Working out Life’s Priorities

Betty Stroud

Year C 2025 Pentecost 8

Luke 12:13-21

To say we live in a society based on a very high level of consumerism, is both a truism and a fact. More than at any other time in our history, we are living in a time marked by the need to have things: to have a large superannuation payout, to have a house, to have a car, to have a job… even a second job.

To have… seems to symbolise many people’s way of life.

Why do you think this is?

Well … it can give us security, a sense of well-being, and a sense of prestige.
Some people think that in order to live we must have things.
For others, what we have makes us who we are.
At the same time – there are people who just want a roof over their heads, or a meal to put on the table for their children.

One commentator on our society has said: “We live in a culture in which the supreme goal is to have – and to have more and more. For many people the end goal is to acquire, to own, and to make a profit. For them, these are the sacred and unalienable rights of the individual in modern society”

That was said by Eric Fromm some 40 years ago – and as I look at television, read the newspapers and listen to the radio today, things don’t seem to have changed all that much.

Advertisements encourage us to buy more – to spend more on things.

However, there are people who are trying not to let themselves be caught up in the cycle of consumerism, There are people who look for alternatives. Many of you are amongst these people.
What are ways that you fight back against the consumerist society?

And there are many people wanting to move away from ‘I am what I have’, to another lifestyle: a lifestyle that says, ‘I am what I can be’.

If we reflect on what I’ve said about modern consumerism maybe we can say that this is the modern setting for the Lukan story we heard this morning.

The story’s scene is set by a man in a crowd who asks Jesus to arbitrate in a dispute he is having with his brother, over a family inheritance.

Jesus quickly responds: it’s not my role to make judgments.

In fact, Jesus’ response asks the person to judge for himself the right course of action.
It also invites the person to think about whether the dispute is being fuelled by his greed.

And so, to emphasise the point, Luke has Jesus tell a parable about a rich and you could say, greedy, land owner

The parable opens with the landholder celebrating the fact his land has produced abundantly. And he sets about working out how he might be able to increase his storage capacity.

In Jesus’ day, greed was seen as particularly vicious in light of their experience of limited good. Biblical scholar, Barbara Reid, says: “Contrary to our capitalistic notions that all can increase in wealth, in first-century Palestine the assumption was that everything was finite and couldn’t be expanded. If someone’s share got larger, someone else’s decreased. Desiring more for oneself was the most insidious of vices, and was utterly destructive of village solidarity”

Capitalism has been touted as the great leveller of society where everyone can benefit if we work hard enough, but we know that’s not true. We know that in Australia – and indeed in most capitalistic societies across the world, the gap between rich and poor is widening – even in so-called economic good times.

But to get back to the parable:
We overhear this parable through the thoughts and plans of the rich man, as he talks to himself:
I don’t have enough room.
I will pull down my barns.
I will build bigger ones.
I will say to myself: take things easy, eat, drink, have a good time.
The man has no thought for others.
Slaves, family, tenants, day workers, peasants.
Yet as a rich landowner, it would have been by their sweat that the harvest was so miraculously plentiful.
If we think about how his workers would have felt we might imagine them thinking that all their efforts to produce a good crop meant absolutely nothing to him– for they would receive very little for their efforts.

I have no doubt that they would have felt, like thousands of serf, peasants and labourers over the centuries: resentment and envy and anger, as they clung to the edge of life for bare subsistence in the face of their landlord hoarding unused produce”

The parable could be said to be making a socio/economic statement – that is, it is asking us to consider whether life is about storing things up for our own pleasure or asking, ‘Is there something more to life – that is, sharing what we have with others.

That is certainly one perspective on this parable.

But maybe there’s something more.

If we think about it, the parable has a rather humorous twist.

It would have been particularly humorous for Jesus’ listeners, most of whom would probably have been tenant farmers and day labourers.

The landowner has his abundant crops ready for harvest and rubs his hands in glee.
But immediately he sees he has misjudged the storage space required.

Weighing up his various options, he comes up with a laughable and inappropriate action… He plans to tear down what storage facilities he has and begin building new facilities

Hang on a minute, the tenant farmers and day labourers say, the crop needs to be harvested now. You don’t have time to pull down and build new sheds you idiot!
Don’t you worry about that… he replies.

He makes one miscalculation and then another.

He misjudges the length of his life, and dies that night.

His bigger barns and magnificent harvest are all a fantasy.

It would have been laughable for Jesus’ listeners and, if we think about it, it’s laughable for us.

We do live in a society based on a very high level of consumerism.

We are, according to many people, what we have.

But the parable forces us to look at the question:

If I am what I have and I lose what I have, who then am I?

The parable offers no answer to that question, but it does raise the issue of life’s meaning and priorities.

Take a moment to think about the question: If I am what I have and lose what I have, who then am I?

And as you think about that question think about what are the priorities in your life.

It is pretty clear from the story that economic prosperity, or the accumulation of possessions, is not what life is all about.

We have other needs… emotional, mental, spiritual and psychological needs.

We also need a sense of purpose and acceptance… and to have relationship with those around us.

In this story Jesus provided the man who came to him with no clear answer.

What he did say, however, was that it was up to him to work out what was the best thing to do and gave him a story on which to form an opinion.

And this is what he says to us: ‘I’ve given you the basis on which to work out your answer but, in the end, it’s your call. It’s up to you to work out the priorities in your life.’

Jesus’ stories provide no ready-made answers but prompt us, if we look closely at them, to work out our own most appropriate answers to the challenges we face in our lives.