Luke 12:16-21
November 21, 2025 — Osaka Church
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
A rich man who had been blessed with an abundant harvest pondered.
“What shall I do? I have nowhere to store this abundant harvest.”
He then came up with the idea of tearing down his barns and building bigger ones. “Now I’m safe. I’ve saved up for years. From now on, I can enjoy life at a leisurely pace.”
This parable has been called “The Parable of the Rich Fool.” It has a punchline: God tells the proud rich man, “Fool! Tonight you die. All the things you’ve worked so hard to prepare will be for nothing.”
We often hear this parable as a lesson in how foolish people are when they greedily accumulate wealth. But was the rich man really that foolish? Even if one knows full well that he might die tonight, is it really so foolish to try to save up a large harvest, considering the possibility that he might live for decades to come? “I might die tonight, so I’ll just convert all my harvest into money and spend it all in one night. It would be exhilarating, wouldn’t it? But what will I do after that? What would happen if everyone who heard this parable stopped taking full responsibility for their own lives and living carefully and thoughtfully? Would they really be foolish?
If he is foolish, then we are all foolish. We too consider the worst-case scenario and rack our brains to live as comfortably as possible. Whether things are going well or not is a different matter. If things go well and we create a comfortable life, we will be rich, but if we are unlucky or fail, we will be forced to live in poverty. But we are all the same in that we are racking our brains and working hard for ourselves. This is not just something that individuals do, but society as a whole does. This whole world strains to gather all the wisdom it can, just to keep things running.
In fact, today’s parable was not told to criticize a handful of rich people and mock their foolishness. First and foremost, it is a lesson in how we humans live. Humanity has lived by straining its own wisdom and strength. In order to live richer and safer lives, we have continued to carve matter to its very limits, and have seen into the very limits of the universe, pushing those limits further and further. As a result, we have harnessed incredible power enough to destroy humanity thousands of times over. By receiving the warm, beating heart of a person who has “died” from brain death, we are now able to save those with incurable diseases.
This way of life was begun when Adam and Eve nibbled from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden. Since then, people have given up a life in which God always provides for their needs, and have continued to decline His love, saying “no, thank you.”
But aren’t we doing quite well? Average life expectancy has increased. Poverty is slowly disappearing. But are people still foolish?
Yes. It’s not I who say it, but the Lord Jesus who says it’s foolish. He says that such a way of life is sad. …Because you do not know God’s love, you do not know true joy or true peace. And Jesus, out of our foolishness, sadness, and misery, offered himself on the cross so that we humans could once again live in the loving care of God.
We are now gathered in the Divine Liturgy. Soon the Church will return on the wings of the Holy Spirit to that one and only place where the Lord offered himself on the cross. This is the Entrance, which commemorates Christ’s offering on the cross. As we watch over this offering, we sing, “Let us lay aside all earthly cares.” When we, the Church, cast aside all human cares and throw ourselves into God’s care, the light we receive, the warmth that surrounds us, and the taste of the Eucharist will help us realize our own foolishness, just like that of the “rich fool,” and we will begin anew, holding tightly in our hearts our trust in God the Most Holy Trinity.