Bigger tables and smaller barns
In response to an inheritance dispute between two siblings, Jesus told this story:
“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 12:16–21, NRSV)
First, we must recognize that abundance is never entirely of our own, individual doing. The wealth the man had came from the land. He may or may not have had a hand in working it, but it was the product of natural grace and the labor of many. This is true of any sort of abundance even today. Even the most solitary of creative tasks still sits atop systems of education and provision.
Second, the man asks a faulty question that shows he does not appreciate the source of his abundance. He treats it unquestioningly as his own. No thought is given to his community or those who may be suffering and in need of food. Instead, he went to extreme lengths to keep "his" surplus.
Remember that this man lived in a society where religious law dictated that the corners of fields were not to be harvested and gleanings were to be left for the poor and the immigrant (Lev 19:9-10). It is not a far stretch from those laws to imagine that taking extreme measures to hoard wealth might not be in keeping with the spirit of the law.
Third, he wishes to make use of his abundance to "relax, eat, drink, and be merry." Here we may be tempted to think that these are evil desires, and nothing could be farther from the truth. Again remember that this society considered failure to take a day off every week a capital offense. (Ex 35:2). Eating and drinking were a central part of worship. The wisdom of the ancients sometimes even settled on pleasure as one of the greatest goods to come from labor. Take this example from the writer of Ecclesiastes, who calls himself Qoheleth:
“I hated all my toil in which I had toiled under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to those who come after me —and who knows whether they will be wise or foolish? Yet they will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity. So I turned and gave my heart up to despair concerning all the toil of my labors under the sun, because sometimes one who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave all to be enjoyed by another who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil. What do mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun? For all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation; even at night their minds do not rest. This also is vanity. There is nothing better for mortals than to eat and drink, and find enjoyment in their toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God; for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?” (Ecclesiastes 2:18–25, NRSV)
Qoheleth sees what the man in the parable did not. First, the abundance is from God. It is a gift. Second, labor is meant to create pleasure, and not as a means to hoard surplus.
So what did the man in the parable do wrong? It was not his desire to eat, drink, and be merry. It was the fact that he had it in his power to let many people eat, drink, and be merry and instead kept the blessing only for himself. Jesus, speaking in the voice of God in the parable lays out one of the most scathing rebukes to absolutist ideas of property and at the same time a powerful affirmation of pleasure: death.
As for the idea of property, death teaches us that nothing is ever really ours. One day we will die and whatever we have accumulated will belong to someone else. It is then absurd to hoard and concentrate wealth based on a misguided notion of property rights that ignores the role of natural abundance and the labor of the masses that make such accumulation possible.
As for pleasure, death teaches us that life is like a holiday. It is finite and the very fact that we cannot accumulate beyond its boundaries leaves only one thing of value: pleasure. This is the great gift of God: that life (though short) can contain pleasures such as eating, drinking, sleeping, having sex, playing, laughing , and more. One would not abstain from partying just because the party will end eventually. The pursuit of pleasure must be tempered, however, by the recognition that it is a gift from God to all humanity and to hoard access to it at the expense of others, maybe especially those who helped produce it in the first place, is a waste of life.
The Gospel is, among other things, a call for all of us to eat, drink, and be merry together. As the Apostle Paul points out, “In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!” (Col 3:11, NRSV) If Christ is all and in all, then being "rich toward God" does not mean denying ourselves pleasure now so that we can get some sort of reward in the afterlife. It means seeing the divine in everyone and everything and building bigger tables instead of bigger barns.