Storing up the goods

This Sunday's reading is from Luke 12:13-21,

One of the multitude said to him, “Teacher, bid my brother divide the inheritance with me.” But he said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or divider over you?”  And he said to them, “Take heed, and beware of all covetousness; for a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”  And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man brought forth plentifully;  and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’  And 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; take your ease, eat, drink, be merry.’  But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’  So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.”

The man asking for Jesus to help him to get half of an inheritance to which he had no right if he were the younger of the two is, as Jesus noted, guilty of covetousness. In the parable Jesus is talking about greediness which is a form of covetousness. 

We Americans are blessed with many possessions and need Jesus'  reminder that we must not let them possess us, and that we can't take them with us.