I have a friend who suffers from what psychologists have named “Sudden Wealth Syndrome.”  I know – it sounds like a disease we’d all like to get and I thought it a joke until my friend explained it to me.  It is serious business.  The term “Sudden Wealth Syndrome” describes the issues and symptoms of people dealing with the stress of sudden success or wealth. Some have struck it rich through entrepreneurial ventures and corporate stock options.[1]  Others have made their fortune through an inheritance. It really started to be seen in the dot-com era and is now being seen as the wealth of the striving generation that is being transferred to the next generation. For my friend, his sudden wealth was such a departure from his upbringing - his family was squarely middle class and he worked two jobs to get through college while driving a beat-up car held together by duct tape and bailing wire.  After college, he found an entry-level job as an electronics engineer and began to work to pay off college debt and to pay rent while eating 25 cent boxes of macaroni and cheese.  Hot dogs were reserved for special occasions like Sunday dinner. 

 

He, along with three other engineers, saw some potential for public use of some technology that was, at the time, being used exclusively by the military – tracking objects through satellites – we now call it “global positioning” or “GPS.”  In 1989, the four started a company with an idea and no guarantee that the technology would ever be in the public domain.  Today, 18 years later, the company is a thriving public company that was trading on NASDAQ at about $90 a share when I checked last week.  He has more than a couple of shares.

 

I remember one of our visits about ten years ago at a time that, looking back, must have been a pivotal point in his struggle with his new-found wealth.  He struggled with how to be genuine and be a good steward of that which he had been entrusted and acquired so quickly.  He struggled with how to make good and responsible decisions and not just do money dumps here and there. People were also treating him differently and he was trying to sort that out – new “friends” were crawling out of the woodwork and existing friends didn’t know how to treat him.  I remember him saying to me that all he wanted to do was make coffee for the fellowship time at church and be one of the guys again. He knew he needed to take a hard look at the situation, examine priorities, and make the necessary mid-course corrections. 

 

Many years ago, I was taught what seems to be a good way to evaluate and take stock of most anything – a party, a business meeting, a worship service and even one’s life.  Make three columns on a piece of paper. In one column put “WW” – that is everything that “went well.”   In the second column put “LL” – those are the “lessons learned” that we want to make sure we remember.  In the last column put “DD“ – those are all the things that we will “do differently” next time or things we will change going forward.  Using scripture as our guide, we have the opportunity to do such a life evaluation.  Let’s see if a parable can provide us with an “LL” – a “lesson learned” and lead us to a “DD” – “do differently” in our life.

 

Jesus is addressed as “teacher” and asked to be the arbitrator in an estate dispute.  Any probate attorney will tell you, such a position is not an easy one.  In first century Palestine, the laws that governed such disputes were scriptural and so the “teachers of the law” – the rabbis – were also the probate lawyers.  Jesus refuses the role of “divider of the estate” and uses the question as a jumping off point for a teaching moment with one simple point – “life is not about possessions.”  Then, he drives the point – “life is not about possessions” - home with a story, more specifically, a parable.

 

Jesus starts the story asking us to imagine this man – already rich – and with farmland that is producing another bumper crop.  Then the story becomes a single actor dialogue – a soliloquy – with the rich man holding the microphone.  Confronted with the dilemma of too many crops to store, he decides to tear down the existing barns and build new, bigger barns so that all the crops can fit. 

 

Now, before you become all judgmental about this man’s decision to build more to store more, isn’t this simply good management of assets – isn’t it good financial planning on his part that we would suggest for anyone? I won’t ask for a show of hands but think…how many of you have any kind of bank account – checking, savings, how about any retirement accounts – 401(k)s, 403(b)s, IRAs?  Anybody got what my grandmother used to call her “mattress money” – money that was there, under the mattress for an unexpected expense? Welcome to your place right along side me in this parable.

 

The great irony of Jesus’ parable is that the rich fool has done everything, right to this point.  He has done exactly what any of us would do in similar circumstances.  He is prudent.  He is looking after himself and his future and not counting on anyone else to care for him.  He has not harmed others; he hasn’t stolen this grain from anyone and he’s storing it on his own land. 

 

And…don’t even think about accusing him of not being happy with what he has, and always wanting more because he does have a conversation with himself in which finally he proclaims contentment. “Soul, he says, this is enough – relax, eat, drink and be merry.”  But that’s when the hammer comes down.  We should have seen it coming.  He has no friends and the only one there to talk to is himself – his own soul – in Greek “psyche”.  And now, we hear directly from God who rudely interrupts this man’s enjoyment and requires his soul back.  “You fool, tonight you’re going to die and last time I checked – you can’t take it with you – so to whom will your assets belong?” And then, the sentence that makes this a parable – the point, the moral of the story – “so it is with those who store up treasures but are not rich toward God.”

 

This man is not being called a fool because he is building up wealth, nor is this man being called a fool because he is saving for retirement.  The problem is not the man's wealth but how he sees and uses his wealth.  The problem is that he is hoarding without regard for anyone but himself.  I can imagine this rich fool farmer having the popular bumper sticker on his plow that says – “he who dies with the most toys wins.” The problem is that he still dies.  The problem with the rich fool was not that he had too much grain in too many silos but that he starved to death spiritually in the very midst of God’s abundance.   He sought sustenance and security for his soul where none was to be found.  So very suddenly, the man of our parable was confronted with the realization that quest for wealth has little to do with living well.

  

In the hours before his death, I wonder if the rich fool finally was able to understand that living well depends more on health and friendships and how we honor God with whatever we have than it does on bank balance or the size and capacity of one’s barns. That is the valuable “LL” – the valuable “lesson learned” in this passage.  So, boiled down, the rich fool became a fool when he refused to be rich toward God – when he thought he had enough to make it on his own.  Whether coincidence or on purpose, for Luke, when God “demands” the man’s soul, the word is the same as is used when collecting on a loan.  Little did the man know that the fruits of the harvest surrounding him in bigger barns were “on loan” from God.[2]

 

My GPS friend’s struggle seems minor compared with the man in the parable.  My friend took pause – did some sort of variation on WW-went well; LL-lessons learned; and DD-do differently – and then took that “do differently” list and acted on it.  He formed a family foundation to do good work in his community and around the country.  He got serious and focused about his passions.  He endowed a professorship and scholarships at his alma mater that combine both his faith and his vocation. To date, he has helped fund three new church starts.  It is a delight to watch his joy in giving, combined with his commitment to his faith. It has transformed him and many around him. 

 

Before you think this parable is only directed at those who have so many assets that they need to build bigger barns and you are at a point that you haven’t even bothered to draw blueprints for your first barn, think again.  This parable is about grain in the silo - yes, it’s about money in the portfolio – yes, but it’s also about anything of which you can obsess and in which you think you can find your security.  It’s about anything that can possess you instead of you possessing it.

 

Hear this again, the sin of the rich fool is not in his wealth but in the way he counted his possessions as if they were his God. And it is in his thinking that it was his wealth.  Doing it differently, by knowing and acknowledging that you and what you own belong to God, changes everything! It changes how you look at your life, how you look at your calendar, and how you use what’s in your wallet and investment accounts. A woman called the church this week.  She is a single mom redoing her will and wanting to know how to provide for Geist Christian Church in that document – a witness to what this particular congregation means to her and how she, even in death, can continue to be a witness in this place.

 

What would you do if you knew you were going to die tomorrow?   What would you do differently?  While any one of us may die tomorrow, it is likely, thankfully, that it will be longer than that but the fact remains that I don’t know anyone immune to death. The question then, and the parable itself, challenges us to live the only kind of life that matters – creating a life so that in everything we do – we are being rich toward God. What does it look like to be "rich toward God"?  Or, asked another way, what’s on your “do differently” list so that you can be rich toward God?

 

 

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