August 1, 2010 Hosea 11:1-11 Luke 12:13-21

“What’s Enough?”
Dr. Ted H. Sandberg

It’s only a coincidence, I think, that the Sunday the lectionary has us looking at this parable of the rich
man who builds bigger and better storage barns for all his crops is the same week we prepare for the
ABW’s annual rummage sale. Now don’t take me wrong. I’m not suggesting that the rummage sale
is the same as the desire to accumulate more and more. In fact, it’s almost the opposite, or can be the
opposite. I know that many who’ve brought things for the sale do so because they’re downsizing – for
whatever reason. Sometimes you’re doing Fall cleaning and getting rid of things that have gathered
dust through the years. Sometimes individuals are moving from a larger home into a smaller, or from
a home into an apartment or into an assisted living situation, and so they’re giving away the things that
won’t fit, or things for which there’s no storage available. The problem is too much stuff, but the
attitude is entirely different.
The rich man wasn’t downsizing. He was upgrading. He wanted more and more. In telling the
parable, Jesus has the rich man want to be able to think, “And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have
ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’” Then comes Jesus’ warning. “But
God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you
have prepared, whose will they be?’” Jesus concludes, “So it is with those who store up treasures for
themselves but are not rich toward God.”
There are lots in our country who are more concerned about upgrading, about getting more and more,
than they are about wondering when enough is enough. I frequently watch a TV show called “House
Hunters.” The show follows different couples throughout the world as they search for a house. These
couples are looking for new houses for lots of reasons. Sometimes they’re moving because the home
in which they’re currently living is too small for them. They’ve had more children and they want to
have more room for the family. Or they’re moving from one part of the country to another part and so
they’re looking at homes. Or they’re looking to move from an apartment to a house, or out of their
parent’s home.
What I find interesting, and why I share this with you, is because it’s startling what some of the
couples find as too small. Some of the couples walk into a master bedroom the size of one of our
classrooms and complain that it’s too small. If the closet isn’t the size of my office, they wonder what
they’ll do with all their clothes. If the master bathroom isn’t even larger, they complain – which is
one of the things I’ve always been curious about. Why do people need huge bathrooms? Cheri and
my master bathroom is actually bigger than we need but it’s no where near as large as some I’ve seen.
When we were on vacation, we had 15 people staying in the family cottage, and there was 1, one,
small bathroom, yet some how we all managed. My guess is that most homes built today in Chico
have at least 2 bathrooms. I generally find myself asking, when I watch the show, “How much is
enough?”
That’s really Jesus asks here. What’s enough? And perhaps even more, what do we do with what we
have? The rich man’s problem wasn’t that he had wealth. It’s that he focused on his wealth instead of
on God. He built bigger and bigger barns to store his crops. Today, we’d say he invested more and
more so that he could look at his huge bank account and feel good, so he could say, “Soul, you have
ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” We don’t hear any concern from the
rich man about family. We don’t hear any concern about neighbors. We don’t hear any concern about

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the poor, or about his workers. All we hear is his concern with building bigger and bigger barns.
I’m currently rereading Tony Hillerman’s mystery books about 2 Navajo policemen, Joe Leaphorn and
Jim Chee. Throughout the books, Hillerman inserts what I’d define as Navajo theology. One of the
basic principles of Navajo life is family and the need to care for family – and Navajo family includes
the entire clan. If someone in the clan is in need of help, then it’s the responsibility of any in the
family that can help to help. What’s more, a traditional Navajo individual wouldn’t want to
accumulate more goods than he or she needed, unless everyone else had the same standard of living.
The traditional Navajo has no desire to get more than his or her neighbors. Their desire is for all to
have equally enough.
That’s much the attitude that Jesus is teaching here. There’s nothing wrong with wanting nice things,
unless that means that we’re going to ignore the needs of the poor. There’s nothing wrong with new
cars and bigger houses and new clothes, unless others are suffering with not enough.
Which holds for our nation as well. A few years back, Lawrence Woods wrote, “Our country is a very
rich man. The United Nations has asked the wealthiest countries to give at least seven-tenths of a
percent of their GNP to foreign aid. Among them, America’s giving ranks dead last: it gives one-tenth
of 1 percent. (Of course, we do provide enormous military aid.) Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands,
Luxembourg and Sweden lead the world in generosity. In 2001, with a population of 5.3 million, less
than that of greater Chicago, the Netherlands gave $3.2 billion, almost a third of what we gave. We
Americans debate what constitutes a tithe, how much is subject to it, if it is regressive and should be
modified for people of modest means – say, for us. Meanwhile those godless Scandinavians seem to
be practicing the tithe.”1
“In the revolutionary year of 1776, a new political democracy was born, and Adam Smith published
his An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations and became the ‘father of political
economy.’ The whole of Europe and the infant nation born that year became the world of Adam
Smith.
In that world each learned to expect others to do what was in their economic self-interest, and society
learned to rely on a free market to direct such self-interested economic activity toward society’s
benefit. When we deal with ‘the butcher, the brewer, or the baker,’ he said, we depend not on their
benevolence but on their self-interest. We enter their shops without looking for favors, offering
instead to pay for the goods they offer for sale. If they charge too much or offer inferior goods, they
know that we won’t be back, that it will be in our self-interest to enter the shop of a competitor
instead.
“In Adam Smith’s world the self-interested individual was liberated from the control of tradition and
political or religious authorities. . . The pursuit of economic self-interest in a free market would
increase the wealth of the whole society. Such was the vision of Adam Smith in 1776, and such is the
prescription for the lenses through which many economists still see the world in capitalist economies.
“Things have changed since 1776. The confidence that an ‘invisible hand’ would fashion social well-
being through the competition of a free market could hardly endure the sight of children working 14
hours a day in sweatshops or the smell of noxious factory smoke. Some moral qualms and scruples
have been impossible to suppress. Consider the social legislation enacted in the last century and a

1 2. Wood, Lawrence, “Living by the Word: ‘A Lot of Junk,’” The Christian Century,
July 27, 2004, p. 20.
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half, much of it under the support of the churches, in areas ranging from child labor laws and the
abolition of slavery, that market human flesh, to the rights of workers to organize, Social Security,
safety standards for the workplace, and environmental impact studies. Such legislation has expressed
some of those suppressed moral qualms and relied on human resolve to intervene in free markets.
Some political control of the economic order, despite libertarian qualms, is now not only accepted but
respected.”2
We claim to be a Christian nation, but we’re all too willing to accept tax breaks while the poor suffer.
We claim to follow Christ, but we allow the richest to build bigger and bigger barns while the poorer
get poorer – even when we’ll never be that rich ourselves. We claim to love as Jesus loves, but we do
little to ensure justice for all. Instead, we blame the poor for being poor, comforting ourselves when
we hear stories of those who work the system instead of working. We applaud bailing out the banks,
but complain when we try and bail out the unemployed.
With our wealth as well as with our lives, we are to do unto others as we would have them do unto us.
For what does it profit us to gain the wealth of the world and lose our souls? You and I have nowhere
near the wealth of the rich man of this parable. But we live in a wonderful nation, a wonderful nation
that is the rich man. Maybe it’s time for our nation to practice the words of Jesus our Lord. Amen.

2 2. Willimon, William H., “Prosperity Theology,” Pulpit Resource, Vol. 38, No. 3;
Year C; July, August, September 2010, pp. 23-4.
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