Luke 12:13-21: ‘How to be successful’

(Preached in 2010)

I have a big event coming up on the 24^th April.  It’s my twenty year school reunion.  I have to admit that while I think I am looking forward to it I am also somewhat nervous.  It has actually motivated my long standing diet.  We all want to make a good impression.  We all want people to think that we are a success! 

What is real success?  Is success arriving at your school reunion in a big car?  Having a youthful body?  Being able to talk about your foreign travels and a fancy home?  Maybe your success is living in the reflected glow from your children’s achievements.  You success may even be that you are content and happy, and don’t care what people think.

Imagine if the man in today’s parable lived in our culture and was going to his school reunion.  It might be forty years since leaving school.  While everyone else has a decade in the office before retirement he tells people that he is retiring that summer.  People had always envied his wealth, and his wealth had multiplied.  He had invested in the right stocks, and brought and sold property at the right time.  Recently his financial advisor had pointed out that he had more than enough set aside for a luxury retirement.  What was the point of carrying on working?  He would only be earning money that he would not spend.  So he bought a large house in the country, another one in the south of France, and the yacht he always wanted.  He even planned for further down the line when his health might deteriorate, getting the best medical cover and putting aside a large amount of money to be put into care for when he becomes elderly.  This was no workaholic who spends his life toiling but never reaps the rewards.  People looked at him and said, ‘there is a man with the right idea about life!’

However, those who were staying in the hotel where the reunion was being held were disturbed in the early hours of the morning by the flashing lights of an ambulance.  The talk over breakfast was about how the man had awoken with a sharp pain in his chest.  He had realised that something was wrong and rung for assistance.  But by the time the paramedics arrived it was too late.  People couldn’t help pondering the irony of this man with his great plans that would never be fulfilled.  What did his success matter to him now? 

This morning’s passage prompts us to ponder what real success is.

Wealth does not equal success (13-15)

In Luke 12 Jesus has been speaking to a crowd of many thousands.  He was actually talking about issues of eternity.  He had warned them, ‘There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known’; ‘Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has the power to throw you in hell’; he has spoken of the Son of man, to whom the future belongs.

Then someone from the crowd says to him, ‘Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.’  It was common practice for rabbis to sort out such family disputes.  Did this man reckon his inheritance was more important to him than the things that Jesus had been talking about?  Did the here and now mattered more to him than the ever after, like it does to many people?

Jesus warned the crowd “Watch out!  Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”

The Bible is not actually against wealth and possessions.  They can be a blessing and ought to be put to good use.  However, we are warned about the deceitfulness of wealth—we can fall into the trap of living for things and believing that what we buy can satisfy our longings.  We are told that the love of money is the root of all sorts of evil.  We can allow what we own, and want to own, get in the way of the most important thing in life—God and our relationship with him.  Be careful we don’t make possessions an idol.

If you’re a parent, what sort of understanding of success are you giving your children?  Are they being driven to succeed in studies because they think that is where their worth will be found?  Do they believe that it matters that they have an impressive job because that is how success is measured?  Do you put them under pressure to find a partner and have kids, as if that is the only route to fulfilment?  Do they understand that while their hobbies and sports may bring them joy their achievements in these don’t really matter in light of eternity?  We need to teach our young people that life will ultimately be measured in terms of our relationship with God.

Don’t live as a ‘practical’ atheist (16-20)

The film Invictus is based on the 1995 South African victory in the Rugby World Cup.  In it Morgan Freeman (playing Nelson Mandela), tells Matt Damon (playing Springbok captain Francois Pienaar) how he was inspired by a poem entitled Invictus.  The last lines of this poem read, ‘I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.’  Interestingly this poem, written in 1875, is the fourth in a series of poems entitled Life after Death.  However, when it comes to life after death we are not the master of our fate or the captain of our soul.  It is God who has determined our days on this earth and he will decide our destination for eternity.

In response to the man’s question Jesus tells a parable.  He is speaking to a crowd that would have been made up mostly of subsistence farmers so they would have recognised the story’s central figure as a success.  Here is a rich farmer who was blessed by a good crop and now has enough to sit back and enjoy life.  His philosophy in life: ‘Take life easy: eat, drink and be merry.’ 

I want to suggest that this figure was a ‘practical atheist’.  By calling him a ‘practical atheist’ I am not saying that he didn’t believe that God existed.  He may have been a regular at his local synagogue.  But when it came to things he viewed as important God was not allowed shape them.  He had a philosophy of life centred solely on him.  God was not in his plans.

I think that we can act like this godless man.  I think that even those who profess to be followers of Christ sometimes act like ‘practical atheists.’  We set our goals, we spend our time, we form our relationships, we make our priorities as if God is not watching and he is not the one we are living to please.  Our lives are to be centred on Christ.  There ought to be no part of our lives that are not placed under his loving rule.  Our relationship with him should be shaping how we view all things and what we see as important. 

In the end it doesn’t really matter who thinks you are a success or who says you are a failure.  In the end the only verdict that will matter will be God’s.  What is God’s verdict on this ‘successful’ man?  God calls this man a fool!  Apparently the Greek word translated ‘fool’ means ‘to be without thought.’  This man had thought about how to maximise his wealth, he had planned how to enjoy his possessions, he had figured out what he would do for himself, but he had not thought about something far more important, he hadn’t thought about his relationship with God.  ‘Have you really considered life beyond the grave?’ ‘Have you planned for eternity?’ ‘Have you sought God’s forgiveness?’ ‘Do you live with Jesus as your king?’  If you haven’t seriously considered these things then God thinks you are a fool.

Woody Allen once quipped, ‘It’s not that I am afraid to die; I just don’t want to be around when it happens.’  This joke could not disguise his fear.  In one interview he said, ‘The fundamental thing behind all motivation and all activity is the constant struggle against annihilation and death.  It is absolutely stupefying in its terror, and it render’s anyone’s accomplishments meaningless.’  Death renders this man’s success as worthless.  Someone asked of the deceased, ‘how much did they leave?’  The answer came that they had left everything! 

Death is the great leveller.  It won’t matter how far up any career ladder you went.  It won’t matter if you had a title before your name and many letters after it.  It won’t matter if you received an obituary in a national paper, or whether there were only two people at your funeral.  All that will matter will be whether God was at the centre of your life!   

You need to be rich (towards God) if you are going to be a success (21)

Don’t let me put you off paying your pension contributions.  I am not trying to discourage you from investing something for the future—Caroline and I put a little bit away every month ourselves.  But if that is where your security is then you are a fool.  If you have given thought to you retirement before you die and haven’t prepared for eternity after you die, then you are a fool. 

After the parable Jesus pronounces that, “This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich towards God.”  You need to be rich (towards God) if you are going to be a success.  But how can we rich towards God—how can we be eternally successful?

By doing what the man in the parable failed to do: by being on our guard against all kinds of greed—our priorities can be seen by what we do with our money; by realising that a person’s life does not consist in the abundance of our possessions—our property, our bank account, our job status and many of our achievements have no bearing on who we are in God’s eyes; by giving thought to life beyond the grave and living with God in the centre of our plans and ambitions.  The person who is wise in God’s eyes, and who is rich in his estimation, has said with the tax-collector ‘have mercy on me a sinner’ and having received God’s forgiveness lives in grateful obedience to their Saviour.  Indeed in how they live they are storing up for themselves treasure in heaven.

This richness towards God was demonstrated in the life of the evangelist and preacher David Watson, who died of cancer in 1984.  Listen to his outlook on death (and compare it to the bleak assessment of Woody Allen):

When I die, it is my firm conviction that I shall be more alive than ever, experiencing the full reality of all that God has prepared for us in Christ.  Sometimes I have foretastes of that reality, when the sense of God’s presence is especially vivid.  Although such moments are comparatively rare they whet my appetite for much more. The actual moment of dying is still surrounded in mystery, but as I keep my eyes on Jesus I am not afraid.  Jesus has already been through death, and will be with us when we walk through it ourselves.  In those great words of the Twenty-Third Psalm: 'Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for thou art with me ...'

A life centred on God and lived in light of eternity.  That is true success.  That is success that will last for eternity.