Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23
Saint Luke 12:13-21
Last Sunday, at about this same hour, give or take a time zone, gunmen interrupted the Sunday morning worship at the Brooklyn campus of the Leaders of Tomorrow International Churches where the self-appointed Bishop, Lamor M. Whitehead, was preaching. Fortunately, no one was injured but, because the whole event was captured on the Church’s live stream it made the local and national news. However, “the lead” was often buried.
NPR reported that thieves made off with “more than $1 million worth of jewelry from him and his wife, according to the New York Police Department.”
I have absolutely no idea what the pay-scale is out here in Palatine, but I would be willing to wager a lot of money that if someone held up Pastor Joel and Annie the take would be far less than a million. In fact, I would also be willing to venture a guess that if they took everything from everybody in this room that total too wouldn’t be even close to then what they got from the “Bishop” and his wife.
This was a high-end robbery because it was further reported that the thieves first “fled on foot before getting into a white Mercedes Benz.” {If you’re going to be robbed, make sure that the thieves are classy enough to drive a BMW!}
In a Keystone Cops moment, the “Bishop” decided that he would give chase “on foot and then in his car.” It should be noted that Whitehead has been known to tool around town in his very own Rolls-Royce. {Again, something worth noting when the subject of Pastor Joel’s car allowance comes up. You might want to hide the video and text of this sermon from him.} I have to confess that the sight of a Rolls chasing a Mercedes though the street of Brooklyn does engage my imagination.
Commenting on his appetite for fine cars, fine clothing, and flashy jewelry the “Bishop” said: "’It's not about me being flashy. It's about me purchasing what I want to purchase. It's my prerogative to purchase what I want to purchase. If I worked hard for it, I can purchase what I want to purchase.’"1
Jesus told a story about a guy like this once. A guy who “mistook his life for a barn.”
The late, great Dr. Fred B. Craddock reminds us: There is nothing here of graft or theft, there is not mistreatment of workers or any criminal act. Sun, soil, and rain join to make him wealthy. He is careful and conservative. He is not unjust.2
He is a success, such a success that it becomes a problem.
He immediately moves into action (he has not become an agricultural success by just sitting back and waiting for things to happen). He starts making big plans to pull down his barns and build bigger ones to store all his abundant harvest. With full barns and ample savings, he is well fixed to sail into a prosperous and happy retirement.3
Here we have the fabled American Dream, work hard, be prudent, save wisely, put things aside today for security in the future. Then sit back, relax, and enjoy the fruits of your labor.
Why then does Jesus pronounce him to be a fool?
As one of my pastors, the always insightful Dr. Lucy Foster-Smith wrote in a devotional:
It is that this dude is living out his life for himself: he talks to himself, he makes all of his plans for himself, he is so proud of himself, he probably would have had a portrait of himself on every door of the barns. His life shrunk inside as his possessions expanded exponentially. Jesus says he was a fool. In amassing it all for himself, he filled his life with things and crowded out his very life.4
In short, he mistook his life for a barn.
While we would give this guy the farmer of the year award Jesus says he is anything but because in “the Bible, the words ‘fool’ and ‘foolish’ are usually associated with [a] lifestyle or self-understanding that is godless.”5
We can tell this by the man’s inner dialogue. By my count ten times in three sentences, he uses “I” or “my”. If you run them together, he sounds rather full of himself.
‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then 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.’6
“He is a fool says the parable. He lives completely for himself, he plans for himself, he congratulates himself.” There is no mention of God in his monologue. He is talking to himself about himself. He has “mistaken his life for a barn.”
Enter God who finally speaks with a word of prophesy, and a very important question. “Fool! Tonight you die. And your barnful of goods—who gets it?”8
Has he made any provision for the poor? Has he left it in a will to a relative? Has he planned to do any good at all with his goods now that they have been safely stored away in his barn? “That’s what happens when you fill your barn with self and not with God.”9
He would have done well to heed the warning of the writer of Ecclesiastes. “I hated all my toil in which I had toiled under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to those who come after me —and who knows whether they will be wise or foolish?”10
The author of this bit of the Good Book is the exact opposite of the self-absorbed landowner. The one thing the landowner has going for him is that he is, at least, positive. The author of Ecclesiastes is a bit of a downer. The New Revised Standard Version uses the word, “vanity.” In the Hebrew the word means “vapor,” “mist,” or “whisp.” It’s all meaninglessness or triviality.”11
Both these authors are totally self-absorbed. One has so ignored his mortality that he has forgotten to write a will while the other is worried that his beneficiary might be a bozo. What is left out of one’s exaltation and the other’s lamentation is God.
Without God life is an unhappy business. Treasures mean nothing. Life is meaningless. It can all be gone as fast as it takes burglars in Brooklyn to steal 100K worth of jewelry.
{Is it any wonder your pastor took this Sunday off!}
It is left to me to give you an antidote to these two unhappy fellows from Scripture and I think that antidote is worship! Yes! Worship!
I think what we are doing right now reminds us that there is more to life than our possessions. I think what we are doing right now reminds us that all is not vanity, not a puff of wind. I think what we are doing right now is so counter cultural that many do not understand it.
Confessing that “we have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves” is pretty radical stuff. And hearing that in this place, and may I add only in a place called church that, in Christ, you have received, “the entire forgiveness of all your sins” is even more radical.
You're not hearing this kind of thing alone on your Sunday morning run unless you are remembering where you’ve heard it and deciding to pick-up the pace so you can hurry back to the place where you will hear it again.
You're not hearing this jammed in with thousands of your closest friends to hear music on Chicago’s lakefront.
But you will hear it here so that later in the week when, just when you need it most, it will come to you with all the force of a hint. Because you heard it here.
Later on in the book the author of Ecclesiastes will get the hint. After moved by the spirit to write those couplets made famous by Peter, Paul, and Mary: “a time to be born, a time to die...” The author hints at what I have been trying to tell you when the words appear: “{God} has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, He has put eternity in their hearts.”12
Here in this place we have been reminded that there is something more. That our life in more than a barn filled with goods. That it is not all vanity. That eternity can come into our hearts and into our hands as we do the humblest of acts.
As we come forward and Christ comes to us and we hear those words “for you” we receive something worth more that silver or gold but in communion’s bread and wine, we receive a glimpse of eternity lived in God’s grace.
It’s a barn full of grace.
It is grace that is worth more than the finest of cars and the flashiest of outfits.
It is “grace-a-paloza”! It's here now in the bread and wine that is Christ’s own gift to us.
So come to that place where Christ is our host, our gift and our guest and eternity will always be on your mind.
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1. Bill Chappell, “A High-Profile Pastor Was Robbed during a Live-Streamed Service in NYC,” NPR (NPR, July 25, 2022), https://www.npr.org/2022/07/25/1113430654/bishop-lamor-whitehead-robbed.
2. Fred B. Craddock, Luke: Interpretation Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. (Louisville, , KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 163.
3. William H. Willimon, “Wise Up,” Pulpit Resource 21, no. 3 (2022): pp. 15-17.
4. Lucy Foster-Smith, “Luke 12:13-21,” Devotion for Saturday, July 30, 2022 | Fourth Presbyterian Church (Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago, 2022), https://www.fourthchurch.org/devotions/2022/073022.html.
5. William H. Willimon, “Fools Like Us,” Pulpit Resource 41, no. 3 (2013), 21-24.
6. Luke 12:17-19. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]
7. Craddock, loc. cit.
8. St. Luke 12. 20. (MSG) {MSG=The Message. Eugene H. Peterson, “St. Luke 12:20.,” in The Message: The New Testament in Contemporary English (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 1995).
9. St. Luke 12:21. (MSG)
10. Ecclesiastes 2:17 (NRSV)
11. Eli Lizorkin-Eyzenberg and Nicholas Schaser, “Is Everything Vanity the Hebrew Meaning of Hevel,” Is Everything Vanity The Hebrew Meaning of Hevel (Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! December 8, 2021), https://www.patheos.com/articles/is-everything-vanity-the-hebrew-meaning-of-hevel.
12. Ecclesiastes 3:11. (NKJV) [NKJV=The New King James Version]
Sermon preached at Christ Lutheran Church
Palatine Illinois
31 July 2022
Sermon video with sermon beginning at 15:15
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