They Want Your Soul! [Proper 13C]

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Luke 12:13-21

They Want Your Soul!

It began as no more than a whisper.  It always starts small, doesn’t it?  It was like the faintest tapping on a window, on his window, as gentle as the first drops of a light spring shower.  So light, in fact, he wasn’t sure it was even really there – maybe it was all in his head – a product of outsized aspirations and a bit too much anxiety. 

Each evening the man would fall into bed, exhausted from the daily toll his farm demanded.  And yet, he was never truly restful.  He would lie in bed, half-asleep, half-tossed, sure that each night, as the darkness set in, that whisper grew louder.  If courage is the right word for it, he would summon his courage and dare look out his window.  And gaze, he would, on the field below.  The sandy soil turned to a sea of blackness by the dark sky.  In some mysterious way, he sensed that his life, his future, was hidden just below that surface.  And it was calling to him.  He just knew it.

The earliest days proceeded just as he expected them to: little green explosions on a map of brown.  But each year there were more – more tiny explosions of green.  It seemed as if it was spreading, gaining ground; and this year was no exception.  This particular year, those sprouts appeared to be transgressing even the neat boundaries the man had set.  They creeped closer to the barns.  Closer to the house.  Which meant closer to the window from which he stared with that midnight mix of anticipation and terror.  Closer to filling every space in his life. 

That said, it was a dream come true.  Really.  The bumper crop to end all bumper crops.  The harvest that tears down your barns: one doesn’t even dare entertain the thought, let alone expect it.  But here it was.  The best possible problem: to have too much.

The bounty so bountiful, it was almost as if the crop owned the man rather than the other way around.  The grain was now setting the agenda, in a way.  Although the farmer would never admit that.  And of course, despite the extra time, effort, and energy, he couldn’t complain.  He wouldn’t want to appear ungrateful.  One could hardly grouse about having too much in a subsistence culture, in a land of peasants.

If too much was his lot in life, well, then, he would just have to make do.  And so, because the grain demanded it, he tore down his barns and built larger barns.  Now, one, a casual observer perhaps, or an audience for this story, might wonder: why not just build additional barns?  But he couldn’t simply add barns to his old collection.  The grain wouldn’t allow that.  The grain needed the land – space to fill, room to spread. 

He stuffed them full, those new barns.  Because somehow, he just knew he was supposed to; a lot wasn’t enough; he needed more.  That is what the voice said, that voice that started as a faint twilight whisper.  Like the grain, it was also filling the space, also spreading to fill the room – in his life, inside of him.  It now played on an infinitely loop in his very soul.  No longer indistinguishable, it now echoed clearly, through his window, through his mind.  Always carrying the same message, the thought that motivated him, that ruled him, the thought that pulled him out of bed in the morning, the one that sang him to sleep at night: “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”  It became his unwitting mantra.  Like a song stuck in his head.

It was all he had ever wanted.  To be rich.  To be secure.  The grain, it gave him everything.  It asked a lot of him.  Sure.  But it deserved his effort.  It deserved his sweat.  It deserved his loyalty.  It deserved his soul.  It was a trade-off to be sure, but one he felt he had to make.

You see, he lived in a harsh world.  His neighbors, they were farming to stay alive.  That appeared to him an unpleasant, undesirable lifestyle.  He was sure they would do just about anything to be him, to have what he had.  They were probably jealous and frankly he didn’t blame them.

That’s likely why they never talked to him: the jealousy.  They were peasants.  Of course they harbored some hard feelings over his success.  But they couldn’t possible fault him for being a good business man, for being smarter, harder working, more successful. 

He had to make decisions that satisfied the voice, that voice that had become his business plan.  He had to store up treasures on earth; he had to build bigger barns for his stuff.  How else could he relax, eat, drink, and be merry?  The poor peasants in his village, they were not relaxing; in fact, they seemed very concerned about feeding their children.  That’s no way to live, he thought to himself. 

It was a question of supply and demand.  If he controlled the supply, then he controlled the demand.  And if he controlled the demand then he set the price.  So sure, all that precious grain stuffed in his new barns for a not-so-rainy day did drive up the price for the villagers.  But that’s just business.  And yes, the more he packed into his barns the more he hoped that next year would bring a terrible drought.  It’s just that bad droughts really motivate folks to stock up on grain.  That’s just business too.  Nothing personal.  He would offer his thoughts and prayers for those who starved to death.

This was the life he had chosen; maybe better said: the life that chose him.  The grain was a demanding master.  But he was following the plan.  He would repeat his mantra any time his pesky soul nagged him with questions of deeper meaning.  The meaning of life was not in the business plan.  He had work to do.  He had money to make.  He had barns to fill.  "Stop bothering me, Soul.  Just relax, eat, drink, and be merry."

He would never admit this out loud, but once, just once, he dreamed it was all gone.  In his dream, lightening split the sky and landed on the heads of grain like the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.  And set the field on fire.  And the fire spread.  And it consumed the barns and all the stuff that stuffed them.  Until there was nothing left.  Just silence.  Peace.  And in his secret fantasy, the rich man collapsed into that sea of black and wept.  Not because he was sad but because he was free.

But that is a dream that did not come true.  And he never got free.  His possessions, his grain and his goods, they eventually buried him alive.  They spread and spread, beyond the fields, and took root in the man’s heart.  They demanded his life.  They took his soul.  That was, after all, all that they had ever asked for.

As Jesus ended his terrifying story, he looked at the man who had asked him the question, the question about his inheritance.  Their eyes locked.  And Jesus said, as he had before, “What does it profit a man to gain the world, and yet lose his very soul?”  The words, like the gaze, bore into the man’s deepest parts.  And it hurt but not like a sword, more like a scalpel.  Not meant to kill but to heal.  The man knew at once that the look on Jesus’ face was not one of reprimand or anger.  The questioner saw something else in the face of Jesus: salvation. 

This story, Jesus’ story, today’s Gospel, was never meant to shame or scare.  It was meant to save.  As Jesus moved on, so did the man – imagining what it would feel like to be free.