The 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time revolves around the theme of wealth, in

particular of the dangers of wealth. So what the lectionary gives us this week is
another cluster of of teachings of Jesus from the Gospel of Luke that are focused on
a specific theme. And in this case that theme is wealth. So what we are going to do,
as usual, is begin with the Gospel in Luke 12, well read through it, ask some
questions, and then well go back and look at the Old Testament reading and the
Psalm. And again, this week theyre very tightly knit and they really go home to a
very important theme, which was Jesus teaching on the dangers of wealth. So well
begin with Luke 12:13, the Gospel reads as follows:
One of the multitude said to him, "Teacher, bid my brother divide the inheritance
with me."
But he said to him, "Man, who made me a judge or divider over you?"
And he said to them, "Take heed, and beware of all covetousness;
for a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions."
And he told them a parable, saying, "The land of a rich man brought forth
plentifully;
and he thought to himself, `What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?'
And 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;
take your ease, eat, drink, be merry.'
But God said to him, `Fool! This night your soul is required of you; and the things
you have prepared, whose will they be?'
So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God."
Okay, so what do we want to say about this passage? There is a lot here that we
could talk about. Let me just break down a few key elements of the text. First of all
the context. The context is a man telling Jesus to make his brother fairly divide the
inheritance between the two. So he sees Jesus as a kind of respectable teacher,
prophet, and leade, and he is trying to get Jesus to basically force his brother give
him his fair share. And Jesus uses that episode, which clearly manifests, on that
man's part, envy or covetousness, a desire to possess the land, even if it's rightly
coming to him, he's attached to possessing that land. Jesus uses that in order to
warn them against covetousness, against desiring wealth, against avarice and
greed. So there are a few elements here to his teaching on wealth. And if you know
anything about the Gospels, you'll know that Jesus of Nazareth certainly did not
teach a health and wealth Gospel that you sometimes hear about these days. If
anything, Jesus was hardest on those who were wealthy and most stringent about
the dangers of wealth. So these are just a few, this isnt all of his teaching on
wealth. These are just a few highlights of his teaching.
The first thing he says is this in verse 15, he says be aware of all covetousness.
Now what does that mean, covetousness? Well some translations, like the New
American Bible, say beware of all greed. The Greek word here is pleonexia, and it

comes from the Greek word pleon, which means plenty or much or more. So
pleonoxia, what we translate as greed, literally is - it is greediness, but it's more
than that - it's kind of literally much-ness or many-ness, a kind of insatiable desire
to get more and more and more and more. It's the phenomena of never having
enough, thats what pleonexia is. And so Jesus is saying beware of that, beware of
that desire to possess more and more and more. Beware of greed. Why? Because a
man's life doesn't consist in the abundance of his possessions.
So he's trying to do something about the real meaning of life, about the nature of
life, and he knows that human beings are very much inclined to, in a sense, give
themselves over to the acquisition of possessions, to the extent that they identify
the success or the failure, the happiness or the sadness of their life with how much
stuff they have, with how much money they possess, or how much land they
possess, or whatever it is in terms of monetary gain. And he is saying to them, that
is not what your life is about. Your life doesn't consist in your possessions. And in
order to illustrate that, he gives a parable, the parable of the rich fool. And basically
what he is describing here is a man who is obviously wealthy, his crops have been
plentiful and so what he decides to do is acquire and secure as much as he can. So
he tears down his barns, he builds bigger barns, and he sets up all of his grain and
all of his goods for storage. And once he has everything he thinks he needs, he says
to himself - and this is a kind of funny discourse here, it says soul in this translation,
but hes really basically just talking to himself - he says soul, you have ample goods
laid up for many years, take your ease, eat, drink and be merry.
So what's going on right there? It's very simple. What Jesus is saying is that greed
may, in many cases, lead to wealth. But wealth leads to a sense of false security,
and false security leads to laziness, leads to laziness, leads to sloth, especially
spiritual laziness. Because what does this rich man think? As long as he's got all
these possessions he's safe, he's fine, hes secure, he can just focus on eating,
drinking, and making merry. Notice what he is not focusing on, he's not focusing on
God, because one of the dangers of wealth is to make you believe the illusion that
you don't need God, that you are self-sufficient, that you can take care of yourself
without any reference to the creator, the one who gave you life, the one who
sustains your life. And what Jesus is saying is, that kind of attitude, that false since
of security that wealth brings, is an illusion, it's foolish. It is foolish to think that
you're safe, or that your secure, just because you have stuff, just because you have
lots of money, just because you have lots of possession, or, in a contemporary
context, just because you have, what is so popular in our American culture?
Insurance. We are going to insure your house, were going to insure your car, you
can even insure pets, theyve got food insurance now. So there are all these
different forms of insurance. What is insurance meant to show you? Well now I'm
safe, now Im secure. And what Jesus is saying is that's foolish, that's a false sense
of security. Why? Well look at the parable, because it just so happened that the
second that that man had everything set, was also the night he was going to die. So

he says fool, this night your soul is required of you, and the things you prepared,
whose will they be? So that night the man dies and all the time and all the effort
that he spent putting all the grain into the barns, into acquiring and securing all this
wealth, its all for nothing because he's dead. So the one thing he couldnt secure
himself against is the one thing that matters, namely the end of his life and his
relationship with God.
So Jesus ends the teaching by saying, the main thrust of the parable is the last line,
so is he who lays up treasure for himself but isn't rich toward God. So he lays out
two paths there, on the one hand you can spend your life storing up treasure for
your self, that's what the rich full did. He did it to secure his livelihood, to secure his
wealth so that he could eat, drink, seek physical and material pleasures, and rest
and be at ease. He did nothing to acquire a relationship with God, he did nothing
evidently, at least in the parable it doesn't sound like he had any concern for the
poor, for anyone else. He was focused on making himself rich to himself, as the
Greek says. Or you can become rich toward God. What does that mean, rich
toward God? Well if you know the rest of the Gospels, like the sermon on the mount
and the sermon on the plain, you'll know that Jesus is referring here to building up
treasure in heaven, building up, in a sense, a heavenly account, a heavenly storage
place, where you will amass the treasures of the spiritual life so that you may be
poor on earth, you may be very poor, but youre rich towards God. And so Jesus is
saying here that that's true wisdom, to focus on the treasurer of the kingdom, for as
he will say elsewhere, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Because
let's face it, whatever we pour ourselves into, whatever we seek to acquire,
whatever we give priority to in our life, is going to, in a sense, capture our hearts.
And so Jesus is trying to get us to redirect our hearts to heavenly rather than earthly
treasure, to our relationship with God and our love of neighbor, rather than love of
self and acquisition of wealth for ourselves. And that's the danger of wealth, it leads
to selfishness, self-centeredness, a false sense of security, and ultimately to
spiritual sloth as well, of laziness in the matters of heavenly treasure.
Think about it, how many of us really have focused on - what does my treasure in
heaven look like? How am I building up the heavenly resources, the heavenly
merits, the good deeds, the acts of grace that would increase my treasure in
heaven, as opposed to my IRA or my 401(k)? Think of all the time that goes into
financial planning for earthly matters when all of it can go in a second. Are we
making the same kind of plans for our heavenly wealth, for our heavenly treasure,
for our heavenly home? That is what Jesus is trying to do here in this parable when
he warns against the rich fool, of being rich fool. Because it's foolish to think you are
going to live forever. You just have to look around the world see that death is
everywhere and that it will come to you probably sooner rather than later.
And if you have any doubt about that then back to the Old Testament reading for
this week. In this case, there is a perfect passage chosen for the first reading for the
week, and it is from one of my favorite books in the Old Testament, the book of

Ecclesiastes. One scholar, N.T. Wright I think it was, who said Ecclesiastes (thinking
about Winnie the Pooh here) is the Eeyore of the Old Testament, its not an uplifting
book, but it's an important book because it has a realistic view of the passing nature
of life. And so the Church selects a couple of verses from chapter 1 and 2 of
Ecclesiastes as the oldest reading to prepare us for Jesus teaching. And this is what
it says:
Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
And then it skips to 2:1, which reads:
because sometimes a man who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge
and skill must leave all to be enjoyed by a man who did not toil for it. This also is
vanity and a great evil.
What has a man from all the toil and strain with which he toils beneath the sun?
For all his days are full of pain, and his work is a vexation; even in the night his
mind does not rest. This also is vanity.
So what's this reading about? A couple of points. First and foremost, this is very
important, when we hear the word vanity in English, we tend to think of selfcenteredness, or of a person who is vain. In other words, prideful or full of himself or
focused on themselves. That's not what Ecclesiastes means here. The English word
vanity has multiple meanings. In Hebrew, when it says all is vanity, the literal
Hebrew is all is hevel, which literally means vapor or mist or breath. So when
Ecclesiastes is saying everything is vapor, everything is mist, what it means is
everything is passing, everything is fleeting, everything is ephemeral. It's here one
day and it's gone the next. So that's what Ecclesiastes means by vain. It's not going
to last, it's not eternal, it's temporary. So in order to illustrate that, the Church gives
us this reading about the vanity or the temporal nature of wealth, and it shows us
that for all of the effort, and think about the amount of human effort that goes into
acquiring wealth. People pour all their lives, all their energies, all their efforts, all
their thoughts and their anxieties into acquiring wealth. And the reality is that the
vast majority of that, at the end of the day, is going to go to someone else. If you
die it might go to your children, it might go to the government with taxes being
taken out. In fact, it definitely will go to the government, they will get their cut. So
it's showing the irrationality, the fundamental irrationality, of a man or woman
putting all of their effort into acquiring something that is in fact hevel, its just a
mist, its just a breath, it is passing. And in terms of earthly wealth, all the strain, all
the toil, all the vexation, you can't sleep at night, thinking about work, all that is
really an illusion, because it's going to pass so quickly, and it has to be left behind
for someone else. The old clich, you can't take it with you, is not only true, you can
actually make it stronger. Not only can you not take it with you, but someone else is
going to get it. That's what Ecclesiastes is saying. Why give yourself entirely to
earthly wealth? It just doesn't make any sense.

And the Psalm for this day, the Responsorial Psalm, Psalm 90, makes the same
point. Turn to Psalm 90, the Church has selected several verses from this Psalm. The
the refrain for this Psalm is:
If today you hear his voice, harden not your your hearts.
Now that might seem like, what does that have to do with the vanity of wealth in
Ecclesiastes, or the the danger of not storing up treasure in heaven in the Gospel?
Well, the link is this, if you look at it in context, what that means is the Psalm here,
verses 11 and following, is about the passing nature of our life. So just to take one
section, in Psalm 90:12 it says:
So teach us to number our days
that we may get a heart of wisdom.
Return, O LORD! How long?
Have pity on thy servants!
Satisfy us in the morning with thy steadfast love,
that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
So notice that one line, teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of
wisdom. What is that saying? Well basically this, your days are numbered. You could
die in your sleep like the rich fool and your life would be over. So the heart of
wisdom for this Psalm is to number our days, to realize you're not going to live
forever, that this temporal life, that this earthly life is passing, and to live as if that
is the case, for it is in fact the case. And so, what the Psalm is saying is this, if today
you hear his voice don't harden your heart, don't wait thinking, oh I hhave plenty of
time to serve Lord, like the rich fool. I can eat and drank and rest and just be merry.
That's a lie, thats an allusion, it's not true. Death will come sooner rather than later,
and life is fleeting. Therefore, this life needs to be lived in such a way that were
always listening to the voice of the Lord and not hardening our hearts against Him.
And that is what Jesus is talking about in his teaching on wealth as well. He realizes
that the human inclination to acquire in order to acquire security is one of the
greatest temptations of the spiritual life. So in this Gospel, and in many other places
in the Gospel, over and over again he's going to exhort us seek first the kingdom of
God, build up treasure in heaven, for where your treasure is, there will your heart be
also.