Mel Prestamo, Elder PCUSA
Taken from Luke 12: 13-21, offered on August 3, 2025, at Hilltop Presbytery Church, Mendham, NJ
The Story of the Greedy Farmer
[I am providing the text from the Message – of particular interest is the transcription of verse 21]
13 Someone out of the crowd said, “Teacher, order my brother to give me a fair share of the family inheritance.”
14 He replied, “Mister, what makes you think it’s any of my business to be a judge or mediator for you?”
15 Speaking to the people, he went on, “Take care! Protect yourself against the least bit of greed. Life is not defined by what you have, even when you have a lot.”
16-19 Then he told them this story: “The farm of a certain rich man produced a terrific crop. He talked to himself: ‘What can I do? My barn isn’t big enough for this harvest.’ Then he said, ‘Here’s what I’ll do: I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. Then I’ll gather in all my grain and goods, and I’ll say to myself, Self, you’ve done well! You’ve got it made and can now retire. Take it easy and have the time of your life!’
20 “Just then God showed up and said, ‘Fool! Tonight you die. And your barnful of goods—who gets it?’
21 “That’s what happens when you fill your barn with Self and not with God.”
I, My, and Myself – [sermon message begins here]
In today’s passage from Luke, there is embedded a parable. We can refer to it as the parable of the “rich fool.” This parable consists of one hundred and twenty words. Now make note of this, ten of them are either the words “I”, “my” or “myself”. I tried to stress them when I read the passage for you but let me read it again for you now that I have called your attention to them.
“The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. 17 Then he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ “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?’
One hundred and twenty words and ten of them are I, my, or myself. That is eight percent of the total. But if we go on to include the words, he, himself, and you – all of which refer back to the “I”, there are four more words that refer directly to the rich man himself. Now we are almost at twelve per cent.
Why is this important? What is Jesus trying to say to us here? What is it that Jesus wants to be said here in this morning’s worship service to the affluent community of Mendham, New Jersey? We are his audience today even as he spoke this parable two thousand plus years ago. So, what is Jesus saying to us today?
Let’s begin by taking a look at what precedes Jesus’ parable. Luke tells us that after the events of the day Jesus is confronted by the young man demanding of Jesus that he settle a dispute between himself and his brother. We are a part of his audience today as were his followers two thousand years ago. What Solomon like wisdom does this Rabbi, Jesus, offer the man calling for a division of earthly property?
The first observation that I will call our attention to is that this man yelling out from the crowd, asking for Jesus to settle a dispute between he and his brother probably has no claim on the estate he is demanding to be split up. As you may be aware, in ancient times after the passing of the father an estate would go to the oldest son. After that, the brothers that followed would be dependent upon the eldest son’s generosity for a livelihood. So, Jesus rightly extracts himself from that argument. No way. Ain’t gonna go there. But sensing the opportunity, Jesus seizes on it as a teaching moment.
Jesus seizes upon this man’s desire to gain some earthly wealth from his father’s estate, to gain from the wealth his father had amassed in his life and Jesus tries to refocus the man and his other listeners on treasures of greater importance.
So, what is it that Jesus is saying to those of us who have an abundance of material possessions – to those of us who have stored up the riches of this world.
Now, relax and take a deep breath. I am not going to tell you to sell all you have in order that you can be a good Christian follower of Jesus. I don’t think that is where Jesus is going with this parable.
What I do think is important for us all to focus in on is the attitude of the rich man in Jesus’ parable and what exactly makes him a fool.
In this parable, Jesus takes great pains as a teacher to make it plain that this rich man never focuses on anything other than himself and his wealth. There isn’t a possessive adjective or pronoun in this story that doesn’t focus back on the man himself. “I”, “my”, and “myself” – even, the pronouns, “he”, “you” and “yourself” refer only back to himself.
This first lesson we should observe here is that this rich man never sees the world beyond himself. This rich man is aggressively focused on the “self”. There is no “other” in this story.
Bible Scholar, William Barclay, suggests you might say that the man’s world is bordered on the north, south, east, and west by himself. Think on the image of that. On his horizons, he could see only himself. His world, his entire existence was filled only with his own ego. Never once in the parable does the rich man consider the needs of the “other” and what good his surplus wealth might be used for.
In the abundance of his wealth, he never once considers what good may come of it. His only concern is to store it up for himself.
So, he tears down the barns he already has to build bigger ones large enough to store up all the riches he has amassed in this world.
So, this might be the first question Jesus poses for us today. Where is your focus? Who do you focus on? Is your focus on yourself, what you possess, what you have amassed. Or, does God play any part in how you store up your wealth – or more precisely, does God play a part in the treasures you consider worthy to store up?
Greed is a dominant underlying theme in this parable. Jesus prequalifies the man as bring rich. This rich man already has, but he wants to possess more. But Jesus point of the parable is to ask the question, what will his earthly wealth gain him.
In a commentary by William Barclay on this passage, he quotes a Roman proverb, “…money is like sea water, the more you drink, the thirstier you get.” I think this is an apt insight to the motivation of the rich man in Jesus’ story.
The driving force in this rich man’s world is how much more he can store up for himself. This is the definition of greed, is it not? The rich fool never sees the world beyond his own self-centered wants.
And that word “want” is important. When I was writing this message, I almost used the word “needs” here. But what the rich man was doing was going well beyond providing for his needs. What the rich man was doing was amassing wealth well beyond what his needs could possibly require. He never considered a world, a kingdom beyond the barns he was building up to store his earthly wealth.
Bible scholar William Barclay uses this story to drive the point home.
“There is an ambitious young man and an older man who knew life. The young man announces, “I will learn a trade.” The older man asks, “And, then?” the younger man answers, “I will set up my business.” Again, the older man asks, “And, then?” “I will make my fortune”, was the young man’s reply. “And, then? the older man asks. “I suppose I will grow old and live on my money” was the young man’s answer. “And, then?” Now, the young man’s response, “Well I suppose that someday I will die.” The older man’s final question is, “And, then?”
This was the question the rich man never considered. “And, then?” What happens then? After he had built up all his earthly riches and stored them up in barns that he constructed in this world, what happens then? He never took a moment to consider what comes next. He never – in all the work that he expended amassing his wealth – he never spent a moment working on his relationship with God. He never once thought of building up a treasure in heaven so that he had a home that he could be welcomed into – so that he could relax, eat, drink, and be merry in the eternity of God’s Kingdom. He had an opportunity to build up something for all eternity but instead he concentrated on storing up wealth and riches that would rot away and die consumed by rust and moths.
That is when this rich man becomes a fool.
God tells him, his life will be demanded of him on the evening of the very day he completes constructing his barns. Then God asks him, “…these things that you have prepared, whose will they be?” In other words, God asks the rich fool, “And, then?
Then Jesus stresses this final thought. “So, it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich [in their relationship] with God.”
Jesus drives this point home in the verses that follow today’s reading. He tells his disciples [and us] not to worry about what we are to eat or about what we would wear.
Now I don’t want to trivialize our needs to eat and to be clothed. These are two very important needs in our world. We need to be able to find sustenance. We need to be able to clothe ourselves to protect ourselves from winter’s cold and summer’s sun.
But Jesus rightly points out that we also need to look to God to be fed by God’s Word. We need to be able to clothe ourselves in what Paul calls the armor of God. Jesus is telling us that looking to God to be fed and clothed is more vitally important than how we look to be fed and clothed in this world. Although, I might suggest that the two are NOT mutually exclusive.
Look. We can worry and obsess about all our troubles and angst of our lives. We can let our to-do lists obscure our vision and distract us from what is important; or we can rely on God to be fed and to guide us, to clothe us in God’s Word. Now Jesus doesn’t present this as an either/or choice. He clearly is telling us that placing our reliance on God to provide and nurture us is by far the more critical way to go.
Jesus asks, “Which of you, by worrying, can add a few days to the span of your lives?” And so, I ask the same of you. Can you by worrying extend your days? No. You can’t.
Now hear me clearly. I don’t believe that Jesus is telling us to chuck it all and live our lives without any attention at all to the world around us. The world around us is broken and God requires us to be God’s hands and feet and to go into this world to heal its brokenness.
But what I think Jesus is telling us is that there is a way to put focus in our lives and a way not to. Jesus also told us the parable of the workers and the talents. In it, the master of the household leaves to travel abroad, and he assigns three of his servants with Talents. Jesus tells us that when the master of the household returned, he demanded to know of the servants what they had done with the talents he had provided them. The master of the house expected his servants to use the talents he had provided them with and to put them to good use and to make them grow to the benefit of his household. Clearly, we are not to be lumps that ignore the gifts and talents we have been given and bury them into the ground. We are called to invest the talents we have been given and make them grow.
Recall with me the opening line of Jesus’ parable from today’s reading. It is: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest.”
In other words, this rich man had been gifted the harvest just as the servants had been gifted the Talents by their master. Now we know that the third foolish servant buried his talents in the ground where it could rot away. The other two invested their Talents to make them grow.
But to grow how? This is a question we need to consider for ourselves.
Should we grow our Talents for our own benefit? To fill our barns, our bank accounts, to store up our wealth as possessions that we alone would own. No. It is to grow our talents and gifts to the benefit of God’s Kingdom. The servants who doubled their Talents returned them to the master of the house for the benefit of the household.
The focus Jesus wants us to make in our lives is on God. Focus on our relationship with God, first. That will guide us in how we make our talents grow in this life so that we can reap rewards in heaven. We would be taking our Talents and building up treasures in our relationship with God. So that when we are asked, “And, then? We can respond that we have stored eternal life up in a place in God’s house where we can eat, drink and be merry.
May it be so.
