The Parable of the Rich Fool

Someone in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me." But he said to him, "Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?" And he said to them, "Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions." The he told them a parable: "The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, 'What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?' The 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; relax, eat, drink, be merry.' But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?' So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God." (Luke 12:13-21)

This passage has a very ordinary application which I'm sure has been repeated often enough: don't be greedy. The saying, "You can't take it with you," seems almost directly inspired by the parable Jesus tells. It's easy to glide through this passage as another moral teaching on how we ought to put our priorities in order.

Yet as I came once again to this passage in Luke's gospel, I was struck by these words of Jesus, which seem always to go unnoticed: Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?

Contemplate for a moment. This Jesus, who in the New Testament is called the Word made flesh, the Son of God, the firstborn of all creation, the Messiah, the Son of David--this Jesus is now telling one of his followers, "Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?"

I wonder if the man was taken aback by this question. Was Jesus denying his own authority? Didn't he just say, "Something greater than Solomon is here"? (Luke 11:31) Of course the Messiah would have authority to judge and to arbitrate. To whom else would you turn for judgment, if not your king? Especially a king greater than Solomon.

What might this say about what good government should look like? You will hear many people borrow phrases from Jesus in order to derive general principles for a just society. Rarely, if ever, will you find someone try to base an idea of good government on what Jesus actually did as a leader.

The relationship between Jesus and his followers is a curious matter. At times they are his sheep; at other times, his friends. He asks that they come willingly, never looking back; yet he also reminds them that they are but servants, and he their master. He has compassion on the crowds and feeds them; then he turns around and offends them with his cryptic teaching. He is at once supremely gentle, and extremely demanding. He is at once egalitarian and supremely authoritarian.

But here in this passage it seems that Jesus is refusing to exercise authority as King, and exercising it only as Teacher. How in the world does Jesus expect to be King if he won't arbitrate a simple dispute over property? Don't the common people need strong leaders to resolve conflicts? What would the world look like if our leaders left it up to us to resolve our differences? Even more incredible, what if they told us simply not to worry about these differences?

Yet these are the words of the King of the Universe: Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?

I think this demands that we rethink our political life. Jesus does not dictate what the man and his brother should do with their inheritance. Instead, Jesus is selling something. "Look," he says. "The rich man ended up with nothing, even though he thought he had something. Don't be like the rich man." Jesus is convincing us to invest properly, not in things that won't last, but in the Kingdom of God, which will last forever.

The worst thing the Church can do is assume it operates outside the market. On the contrary; every effort it makes toward bringing people to Christ is a market activity. We convince people to invest in something, and Christ has no qualms about saying that this investment is meant to have a return. Jesus gives us a vision of a truly free society, in which people are motivated by enlightened self-interest--that is, they understand truly what it means to have treasure, as opposed to the world perceives as treasure. They do not need an arbitrator over them, because they seek the treasures that are in heaven, which lead to the good of all people.

Is this an idealistic fantasy? Well, is the Kingdom of God among us, or not? Perhaps the world is simply not ready for such questions.