Rich Foolism
A sermon preached with the people of Lordstown Lutheran Church in Lordstown, Ohio.
You have probably all heard of Angeli Gomez. She’s the mom who was handcuffed by police after urging them to take action to save the children, including her two sons, from a gunman who had opened fire at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Eventually, she was freed and made a run for it into the school, risking her life in a way that law enforcement did not, and saving her sons and other children.
When the press heard about her bravery, they wanted to speak with her. And reporter Lilia Luciano found her. She found her at work. In a field. Angeli is a farmworker.
I will admit when I first saw the footage of Angeli in that field, with the work going on behind her, it took my breath away.
Luciano noted that Angeli insisted she do the interview in the fields. “For me it’s important you come and see how hard we work in this heat, under the sun,” she said. There was also another Uvalde parent whose child was killed, there in the same field, already back at work.
This courageous woman. This incredible mom. A face and a name and a story attached to a vocation that largely goes faceless and nameless. A vocation that is so often cut from the story entirely.
This morning, we heard the so-called parable of the rich fool.
A rich man’s land is producing a surplus, and so he decides to build bigger barns to store all the extra grain and food and goods. The rich man finds a sense of security in this: “And I will say to my soul, `Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry,” he says.
But God has other ideas. “You fool,” God says. “This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?' So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God."
When I first sat down this week to consider this familiar parable, I thought, “well, this is so simple it hardly needs a sermon. The message is that old phrase: ‘you can’t take it with you.’” But then I noticed something I hadn’t before. Let me read you a couple lines again.
“The land of a rich man produced abundantly.”
“I will pull down my barns and build larger ones.”
Who’s missing?
Sure, the land might be particularly fruitful, but is it the rich man planting the seeds? Is he out harvesting under the sun? How about the barn? Is he tearing down the old ones and building the new ones, all by himself? I think we can safely say, no.
The laborers. The fieldworkers. The Angeli Gomezes of the day. They’re cut out of the story entirely.
And so this week I found God tapping me on the shoulder, and asking, “hey – did you notice?”
Because humans do this thing where we trick ourselves with language in order to be more comfortable. Like the rich fool in today’s story, we talk as though the person paying for the building of a barn is the one building the barn. We talk as though land sows and harvests itself.
But God asks us to notice those who are not included in the story. Those who are not represented. Those who go nameless, and faceless.
“And the things you have prepared, whose will they be,” God asks the rich man. Put another way, if the rich man is storing up excess food, to whom is not going. Perhaps one answer is those cut out of the story -- the very people who sowed the seeds, who reaped the fruits, who held it in their hands, processed it into grain, packaged it, and stored it.
The farm workers, the day laborers, the factory workers, the delivery truck drivers, the warehouse workers, the servers, the line cooks, the dishwashers and bussers. These are the people that make excess treasure possible. And not just for the billionaires, but for people like me, who enjoy the convenience of buying fruit from California in a supermarket in Ohio any day of the week.
When we start putting names and faces and stories to the people who make that possible, things can get uncomfortable. For me, at least. Because it reveals that the astounding excess of the so-called “space billionaires,” and the little conveniences of excess I enjoy, come at a cost. And that cost is often underpaid, exploited, and mistreated human beings. With names, and faces and stories.
The abundance of this world belongs to God. In the end, the answer to the question “whose will they be” is always “God’s.” Nothing, in the end, belongs to us. And yet, so much of God’s abundance – God’s excess – gets stored instead of shared: with the laborers, with the poor, with those who need it most, and those who need it now, not in the future.
And there are understandable reasons for this, I think.
Being human is scary. God knows this from first-hand experience. God knows we crave safety and certainty. And that material wealth can make us feel as though we are building up a security fence against those things that scare us most: illness, isolation, loneliness, discomfort, grief. Even death itself. And, on a small scale, this is true. In our context, a certain degree of material wealth does provide safe housing, access to reliable medical care and education, and the promise of food on the table. But, there seems to be something addictive to the kind of material wealth that results in what I might call “rich foolism” – a belief that “eating, drinking and merry-making,” that happiness and fulfillment and human connection, can only be achieved through ever-increasing material wealth; can only be achieved through storing up treasure.
“Rich foolism” is a powerful force that seeps into our world from every corner, whether we are rich or not. It comes at us through TV and movies and advertisements and marketing, even from some pulpits -- this idea that stored up treasures will make us happy, and that true comfort is found in removing ourselves as much as possible from the making and the growing, and those who do that work.
As we all know, this summer has seen record heatwaves across the country and around the world. And yet, food is still on my table. In Washington, in California, in Texas -- workers are harvesting our produce in 110+ degree heat. They have names and faces and stories. Some of them, like Angeli Gomez, have extraordinary stories. Stories that we need to hear, because they inspire us to be better, braver people.
Angeli Gomez wanted to be interviewed in the field because she knows that the laborers get cut from the story, and she wanted to interrupt that tradition. She wanted to take the breath away from people like me.
So, what are we to do with this lesson from Jesus this morning?
I don’t ever pretend to know a definitive answer.
But I have some ideas, for myself anyway. I am going to think about the conveniences I take for granted every day. That fruit I mentioned? When I eat it, I will do so with the reverence and thanks it deserves. I will thank God and the workers that brought it to me. I will thank Angeli, Lourdes, Lily, Gerardo, and other farmworkers with faces and names, I read about, working this summer in unbearable heat. I will thank them by name.
I will do my part to advocate for fair labor practices and conditions. For the right to unionize and advocate. I will donate some of my excess treasure to laborers’ causes.
I will strive to be a maker and a grower when I can, and not just a consumer. I will try to resist the rich foolism that permeates every inch of our culture and media. Or at least, take a step back so I can see it at work.
I will try to remember that my deepest fears will not be relieved by material wealth and the things it brings. I will try to remember that eating and drinking and being merry, or any other kind of fun, is not actually something that needs to be purchased.
I’m sure I’m missing some good ideas, and I’d love to hear yours.
Most of all, I am going to hold onto that question God asks the rich man, and us: “And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?”
This sermon was inspired by the work of United Farmworkers. You can donate to their cause here: https://ufw.org/sparechange/
Credit must also go to an internet cat named Jorts. Follow him on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/JortsTheCat You won’t regret it.