvious rather than the sublime. I suppose you could focus on greed and all its evils. You could also go down the simple road of “you can’t take it with you.” Its also too easy to stand outside this story and make judgments about those with great wealth. But as listeners to this parable so many centuries later, my hunch is that if we were really transparent, we would have to admit that there is something of this rich farmer hiding inside each of us. We all hoard, we all build our barns, don’t we? The important truth here is that everything we own owns a little bit of us. Our things can become a demanding deity. So how can we be faithful followers of Jesus in the midst of all the barn building that is going on around us, and with everything in our culture invites us to recline, wine, dine, and shine.

Looking through a theological lens on the question of ownership, this parable is a reminder that you and I don’t own anything. We may have barns full of stuff in our possession, but nothing that we really own, for we only hold it in trust. Hoarding for oneself goes against the natural order of creation, some would say it’s a denial of creation, others would say it’s a denial of God.

Looking through a more global lens, this parable came to life for me after recalling a conversation I had a few weeks ago over a few beers at a Nationals game with fellow parishoner Monica Mills, who works as a lobbyist for Bread for the World. She took me to school on the ins and outs of the Farm Bill which got through the House last week and is now on its way to the Senate. She shared with me how this particular piece of legislation was being formed and shaped in order to get it passed. What I learned was that only 25% of American farmers get any benefit at all from this bill in the form of commodity payments. The small farmer is simply left out. Of those 25 % of American farmers who get subsidies, the top 10 percent of producers get 75% of that money. Payments are based on the amount of land you farm, and the more you produce, the bigger the payment the farmer gets. Consequently, the playing field for the small farmer has no chance of ever being level.

And if the subsidized farmer grows more than is needed domestically, it gets shipped overseas to the international markets at our subsidized price, which is lower than the price that the West African farmer can sell it for locally. So he either lowers his price in order to compete and thus makes less money, or loses out altogether when the market is flooded with that particular commodity that you as taxpayers help subsidize. In my limited and perhaps naïve view, what this looks like to me is this parable playing itself out all over again on a global scale, with you and I footing the bill for the barns that are being built.

Barbara Kingsolver in her most recent book, Animal, Vegetable and Miracle, makes the statement that “how we eat, determines how the world gets used.” Until I read her book, I’d not thought too long and hard about where my food comes from, other than my local Giant four blocks away. But after reading it, I am now thinking differently. For if how I consume determines how the world gets used, if how I consume keeps the global playing field unlevel, then this parable reminds me that I’ve got some work to do.

These are some of my thoughts as I take a run about the bases of this parable…as I seek to be a conscious consumer, a recovering barn builder, and a faithful follower of Jesus. I invite your reflections and thoughts.

Amen

[1]

[2] Thayer and Smith. "Greek Lexicon entry for Aphron". "The New Testament Greek Lexicon".