Worse than a Rich Fool: Grace and Waste

Several years ago when I was living in Washington wine country there was a September when every label I had connections with had an extraordinary bumper crop. Not just a little bit more, but a whole lot more good grapes than expected. In a wine region that stretches over a hundred square miles, where the rainfall more than doubles from west to east, it wasnât because of technique or expansion or anything they did. Yet suddenly they had a whole heck of a lot of grapes. If you have extra wine grapes you cannot just sell them for consumer table grapes or raisins. Too many seeds, the wrong balance of sugars. To ignore them wouldnât be a lost investment, so much as lost potential, because they would go back into the ecosystem. However, while there are always some grapes left on the vines every harvest, and deer do the gleaning, if vineyards were to leave bunches and bunches on the vine, it would go back to God, but it would be like what would happen if we left every rotten pumpkin in the yard. Critter and stink and messiness oh my.
Fermentation is the bonus prize of the decay section of the cycle of life. Even if you donât consume alcohol it is crucial to human well-being. If we donât capture it, grapes continue to decay into vinegar, and then water and other chemicals and debris. The problem with a whole region having a bumper crop is: that you have to press all the grapes you can and get them into fermentation vessels asap. And there are only so many barrels etc in one place at one time at the last minute. It took ingenuity and cooperation across the west to respond to the abundance, it took the opposite instincts of the rich fool.
The parable today takes its most common name from what adjectives Jesus calls him. Rich is a word I hear and think: people with nine mansions. And our parable star could be in that category. Jesus does identify with the poor to be certain, yet most of his teaching is aimed at folks who have more than enough. So when he says rich, do not think of Scrooge McDuck. If we have even a bit more than enough – we are rich compared to 95% of the people to have ever lived on earth. When he says rich, remember he could be talking about you.
As for fool, that is obvious, but not for being a sniveling whiner. When you donât have enough room in your tanks for all the pressed grape juice, dumping it all out on the floor and down the drain, before going to buy bigger tanks is the natural behavior of a 5-year-old.
This guy may be rich and he is a fool, but I want us to rename him the Atrocious Bachelor. The text doesnât say clearly that he would check single on demographic forms, but since this person apparently has no children, spouse, or parent to care for beyond his years, it is reasonable to assume he is flying solo. We donât have data on the size of barns or the diets of Jesus and his neighbors. But we do have that kind of information for now. So let us pretend this person is a current resident of either Israel or Palestine. I did some maths with information about the average size of silos and the length of time grain can be stored in an arid climate and how much bread a person there eats. Let us use this one grape to represent all the wheat that the bachelor needs or could store for one year, and this (pour bucket full of grapes into large bowl) is how much he has stored up. In my maths game, he has over 400x as much grain as he would need. And he wastes it. He tears down the barn before he builds a bigger one. That fool might as well have dumped the grain in the Mediterranean. What feelings come up for you when you hear it that way: dismay, anger, outrage, disgust? Itâs atrocious.
Whole grain wheat will blow away and return to the earth dust to dust. But do you recall what saved the Hebrews and Egyptians from famine storage of grain to be shared? Do you recall what happened to manna in the wilderness if you gathered more than you needed? It turned to goo. Do you recall how Ruth and Naomi met Boaz? They were gleaning: gathering the unharvested grain from the fields as implored by their tradition. The command of God is to care for the last and least and lost to maintain ways that all are fed. It is important ancient law, it was not followed as well as it should been. Which is part of why Hosea echoes Godâs words of mourning. The ethical standard of a just society rooted in all being fed, was deep and important. This guy isnât just a fool. He is a short story example of the worst of how we destroy ourselves just as Hoseaâs contemporaries did. He has completely turned his back on Godâs way and a safe and just community. This was sin as large as the waste – burning off commandments like it was a bonfire. The behavior of the Atrocitous Bachelor wasnât hoarding garages of bottle caps. It was grasping absurdly to the gifts of God, that he first held on to and then wasted. It was a basic necessity for neighbor and life together that landed in his lap abundance he did nothing for: it was all grace. And he set it on fire.
One of the most dangerous agents of evil is âthe privation of the good.â When I make me the only thing that matters, I have turned from the common good and embraced the weaponization of the basics. It follows no commandment. It defies the directives of Jesus. This parable comes to us in the middle of a long series of teachings that you probably know well. Donât worry about what you wear because God takes care of the sparrow. Then, now, probably tomorrow, our anxiety keeps us from following him. We clutch and grab, say prayers over lottery tickets. We wish we had even a taste of the life of the glittery 3-minute private jet fools, rather than learning to be satisfied. We who hear the word and respond are to open our hands to the trust and humility and let go just as Jesus does on his way to the cross.
The point of parables is never the top of the story. Is Jesusâ main point that you shouldnât hoard or waste 400x a personâs annual need, actually no. You shouldnât, but thatâs not the whole point. The scale is absurd, about material that needs transformation, and therefore pushes us to consider the reign of God. What would it be like if all the atrocious bachelor’s time and effort and passion were turned towards the practices of neighborliness and the disciplines of focus on Godâs presence? What is your fill in the blank that will not last that isnât one of those two holinesses- neighborliness or love of God? What is our fill in the blank that turns to vinegar and debris, but that if we put even just 40x more effort into would ferment genuinely good news for the neighborhood? Is God calling us to learn and evolve?
As long as we keep one hand in the rich foolâs favor we will keep finding that the wholeness and peace of Jesus is out of reach. Our ability to hold on to what we need and what we want is finite. No matter how many grapes were available at the harvest, we only need so much wine or can hold so much at one time. It all belongs to God. It isnât ours – but we are the winemakers and millers and bread bakers. Jesus gently shocks us today with a rich atrocious foolish bachelor. Has it worked? Hold fast to mutuality and the well-being of every neighbor as the only sacred barn. Hold fast to Jesus who says – take, bless, break, give.