A man in the crowd interrupts Jesus with an ordinary grievance. 13"Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me." Inheritance disputes were common, rabbis were regularly asked to settle them, and the request sounds reasonable. Jesus refuses the role and sees past the dispute to the appetite under it. He tells the man to be on guard against all covetousness, because 15"one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." Whatever the merits of the quarrel, Jesus goes past who deserves what to what is driving the question.
The parable he tells is ordinary in its setup. A rich man's land produced plentifully, a blessing by any measure, and his first instinct is a practical problem. 17"What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?" His solution sounds like sound financial planning. Tear down the barns, build bigger ones, and secure the surplus. Nothing so far marks him as a villain. He has had a good harvest and made a sensible plan.
His speech to himself is telling. 18"I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones." Every verb in his speech is first person. I will tear down, I will build, I will store, I will say. God does not appear anywhere in the man's account of his own future, not as the giver of the harvest, not as a partner in the planning, not even as an afterthought. His barns have grown large enough, in his own mind, to hold his entire security, and he tells his soul, 19"Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry."
God's answer comes in a single word. 20"Fool!" The Psalms use that word for a particular kind of person. "The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God'" (Psalm 14:1). That describes someone who plans a whole life, barns and all, as if God were not there to plan around. Then the sentence that undoes the plan: 20"This night your soul is required of you." The word "required" is one used for demanding something back, the language of a debt being called in. The rich man never owned his own life outright. It was on loan the whole time, and the loan is called that very night, with the barns not even filled. Every plan built around many years collapses into one night, and the goods he secured pass into hands he never named.
Jesus closes with the verdict. 21"So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God." The harvest and the barns were fine. The trouble was a life measured entirely by what could be stored up for self, with nothing set aside in the one relationship that would outlast the night.
Ask how often your own plans, spoken or silent, have no place in them for God, and whose voice sounds when you talk to your own soul. Then decide one way you will be rich toward him this week, because your barns cannot answer the question this parable asks.
Prayer
Father, forgive the quiet arithmetic we have done with our own barns, larger and larger, with no room in the plan for you. Remind us, before the night our soul is required, that life was never meant to consist in the abundance of what we have stored up. Make us rich toward you, however small or large our barns turn out to be. In Jesus' name, amen.