For Sunday, August 4, 2013 – Luke 12:13-21
It isn’t that he did anything wrong exactly, the land owner whose crops yielded abundantly. Nature gives. Should he regret the bounty of the harvest? Should he let it go to waste in the field, proving himself to be a lazy and ungrateful servant? No, the problem for the land owner in Jesus’ story lies elsewhere. There, on the other side of bounty—where choices get made about how to respond—is where his imagination withers on the vine and dies.
“He asks himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?'” First mistake—he asks himself. A committee of one will never be named wisest in the county, trustworthy in all its judgments. Second mistake—a classic pronoun problem. “I” and “my” are notorious troublemakers among those who would follow Jesus. Third mistake—a massive failure of imagination (see numbers one and two). One option, and only one, can be imagined by this “I” and “my” guy. He, in and of and for himself, can imagine only self-protection and keeping himself bolstered against outside threats to his comfort and ease.
Of course, his own self-protection IS the true threat. Even he suspects he needs to turn within for some soul talk, and at the moment he says, “Soul…,” don’t you see it in the dark, a small flame of hope? But then he makes the classic mistake of giving advice to his soul rather than seeking advice from his soul. He was wise enough to turn there, but not yet able to be quiet, to wait, to trust his soul to imagine new ways.
When seasons of bounty come to us, what is our response? Do we store up or cast forth? Build bigger barns or bigger community? The only safety is in stepping out of our dangerously small self and beginning to collaborate with the Great Soul’s imagination.
