Prayer of the Day
Benevolent God, you are the source, the guide, and the goal of our lives. Teach us to love what is worth loving, to reject what is offensive to you, and to treasure what is precious in your sight, through Jesus Christ, our Saviour and Lord. Amen.

Luke 12:13-21
13 Someone in the crowd said to [Jesus,] “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” 14 But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” 15 And he said 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.” 16 Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. 17 And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ 18 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. 19 And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ 20 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?’ 21 So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

REFLECTIONS ON THE GOSPEL TEXT
Sometimes rabbis settled probate issues, so nothing odd here except Jesus once again doesn’t adjudicate or give easy answers. Once again he tells a story designed to knock us for a loop and send us reeling into new and more life giving directions.

Let’s think a minute about who tells the story….a man whose mother sang about the high and mighty being cast down and the poor being filled with good things while the rich are sent away empty.

Jesus knows the Wisdom tradition and is certainly familiar with the oft-repeated word from Ecclesiastes, “HE-bel” meaning…mist….futility… emptiness. The Teacher recounts a life of chasing after things which never really lead to fulfillment.

—Jesus would need no refresher course about the post-Red Sea life of the Israelites. Pastor Dan Erlander calls the forty year trek the wilderness school. The curriculum is love of God and neighbour. Manna is both daily bread and the object lesson meant form a community of people into living lives of Shalom-friendship with God, friendship with one another, friendship with creation and even friendship with ourselves.

Remember the drill? Collect only what you need for the day and you could collect a bit extra for the day of Sabbath rest. Manna teaches us that the earth provides and we can share. Many traditional indigenous teachings and hunting and fishing practices align with manna teaching. Take what you truly need and waste as little as possible.

Imagine God’s grief when we flunked Manna 101: Some would-be entrepreneurs decide to collect LOTS of manna so they can sell it. Pastor Daniel Erlander writes that the resulting rot and maggots taught the manna lesson that hoarding stinks!

All those interconnections break—-our friendships with others, creation, and God—we even become estranged from ourselves. The alternative to Shalom is alienation and isolation.

Back to “bigger barn boy”….One Commentator calls the fictive fool’s self talk a grave miscalculation: “I say to my self, self…..you have accumulated for yourself….let the good times roll.”

Nobody —not God, not neighbour— figures into the equation.

Due missed the memo about manna, and his full barns do nothing for an empty life.—no amount of stuff can protect his from any dark night of the soul or sudden catastrophe or sudden death…poof! over and done and what did it get you?

Maybe the guy could have thought about giving back or sharing the wealth. Nope. And he’s not the only one.

The CBC reports Statistics Canada says that in 2025 the wealth gap also increased as the top 20 per cent of the wealth distribution accounted for 64.7 per cent of Canadians’ total net worth in the first quarter.

The bottom 40 per cent of the wealth distribution accounted for 3.3 per cent of net worth.

Forbes Magazine reports that Global wealth is concentrated at the top. This is true for all countries to varying degrees. Yet—according to the World Inequality Database—in almost all nations, the richest 10% hold more than 50% of personal wealth, while the bottom 50% hold at most 10.4%.

It’s hard not to think about rot and ruin when we hear about people starving to death while bombs are dropping. We see the hoarding as obscene wealth is celebrated and while people are scrambling to replace lost health insurance and school lunches.

Jesus fed people and demanded fair and just distribution of goods. He told stories like the one about the “big miscalculation”because compassion even for those who had too much and yet were empty inside. Jesus would stake his life, risk it and even give it up for the sake of shalom for all of God’s children and all God has created.