October 5 2025: Homily on Luke 12, Sophie Callahan

Sophie Callahan

 

Sermon on Luke 12:13–21

Sophie Callahan

October 5 2025

 

Every so often, Jesus tells a story that hits a little too close to home. The kind that sounds less like a distant parable and more like a mirror. Okay, sure, I don’t have storehouses of grain. But I do have a savings account, sooo. I hear a story like this and wonder what to make of it.

The Parable of the Rich Fool

In our gospel reading, Jesus is asked to arbitrate a family dispute about inheritance. Now, this wasn’t unusual—rabbis were often called on to discern religious teachings about money and family obligations.

But, because it’s Jesus, of course he doesn’t give a straightforward answer. Instead, he tells a parable – a story with far bigger implications. A parable that makes me, and probably many of us here, a little uncomfortable.

He tells of a man whose land has produced so abundantly that he tears down his barns and builds bigger ones.

This might sound quite reasonable to us. Isn’t this just smart planning? Good business sense? He thinks he has earned his wealth, and now he feels secure enough to sit back and say to his soul, “Eat, drink, relax—you’ve done well.”

 And that is exactly when God shows up and calls him a fool. His life ends that very night. Those storehouses of grain can offer him nothing lasting.

Guarding Against Greed

 Let’s back up a verse. Before Jesus tells this parable, he instructs the crowd: “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

 This parable isn’t about a retirement plan gone wrong. It’s about greed. It’s about wealth inequality. It’s about how our finances impact our soul and our community’s well-being. It’s still uncomfortable – but it’s deeper than evaluating Jesus approved savings methods.

Greed doesn’t just hoard resources—it destroys generosity. Greed is a clenched fist, always saying me first. Sometimes quietly operating in our acceptable and socialized ways. Sometimes more egregiously. Greed is building bigger storehouses; greed is a billionaire’s bunker; greed is treating unlimited online purchases as a pathway to contentment (and simultaneously supporting that billionaire’s bunker…)

And greed obscures the world beyond ourselves. The man in the story doesn’t seem to be actively cheating anyone. But in storing up all that grain, he’s forgotten the bigger picture: his community. He, likely, has stockpiled his grain to anticipate a future price hike. A business plan! But in hoarding abundance for himself, he makes scarcity for others. If he’s gearing up for inflation, then who won’t be able to afford bread? His neighbors will go hungry while he relaxes in comfort.

Yesterday, I took a trip to Good Courage Farm, which provided a painfully real sermon example.

Good Courage Farm, a partner of St. John’s, is tending to the land with care — trying to reverse harms to the land by using regenerative agriculture practices. But most of their neighbors are farming monocrops like corn and soybeans using industrial agriculture practices. Many rely on herbicides and pesticides to produce these crops, though they’re incredibly harmful for the ecosystem. While they spray their crops, the drift of the toxins lands on Good Courage and has killed off many of their grape vines. Grapes they are growing to create communion wine, to provide neighbors at First Nations Kitchen and Casa Maris with healthy local food. What happens on one farm impacts a neighbor.

The volunteers explained that a particular pesticide is now banned. But some farms were grandfathered in. So they bought up all the supply. They literally built storehouses of pesticides to last them the next twenty-five years.

That’s how greed works. It shrinks our vision until we see only ourselves or our land. The same principle applies on a larger scale. A society run by greed will always prioritize profits over people. We see this on repeat—gun manufacturers’ wealth valued over children’s safety, insurance companies prioritized over family health, military arsenals built while aid to the poor is cut. It’s lawmakers voting based on lobbyists’ payouts instead of the needs of their communities. Greed, on a social scale, continually limits the common good.

God the Abundant Creator

 And there is a second thing greed does—it gives us a false sense of security. The rich man in the parable forgets where the abundance came from in the first place. The crops didn’t spring up because of his cleverness. Verse 16 says it plainly – the land produced abundantly. From rain and sun and soil. From God, the abundant Creator. God, who gave us this world for delight and care – not for hoarding.

We hear this in today’s passage from Job. God goes on a rant – multiple books of the Bible! – detailing God’s abundance and care in the natural world.

We could imagine God saying to the rich man like to Job… Do you make those crops grow? Are you the one in control of the seasons? Did you give the animals their grazing land? Did you give

orders to the morning or cut channels for the rain? Did you create a thriving ecosystem in the soil, so microscopic you can’t even see every detail working together?

The rich man foolishly thought those barns were his. Jesus invites us to trust in God’s abundance instead.

This line of thinking actually continues in today’s passage in Luke. Jesus follows this parable by reminding the disciples, Do not worry. Do not worry about what you will eat, or what you will wear. He points to the natural world as evidence. “Look at the birds of the air, how they are fed. consider the lilies of the field, how beautifully they are clothed. Their lives testify to God’s generous care.

 

Witnesses of Another Way: St. Francis

 Now, this way of living actually seems a bit foolish based on the world’s logic. That’s the upside down of God’s kin-dom! And throughout history, there have been people who took these words seriously. St. Francis of Assisi was one of them. In the 12th century in Italy, Francis grew up in wealth, chasing pleasure and a military career. He lived a carefree life, but over the course of a few years, he became increasingly compelled toward a life of generosity. He renounced his inheritance and lived among the poor. He preached to the birds and acquired followers that eventually became a recognized monastic order.

To most of the world, Francis looked like a fool. And yet his joy in God the Creator was undeniable. His life sparked a movement that continues to this day. A movement that outlasted the political power of his time, a movement that has outlasted empires, popes, and presidents. Francis shows us that joy and delight are not luxuries but foundations for social change.

 Joy is the motivator behind Francis’s generosity and simplicity — not guilt, shame, or obligation. And don’t we need more social change movements motivated by joy? Motivated by delight? To be so free from our possessions that we are able to give sacrificially? To volunteer in our community because our souls are filled by the practice? To rally at the Capitol because we actually (foolishly even?) believe a better way is possible?

Joy and delight can fuel us, whereas greed constricts us.

Witnesses of Another Way: Mary Oliver

 The poet Mary Oliver is, in some ways, a modern-day Francis in how she so prayerfully delighted in creation. Many of you know her famous line: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

 It sounds like a motivational poster—make the most of your one life!

But if you read the whole poem, The Summer’s Day, you see her answer. I’m going to read the poem in its entirety for us today:

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean —

the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down — who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

 

She spends the day paying attention, recognizing that this life is limited. Strolling through fields, not storing up grainhouses. Like Francis, like the book of Job, like Jesus – she points us back to the God who made the grasshopper, the one who creates and sustains all things.

Closing/Joy as Resistance

 So what does this mean for us? Most of us are not about to start new monastic orders or spend our days in fields of wildflowers. We do have jobs, kids, bills, and obligations. But Jesus is reminding us of the paradigm shift that comes with following God – a shift toward abundance and delight. I’m not here to let us off the hook either – the more you’re willing to sacrifice of your financial security, well, the world could really use some of that generosity these days. Each of us, in our own way, is invited to orient our lives in a way that looks foolish by the world’s standards.

Because in the end, greed cannot save us. Possessions cannot define us. But movements rooted in God’s generosity, abundance, and delight—that’s what we’re invited into. That’s what we can all do with this one wild and precious life.

Amen.

 

 

10am Service