NOTES for Luk 12:13-21

In the Gospel there are many parables told by the Savior about rich people, about wealth, about its meaning in life, and about life itself. Sometimes, as in this case, the parables were connected with a concrete situation: Jesus is asked to resolve what today would be called an inheritance dispute, and He refuses, declaring that such disputes are not His business. The parable becomes an illustration of His words, an explanation of His refusal to deal with the division of someone else's property. Meanwhile, the request addressed to Jesus was precisely evidence of His authority in the eyes of those who came to Him, recognition of the fact that He, Jesus, would be able to divide the inheritance justly and in accordance with the Torah. Among the Jews in antiquity, and later as well, people often brought questions to teachers of the Torah and learned rabbis that Gentiles usually resolved in courts. They resolved them, including problems connected with family, inheritance, and property law. In principle, anyone could be a judge if he knew the Torah, could make a decision corresponding to the Torah, and if the litigants trusted him. This kind of arbitration was widespread in Jewish society at all times.

So Jesus is asked to become such a judge in an inheritance matter, and He refuses. And after refusing, He then tells that very parable of what we usually call the foolish rich man. It can appear that by this parable Jesus only wants to tell us that it is better to be poor than rich, because that makes it easier to enter the Kingdom. In reality, however, everything is somewhat more complex. Different people experience poverty in different ways too.

The main point here is different: a person's real, genuine life does not depend on his possessions. A person's life, not only spiritual life but life in general, is determined not by what and how much he has, but by who and what he is. One can be poor or rich. The main question is what a person connects himself, his "I," with, where, to speak in Gospel language, his treasure is. For where his treasure is, there his heart is also. There is his genuine life.

If it turns out to be connected with what a person can easily lose, even simply by dying, then his life will end at the moment he parts with what he cannot take and carry away with him. Then the only and absolute reality at the moment of parting with earthly life will be separation, loss, and death. And the life, that life of the Kingdom which he could have lived in fullness, the person will never know. Here, however, it is his own choice. To each his own.