A sermon preached in the Chapel of the Apostles’ in Sewanee, Tennessee, on October 22, 2018, Monday in Proper 24. It’s a retelling of the Parable of the Rich Fool in Luke 12:13-21.
You can find a video of this sermon here.
There once was a rich man who did everything his priest asked of him.
When the man was young, he started a small business, and with time, he had some success. He hired workers and his company expanded.
One day the rich man got a call from his banker. There were some interested investors, but he would have to expand more. So the man got a new building with new technology, and he hired many more workers, but only part-time. You see, when someone only works 30 hours a week, you don’t have to pay for their health insurance.
Soon thereafter, the rich man got a call from his priest. The man still felt guilty about having workers without health insurance, so he asked the priest about it. The priest said that it must be hard to run a small business with healthcare costs skyrocketing. What could you do? The topic turned to stewardship. The priest wondered if the man had ever considered pledging? The priest explained there were some significant tax benefits for someone like him. So the man pledged for the first time. For the rest of his life, he never forgot to pay his monthly pledge.
A few years later, the rich man got a call from his attorney. The state house would be considering a measure to raise the minimum wage progressively over the next five years, from $8/hr to $15/hr. Since his average front line worker made between 9 and $10/hr, he might want to make some calls and threaten to pull some campaign donations. So that’s what the rich man did.
The next day, his priest stopped by for a visit at his office. The rich man told the priest about the proposal, and asked the priest what he thought about this issue. “Look,” the priest said, “It’s hard to run a small business. We are just grateful you hire so many people in this town and pay them more than the minimum wage.” Then the priest told him they were starting a capital campaign to add on to the building. The rich man said he would give the money for the new Christian education wing, and the priest said they would name it after him.
Many years later, the rich man got a call from his senator. Some environmental regulations were on the table, and the senator wanted the man’s thoughts. Deregulate, deregulate, deregulate. The fewer legal barriers, the more money he could make. So the environment was deregulated, and business processes were “streamlined,” and his company expanded.
The priest and the rich man met on the golf course soon thereafter. The rich man asked his priest about the environment, and they seemed to agree. They were both worried about the environment, rising sea levels and temperatures, and the uptick of once-in-a-century natural disasters. But what could one person do? Then the priest asked him if he had ever considered putting the church into his will. The man told the priest not to worry; he would leave the parish with a sizable endowment.
Then the rich man died.
At his funeral, the priest talked about how great a Christian this man was and how much good he had done for the community and the world. The priest bragged that the rich man always did whatever his priest asked him to do. And indeed he had.
And God looked at the priest, and said, you fool.
Storied Grace 