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A skillful preacher will scour the text for such gospel gateways, even gateways as narrow as three letters.
Sometimes the gospel self-presents, as in John 3:16. It is right there almost in glowing letters. Other times the gospel sits very much in the background, almost off stage... almost. In the case of Luke 12:13-21, famously known as the “Parable of the Rich Fool,” the gospel pulsates in place from only three letters, although they are frequently overlooked or crowded out by what seems like a denunciatory pericope about trusting in riches. A skillful preacher will scour the text for such gospel gateways, even gateways as narrow as three letters.
In the “Parable of the Rich Fool,” Jesus creates a man with a plot of land which yielded a bumper crop. This took the rich man by surprise because he had never anticipated such a harvest and so lacked the facilities to store the windfall. Arguably the most striking thing about this man is that his interest seems to begin and end with himself. His thoughts have little room for anyone else. The character whom Jesus draws only says three sentences in the Bible, but one word crops up frequently in them. That word is “my;” “my barns,” “my grain,” “my goods,” and “my soul.” That tells us a lot about him. Someone who uses the possessive pronoun so often must be a possessive person. Indeed, he was. Apparently, he had no one else to discuss things with so he spoke to himself. “Self,” he said, “I will pull down my barns, and build larger ones, and there I will store my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; take it easy, eat, drink and be merry.”
He thought only of himself, his own future, and his own needs. He could not see that his unexpected good fortune, which dramatically exceeded his personal requirements, might be an invitation to generosity. But even then, he had a very narrow view of himself, because he could only think of his body and of the mundane business of eating, drinking, and being merry. This man is easily deconstructed by the law on various fronts. If a preacher is looking for a foil for moralizing, then look no further than this “fool.”
To be sure, Jesus invented this man. But there was an antecedent to such a man in the Old Testament, by the name of Nabal. Jesus makes a conscious correlation and reference. Like the man in the parable, he was rich. Like the man in the parable, he was possessive. The Bible describes him as churlish and ill-mannered, and his name meant “fool.” As by name, so by nature, he was a fool. He is mentioned in connection with David, who had been hospitable to Nabal’s shepherds. But when David was in need, he appealed to Nabal to return the hospitality. This is his answer, bringing to mind the rich fool from Luke 12: “Shall I take my bread and my water and my sheep that I have killed for my shearers, and give it to men who come from I do not know where?” Were it not for the intervention of his much more sensible wife, who went behind his back and showed hospitality to David and his men, Nabal would have been run through with the sword. But then, apparently, the shock of her generosity (or his brush with death) was so great that it paralyzed Nabal and in ten days he was dead, that is, his “soul was required of him.”
Here we have the mid-stage gospel in the text. To evoke Nabal is to invoke David. Jesus is the Son of David and stands in the Messianic line. In the parable, Jesus juxtaposes the wrongful notion of wealth connoting favor with God with the truth that salvation and divine wealth flow from the Messiah: Jesus. While not as overt as John 3:16 or Mark 8:31, the literary cues (life, wealth, death) and character (fool) drive the preacher to explore avenues related to the Messiah of God and the richness of divine grace.
The latent gospel, however, requires more effort than Jesus directing us to His vocation through the foil of Nabal/David, although the gospel revelation here offers many promising avenues for exploration through parallels aligning David’s contextual circumstances to Jesus’ own.
Here is how the denunciatory aspects may present. Like the rich fool in the parable, we “lay up” our goods in other barns, like savings, investments, pensions, inheritance, or a good career. Does God condemn these things? No, not at all, not the things, because things cannot be good or bad, things have no moral qualities, only people. But Jesus condemns a particular type of foolishness, the short-sighted folly of believing life consists in the abundance of these possessions. This is the diabolical lie, that there is any permanent security in stuff. This is the divine truth: “He who trusts in riches will wither” (Proverbs 11:28). Herein lies the rub of the law: When your soul is required of you, these things you have prepared, upon which you have depended, and even lived for the amassing of them, whose will they be?
And the answer is, they will be whose they have been all along. They have always been a gift of God, and what the fool never saw, and every fool never sees, is the God who gives. The God who has always given can be trusted for the future; not taken for granted but trusted.
It is, at first, hard to detect the Gospel in this text. It tells of a man who lived an empty life and died condemned. Where is the good news in that? Take heed and beware of covetousness, it says, sounding its note of warning not of comfort. But perhaps there is a small window to the Good News hidden in a little three letter word. A person’s life, Jesus says, “does not consist in the abundance of their possessions.” The most encouraging word in the whole text is the word “not.” Imagine if it were not there. Imagine if Jesus said that a person’s life does consist in the abundance of their possessions. Then He would be saying, “This man stands in the way of blessing.” If you are poor, that is tough for you, because there is nothing but wealth. But Jesus did not say that, and this is not the case. Here is the great truth of Jesus Christ. He came so we might “have life and have it more abundantly,” not that we might have riches and have them more abundantly. And the life He gives is the life of peace and security in the love of God. No one else can live without terror of that night when their soul is required of them, but the baptized faithful can do so. We know the forgiveness of sins that otherwise, without forgiveness, would haunt us to the grave. Those sins and all sins are gone, removed by Jesus who nailed them to the cross and purged them with His purifying blood. We know the quality of everlasting life because we live it, from the moment we rose out of the baptismal font. We know the taste of Heaven, just a hint of it, which we receive in the body of Christ, given for us, and His blood shed for us, but enough to know we would happily join the real feast in eternity. No fear, no regret, awaits us.
This is the Gospel, a gospel found in three little letters, in fact, negative letters: “not.”
