Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity Harvest Festival
“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?”
Summary
Today we celebrate Harvest Festival. It is a time to give thanks for all we have and a time to share our abundance with others but more than this it is time to consider where our real security lies. In our Gospel, Luke 12:16-30, Jesus tells the parable of the wealthy farmer who stores up more and more produce. He is not a fool because he is successful, he is not gained his wealth by dishonest or unethical practise. He is a fool because, when his goods are all stored up he thinks he has achieved his goal; his wealth is not a means to an end, to live well, it has become an end itself. He was a fool because he was insular, fixed on his goal. Note how he talks to himself using “me”, “my”, “I”, over and over again. He has no understanding of his dependence on God or others or their dependence on him. In Deuteronomy 8:7-18, God is happy to bless her people with abundance but warns us not to think: “my power and the might of my own hand have gained me this wealth”. True security, real abundance is found in our relationships with God, with one another, with the earth on which we depend.
FIRST READING
Deuteronomy 8:7-18
For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron and from whose hills you may mine copper. You shall eat your fill and bless the Lord your God for the good land that he has given you.
Take care that you do not forget the Lord your God, by failing to keep his commandments, his ordinances, and his statutes, which I am commanding you today. When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, then do not exalt yourself, forgetting the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who led you through the great and terrible wilderness, an arid waste-land with poisonous snakes and scorpions. He made water flow for you from flint rock, and fed you in the wilderness with manna that your ancestors did not know, to humble you and to test you, and in the end to do you good. Do not say to yourself, ‘My power and the might of my own hand have gained me this wealth.’ But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, so that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your ancestors, as he is doing today.
GOSPEL
Luke 12.16-30
‘‘Then 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?” 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.” 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 towards God.’
He said to his disciples, ‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? If then you are not able to do so small a thing as that, why do you worry about the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith! And do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying. For it is the nations of the world that strive after all these things, and your Father knows that you need them.
