Today’s Gospel lesson is the origin of the saying “eat, drink and be merry” – not bad advice for these lazy summer days! But on closer examination, today’s lesson is not exactly light summer reading. It deals with a temptation that faces many of us – of seeing our possessions, rather than our relationship with God, as the security and foundation of our lives.

In our lesson from Luke, Jesus is preaching the Good News to a throng of thousands when a man in the crowd speaks up. The man’s father has died, and he asks Jesus to divide the inheritance between him and his brother. Rabbis were often asked to give rulings on points of law, including those related to family money matters; but Jesus prefers to talk about the Kingdom of God rather than get involved in such mundane affairs, and he warns the man against covetousness, saying a man’s life does not consist of the abundance of his possessions.

Jesus then underscores his point by telling a hard-hitting parable about a rich man who has a successful harvest. The man doesn’t know where to store all the extra crops, so he decides to build bigger barns. The bigger barns in turn enable him to store even more grain, and he becomes even richer. The man congratulates himself on amassing his wealth and securing his future, saying, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; take your ease, eat, drink, be merry.”

The man in the parable has filled his life with material goods – and he has tried to fill his soul with them, too. But all the while, he has completely ignored the One who has given him life, who truly feeds his soul, the One who is the source of all his blessings. Indeed, the man’s life and his soul belong not to himself, but to God. And in the parable, God shows up, calling him a fool, for that very night he will die, and all his efforts to accumulate riches will have been for naught.

There is a story told about Aristotle Onassis, the Greek shipping tycoon who was worth a vast fortune when he died. After his funeral, his rich oil friends were eager to learn the true extent of the fabled wealth of Mr. Onassis, and so they asked the question, “How much did he leave?” And the answer came, “Everything. He left everything.” Onassis had left it all, because he couldn’t take it with him. As Jesus says in our passage, “One’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

The great irony of Jesus’ parable is that the rich fool has done everything right, probably what most of us would have done in similar circumstances. He has been prudent and practical, not impulsive or irrational. He has not harmed or stolen from others; he has kept only what he has earned himself. But Jesus is not condemning the accumulation of wealth and possessions; what Jesus is saying is that wealth and possessions do not bring us peace or security or control over our lives. The rich man’s money did him absolutely no good the night of his death.

This is perhaps the most challenging of this passage’s difficult lessons, for we all want to be in control, don’t we? Indeed, we live in a culture that rewards independence and self-sufficiency, and we all want to believe that we can get our needs met by our own efforts. Yet it is precisely this illusion of control — this false treasure — that takes us furthest from God and most impoverishes our spirit. The problem with the rich fool was not that he had too much grain in too many silos, but that he sought sustenance and security in the wrong things. He starved to death spiritually in the midst of God’s abundance.

This is a tough lesson Jesus is giving us. Are we being told that hard work counts for nothing? That we shouldn’t worry about providing for our old age? That we can’t enjoy the goods things in life? No -- but compare the builder of big barns with the storyteller. Jesus said of himself: “The foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” [Luke 10:58]. This Jesus who travelled so lightly, who owned only the clothes on his back, and who was buried in a borrowed grave – this Jesus who had absolutely nothing materially was a person of the greatest riches. His life was so abundant, so boundless, that it transcended time, space, even death, so that he is able to share that life with us today.

And Jesus shows us that we need to place God and relationships with others at the center of our lives, rather than concerns about wealth. That's not to say that planning for retirement or your kid’s college education isn't wise because it is; but placing more emphasis on making and saving money, keeping up with the Joneses, having a new car or a bigger and better home is not what is important in this life. What is important is our relationship with God and with others. And once we focus on being children of God, once we focus on the Source of our blessings and riches, then we can begin to be, in the words of the parable, “rich toward God.”

Being rich toward God means that we change our focus to the spiritual and on spiritual acts that reach out beyond ourselves; we change our focus from ourselves to others, from inward to outward. Harry Emerson Fosdick, a renowned preacher and theologian and pastor at Riverside Church in New York City, had a sense for this when he wrote the words of “God of Grace and God of Glory," which is our closing hymn today: "Bend our pride to Thy control. Shame our wanton selfish gladness. Rich in things and poor in soul: Grant us wisdom, grant us courage lest we miss your kingdom's goal."

The one who is rich toward God, Jesus says, is the one who recognizes here and now that true treasure is not in what one has, or in what one leaves or gives away, or even in what one does. True treasure is knowing that one belongs not to self, or to work, or to ambition, or to your skill or your identity in the world. True treasure is in knowing whose you are, knowing that you belong to God; knowing that you are loved and that because you are loved, you can love others.

True treasure means having a relationship God – a relationship which the world cannot give and which, therefore, the world and all of its adversities and all of its trials and tribulations cannot take away. The one who is truly rich is the one who cultivates that relationship with God, with the same effort that other people use to cultivate earthly -- but ultimately perishable -- goods.

And so, cultivate and nurture and treasure that relationship with God, so that when you die and leave “everything,” it will be the one thing you can take with you, for it is the only thing you ever truly had in the first place – the boundless, grace-filled, infinite, eternal love of God. Amen.

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