When I first read today’s story, I suffered momentary preacher-panic. The interruption sounded like the beginning of another story in Luke about brothers divvying up an inheritance. Had I forgotten, when I scheduled this text for August, that I’d preached all Lent about that other story of the prodigal son? As it turns out, Jesus refuses to judge which brother’s greed is more right, because this situation isn’t about family relationships. It’s about God.

Maybe that’s why this parable confuses me. Here is a successful farmer whose land does what it’s supposed to do in abundance, so that the farmer becomes wealthy and prudently puts aside his bounty, making an economic decision to replace the barns. Why is this frugal man blasted by God? He dies. His bulging barns, for which he gave himself credit, were no salvation after all. “Eat, drink, be merry,” he says in self-congratulation. And, of course, since he has only himself to credit, he forgets about tithing. He forgets the Resource Center feeds 300 hungry people a week, and that they would love the extra produce his family couldn’t immediately eat.

Jesus’ criticism of hoarding is that it expresses both unfaithfulness and insecurity, putting things in place of God (idolatry). It’s a story about economic decisions, but we 21st century Americans need to be sure we don’t get confused and think this story only criticizes Martha Stewart, Enron, check kiters, and sweat shop bosses. Possessions are the basis of this farmer’s tragedy, luring him into false security. It is greed, idolatry. Which makes this story’s question not, “are Christians allowed to be rich?” but rather “about what should we be rich?”

Jesus interprets his own parable says we should be rich about God, the premise being “gift.” All of life is gift. Certainly, we’ve done nothing to earn God’s love, but neither have we done anything to deserve life and the means of living. It’s all gift. And that’s un-American. At least, it’s not what I learned in my college American studies coursework, when I learned about Social Darwinism. Social Darwinism was a late-19th century theory that says, if you are successful, it’s because you are better than other people. Success is measured in terms of money, honors, accomplishments, talented kids, power, how much stuff you can accumulate. People who have those things are superior to those who don’t. This theory was the justification for manifest destiny, the westward expansion, New England sweatshop child labor, railroad and lumber barons, and political machines. We may think we are more compassionate than this now, but check our national obsession with consumerism. Personal status is raised by more cars, bigger TVs, luxury vacation homes, tightly-scheduled lives for both children and adults. Money talks, and the fever burns bright in election years, when access to power is funded by campaign contributions. In this country, if you are unemployed or employed in minimum-wage labor, your loan credit is checked more rigorously and you aren’t eligible for the better rates for insurance.

Whether we approve of this or not, we live in America. We are the most affluent nation on earth. It doesn’t make sense to wonder what Jesus would do. He didn’t have to live next door to people whose kids get all the latest video games, whose driveways boast a new RV or boat every two years. Think of how the typical middle class family lives. Parents who rush to Costco on the way home from work to pick up all the miscellaneous stuff a family needs to stay clean and hygienic, stocked up for birthday parties and dressed for school. Whose weekends are spent buying sports uniforms and gear, cleaning and repairing the house, getting gas for the boat so they can spend just a couple of hours together as a family on the river Sunday afternoon, before the whole thing starts over again on Monday. And oh man, I didn’t have time to plan menus, let alone write a grocery list, so we’ll either have leftovers or take-out next week until I can get to the store. The beach trips are such good family time, maybe we should buy a place out there, and suddenly there are two places to keep up. Would this family be relieved or devastated if a wildfire took everything away?

Twelve step groups are filled with people who keep moving to better houses to avoid facing responsibility for their addictions and marital problems. Enthusiasts—from scholars with books to musicians with instruments to collectors with their Beanie Babies—who keep buying more to insulate themselves from what is really a battle to keep God’s voice at a distance. One of my ancestors kept selling farms and moving, believing that the problem was the land, never noticing it was God’s call he was avoiding.

What does this have to do with being rich toward God? I am told that the human body has a sort of appetite thermostat that knows when to stop eating—sort of an appestat. The appestat tells us we’re hungry when we need food, and when we’ve eaten enough, it decreases our hunger so we stop eating. Unfortunately, it takes some time for the appestat’s message to reach our conscious mind so that we actually do stop eating. Scientists say that it takes 20 minutes before the “full” signal is registered. I don’t know about you, but I can put away a lot of food in 20 minutes. This is why diet gurus tell us to eat slowly. In some cultures, meals can take hours, as the family stays at the table talking and eating. Yet, they aren’t fat, because their appestats have time to register “full.” Many American families eat in their cars as they rush from game to appointment to practice to lesson, wolfing food because there’s no time to stop and eat before they need to get to the next thing. Our appestats can’t keep up and we suffer from an epidemic of obesity.

What does this have to do with being rich toward God? Simply this: relationship. Relationship takes time. If we’re doing the relationship equivalent of wolfing down a Happy Meal in the car, God’s going to take the hint and buzz off until we can fit the Divine into our schedule. Our spiritual appestat doesn’t have time to register anything, and it can’t tell us what’s nutritious, only that we aren’t satisfying it with healthy spiritual food. We cram ourselves with things that don’t satisfy—entertainment, substances, shopping, self-help activities, anything just to keep the spiritual appestat to a dull roar. A day of rest—the Sabbath—was created to give our spiritual appestats time to re-orient to God. Sabbath is time with God, time with the humans who are important to us. The religious idea of Sabbath is not, “Hurry and get your work done so you can do Sabbath.” The religious idea of Sabbath is, “It is Sabbath, my work is done.” That is a radically different understanding of making time for God. Not, “I’ll fit you in when I have time,” but “This is a priority, so I that time is set aside.”

I’m always sad when I hear of the death of a just-retired person. It always seems that, here was a person who worked hard, saving and putting off vacations and hobbies and things they enjoyed—sometimes working two jobs in order to build up that IRA so they could live in “comfort” when they retired, doing the things they always wanted to do. And then they die, before they get to. A lifetime spent building bigger barns to hold the proceeds of putting off living until life can be enjoyed later.

Doug Oldenburg, former president of Columbia Seminary tells the story of a man who decided to live for a year with only 250 things, to see if he would be just as happy at the end of it. Only 250—spoons, pots, cars, books, shirts, you name it. At the end of the year, he decided his life was richer for only 250 things. Oldenburg suggests that the gospel is an alternate voice to our culture’s affluenza. The gospel promotes giving more instead of getting more; God-centered vs self-centered; valuing people vs valuing things. If you had to choose only 250 things, what would they be? What would be your wealth? Would 250 be “enough”?