What’s the Purpose? (Eighth Sunday after Pentecost)

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“Vanity of vanities … all is vanity” – says the Teacher in today’s first reading.  From beginning to end, the Book of Ecclesiastes laments how all is vanity.  And in Hebrew, the word translated as “vanity” implies lacking any purpose. 

What’s the purpose, the writer asks?  What’s the purpose of all my hard work? What’s the purpose of being wise and having understanding?  What’s the purpose of all of the stuff I’ve accumulated?

Ecclesiastes goes on for 12 chapters like this!  And by the end, there’s really not a satisfying answer to the question, “what’s the purpose?”  It’s honestly pretty depressing!

But the question remains, and it’s really the question Jesus is lifting up in today’s parable.  As the reading begins, a guy comes up to Jesus and tries to triangulate him in a family fight over inheritance.  We don’t really know exactly what the fight was about, and Jesus isn’t interested in getting sucked into it.  But Jesus is willing to use this occasion to lift up the question, “what’s the purpose?”  What’s the purpose of this “inheritance?” What’s it’s meaning?  Whatever it is, if it has no purpose, it lacks meaning and real value.

And so Jesus tells this parable about a guy who’s already rich, but whose land produces a bumper crop.  He has so much stuff, he has no place to store it.

Now there’s no suggestion in this story that the rich man shouldn’t have this bumper crop.  There’s no indication he hasn’t worked hard on his farm.  And there’s no reason to suspect he’s exploited his laborers.  So the problem isn’t the bumper crop itself.

Rather, the issue is that the bumper crop has no purpose.  He’s just going to stick it in a barn, and hope that he can be fat, dumb and happy for years to come.  But since God tells him that he’s going to die suddenly that very night, it highlights the fact that his wealth has no purpose or meaning.  In fact, he lacks any kind of real wealth in the sight of God.

So what is it that might have given his wealth purpose?  What would have made him “rich toward God”?  Parables are intended to cause us to ask such questions, and there are many possibilities.  But I’d suggest at least 3.

The abundance of this guy has no purpose or meaning because he lacks:

• Thankfulness – the bumper crop is a great thing!  But even today, what might be a bumper crop could be easily wiped out by drought, insects or storms.  When this guy considers his great abundance, he doesn’t pause for even a moment to give thanks to God that this has happened, and he doesn’t appreciate that God has given him the ability to be living in a time and place which has allowed him to have an abundance.  He just goes on and has a conversation with himself, as though he were alone in the universe without any help if things don’t go so well next year…

• The desire to share his abundance – he thinks only of how he can eat, drink and be merry by himself.  He doesn’t even say, “hey, I can have big parties and invite my friends and family over for big meals.” And he certainly isn’t considering how he might help those in his community who hadn’t been as fortunate as he’s been.  After all, even from a practical standpoint, some of those crops will rot and go bad if he just tries to hoard them for himself.  But he never gives thought to sharing…

• Generosity for the future – at the end of the story, God asks him, “the things you have prepared, whose will they be?”  Sometimes, we read this as a rhetorical question, but it’s not.  Who would benefit from this guy’s abundance when he died (whether that was imminent or decades away)?  It seems he had never given that a thought, and certainly didn’t have a plan…

Now, we sometimes read this parable and don’t pay a lot of attention because it sounds like this is about what you should do or not do if you’re rich beyond imagination.  And so we’re tempted to file it under “I’ll remember this if I’m ever lucky enough to be in that situation!”  But that’s not really what Jesus intends.  Instead, Jesus tells this parable to everybody.  And it’s about considering the purpose of whatever abundance we have.  And how is it that that purpose can help us to be “rich toward God”?

And for us, too, purpose simply can’t be found in how much stuff we have or don’t have.  Rather, it’s often the case for us that we find purpose through:

• Thankfulness – and that’s often hard in our society.  We constantly get told that, no matter how much we have, we should have more.  And we don’t really have an “abundance” unless we rank up with the top 1/10 of 1% – and have net worth like Elon Musk, Warren Buffet or Bill Gates.  But thankfulness is about recognizing what you DO have.  In the parable, the guy with the bumper crop may have worked hard – but if a drought had come along, it wouldn’t have mattered.  And giving thanks to God is a way of reminding ourselves that we’re not in this life by ourselves. God is with us, giving us strength and helping us to manage even when we don’t feel like we have a huge abundance.  And when we’re able to give thanks for what we have, then what we have actually has the purpose of reminding us of God’s presence.  And that realization makes us “rich toward God”…

• Sharing – you and I all need stuff to live.  But it’s really hard to have more than the bare minimum and feel like that has purpose if it doesn’t make a difference in the life of somebody else.  Even when I do small and simple things like buy school supplies for needy kids, it helps me to appreciate that my abundance has meaning and purpose beyond myself.  There actually is purpose in having things when you can share them.  And over and over again in the New Testament, we’re called to see sharing as one of the things that makes us “rich toward God”…

• Generosity – the question, “those things you have prepared, whose will they be?” isn’t a rhetorical question for us, either.  Almost 30 years ago, I took a personal finance class, where the professor told us that we should plan to live into our 90’s, because some of us would, and it would be bad to run out of money at that point!  But he also said, “if you don’t live even to retirement – and many of you won’t – you’ll have money to leave to family, friends, charities and religious groups that have meaning to you.”  And that reminder has always helped me realize that, while I won’t be around forever, God has given me the ability to be generous and make a difference beyond my lifetime.  “Abundance” can’t have purpose if it’s just about “whoever has the most toys at the end wins.”  Instead, purpose is found in the good you can do with your abundance.  And using your abundance to make a difference is one of the things that makes us “rich toward God”…

What’s the purpose, the writer of Ecclesiastes asks?  And through this parable, Jesus tells us that the purpose is using whatever we have – our time, our effort and our possessions – in ways that make us “rich toward God.”

Yet finding the meaning and purpose that makes us rich toward God can never be centered on ourselves.  Instead, purpose is found in the kind of thankfulness that reminds us of God’s constant presence and help in our lives.  Purpose is found in sharing our abundance with others so that we become agents of God’s love and presence in the life of the world around us.  And purpose is found in the kind of generosity that reflects the constant generosity that God showers upon us each and every day.

Amen.