URC Daily Devotion Thursday 13 August 2026

Theology and Money 

Luke 12:15–21

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.”  Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’  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.  And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’  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?’  So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

Reflection

The rich fool is both rich and a fool even before his bumper harvest. We’re told that he is wealthy, and we know that he’s a fool by what we’re not told — because in the culture of Jesus’ time, it would be unthinkable for anyone who wasn’t a fool not to discuss this sort of problem with the village elders or his fellow farmers. But no, the rich fool simply debates with himself what he should do. His love of wealth has already isolated him from all those around him. So the rich fool’s rejoicing is a sorry affair indeed: in his self-imposed isolation he must congratulate himself on his good fortune — and the only other one to hear him is God.

If he was a rich fool before the harvest, he is now not only very much richer; he is also very much more foolish. He cannot see that he is the steward of his great wealth, not its owner, and that it – and indeed his very life – are on loan to him from God. And consequently the only meaning his life has is to “eat, drink and be merry” – the very words of those seeking refuge in despairing debauchery in the face of defeat and annihilation: for tomorrow they expect to die.
But God calls time on the loan: the rich fool’s purposeless earthly existence abruptly ends – and his great store of wealth simply rots away.

It is a shocking conclusion to the parable. The rich landowner has been foolish rather than unjust. He is a rather pathetic, lonely figure who – like most of us, to be honest – simply wanted a comfortable retirement with enough set by to last for many years.

Yet Jesus says that God regards that man as being as good as dead, because his life is so empty of meaning that it is no life at all. Worse, it is a life of idolatry: he has chosen wealth over people and himself over God.

Prayer

Lord, 
hold before me constantly 
the responsibility that comes with wealth and possessions, 
however great or small they may be. 
Help me to find the balance between unthinking spending 
and selfish hoarding of my own resources 
and the resources of Church, family or friends 
which are entrusted to me. Amen.