August 3, 2025 Yr C
Gospel: Luke 12:13-21

So Jesus is teaching and a guy yells from the crowd, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” Which is not exactly a humble prayer request. It’s more like using the Son of God as your small claims court. And Jesus, who clearly didn’t go into ministry to be a probate attorney, shuts it down. Then he tells this parable about a guy whose land produces a bumper crop. And instead of throwing a block party or sending some over to the local food pantry, the guy starts calculating: “What will I do? I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones.”

Which, translated into 2025, sounds like: “I will rent a storage unit. No, I will rent two storage units. Climate-controlled. With 24-hour access and a biometric lock. And I will fill them with my excess until I am secure. Then I will say to myself, ‘Self, you have plenty stored up for many years. Eat, drink, be merry.’”

But then, in the ultimate reversal, God calls him a fool. Not because he’s got stuff, but because his plan for the future is based entirely on the illusion that the future is his to manage. “This very night your life is being demanded of you,” God says, “and the things you’ve prepared—whose will they be?” And then Jesus closes it out with this devastating punchline: “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

Now, it’s tempting to hear this story and think, “Well, that’s for rich people. This is about people with second homes and investment portfolios and more land than they can mow.” Except—let’s talk about self-storage. A recent survey found that 38 percent of Americans reported using self-storage in 2022. And that number’s not shocking if you think about how much stuff we accumulated during COVID.

In 2023, self-storage construction spending exceeded $7 billion, an all-time record. It’s not just folks in cramped apartments with no basement. Gen Xers lead the pack at 54 percent, baby boomers at 51 percent, and millennials are catching up at 41 percent. 45% of people living in spacious homes – medium-sized ones, between 1,500 and 3,500 square feet – are the most likely to use self-storage.

Let me say that again for the people in the back: folks who have multiple bedrooms, a garage, and maybe even an attic are paying money to store extra furniture, clothes, appliances, and hobby gear somewhere else because they’ve run out of space. And this isn’t about being in transition between homes or traveling the country in an RV. This is about – let’s be honest – having more than we can use, but being unable to part with it. And I don’t say that as an outsider. I’ve had my own version of this – drawers stuffed with “just in case” items. Closets that are part home, part archaeological dig of my own consumer choices.

And the irony is that we think the barns, or the storage units, or the spare rooms, will give us control by having (or hoarding) stuff. That if we just have enough tucked away, we’ll be secure. We’ll be ready for anything. But control is a myth. Every single thing in our storage unit could go up in smoke tomorrow. Every carefully folded stack of “someday” clothes could mildew in a flood. The future can change with a diagnosis, an accident, a phone call at 2 a.m.

And yet we keep renting the units. We keep building the bigger barns. Because it’s easier to manage our belongings than to confront our mortality. It’s easier to box up our excess than to open our hands and give some of it away.

And Churches can do the exact same thing. We can become self-storage units with stained glass. Not for couches and kayaks, but for money, buildings, and even the gospel itself. We keep it locked up “for later,” “for emergencies,” “for the right time.” We tell ourselves we’re being prudent, we’re maintaining stability, we’re ensuring a future. But many times, it’s not prudence that we’re acting on. Many times it’s fear. Sometimes it’s a deep, anxious need to control tomorrow instead of trusting God with it.

We can look at our financial statements and think, “If we can just hold onto this endowment… If we can just protect this building… If we can just make sure nothing changes too much… then we’ll be safe.” But friends, that’s just building bigger barns with fancier architecture. That’s a congregation’s version of paying rent on a climate controlled unit full of things we never use but can’t let go of.

And the hard truth is that the Gospel does not call the church to simply survive. Because if the primary goal of a congregation is to maintain its existence, we are not a church anymore, we’re a museum. Or worse, we’re a self-storage facility.
Jesus isn’t anti-planning. He’s not saying don’t save for retirement or keep an extra loaf of bread in the freezer. What he’s saying is that the whole project of trying to control our lives – or our churches – through accumulation is a losing game. And the bigger the barn, the bigger the illusion.

So what does it mean to be rich toward God instead? I don’t think it’s just about pledging more or giving to charity—though generosity is a huge part of it. I think being rich toward God means investing in the things we can actually take with us. Relationships through hands on service. Acts of mercy. Forgiveness. Love. The stuff that gets woven into who we are, not just stacked in a unit with a padlock.
Think about all the ways Jesus talks about the kingdom of God. He never describes it like a well-organized garage. He describes it like a feast. Like a mustard seed growing wild. Like a net catching more fish than you can count. And the people who are rich in this kingdom are the ones who live with open hands, open hearts, and open tables.

The rich man in the parable could have said, “Look at this abundance. Who can I bless with it?” Instead, he said, “Look at this abundance. How can I keep it safe for me?” And I get that impulse, because abundance can feel fragile sometimes. When you’ve had scarcity, or even just the fear of it, you cling. You save. You store. It feels prudent. Responsible, even. But Jesus calls it foolish when it cuts us off from God and from one another.

One of the beautiful and terrifying truths of the gospel is that we are not in control. We can’t know how long we have, and we can’t secure our lives – or our churches – by hoarding. And yet, God’s promise is that there is enough. Enough grace. Enough mercy. Enough love. That the thing we actually need most is already given, and it’s not sitting in a storage unit. It’s in Christ.

So maybe the invitation this morning is to take inventory, not just of our stuff, but of our lives, and even of our church. To ask: What are we keeping locked up for the sake of “someday” when God is calling us to use and share it now? What’s sitting in our metaphorical storage unit that could be a blessing to us and the larger community today? What if we measured our wealth as a congregation not by the size of our endowment or the condition of our roof, but by the ways we risked it all for the sake of God’s love?

And if you’re feeling the irony here – if you can feel the absurdity of paying monthly rent to house things you forgot you owned – good. The gospel has a way of getting in through the cracks of our absurdity. That’s often where grace slips in. Because in the end, every barn will fall down. Every storage unit will be emptied. The only thing that will last is what we’ve given away in love. The rich fool thought the point of life was to be safe. Jesus tells us the point of life is to be free. And those are not the same thing.

So maybe the next time you drive past a row of storage units, instead of feeling smug or ashamed or justifying your own, think of it as a parable in miniature. Every one of those padlocked doors holds a story about someone’s hope for control. And maybe, just maybe, Jesus is whispering behind each one, “There’s a better way to be rich.”
Not in barns. Not in storage units. Not in bank accounts that exist for their own sake. But in God. Amen.