Luke 12:13-21

Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”

Jesus replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.”

And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’”

“Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’”

“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’”

“This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”

Luke 12:13-21, NIV.

The parable Jesus tells here is one I can somewhat relate to. I remember numerous times in my life where I’ve found out I’m getting a decent sum of extra money (maybe on a tax return or as a generous gift), and I immediately start thinking about all the things I’ll get with that money. “Oh I’ll finally be able to buy this, and that, and I can maybe even get this on sale…” Can you relate to that?

That is why I feel so convicted reading this parable. I see myself in this rich man, I can remember after a particularly profitable season feeling like I could finally spoil myself and relax a bit, but I am often only thinking of myself or my family. What often happens is that security I was finding in my God-given finances and resources is often quickly removed and I am vulnerable again. 

What this parable illustrates for us is that our greed, our tendency to turn inward when we are blessed and focus on all that we want, is something we must fight against, because those things we enjoy, the security we find in our resources, is fleeting. It does not last. Not only does it not last, but often times, our accumulation of resources and security for our own benefit often comes at the expense of others.

So we must fight against our flesh, against the greed within us that wants first and foremost to please itself over others. We must continually fight our instincts to hold on to our possessions and store them up for ourselves and instead share them with others, even seeking opportunities to be generous with what we are given. 

We are often concerned with how we use our money and ensuring that where we put it is either going to give us pleasure and fulfillment or a great return on what we spent. But Malcolm Foley writes that, “The most practical way to resist greed is to recognize that the greatest return on our investment comes from our investment in the poor.”¹

While it may lack some of the immediate gratification we desire, it may mean we don’t get to have all of the coolest new things, our generosity here and now forms us to be the people God has made us to be. It makes us more human, in the way that God intended humans to be. Our greed and selfishness draws us further from our humanity, and envelops us in a world of self-indulged isolation and destruction. 

May God strengthen our spirits so that we might become more generous with our resources and time to care for all those around us. And may God’s love at work in our hearts root out any greed and selfishness that would turn us away from our neighbors.

¹ Malcolm Foley, The Anti-Greed Gospel: Why the Love of Money Is the Root of Racism and How the Church Can Create a New Way Forward (Grand Rapids, MI, Brazos Press, 2025), 108.