An Open Hand

Scripture: Luke 12:13-21

Once upon a time, there was a man who won the lottery. And he won big, too. He won millions and millions of dollars, which he accepted in the form of a single large check. He deposited his money in an insured bank account, and then went about his business of avoiding the pitfalls of other lottery winners he'd read about. Other lottery winners bought big houses for their mothers, and made terrible investment decisions, and paid out millions in taxes, and got caught in confidence schemes. Other lottery winners just as poor a few years after their win, as they had been when they bought those winning tickets. Other lottery winners were, in fact, losers, and he didn't intend to be a loser.

So the man got caller ID on his phone and stopped answering it when he thought someone was calling who might want money from him. He stopped walking out his front door because the neighbors might see him and try to talk him into some kind of neighborhood improvement project. He stopped throwing parties because everyone would expected to buy all the food. Soon he stopped going to parties, altogether. He didn't even go to his family's reunions or his niece's birthday parties. And one day, sitting in his kitchen, eating a steak dinner alone, the man realized that no one had called or written to him in weeks and weeks and weeks.

"Be on your guard," Jesus warns, "against all kinds of greed." Which is easy enough for him to say. Jesus was one of those people, it appears, who didn't seem to worry to much about where his next meal was going to come from, or if he would have a kleenex available in case of emergencies. The rich man in today's parable, however, seems a little more down-to-earth. After all, aren't we supposed to be prudent with our resources? Good stewardship, savings, all of that? Surely Jesus can't be talking about my retirement fund!

The rich fool in our story today, it seems, is foolish enough that doesn't know what to do with a windfall. The abundance of the land is a gift from God, and it must have been a pretty good harvest to make it necessary to build new and better barns. Spinning through his mind are his possessions: my land, my grain, my barns, my soul, my relaxation, my salary, my pension, my savings. My, my, my. What he forgets is that all that he has, even his life, is really on loan from God. None of it is truly his.

But isn't it hard not to get caught up just a little bit in our stuff? The things we own, our accumulated wealth, all of that? After all, that's what we have to live on, right? What's funny, though, is how easily our possessions can become the things that possess us. Another way to translate God's warning to the rich fool "Even tonight your life is demanded of you," would be to say, "even tonight, they demand your life." If you don't believe me, then you've probably never owned - or been owned by - a house. Last week, I took a week off of work and spent almost the whole week working on my house. Painting, cleaning, fixing, sweeping, you name it. I am here for the care and guardianship of my house.

I think the key here is the second half of Jesus' admonition: “one’s life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.” Often you will hear people who survive disasters – fires, floods, tornados – say that they don’t miss their furniture or their other household things. All that can be replaced. If they miss anything, it will be the pictures of their children. The true substance of life has a lot more to do with pictures of growing children than it does with a pool table or a china cabinet. The key is remembering how to focus on that.

So what are we supposed to do with the windfalls that may come our way? What’s so wrong with building a bigger barn, a bigger house, a bigger garage? I would say that each gift from God comes with a choice: will we chose gratitude, or will we choose greed? Will we close our hands tightly to keep what we have received, or will we open our hands, ready to give and to receive again. Oddly, living with an open hand often seems to be easier the less you have. Not so oddly, generosity takes practice. And so does gratitude.

I like to think that one of the things our volunteers learn during their year of practicing simplicity and living on a small budget is the lesson of how much is enough. A new group comes to Baltimore in two weeks, and I can imagine that many of them are thinking to themselves: “There’s no way that I can live on the stipend I’m going to get.” But about midway through the year they’ll realize that in fact it is enough. And maybe even more than enough.

Practicing gratitude and generosity with an open hand means recognizing and being thankful that the gifts God gives us are enough, and maybe even more than enough. For the rich fool, what he had wasn’t enough, and so he closed his hand around it. But living with an open hand means giving away to receive again and again that gift that is the true source of life: Jesus Christ, Son of God and Savior of us all. May we all learn to live with an open hand. Amen.