Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.”
It seems a fair enough request to a Rabbi who might just know the law of inheritance or might just be willing to argue a different perspective for the rights of a younger son or a disinherited child. But we don’t know where the speaker comes in the family order, so we really can’t tell what he wants.
Still, it seems a fair enough request to a Rabbi who was interested in justice and fairness, who had told a story not so long ago in the text about a Good Samaritan who flouted the conventions of the time and the danger of a lonely road to care for a destitute stranger.
Yes, it seems a fair enough request…
Yet like a good Rabbi, frustratingly like a good Rabbi, the Rabbi does not answer with an answer but rather, another question, “Who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” “Who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?”
What kind of question is this? Perhaps, it is a rhetorical one that really means “Get away with you. Why are you bothering me with this?” Maybe it is another invitation to identify the identity of this Rabbi like no other: “Well God, of course, gave you the right to judgement or arbitration!” Or perhaps, just perhaps, it is an invitation to think a little differently about the dilemma in which the person in the crowd seems to find himself. And yes, according to the text, it is a he; but then women didn’t get much of a look in in the inheritance stakes in first century societies.
But then, there is a diatribe about the pitfalls of greed. Surely this is the judgement that the Rabbi questions his competence or right or responsibility to give. What’s really going on here?
If it is an invitation to think about the dilemma a little differently, then the Rabbi goes on to provide a judgement anyway. What is really going on here?
Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.”
It is the someone in the crowd who comes seeking a judgement but not upon himself, upon his brother. And the Rabbi produces a judgement upon the someone.
But it would be too easy to preach a sermon against the extravagances and injustices of greed. And you probably know all about that. I certainly do. After all, Australia comes about 12th in the worldwide prosperity stakes, and we’re pretty good consumers.
But morality barely touches the surface of the depth of this intriguing passage. And moralism would be far too easy.
No, the key to this passage doesn’t lie in the injunction against greed or the warning about bigger barns, although such a warning may certainly be warranted. No, the key to this passage lies in the tag, the sting in the tail, the reference to the superiority of being rich toward God—being rich toward God. But what does this really mean?
You’d think once we’d located the key, we’d be well and truly on track, wouldn’t you? But it seems that this key just raises more questions than it answers too. This key is more like another puzzle which needs another key, another solution, another answer, another response. But I bet if we asked this Rabbi, we’d receive another enigmatic response again.
What would we ask anyway? What must I do to be rich toward God? It sounds an awful lot like a question asked not so long ago in the text: What must I do to inherit eternal life? It was asked by a lawyer who, for his trouble, got an admonition about loving God and loving neighbour. Although, he wasn’t particularly satisfied with that, so he kept on asking and received a story about a man whom the lawyer might not have recognised as being a neighbour but yet was a neighbour to someone who needed a friend, indeed a rescuer, a saviour. Perhaps things are becoming a little clearer—or not.
The Rabbi is asked for a judgement: a judgement upon a brother; a judgement upon a neighbour. And the seeker receives a judgement upon himself; upon his seeking. And the judgement seems to be pointing back to something a little earlier about loving God and loving neighbour; and a strange story about a strange rescuer.
Judgement upon another was not a part of the parable of the Good Samaritan; mercy was. And this diatribe about greed too is not so much a judgement upon the someone in the crowd, but an act of mercy pointing to the “better part” chosen by Mary of Bethany while Martha is distracted. That wasn’t so long ago in the text either.
These better barns and this question about inheritance, are they distractions too? Or perhaps detours up wrong paths. The Rabbi seems to be saying that, even if we could achieve what this someone in the crowd might want to achieve: the laying up of ample goods, allowing a life of relaxation, eating, drinking and merry-making, it would be for nothing. Judgement may come before we have achieved what we want to achieve. Or it may come after we have achieved what we want to achieve. More likely, it will come while we are trying to achieve what we want to achieve. But whenever it comes, what won’t be significant is what we have achieved or not, or how relaxed and comfortable we are. It will be where we are at with God. And where we are at with God depends on us seeking the riches of God… or does it?
The riches of God have nothing to do with what we can or want to achieve. The riches of God have nothing to do with what we seek or what we find. The riches of God have already been achieved for us in the person of the Rabbi himself, judge and arbitrator, redeemer and saviour.
And then, what is required of us is not a striving for riches but a response to the riches already received and that response consists in the love of God and the love of neighbour. This response is not one that can be achieved or accomplished. It does not have a beginning or an ending. It is not all that complicated. It hardly seems possible that we might have missed it. Rather, it is just what it means to be overwhelmed by the gift of freedom that we find in Christ, by the gift of re-creation that we have been given in Christ, by the gift of renewal that comes to us through Christ.
Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.”
The Rabbi just might have said, “You already have what’s coming to you. Sit back and enjoy it which is to say, respond to this gracious gift by honouring the one from whom it comes and nurturing one another in the riches of this grace.” And that my friends, is now and always has been the guts of the Gospel, and the inheritance of eternal life.
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