The Land of Plenty (Luke 12:13-21)

            Back in high school, I read John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, a novel set in the Great Depression.  (You may have read it yourself at some point or remember the 1940 film adaptation starring Henry Fonda.)  The book follows the Joad family as they are evicted from their farmland and travel West in search of work and a better life.  They move from Dust Bowl-ravaged Oklahoma to California, searching for migrant farmer jobs, and find little welcome, let alone work.  The Joad family experiences great hardship and deep anxiety as they find that their dream destination in California is not the land of plenty where they will find their needs met. 

            Reading The Grapes of Wrath, I understood better my Grandmother Hugenot’s stories of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl.  Steinbeck’s criticism of the plight of struggling farmers connected with the angst felt among farmers and ranchers in my own community, households desperate to hold onto the land they tilled and pastured, trying to make a living.  An old joke passed around typified the anxieties of many farm families: “I used to do business with the Farmer’s Bank in town.  Now it’s the banker’s farm!”

Looking back, I remember the high school literature classes usually groaned when a new book was introduced.  (“Not Shakespeare again!” muttered one classmate.)  In reality, requiring The Grapes of Wrath was a good move, asking high school students to think about the issues raised by Steinbeck.  After all, the Joad family was not a cast of unknown characters.  They felt familiar to those of us who living in a rural county in Kansas where few good paying jobs were to be found and ranked highly on the list of most economically depressed counties in the state.  Steinbeck’s novel touched chords within us that perhaps we did not realize at the time, clues about the ways the world works as Steinbeck saw it back in Depression era America.

I begin with Steinbeck to ask you to “look before you leap” to conclusions when hearing this parable of Jesus.  A twenty-first century American might read “into” the parable some assumptions about twenty-first century life that do not readily correlate to the first century world of Jesus and the parables. 

For example, the parable tells this story of a landowner with great wealth.  For the 21^st-century listener, we look at the financial angle first, missing out on an important clue about this parable.  Today, we presume landownership is fairly commonplace.  If we were to ask for a show of hands, a good number of you would be (or might have once been) landowners or have someone in your family who owns or owned land. 

In the first century, hardly anybody owned land, so this story about a rich man who owns land tells Jesus’ listeners that this fellow is extraordinarily wealthy just by the fact he owned land, and lots of it! (In the Greek text of Luke, the description is even more opulent than our common English translations:  tracts upon tracts of land!).  For Jesus’ listeners, this landowner is not someone the crowd would respect or trust!

            Living in a limited resource society, the people around Jesus had great distrust for someone who was opulently wealthy. Most of the populace lived hard lives, while a select few made up the privileged “elite”. How did such a person not only own land and then amass such an incredible amount of land?  The first question on the first century listener’s mind was fairly straightforward:  “Who lost out while this guy got it all?”

Again, here is a moment when contemporary readers can make assumptions about the text.  Some would argue that wealth of any sort is antithetical to the teachings of Christianity. The New Testament varies in its perspectives. In Luke’s gospel and his sequel we call the Book of Acts, you read of an aversion to possessions, with Jesus encouraging his follower to sell off possessions, support the poor and not seek material gain.  Subsequently, Luke writes of this same ethic governing the early Church after Pentecost when the disciples gather into churches known for sharing possessions in common. 

Elsewhere in Paul’s epistles, people of means, “the wealthy”, are part of the early churches scattered across the Roman Empire.  Paul encourages the Corinthian fellowship, which was comprised of people of great or little wealth to treat one another as equals.  In other writings, Paul claims the Church is made up of many across all manner of boundaries: the Jew, the Gentile, the rich, the poor, the slave, the free, the male, or the female—all are gathered together without exception or exclusion.  In Paul’s writings, no proviso is given that one must give up everything, though an expectation remains that people of any social classification must make a choice to take leave of the habits of exclusive or insular behavior by which the rest of the world tends to run.

The parable of the rich landowner stands alongside the parable of the Good Samaritan, the story of a rich man and the beggar Lazarus, and the Prodigal Son.  The four parables revolve around examples of the right and the wrong ways of behaving.  The rich landowner is understood as a bad example because he has spent all of his time daydreaming about his own gain and needs.  Living in a limited resource society, he has chosen not to “opt in” to the need to share his resources.  At no time does it cross his mind that his “land of plenty” is not for his sole benefit.  He has chosen to live exclusively at the expense of others.

 In this parable, the failings of this landowner revolve around the choices he makes when it becomes evident his “return” on his lands will be unbelievably successful. The landowner realizes that his land will provide an abundant crop.  The bumper crop will be so great that he begins imagining his next steps: rebuilding his storage facilities so that he can take in all of the grain.  The landowner daydreams of the plentiful crop and the long-term return on such good fortune. 

His daydreams are countered by what could be considered a nightmare.  In his sleep, God gives the landowner a stern lecture about his choices.  He is told that all he has planned for is now moot.  He will not awaken in the morning, losing his life and losing out on all of his plans for the future.  The next construction project on his land will be a tomb.

            The parables scholar Bernard Brandon Scott refers to this parable as “how to mismanage a miracle”, when one is given much yet takes it all for granted.  This sort of failing can easily befall any of us.  We do not need to be in a certain tax bracket or of a certain ideological worldview to live for ourselves alone and with a certain disdain or detachment for others.  Despite the summer heat, I find myself recalling the Christmastime story of Dr. Seuss’ Grinch, whose heart shrank down five times too small.

The parable warns against making possessions or worth your only goal.  The parable of the landowner turns from the realization of abundance coming his way to an internal monologue increasingly self-absorbed (what will “I” do with this crop and how can “my” storage facilities hold it all?). The landowner insulates himself from the needs of others, driven by the desire to possess.

            As noted before, Luke’s two writings (the gospel of Luke and the book of Acts) have few good words about those who become ruled by their possessions.  Elsewhere in Luke’s gospel, Jesus instructs, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Luke 12:34).  In this small subset of four “example” parables, the Prodigal spends his half of the inheritance and learns that you can’t put a price tag on being welcomed home, Lazarus the beggar is lifted up to heaven above as God’s beloved, even though he is ignored and maltreated in his life on earth, and the Samaritan loads up a complete stranger left for dead in the ditch, laying out significant personal funds to ensure the wounded man’s wellbeing.  The parable of the landowner is a challenge to the listener:  how shall you live your life?  Regardless of your economic status, do you still provide, as you are able, for the needs of others?

            In terms of the parable, let’s consider look at the sort of response our congregation gives to these questions.  We support faithfully American Baptist “home” and international mission, providing financial support for programs and staff who offer a variety of ministries around this country and our world.  Our facilities provide space for various community needs for upwards of 100 persons coming on site per day. 

Each week, the church office tracks a variety of canned goods and other items that come in for the Dove Project for community members living with HIV/AIDS and the His Pantry ministry of Sacred Heart/St Francis de Sales Church.  In today’s bulletin you’ll find a listing of the various items received to date for the annual school supply donations given to the Molly Stark Elementary School.   Morgan Flynn has been coordinating pet food donations for Second Chances Animal Shelter.  Beginning today, Bob and Grace Wilson are in New Orleans for a week to volunteer with various Habitat projects. Certainly, the list goes on well beyond this sampling.

            Now, we may consider ourselves like many other faith communities locally and further afield: numerically small, a mix of persons of varying economic backgrounds, dealing with the same challenges of keeping up a physical plant and feeling the financial challenges of juggling all the matters we have to juggle.  Nonetheless, we refrain from storing up our treasures or using our resources for the sole good of the membership.  We turn toward our neighbors with open hands and a willing spirit of service.  It is not about “us” when it comes to our congregational identity and mission.  We call it “missional” work.  Jesus would call these efforts “good examples” of the Kingdom/Reign at hand.

Such consideration makes the gospel come to life. Living with God and neighbor in mind re-imagines the world as the parables envision.  Along the way, we are blessed with treasures of a luster quite unlike fame or gold.