"Greed and Stuff", August 3, 2025

 

Greed and Stuff
By Rev. Jamie Green Klopotoski
Based on Luke
St Paul Lutheran Church, Gloucester
August 3, 2025

 

As soon as I read today’s scripture reading, I knew exactly what I wanted to preach about. Storage facilities. So I set about on a google journey to learn more about them, and I found some interesting facts:

 

Americans spend $44 billion a year just to pay someone to store their extra stuff.

There are more storage facilities than there are McDonalds Restaurants: there are only 13000 McDonalds but over 52,000 self-storage facilities. That’s 2.1 billion square feet of space for people to store their stuff.

 

Then I stumbled upon this great bit by comedian George Carlin, whose comedy I usually don’t like, so I was surprised when I really enjoyed what he had to say about stuff. This was a performance at a charity fundraiser called Comic Relief in 1987. He came out on stage a little late and started his routine by explaining:

 

“I would have been out here a little sooner, but they gave me the wrong dressing room and I couldn’t find any place to put my stuff. And I don’t know how you are, but I need a place to put my stuff. That’s the whole meaning of life, isn’t it? Trying to find a place for your stuff. That’s all your house is. A place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff. Sometimes you’ve got to move. You got to get a bigger house. Why? Too much stuff. You’ve got to move all your stuff, and maybe put some of your stuff in storage. Imagine that. There’s a whole industry based on keeping an eye of your stuff.”

Definitely a funny bit, but it’s also a little depressing to think about. What is our obsession with stuff? I think our culture may have a problem. We are told that to be happy, we need more and more and more stuff, and then we need more and more space to store all this stuff. It’s a never-ending cycle of consumption.

 

Our houses today are larger than ever before. Just after World War II, in 1949, the average new single-family home measured just 909 square feet. Now it averages 2,480 square feet. 100 years ago, most homes didn’t have a garage. But now the trend is, to build two, three, or even four car garages. But many of those garages are not used to park cars, they are used as storage spaces for extra stuff.

 

When our houses run out of room to store our stuff, and our garages run out of room to store our stuff, then we rent units at storage facilities to store more stuff. Even the president, who has a 126-room, 62,500-square-foot mansion with gold-plated sinks at Mar-a-lago, has a storage unit in West Palm Beach.

 

Now, I’m not here to make you feel guilty if you pay to rent a storage unit or if you have an attic or closets full of stuff or if you have so much stuff in your garage that you can no longer park your car. But I am here to get us to think about what Jesus was trying to tell us in today’s parable about greed and stuff. 

 

The sequence of events leading up to the telling of this particular parable are important. After preaching to the crowds about love and acceptance and forgiveness, through stories like the Parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus was invited to eat dinner at the home of a Pharisee. Jesus sat down at the table, and the Pharisee was surprised that Jesus did not rcomplete the ritual washing of hands before the meal. Jesus uses the opportunity to point out the hypocrisy of the Pharisees: they religiously clean the outside of their bodies while inside they are full of greed and wickedness. In modern vernacular, that was a sick burn!

 

After this encounter, Jesus returned to the crowds, which had been increasing, and then shared a private word with his disciples to warn them about the Pharisee’s hypocrisy and abuse of power. Jesus gives them a lovely set of instructions about how they are to rely on the Holy Spirit when they face opposition and he encourages them not to be afraid.

 

Then all of a sudden, a stranger from the crowd interrupts them. The unnamed “someone” says, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”

 

I don’t think this stranger had been listening to Jesus at all! He didn’t hear any of Jesus’s messages of love and generosity and peace, instead he had been ruminating on his own financial woes, and the moment there was a lull in Jesus’ speech, he burst in with this inheritance question. Jesus recognized what was going on here and immediately offers a warning about greed. “Watch out!” He says. “Protect yourself against the least bit of greed. Life is not defined by what you have.” and then he tells what we now call the parable of the Rich Fool. 

 

“The farm of a certain rich man produced a terrific crop. He said to himself: ‘What can I do? My barn isn’t big enough for this harvest. Oh I know: I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. Then I’ll gather in all my grain and goods, and I’ll say to myself, Self, you’ve done well! You’ve got it made and can now retire. Take it easy and have the time of your life!’ Just then God showed up and said, ‘Fool! Tonight you will die. And your barnful of goods—who will enjoy it now?’

 

And then comes the moral of the story. Here are three different translations of it that I really love:

From The Message translation: That’s what happens when you fill your barn with Self and not with God.

From The Voice translation: This is how it will be for people who accumulate huge assets for themselves but have no assets in relation to God.

From the New Living Translation: A person is a fool to store up earthly wealth but not have a rich relationship with God.

 

Biblically speaking, the word ”fool” refers to anyone who fails to notice how the world works. A fool is someone who ignores the reality that there is a world that exists outside themselves and that God exists within and among this world: that in the face of your neighbor is the face of God; in the face of the poor is the face of God; in the face of humanity is the face of God.  

 

The rich man is Jesus’s parable is a fool because he is interested in no one but himself.

Notice how he talks to himself, he plans for himself, he congratulates himself. His favorite adjective is “my.” My grain, my barns, my crops. He is not interested in sharing with those who have less. He doesn’t even see or acknowledge that there are people who have less. He has lost sight of both God and God’s  face amongst the least of these. By hoarding the excess of grain the fields have produced, this man was not a life-sharer or life-giver but someone who deprived others of life.

 

He is also a fool because he did not realize that he didn’t grow all that grain by himself. He needed God to send down the rain to water the plants. He most certainly had works or servants to help him harvest the crops. And he relied upon many others in his community – blacksmiths, woodworkers, and farmers of other crops to provide for all his needs. There is no such thing as a self-made man. 2000 years ago and especially today, we rely on others to survive and thrive, which makes it even worse when people are selfish.

 

This parable is about the selfish pursuit of wealth and hoarding of resources at the expense of and exclusion of others. But it doesn’t just apply to billionaires. It applies to all of us, it warns all of us about greed. One does not have to be rich to have a propensity to use first person singular pronouns: Me, My, MINE! When we close ourselves off and lock our doors due to fear, disinterest, or disdain; when we support policies that hurt the poor or impose a litmus test for compassion, we follow in the rich man’s direction.

 

Jesus offers another path. Be rich toward God. Live a life of gratitude and generosity. Seek the kingdom of God and God’s righteousness. Love God, self, AND neighbor. Share, not hoard, your abundance in order to meet the needs of all of God’s creation–material, physical, social, spiritual, mental, and emotional. Because God has been so generous to us, the proper response is to be grateful to God and generous to others. As writer Anne Lamott puts it, “You can tell if people are following Jesus, because they are feeding the poor, sharing their wealth, and trying to get everyone medical insurance.”

 

Jesus provides a cautionary tale to the crowd that resonates especially today in our culture that measures life through the lens of the financial security, that ranks our personal desires over every other consideration,  that expresses outrage and concern over the price of eggs but is largely silent over the building of a de facto concentration camp in Florida, and endless war around the planet, and the continuing abuse of God’s good creation. Jesus’ parable speaks to us in our self-centered, consumer-driven society where there is more stuff available for purchase than at any other time in human history.

Is there a new way of living waiting for us beyond stuff? A place where we can engage in learning, growing, and living with a lesser impact on our planet and more impact on our souls?

Life is more than our possessions. We aren’t taking any of it with us. 100 years from now, either someone else will have your stuff, or it will be rotting in an overflowing landfill of trash. Your stuff doesn’t give meaning to your life. Your life with Jesus gives new meaning to your stuff. It’s not all about me me me, but serving the person next to me. We are called to use what God has given to us- whether comparatively little or a lot - in service to others – providing for families, supporting the work of the gospel, being a blessing to someone who needs help.

 

If you are guilty, as I think we all are, of having too much stuff, here are a few words of advice. First, try to stop accumulating more stuff. Consider what you need and what you actually use, versus what you simply want or desire. Second, try to help others not accumulate more stuff. When you give a gift, consider giving an experience instead of more stuff. And third, as you look around at all the stuff you already have, consider giving some of it away. Declutter your house, declutter your soul.

 

As a dearly beloved child of God, you are rich toward God, you are filled with all of the good things that God gives you in Christ. Let’s not hoard these gifts. Let’s give them all away. Amen.