A Poem a Sunday

Pentecost 11

July 31, 2016

St. Luke 12:13-21 - New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

Commentary:  A tale for today's Silo Churches with an edifice complex.  The way to tell a church's priorities is to look at the budget.  When the building becomes more important than the mission the community of faith has become like the Rich Fool.  Christian discipleship means that the life of the community of faith does not consist in the abundance of things but in being rich toward God.

The Parable of the Rich Fool

13 Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.”  14 But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?”  15 And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”  16 Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. 

17 And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’  18 Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods.  19 And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’  20 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?’  21 So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

A Poem a Sunday

Pentecost 11

July 31, 2016

“Soul, you have ample goods…”

Silo overgrown with vines sits on a hill.  If these walls could speak oh, the tales they would tell: toiling of women and men dedicated to the soil & family & friends once gathered to erect the nearby barn now in disrepair. Sharing community, plowed the land, filled the silo with golden grain never at ease but content to trust in Providence and pay the rent until a new era bought out by big business agriculture shifts with silos to fill and build more profits for stockholders while family farmers depart.  The land cries out and mourns the loss of those who loved it, respected what it gives. Old silos abandoned new ones with golden grain.  Profits over soil and the connection is broken.  But who has really won as rich souls take their ease disconnected from the soil that cries out:  “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.  Now what of your golden silos and all that you have earned?”  Silent I sit in the broken silo ivy its green shroud.  The farmer rests in peace and business is no longer proud.

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