What a rollercoaster week! Well, more down and down. Inflation fears in America have affected markets around the world. Stock markets have fallen sharply, commentators are talking of a major slow-down in property values in America, the consumer is reining in his or her expenditure, debt levels are high and interest rates world-wide are set to rise.

So what’s a good investment these days? Where will you place your money for maximum gain? Is this a dip, a correction, a bear market, deflation, depression or downturn? Even if these international and national financial concerns leave you cold, they will still affect you. How long can the supermarkets keep the lid on prices when gas, electricity, wages, rates and so on are going up all the time.

It’s worrying isn’t it? The modern western world is built on worry. You see it on the faces of people hurrying to work. You see it even more as they travel home, tired but without having solved life’s problems, all that effort and for what reason – there is never enough money to stop being worried.

The world thrives on people setting higher and higher goals for themselves, and for each other, and especially financial goals, so that they can worry all day and all year about whether they will reach them and find that personal fulfilment. And if they do reach them, they set new and higher ones. If they don’t reach them, they will feel failures.

Was this really how we were supposed to live? Does this give us personal satisfaction and fulfilment? Is this the true purpose to life? Will this make us mature followers of Christ?

A businessman ran into a stockbroker friend of his, who had always had problems with ulcers and high blood pressure. “How’s your health?” the man asked his stockbroker friend. “Great, my ulcers are gone and I don’t have a worry in the world!”

The man asked “How did that happen?” The stockbroker said, “It’s easy, I hired a professional worrier. Whenever something comes along that I need to worry about, I tell him about it and he does all of my worrying for me.”

The business man couldn’t believe it. “That’s incredible. I’d be interested in something like that. How much does it cost?” The stockbroker said, “He charges 100,000 a year.” The businessman said “How in the world can you afford to pay him 100,000 year?” The stockbroker said, “I don’t know, I let him worry about it.”

Our Gospel reading today tells us of a man who worried, who wanted and who got it wrong.

We start with that man in the crowd (v.12), who is worried about his inheritance. It’s quite possible that the man was facing destitution – his brother, the older sibling, was keeping all the land and without land the man would have to chance the seasonal day-labourer market or become a beggar. So the man hopes that Jesus, a man of influence, will decide his worry for him.

Jesus is not rushing to judge the inheritance. He is not about to be hijacked as one whose word would add authority to the man’s case. Jesus is ensuring that his authority is used for such matters, but his authority is reserved for far more important judgements. Typically Jesus, he sees right in to the man’s heart, right to the nub of the problem: greed (v.15).

Jesus also declares what makes a person’s life valuable – not abundance of possessions (v.15) (though you would think so in the world we live) but in richness towards God (v.21). That is what matters; that is what has eternal value.

I have the privilege of ministering at many funerals and at the end of the day, the greatest legacy anyone leaves is not their possessions but their reputation. That is what sums up a person, because that is all that is left when we die – our reputation.

So Jesus tells a parable to the man and to the crowd to counteract their greed and their reliance on possessions. He talks of a rich man, someone already who has done well, but who in the parable does even better (v.16), and who worries about what to do with his surplus (v.17).

It’s interesting that the rich man does not think of others. It’s more than likely that a typical rich man in those 1st century days would have had tenants who did most of the work on the land. There is no indication of a Christmas bonus here. In fact, the rich man is utterly self-absorbed – 11 times he uses the personal pronoun – I or my or myself.

He takes his wealth and satisfies himself (v.18). He takes his wealth and prepares for the easy life (v.19). He has prepared for his own comfort but not for his eternal destiny. He has left God right out of his plans. He has not shown an inkling of mature discipleship.

Then Jesus brings us the thoughts of God: ‘You fool.’ (v.20). A fool in first century Israelite understanding is one who lived life without reference to God. This is exactly what our little parable reveals about our rich man. It wasn’t even just that. A fool not only makes no reference to God in their thinking but in so doing is seen to be one who ignores their best interests.

“‘Wisdom’ was the way of common sense, the way to true life. And this man was foolish because he had failed to reckon up where true life lay. He had not seen that life does not consist of the abundance of possessions. He had spent his ‘life’ in a fixation of acquisitiveness and had missed out on life itself in the process. His tragedy was not that God was asking for his ‘soul’ in death: his tragedy was that he had not had life while he could.” (Tales Jesus Told, Stephen Wright, p.46)

The philosopher of Ecclesiastes would have declared him a fool too, for striving after meaninglessness, utter meaninglessness. In fact, it is our philosopher who points out the hard truth: “For a man may do his work with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then he must leave all he owns to someone who has not worked for it.” (Eccl. 2:21)

What are we going to do with all the money we have? People strive after money; they envy those who earn more than them. So you make your first million. Great, and then what: your second million, and then you make 5 million. That’s really good. Is that enough? So you pursue more and make 10 million, then you have bad run and you increase your wealth only to 11 million. And you die.

You are going to stand at the gates of heaven and God will say to you, “What have you done with your life?” “Well, I’ve made 11 million” “Good, we can play monopoly.”

What does Jesus say about our rich man in the parable – v.20? A person’s life consists not in the abundance of his possessions (v.15) but in his richness towards God.

That’s not to say that possessions are wrong. We are not to throw everything we have and going out begging on the street, demanding charity off our neighbour as a sign of our holiness. As Paul wrote to the Thessalonians: “… when we were with you, we gave you this rule: ‘If a man will not work, he shall not eat.’ We hear that some among you are idle. They are not busy; they are busybodies. Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat.” (2 Thess. 3:10-12)

It’s not wrong to have possessions, but it is wrong to trust in possessions. It wasn’t wrong for the rich man to succeed with a bumper crop, but it was wrong to store them up for himself and forget God and his commands for justice and righteousness and generosity towards others. The rich man’s actions showed great immaturity of discipleship and so we can learn from him. To quote a phrase you’ll see around a great deal soon, “Is there more to life than this?”

DVD – Alpha advert 2006 ‘Is there more to life than this?’ – 00:00 to 00:56

To be rightly aware of the true and godly values of life will enable us to put things in their proper place. The rich man in our story is sensible enough according to his own understanding. He’s looking ahead many years; he’s provided for himself ample sufficiency. The trouble is he has forgotten the life of the world to come, where his plentiful earthly possessions will be of no use to him.

Let’s not forget though for us today that food and clothes, the comforts of life, are a necessary part of human life all over the world, and that our Father in heaven knows that we need them (v.30). Our main concern, as those who would be mature followers of Christ – our mission statement – shouldn’t be the laying up of treasure on earth but the provision of treasure in heaven, which will ensure our wellbeing and welcome in the next world (v.33).

That is what being rich towards God means (v.21); that is what being a mature follower of Christ is.

So we need to ask ourselves: what is our attitude to the money and possessions we have? And the clearest indication of our attitude will be in how rich we are towards the purposes and work of God.

To be a mature follower of Christ is to give generously to his purposes and work, because in so doing we are rich towards God and we are released from the meaningless hold of possessions over us, a meaningless hold that grips our world, but should not grip us.

Do we want to be mature followers of Jesus? Then let us not be like the rich man in our story, but be as Jesus exhorts us: rich towards God, and then let’s rejoice in the spiritual treasure we receive day by day and year by year.