The Rich Fool: Luke 12: 13-21, Hosea 11: 1-11: Usha Hull


So the rich fool died as in today’s gospel. Let’s just suppose, using
poetic licence, that the rich fool was a woman, after all riches and
foolishness are not gender specific. And suppose the rich fool was not
only a woman, but a woman highly successful in today’s world. How then
do you suppose the scenario might unfold? I suspect it might go
something like this...

A woman died and stood at the pearly gates. She knocked, the gates
opened and and St Peter stood there. The woman said:

Sylvia: “Good day, my good man. And who might you be?”

Peter: “Welcome Ma’am. I am Simon, known as Peter.”

Sylvia: “Well, let me in then, Peter. I am Lady Sylvia Sterling and I
am not accustomed to waiting.”

Peter: “Ma’am, let me just find your name in the Book of Life.” (pause)
“Sorry Ma’am, your name’s not on the list, so I’m afraid I can’t let
you in. Besides, you aren’t dressed properly.”

Sylvia: “Not dressed properly? What do you mean! How would you like me
to dress? Do you know I have more walk-in wardrobes than would fill the
millennium dome. The shoes I own, if laid heel to toe would go right
round the globe. My real furs, if laid collar to hem, would stretch
from Welwyn (Woolmer Green) to Dover. So how dare you tell me that out
of this vast choice there isn’t something that will allow me entry to
the Kingdom of Heaven!”

Peter: “Shhhh, please keep your voice down Sylvia. I wouldn’t mention
real furs around here if I were you. I can only say that all those
outfits aren’t the right ones..I’d really like to help you, so just to
check, have you got any of the following: a helmet of salvation; a
breastplate of the Saviour’s righteousness; a shield of faith or a belt
of truth? Among your many shoes do you have a pair of Gospel of Peace
sandals? And how about the sword of the Word of God? A robe of
humility? A suit of love?”

Sylvia: “What are you talking about, my good man? Where on earth was I
supposed to buy those items?”

Peter: “Dear Lady, you can’t buy them. They’re acquired from the
Saviour who provides them free of charge to all who seek them and live
their lives with those characteristics. They become part of you as you
grow in His love.”

Sylvia: “Well I haven’t got any of those strange things.”

Peter: “I am very sorry then Sylvia, but there are strict dress codes
about how you should be dressed for the Heavenly banquet.”

Sylvia: “Well let’s get to the point. How much do you want? What’s the
entrance fee? I’ve got millions from my business ’Sterling Sylvia
Enterprises, Global Trading and Investments’, dealing mainly in real
furs and using local labour, where I’ve given jobs to people who were
really happy to get them. Very grateful they were, too. Would you like
to be paid in sterling or US dollars? I can pay in any currency, Indian
rupees, Japanese yen, Swiss francs, South African rands, just name it.”

Peter: “Sylvia, behind these pearly gates is a kingdom where a widow’s
mite, lovingly given, is worth more than all the currency in the world.
Where the only gold of any value is the gold of obedience. Where a
pearl of great price, such as those that stud these gates, is the love
in people’s hearts, because that’s where the kingdom of God is to be
found. We have treasure, yes, dug up in a field, which comes from years
of right living, hard work and selfless giving to other people. So I’m
afraid the currency you offer just isn’t acceptable.”

Sylvia: “Now look here, Peter. I’ve paid my taxes and I gave all my
employees a bonus last Christmas.”

Peter: “Actually Sylvia, you paid large amounts to an expensive
accountant to find as many tax loopholes as possible. And as for your
Christmas bonus, I think it was about 0.5% for your workforce while you
gave yourself 30% with 20% personal share options.”

Sylvia: “Oh, rubbish..., err who is that over there? Oh, I do believe
it is Lady Golden. She was a silly woman with pots of money and she
kept giving it all away, to all those scroungers such as single
parents, children in Darfur, a little known organisation called
Amnesty, victims of the wars in the Middle East and the like. Nearly
made herself bankrupt, the stupid woman. Heavens above, what is she
wearing?”

Peter: “That’s her white robe of the Saviour’s holiness and love as
mentioned in the book of Revelation. We all wear them here. Which is
why I am very sorry, but you can’t come in, as you haven’t got one.”

Sylvia: “So where am I supposed to go then?”

Peter: “Sylvia, with all my heart I wish I could help you and that you
had followed the Saviour’s advice of getting rid of the things that
don’t matter and devoting your life to the things that do. Now, if you
follow those red steps down that tunnel I think you will find somewhere
more appropriate to your attire and lifestyle.”

(end of skit, second part of sermon follows)

Poor Sylvia Sterling, trying to buy her way into Heaven and being
directed in the nicest possible way by St Peter to that other place.
Money, Jesus taught, is not evil in itself, it is the misuse of it that
is. His own life was to perfectly demonstrate this.

He himself was born into an extremely poor family. We know this because
shortly after his birth his earthly parents made an offering of a pair
of doves at the temple for his presentation and only very poor people
did that. When the maggi brought their gifts of gold, frankincense and
myrhh it must have seemed a small fortune for the holy family. It
probably helped them in their exile in Egypt, and later, on their
return to establish a small carpentry business and bring up a family in
a modest way.

When Jesus began his ministry he lived the life of a teaching rabbi,
dependant on others for food and shelter. We do know that some of his
followers were rich, examples being Simon the tax collector, possibly
Mary Magdalene and certainlyJoseph of Arimathea. And it was in the
borrowed tomb of the latter that Jesus was laid when he died and from
which he was to rise again.

In the parable of the rich fool Jesus demonstrated that hoarding in any
form was wasteful, pointless and selfish. Both Sylvia Sterling and the
rich fool are guilty, not of having a great deal of money, but in not
using it for the benefit of themselves and others. They both tended to
hoard. And I suspect there is a little bit of Sylvia Sterling and the
rich fool in each of us.

So in what way do we hoard in our own lives? I think that in varying
degrees we all tend to hoard three things: time, talent and tenderness.
Let’s look at these three, briefly, one by one.

Firstly, time. In our busy lives, yes, we pride ourselves on having
time for others, after all we have relationships, friends, people we
care about. But let us ask ourselves, how much time we spend in actual
listening. Listening to God, truly being still and listening to others.
We tend to begrudge God this silence, this stillness, this
communication. We are too busy, we say.

Yet God longs for us to seek to develop our own spirituality and there
are are other ways we can spend our time but we never seem to get
around to them. So the music that could lift us remains unheard, the
poetry that could inspire us remains unread, the beauty of the world
around us often goes unnoticed. And what a waste that is when the barns
of our lives are full of the superficial and the unnecessary.

Secondly, talent. We are each one of us called to ministry. God has
given each one of us unique talents to develop the type of person we
are each, individually. Yes, we are to use our talents to maintain
ourselves and our families, to be financially self sufficient as far as
we are able, to give to those who are in need of our help.

But so often it stops there and again those barns become full of
hoarded gifts given to us by God that only we can offer back to him and
to the world. There is a huge amount of talent in this church and we
need to ask ourselves how we could use our individual gifts as
accountants, as home makers, as copy writers, journalists, scientists
or whatever, not just to make a living but to further the work of of
God.

Which brings us to our third point, tenderness. There is a beautiful
demonstration of tenderness in Hosea where God talks of loving his own
people as a son. ‘I trained him from infancy, I taught him to walk, I
held him in my arms,’ God says. And it is a huge sadness that the love
of God for us is often not reciprocated.

I believe the human heart has an infinite capacity for love given us by
God. But so often we give our love only to those we believe are
deserving of it. We tend to love sparingly, carefully, after weighing
up, afraid of hurt, afraid of rejection, afraid of anything that would
require more than the amount we are prepared to give. So often we keep
God and each other at arm’s length. And when you consider this in a
world that is crying out for love, that too is a huge sadness.

So will we hear the challenge of Jesus’ words not be a hoarder but to
go on a spending spree with what God has given us, our time, our
talents and our tenderness?. For the way we use what God has given us
is the currency that will get us to Heaven.

I end with a verse from that lovely hymn by J Monsell.

‘Fear not to enter his courts in the slenderness of the poor wealth thou wouldst
reckon as thine. Truth in its beauty and love in its tenderness, these
are the offerings to lay on his shrine.’

Amen