March 22, 2026
There Will Be Treasure
Luke 12, 13-22 & 32-34
Rev. David Germer
[Proverbs 23:4-5] How’s that for pointed brevity! Only the author of Proverbs could make not getting what you think will satisfy you sound that poetically beautiful.
Our second text is significantly longer, but edited down a bit.
This is Luke 12, 13-22 & 32-34. Jesus has been speaking to his disciples as a crowd of thousands gathers to listen. Let us listen for God’s Word.
Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” But he said to him, “Friend,” (“Bro,”) who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life” (your essence) “is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”
He said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food and the body more than clothing.
[He then encourages them to consider the ravens and the lilies; God cares for them, but cares so much more, about us. He concludes]
“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
It’s nice timing for this passage. This week, Jeff Bezos announced that he’s beginning a new process of raising 100 billion dollars to buy up manufacturing companies to then use AI to automate production for those companies. The man who already has 200 billion dollars, is launching an endeavor to raise 100 billion more dollars, so that he can put millions of people out of work, ultimately, of course, to make himself even richer.
There’s a word for that: Greed.
That passage I read – the parable that Jesus tells at it’s heart – depicts greed in a clear-eyed, realistic way that I want to explore with you this morning. We’re going to consider the sickness of greed, the symptoms of greed, and lastly some good news – the cure for greed.
But before any of that, I want to acknowledge a couple of ways that we might be tempted to read this passage that could rob it of some of its power.
One way is that we might read this and think: “I certainly have never built larger and larger barns for my grain, so this isn’t me.” More likely, we might say: “There may be a good warning to all of us in this passage… but surely the people who really need to hear this are the ultra-wealthy. Jeff Bezos’ new scheme is not only excessive… it is excessively unnecessary and immoral. That’s what Jesus surely cares the most about – the extreme greed of the billionaires.”
I don’t think that’s entirely wrong, but I’m cautioning us against that reading, and I’ll come back to why.
The other reading I’m cautioning us against is one that would suggest that anyone who’s ever worried about what they’ll eat, how they’ll provide for their family, what they’ll wear; anyone who’s ever wanted a nicer house, or longed for the ability to save more, or has a fondness for any kind of material goods – I don’t know, say, a movie collection, or a bit too many books… that any of those folks with normal worries and typical lives – are the fool in this story, turning material goods into our treasures.
There’s a quote I loved in my college days, attributed to everyone from St. Ambrose to Dorothy Day to Shane Claibrone, but clearly rooted in Jesus’ own words in the sermon on the mount: “If you have two coats, you’ve stolen one.” It’s provocative, it takes Jesus’ words seriously, and it makes you think… it can also make you into an insufferable and judgmental jerk, who’s missed the point of this story.
So we want to avoid both of those readings:
That this is really about the billionaires, so we’re off the hook;
That this is about anyone who hasn’t taken a vow of poverty, so that’s the only way forward, for a “true, good, faithful Christian.”
It’s more complex than that, so let’s get into it.
What is the sickness of greed?
It’s wanting more and more of something, regardless of what having it does to or in you; it’s unwillingness to let go, or an unreasonably deep sadness in having to let go, of something you have.
But I think greed is easier to identify than it is to define, so here are some images that may be helpful
Years ago, actor Jim Carey was presenting a Golden Globe award, and he introduced himself as “Two Time Golden Globe winner, Jim Carey.” (have you seen this?) He said, “When I go to sleep at night, I’m not just a guy going to sleep. I’m two time golden globe winner Jim Carey going to get some well needed shut-eye… and when I dream, I don’t just dream any old dream. No sir, I dream about being three time Golden Globe winning actor Jim Carey. Because then I would be enough. It would finally be true. And I could stop this terrible search.”
It was a hysterical moment, and the whole crowd was laughing.. but nervously, because it was also shocking in its honesty – this insider shining a light on the absurdity of his industry and colleagues and the silliness of how directly people connect their worth to these status symbols. Decades ago another ultra wealthy famous actor was asked: “how much will be enough? When will you have so much that you don’t worry about your wealth anymore?” And the actor smiled and responded: “a little bit more.” Both hit on something universally true, that we recognize. The desire for more. Always more. No matter what.
I think of Daniel Plainview, played by Daniel Day Lewis in the movie There Will Be Blood, which I hope you’ve seen. Daniel’s an oil man, and has amassed a fortune by procuring all the land he can in a region of southern CA so that he holds owns it all. He’s built an oil empire, and abandoned his child and any sense of morality he ever had, in the process… and looking at a map, next to one of his top employees, he realizes there’s a little piece of property he doesn’t own, and he asks: “What’s this? Why don’t I own this? WHY DON’T I OWN THIS?” Without morality, with his kind of drive and that kind of greed, rest assured, there will be blood.
Or I think about the movie that There Will Be Blood was deeply influenced by: Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Has anyone seen this 1948 Humphry Bogart classic? In it, a couple down on their luck guys in a small Mexican town in the 1920s just want a little money, enough to get by, and they convince an old prospector to let them join up with him on his next venture into the hills, not heeding his warning that gold will change a person’s soul so that they aren’t even the same person after finding it as they were before. The Bogart character muses, “I figure it depends on the guy. If it’s the right kind of guy, gold can be a blessing, not a curse.” Well, they find some gold – actually vast amounts – and the rest of the movie shows the pair slowly descending into the curse – a sort of hell of paranoia and madness, in which greed has them in its clutches, and won’t let go. There’s treasure in the Madre mountains, but it’s all ultimately lost. The question for the characters is: can they untether their hearts from that treasure, or is their life demanded of them – effectively over – the moment it’s lost?
See, greed is a sickness that anyone can catch.
Or at least… that anyone else can catch. Right?
Everyone agrees it’s a problem… for someone else.
You might have even thought, I’m so glad he’s talking about greed, because there are some people in the room who really need to hear it.
What makes greed sneaky, is that it’s so easy to hide, even from the one who’s experiencing it. If you steal, or kill, you know it. Nobody’s surprised to find out they’re a murderer or a cheat, or liar.
I’ve never met a person who committed adultery who didn’t know it. You know? But how do you know if greed has a grip on you?
You certainly don’t know by looking at Jeff Bezos. We can always find someone who is MORE greedy. When it comes to greed, a comparison can always make us look good, or at least relatively ok.
And I hope this goes without saying, but of course it’s not limited to money, or to gold. Our treasure can be anything; it’s what we love and it’s what we live for.
Unless you’re Scrooge McDuck, filling a swimming pool with coins and bills to dive into and swim laps in, it’s what we think that money will get us, that we can’t get another way – THAT is our treasure that leads us to greed. And a lot of those things that we want aren’t bad – more time with family, the ability to be generous enough to change someone else’s life, special experiences for our children, recognition for working hard or a job well done. The sickness of greed can turn any of those things into treasures that become our ultimate goal and slowly poison our hearts. Bob Dylan mused and sang that in this world, “you’re gonna have to serve somebody;” it’s going to happen; the only question is: who or what will you serve? We might playfully shift that to incorporate some of those images I offered earlier, and suggest: there will be treasure. What is it going to be? If we allow greed a foothold, we are going to live lives that lead us away from the true and greatest treasure that God offers.
So we better think about how that happens. What are the symptoms of greed? How can we learn to recognize it, so that we can resist or replace it?
Let’s take the man in the parable, who Jesus has God call a fool.
Was it because he was a bad guy? Did he take advantage of anyone, or get his massive heaps of grain dishonestly or unjustly? Nothing in the parable suggests that. Did he fail to plan ahead? Again, no; that’s exactly what he’s doing, here in the story. So why is he a fool?
His foolishness stems from failing to recognize that his harvest, his bounty, is provision, a gift – sheer grace.
“The land of a rich man produces abundantly,” Jesus says. It wasn’t the man. It wasn’t his superior work ethic. He was not a self-made man who pulled himself up by his bootstraps.
This is hard for us because this is the cultural water we are swimming in, in the U.S. – so much is about what people deserve and earn.
If we understood stewardship, we’d be freed from this lie and able to see that God’s gifts are abundant, and abundantly quirky; sometimes annoyingly so (you know?). ‘Why should that person have so much?’ Even setting aside issues of immorality and injustice (for surely many people are wealthy not as a gift from God, but by taking advantage of others)… but even aside from those examples, the inevitable follow up to the question of “why them?” is: “and why not me?”
This is the other symptom of the sickness of greed. It diverts our attention away from others, exclusively onto ourselves.
The rich man’s thought-monologue in the parable is stunning in revealing this point. I want to read again, just what he thinks to himself:
‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and I will build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul (which some translate life, or self), Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; you relax, you eat, you drink, you be merry.”
In the Greek, that’s a mere 46 words he says to himself, roughly one third of which are about himself or refer to himself.
Did you notice he even consults and listens to the only person he trusts, likely the wisest person he knows: himself.
I, I, I. My my my. My own. [Gollum voice:] “My precious.”
Yes.
As great as There Will Be Blood and Treasure of the Sierra Madre are, The Lord of the Rings trilogy might offer the definitive picture of what greed does to us. It turns us into gollums, or misers (as depicted on the front of the bulletin) – those who keep gathering in to themselves more and more to the point that they are literally and physically shaped by the need to gather more, and the need to hold onto and not lose what they have, so that the distinction between what they want and gather begins to blur and fade into their very selves.
This is what greed looks like – the symptoms are a) failing to recognize grace, and b) an outlook on life that is so inwardly focused that one’s very life begins to collapse in on itself.
It’s worth noting that wealth itself is not a symptom of greed. The problem for the rich man in the story is not his wealth. You can be rich, and rich toward God. The problem for the man is his thinking that his wealth will satisfy him, more than God. It’s failing to think about his wealth as a gift… and therefore thinking that it all rightfully belongs to him. If it does, of course the issue is where to store and put his stuff. If he realizes it doesn’t, he’s free to have the mindset of St. Augustine, who said, “the bellies of the poor are much safer storerooms than barns.” Bigger barns will burn as easily if not more easily than small ones. Loving and caring for one’s neighbor demonstrates a treasure that neither thief can take nor moth destroy.
We don’t have to be billionaires or Gollum-like misers to have an issue with greed; we just have to treasure the wrong thing. Our society, culture, and world are basically designed to get us to treasure the wrong things.
Part of us fears, I think, that if we don’t store up some treasure for ourselves, we’ll never get to truly taste the good life. We might think, “life lived to God sounds so holy, and spartan, and monastic. It’s probably endlessly reading Scripture and worshipping God and praying and sharing… I mean I can get into that a few times a month I guess, but I think God wants me to experience the fullness that life has to offer!”
Friends, the good news is that this is true. God does want us to experience the good fullness of what God has to offer; to know that in the kingdom of God, there will be treasure – beyond what we can experience now. There is treasure, available to us, here and now. And it doesn’t require us to take poverty vows or give up all our things…
But it does require us to learn to recognize that life with God – that Jesus Christ himself, and walking with him, IS the treasure.
And recognizing, believing, and living this, ultimately is the cure.
Jesus breaks it down for the disciples, in the passage, after the parable, this way: “Don’t worry. Don’t be afraid. Sell what you have.” (And some of you are thinking, “I was worried that that was where you were going”).
Jesus isn’t afraid to speak in hyperbole, and I don’t think it’s dishonest of us to point that out, nor is it an attempt to be let off easy. We all need things to survive. It’s one thing for Jesus to go around telling people to sell what they have… but he’s fine showing up at working people’s houses for dinner and having the ladies cook for him and wash his feet with perfume. He’s not anti-stuff, even if he did at times have on the cultural blinders of his patriarchal time. And that’s not sin, that’s called being fully human. We all have our blind spots, too.
But what we need to take seriously, is the truth in Jesus’ message – our stuff, whether it’s numbers in a bank account that represent comfort and security and opportunity, or if it’s the next nice and new gadget or device, or set of golf clubs, or clothes… anything that occupies more space in our minds and hearts than it should… is not our treasure.
And so he prescribes the medicine: give it away.
Giving is step one on the path toward being cured of greed.
This is a radical, incredibly practical thing that each one of us can do, this week, as an exercise in becoming slightly less greedy. Give something away… something that you care about, and will miss, at least a little. I dare you. If money feels just a little tight, give to a charity or organization you’ve always liked but never given to before. Buy a meal for someone who needs it. If that feels too easy, ask yourself what you’d cling to most dramatically, if it was being taken from you, and ask: “Is there someone else who would benefit from having this? What does my holding onto this, when I don’t have to, do to and in me?”
Release something this week. Free yourself from the grip it has on you, and notice what happens in you, over time, as you do this more and more.
Two different times in my life, I’ve been into someone’s house, and complimented a piece of artwork, and the owner unhesitatingly said: you should take it. In one case, the owner insisted, and brought it to our house. You don’t have to do that… but the point is: do you see the freedom those people have? Do you see how uncontrolled they are by their stuff? Do you see that their treasure is somewhere else?
Where is your treasure? What do we really need?We love our big barns. But Jesus is saying to you, and to me: “I’m your treasure. And I’m right here.”
Let’s pray:
Lord, open our eyes to the reality that there is enough. That we are full. That you are enough. You are the God of the universe, and you have given us everything that we need. Release us from the hold that anything else might have on us. Please. Amen.