Thoughts on Today’s Lessons for July 31, 2016
The Parable of the Rich Fool. Oil on oak panel by Rembrandt van Rijn, 1627, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin.
We started in Hosea last Sunday with the prophet’s fierce and startling charge from God about Israel’s path to destruction; but its last verse offered hope for the future. Today’s following verses envision God poetically as a loving, albeit somewhat exasperated parent, looking on Israel as a beloved but troublesome child. Misbehaving offspring may deserve punishment, but no caring parent will give up entirely on a child. God’s heart recoils when Israel turns away, but God’s compassion grows warm and tender; God’s fierce anger is constrained.
First Reading (Track Two): Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23
“Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.” In reflecting on this familiar passage in the mysterious wisdom book of Ecclesiastes, think of “vanity” in the original Hebrew sense of this word, “breath” or “vapor,” something barely visible that veils the light. We spend our lives futilely toiling under the scorching sun in pursuit of something that we can’t grasp, the poet sings: “chasing after wind.”
The Israelites hearing Hosea’s prophecy were not spared exile; the Northern Kingdom fell to the Assyrians and their leaders went into exile a century before Judah and the Jerusalem Temple met a similar fate at the hands of Babylon. But those coming home from exile surely felt the emotions expressed in this Psalm, celebrating and offering thanksgiving for the steadfast love of God who gathered them out of exile and brought them home, satisfying their hunger and thirst.
Psalm (Track Two): Psalm 49:1-11
Foreshadowing the parable of the foolish rich man in today’s Gospel, we hear a Psalm that shouts out the foolishness of trust in riches. Biblical ideas like this surely formed Jesus and his mother, Mary, who spoke often about the hope that the hungry would be filled up and the rich sent away empty. “We can never ransom ourselves, or deliver to God the price of our life,” the Psalmist sings to high and low, to rich and poor alike.
Second Reading: Colossians 3:1-11
In the last of our four readings from Colossians this season, the author continues his instruction to the new believers in the ancient church at Colossae, reminding them that once Christ is revealed in our lives, we are called to put away evil ways and clothe ourselves in a new life in Christ. In words resembling Paul’s invitation to the Galatians to put away all differences among humankind, we are reminded that “there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!”
Gospel: Luke 12:13-21
“You can’t take it with you.” Jesus’ parable of the foolish rich man shares this simple homespun folk wisdom. The rich man’s land produced such a large crop that he wants to build larger barns to store it in. With all this wealth in hand, he plans to “relax, eat, drink, be merry.” But God responds with grim, unexpected news: The man will die that very night, having no use for all the cherished goods. Jesus, who reminded us that what we do for the poor, we do also for him, has little patience with those who think only of themselves.