Sitting with the Sacred

Someone in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me.” He replied to him, “Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?” Then he said to the crowd, “Take care to guard against all greed, for though one may be rich, one’s life does not consist of possessions.”

Luke 12: 13-15

When I heard this exchange this weekend, my first thought was, didn’t God appoint Jesus the judge and abiitrator between this person and his or her brother? Isn’t he the ultimate judge and arbitrator? Wouldn’t he be the most merciful and just judge and arbitrator? I believe the short answer to these questions is “Yes, but not yet.”

The way I see it, Jesus is giving this person a chance to resolve his issues with his brother while both are still alive to do so. (From now on I’m going to imagine that the person from the crowd who addresses Jesus is a man because it’s hard for me to imagine a woman of the first century addressing a rabbi or teacher in this way, especially in public. But I do find it interesting that the reading says “someone” spoke to Jesus rather than saying “a man” or “a woman,” spoke to him, as it seems like the Scriptures often do. A woman bringing this desire to Jesus would give the problem a different context in Jesus’ time. A brother might be a woman’s only source of support, and this reality would make the warning against greed all the more challenging.) After the deaths of one sibling or both when only God can be the arbitrator and judge, the siblings will have missed out on the joys and the peace that would have come from reconciling while they lived. Also, I think the response that Jesus gives directly to the person in the crowd reminds us of a couple important lessons:

• Try to avoid erring your disputes with others in public. There are times when bringing disputes to public forums is necessary for the sake of justice, but doing so is not always necessary.
• Proceed with caution when considering publicly shaming someone. Again, sometimes bringing misdeeds to the public form is necessary for the sake of justice, but when we are considering criticizing someone publicly, it’s a good idea to ask ourselves whether we are doing so to bring about justice or simply to embarrass the other person and make ourselves feel righteous. In the New Testament, Jesus calls out misdeeds and less-than-stellar motives in public sometimes, but as far as I can remember, the people to whom such corrections (to put it lightly) were directed were people with privilege and power. When he speaks to the woman at the well, on the other hand, we don’t get the impression that there’s a crowd around, even though the whole village has probably heard whatever sordid details or rumors got passed around about her past. Of course, immediately following the exchange that begins this post, Jesus does respond to the complaint, but he pivots him away from addressing the person directly, and he doesn’t respond with anger. In bringing the complaint, I think Jesus recognizes that the man has presented him an opportunity to teach everyone. He knows the person who spoke to him isn’t the only one tempted toward greed.

So he tells a parable about a rich man who thinks he has all the time in the world to “rest, eat, drink, and be merry,” “who stores up treasure for himself, but is not rich in what matters to God (Luke 12: 19, 21). The parable foretells that the man will die the night he presumes he has all this time, and because he kept his treasures to himself, no one will be able to benefit from them once he dies (Luke 12:20). However before he dies, he lists some things other than money itself that we can be greedy with: rest, food, and drink.

We can resent someone intruding on our resting, eating, drinking, and being merry. I think that’s what Jesus points to when he warns against all greed and not just money, specifically. Or perhaps more like the person from the crowd who speaks to Jesus, we can focus so much on what we want, even if it’s another person’s time and not their inheritance, that the other person doesn’t have enough time to care for properly the body and spirit that God gave him or her. We can be so focused on what we don’t have that we don’t appreciate what we do have, and resentment toward others eats away at our relationships and makes it more difficult for us to form new ones. On the other hand, we can be like the man in the parable who, on some level, appreciates what he has but doesn’t recognize how truly precious and limited his time is. He doesn’t make the most of the time he has by doing the most good he can with it.

I know I’m tempted to greed when it comes to giving what I like to think of as my time to others. This parable reminds me that my time isn’t mine. It’s given to me by God for me to use to glorify God. At any moment, I may run out of what I think of as my time.

While I have time, let me say thank you, God and my readers, for the time you have given me. I ask for the grace to give the time I have received back to God and my neighbor. Amen

Work cited

The Bible. The New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle edition, Fairbrother, 2011.