The Parable of the Foolish Farmer
August 1, 2010
In looking back over our summer readings this past week, I noticed we’ve had quite a lot of parables - the parable of the Prodigal Son early on, the Good Samaritan, last week’s persistent neighbor knocking at the door, and now today’s parable of the foolish farmer. It’s hard to imagine our Gospels being half as compelling without the parables, and so it’s always nice when we get a string of them like this.
Today’s parable, like I said, is called the parable of the foolish (or rich) farmer, and it follows a common set-up of parables in Luke’s Gospel: someone emerges from the crowd, asks Jesus a question, to which Jesus gives a slightly evasive answer in the form of a parable. So, following that structure, in this story a man appears from the crowd, asks Jesus whether he’ll arbitrate in a family inheritance dispute, to which Jesus responds with a resounding No followed by a parable: A man comes into a harvest too large for his small barns to hold. So he builds bigger barns to store his harvest in, and then decides that he’s going to live the rest of his days off this trove. Unfortunately, no sooner is he settled and comfortable than God comes to tell him that his life is nearly over.
There aren’t right or wrong ways of reading parables, and that’s part of their beauty. But even so, I was struck by how my initial reaction to the farmer seemed far from what Jesus intended. After all, to me, this farmer seemed fairly put together. He didn’t look at this lucrative harvest and decide he needed another one like it next year – and then the next and the next. Amassing more and more was less a concern of his than just enjoying what he had.
At the same time, I thought of all the examples of excess out there – the impossibly high bonuses in the corporate world that we’re constantly hearing about in the news. The salaries of our athletes, who, not content with just a few million a year, then barter for still higher salaries. I even read a piece this past week about some of the insanely high directors’ salaries in the not-for-profit world. (Which reminded me of another piece a couple years ago about a minister in NYC who was making over 600,000 a year!)
It just seems like we don’t know how or where to stop, and at least the man in our parable was able to exit the rat race and just enjoy his life after just one good harvest. What’s so wrong with that?
That was my reaction to this parable, anyway. But I’m guessing Jesus’ hearers would have had a different first impression of the story – not only because they didn’t have my (or our) point of reference culturally, but also because they probably caught some Scriptural allusions in this story that aren’t as obvious to us.
One is the story of their patriarch, Joseph (of the multi-colored coat). After being sold into slavery by his brothers, Joseph wound up serving the king of Egypt as head of his granaries. Part of his role was to prepare Egypt for famine, so he built huge barns in which he stored grain to take them through the lean years. When the famine finally came, he used that grain to help (particularly) the poor who were suffering the most – in fact, touchingly, some of those poor were his very brothers, with whom he was reunited when they came to collect their share of the king’s grain.
If Jesus’ hearers missed that possible reference, then maybe they heard an allusion to the Old Testament commandment to give back (or tithe) ten percent of everything we have to God. And if they missed that one, then the parable might have brought to mind the Old Testament tradition of gleaning in the fields. One of the many agricultural laws in the book of Leviticus stipulates that farmers should leave part of their grain in the field for poor people to glean. In fact, there’s a passage in the Gospels in which Jesus and his disciples are those poor people gleaning one day in the fields when the Pharisees criticize them for violating the rule to rest on the Sabbath.
Which is all just to say that it was probably evident that what the rich farmer in this parable failed to do was take the needy into account.
Whatever our means, that’s a message the Gospel directs at all of us: from the widow with nothing but a few cents to give, to those of us who have much more. Perhaps late summer, as we look forward to the crisp new start of fall, is a good time to think about how much we’re really giving to others. Because until God comes for us - and may it not be as soon as it was for this poor farmer! - it’s never too late to start being more generous.
