What’s Your Story?
Proper 13 Year C
Artwork: “The Rich Fool” By Jesus Mafa
Luke’s Jesus is the “teaching Jesus.” This week’s gospel comes amid a remarkable sequence that displays Jesus at the height of his teaching powers. Starting in Chapter 10, we have the Parable of the Good Samaritan; Jesus’s “better part” lesson to Martha; the Lord’s Prayer; and, this week, the Parable of the Rich Fool. Yet to come, with scarcely a breath taken, are the parables of the Mustard Seed, the Great Banquet, the Prodigal Son, the Shrewd Manager, Lazarus and Dives, the Persistent Widow, and more. This week’s parable with its memorably clueless, Epicurean line “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry,” is certainly the highlight of the reading.
However, we also have that odd cameo appearance of the man disputing with his brother. Jesus, in a private moment with his disciples, tells them how to prepare (actually, not prepare) for the confrontations with rulers and authorities that lie ahead. An anonymous crowd member interrupts, shouting “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” Jesus declines the request, and says to ‘them’: “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” (It’s not clear whether ‘them’ is the two brothers, or the disciples, or the entire crowd.) Then he tells the parable.
The crowd, numbering in the thousands that day, was restive, trampling over each other, so there is no way that everyone heard the man’s request. The man, presumably a younger son, fades from the narrative, never mentioned again. We don’t know if he wanted a full share of the estate rather than the reduced portion that Deuteronomistic law allocated to a second son, or whether his older brother had refused to give him anything. Perhaps he wanted Jesus to tell his older brother “Wealth is not all it’s cracked up to be, so be generous with your brother.”
Whomever he was speaking to, Jesus’s response was a direct rejoinder to the man’s concern with his inheritance. The rich farmer was nothing if not foolish; he prepares for a life of leisure, living off his stored riches rather than sharing them with the poor, unsuspecting that his life is numbered in minutes rather than years. The point Jesus makes is that wealth stored in a barn does not guarantee a long happy life, nor does it earn any points in heaven. We are also reminded, though, that handsome estates are not likely to make our heirs happy either. This story previews the parable of the Prodigal Son in Chapter 15. Getting an advance on his share of the estate turns out for the prodigal to be the gift of a basket of snakes. Only after he squanders his inheritance does he return home and receive his father’s unconditional love. Even so, jealousy over the estate alienates his older brother, who reacts to his younger brother’s return as if he’s been stung by a scorpion.
What happened to this fellow? Did he go away, put off by Jesus’s failure to help him? Jesus’s refusal to arbitrate may have seemed like a slap in the face. Inheritance disputes were ordinarily addressed to rabbis, and Jesus’s followers clearly regarded him as one. Jesus turns to the man, and says “who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” Depending on the translation you read, Jesus’s reply can be abrasive or avuncular: in many versions Jesus uses the simple “Man,” but the NRSV uses “friend” and J.B. Phillips’ New Testament has Jesus call him “my dear man.”
Or, like others in the gospels, does something in the encounter change him, making him another follower? The gospels are full of bit players that make brief appearances, saying little or nothing, and then disappearing: the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well; the Syrophoenician woman that asks Jesus to heal her daughter; the lawyer who arrogantly asks Jesus “who is my neighbor,” setting up the parable of the Good Samaritan; the young boy who flees naked from the Garden of Gethsemane in the 14th Chapter of Mark. (Legend has it this is the evangelist himself, “signing” his gospel.) Often, they drive the narrative along, but sometimes we scratch our heads at why they even appear.
The “Life of Jesus” movies from a generation ago often cast A-list actors in these roles, presumably to get a marquee name at a relatively bargain price. In Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth, the Italian actress Claudia Cardinale plays the woman caught in adultery whom Jesus rescues from stoning. In the epic The Greatest Story Ever Told, Sidney Poitier plays Simon of Cyrene, and John Wayne, the Duke himself, has one memorable line as the centurion at the cross. Popular culture of that era, in literature and on screen, also liked to weave elaborate but completely fictional tales around these minor characters, invariably culminating in a life transformed by a brief encounter with Jesus. The Robe, a 1953 film based on a novel by Lloyd Douglas, stars Richard Burton as the Roman centurion who wins Jesus’s robe in a dice game at the foot of the cross, and is transformed into a Christian martyr. In Barrabas, a 1961 film based on the novel by Nobel Prize winner Pär Lagerkvist, Anthony Quinn plays the prisoner released by Pilate instead of Jesus, and ends up dying a Christian in Rome (a story without any historical basis). The most famous example is Ben Hur (again, based on a best-selling novel), which won eleven Oscars, including Charlton Heston for Best Actor, as a fictitious Jewish prince / Roman slave / Christian disciple.
If you’ve ever had a guest lecturer roll his eyeballs at a question you asked in the Q & A session -- I have, more than once – you must identify with this fellow. How might the young man’s brief encounter with our Lord have changed his life? Did he have a cinematic – worthy epiphany? (Zeffirelli plays brilliantly with the idea of transformation by having Cardinale hide her face in shame the entire scene, until Jesus speaks to her. Then she turns to the camera, revealing her elegant face, as beautiful as Jesus himself, a powerful symbol of redemption.) If so, that transformation came from who Jesus is as much as what he said. The inadequacy of lucre is not a uniquely Christian message. One could find the same thing in Thoreau or Gandhi, or even Real Simple magazine. But today’s gospel does not simply give us a rule to live by, like “floss your teeth” or “change your car’s oil every six months.” Indeed, from the world’s perspective, storing up a bit of wealth for your old age is prudent advice. Jesus’s transformative brilliance as a teacher lies not in a set of aphorisms, but in a set of stories, and the questions they raise. (For us, of course, that includes His story.) If we pay attention, we recognize ourselves in those stories, even, perhaps especially, in the bit players. And by recognizing ourselves in the stories perhaps we find Jesus in the stories of our lives today.