Reading
Luke 12:13-21
13 Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”
14 Jesus replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” 15 Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.”
16 And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. 17 He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’
18 “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. 19 And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’
20 “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’
21 “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”
Comment
Being considered a "teacher", Jesus is called to settle not only religious but also civil issues. He rejects this role, not because he does not have the power to judge - being, indeed, judge of the universe - but because he refuses to be the arbiter of merely earthly disputes.
Jesus goes to the root of the problem by condemning greed and presenting a parable. The protagonist is a man whose work has been blessed by God with a bountiful harvest. The desire for him is something we all have: to enjoy our well-being with a joyful and peaceful life. What he is reproached with is not the way he enriched himself, completely honest, but the total absence of God and the needs of his neighbor from his existential perspective.
Every interest of the man in the parable is turned to himself and to his possessions; he has accumulated riches on earth but is not enriched before God. The poverty of his interior life, unable to raise a look of gratitude to heaven and to rejoice in sharing his material wealth, will be revealed by the sudden arrival of death, which will separate him definitely from what he has accumulated in the barn.
Jesus condemns all forms of greed because even if one is in abundance "life does not consist in an abundance of possessions" (v. 15). The man described by Jesus makes his security and happiness depend on earthly riches, he becomes a slave to them, unable to enrich them with meaning in sharing. But charity needs an "other" as the recipient of one's love, while the enriched man is closed in a monologue with himself. We can say of him with the psalmist: «as a shadow is the man who passes by; only a breath that is stirred, accumulates riches and does not know who is gathering them "(Ps 39:6).
Our goods, of whatever nature, can become a barrier to God and to our neighbor, but freed from our greed they can be placed at the service of what is as strong as death (Ct 8:6): love.
Prayer
Your Spirit, o Lord, fill our hearts with gratitude for the goods you give us and make us generous in sharing them with our neighbor. Amen.
- Rev. Dr. Luca Vona
