“A Barn Full of Self”

Luke 12: 13-21

Pastor Deb Troester, STHPC, Nov. 10, 2024

This has been a hard week. The stress leading up to the election, with all its acrimonious discourse; disagreements between family members and friends; or with those who agree with you, mutual lamentation over the state of the nation and the world and worries about how the election would turn out.

Then election day, with all our hopes and fears on the line, and finally the results, which I can guess were disappointing for many of us, given the deep blue statistics for this part of California. All of this turmoil has caused high levels of stress, worry, and even shock, fear, and anger. Many people are deeply concerned about the future of our country. Others hope a change of administration will bring better times, but no one is sure of anything except that the U.S. is deeply divided politically and even culturally, with people on one side not even understanding how people on the other side could think the way they do. As a nation, we are not in a good place right now.

Yet, as our opening hymn this morning reminded us, God is faithful.

Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father;
there is no shadow of turning with thee.
Thou changest not; thy compassions they fail not.
As thou hast been thou forever wilt be.

Great is thy faithfulness!
Great is thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning, new mercies I see.
All I have needed thy hand hath provided.
Great is thy faithfulness, Lord unto me!

When I am feeling stressed about the state of things, I remind myself, “All I have needed, God has provided. God has been faithful to me.” That doesn’t solve the world’s problems, of course, but it calms my mind and my heart to remember how good God has been to me in my life. Thinking of God’s faithfulness also reminds me that although the world may seem out of control, God is still in control. We can make our plans, but ultimately God decides how things will turn out.

Our parable this morning is about a man who forgot that God was in control. Indeed, he thought he had planned his life very well. This successful farmer would fit right into today’s society. 

He is hard-working. He plans for the future. His plans have come to fruition and he seems to have it made.

Yet there were some important things he didn’t take into account – God, for instance. As it turns out, leaving God out of your plans is not a good idea. We live in a time when many consider God and religion to be totally irrelevant. And why shouldn’t they? If the church doesn’t offer an alternative set of values to our culture’s materialism, division, and hatred of those who are different from us – whether immigrants, the LGBTQ community, people from a different political party – if our faith doesn’t make a difference in how we live and how we treat other people, why should non-religious people believe in God? Why should non-Christians have any interest in a church they perceive as mean-spirited, homo-phobic, and racist. I’m not saying we here at Santa Teresa Hills are like that, but for a lot of people who never enter a church, that is their impression. Unless we give them reasons to see things differently, they will keep on thinking that all Christians are hypocrites.

Like most of the people who listened to Jesus that day, the man in the parable was probably a good Jew, someone who went to the synagogue each Sabbath. Yet, we see a man totally focused on himself and his own needs: “I have no place to store my crops… I will pull down my barns…I will build larger ones… I will store all my grain and my goods…” There is no recognition that it was God who provided the rain, the sunshine, the strength and the energy needed to work. All we have ultimately comes from God. As I said last week, we are but stewards of God’s bounty. The old hymn goes, “We give Thee but Thine own, whate’er the gift may be: All that we have is Thine alone, A trust, O Lord, from Thee.” This is a counter-cultural value. Our world worships money and the power that comes with it. That is why the Apostle Paul wrote to the Colossians that greed is a form of idolatry.  The more we have, the more we want, and finally our things own us, rather than us owning them. 

I began to learn this lesson when Joe and I had just been married a few years. After living in a series of small apartments, we were finally moving into a small house. I remember thinking, “I wish we had just a little more space…and then it hit me. When we were newlyweds living in an efficiency apartment, I wished for a one-bedroom. When we moved into a one bedroom apartment, I wished for two bedrooms. When we moved into a two-bedroom apartment, I wished for a house. Now that we had a house, I thought it wasn’t big enough. I realized that at this rate, I would never be satisfied. I decided then and there that I would try to be content with what I had and stop wishing for more.  

There is a peace that comes with being content with what you have, and joy that comes from giving thanks for what you have. Did you notice that the man in the parable who was given such tremendous blessings never bothered to thank God for his full barn! Apparently, he had forgotten about God. His barn was full of grain, but his life was empty of God.

It seems he had forgotten about his neighbors as well. He could have had a big party and invited everyone in the community to celebrate his good harvest. He could have shared with the poor. He had such a big crop that there would still have been plenty left over. One of the biggest myths of our day is that there isn’t enough to go around – not enough food, not enough water, not enough of life’s necessities for all 8 billion of us on this planet. Some think that we have to get what we can and keep it for ourselves. That simply is not true. The world's farmers produce enough food to feed the global population, but a lot of it is wasted, or just doesn’t get to the people who need it the most. God has provided enough, but it’s up to us to share. I’m glad our church supports local, national, and international efforts to lessen hunger, such as by supporting local food banks and organizations such as Bread for the World. We need to continue our efforts in this direction.

Finally, there is another reason for sharing what we have: because God loves us, God wants to keep us from a meaningless life of piling up more and more possessions. God knows that our greed will ultimately destroy us. We are a slave to anything we cannot freely give up.

The desire for more and more stems from fear and a lack of faith. We fear that we will not have enough, or that someone will have more than we do, or that others will not think so highly of us unless we have a nice house or a nice car. Ages ago the prophet Isaiah asked, “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?” As Jesus reminds us, “…one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” 

Throughout our years in Africa, I was constantly reminded of this truth when I saw people living happy and fulfilling lives without things we Americans consider necessities: indoor plumbing, electricity, a refrigerator or TV. Many of the pastors Joe and I worked with did not have those things, yet they successfully led the church, enjoyed good times with their families, and shared with neighbors who had even less.

         We are not in control of our lives. Just when the rich farmer thought he had it made, 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?” Jesus adds: “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.” I like how The Message paraphrases it:  “That’s what happens when you fill your barn with Self and not with God.” 

         The good news is, the best things in life are free: love, joy, faith, hope. God wants us to live lives free from fear, free from greed, free from dependence on wealth or on anything else but God. Jesus came to bring us freedom – freedom from the guilt of sin, freedom to truly love others, freedom to love ourselves. We cannot out-give God. God has already given us his only Son to die for us, to bring us eternal life, to teach us how to live. These are true riches indeed. Amen.

©Deborah Troester, 2024