THIS Gospel passage is known as the “parable of the rich fool”. That label is not a value judgement passed by readers; for Jesus tells us that the man in the story is rich, while God tells us that the man is a fool. The parable comes with a moral, but it may not what we assume it to be. We must break the habit of thinking spiritually, and instead think in terms of hard cash. Then can we understand how “it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God”.
The story contains a factual event: the rich fool will die on the very night of his self-congratulation. And it contains a reflection on his attitude to his possessions: NIV translates it: “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”
The riches being bestowed may be literal (money, property) or spiritual (virtues). Here, the proper way of “being rich” is contrasted with how the fool was “being rich”, which was evidently a richness towards himself. Surely, we might think, being rich toward God must mean abounding in the virtues proper to a right relationship with God.
That is a perfectly satisfactory idea. But is it what the Greek means? We might think that “being rich towards God” is simple, but wrestling commentaries suggest otherwise. They twist the words around, to say “rich in God’s eyes”; or argue that the wise person stores up treasure for God’s keeping, as if God were a bank and their good deeds were cash deposits.
The simplest reading of the Greek is generally the one to go for, unless the reasons not to do so are very good indeed. This produces a meaning that someone who is wise gives riches to God. If this is correct, it must mean that God is therefore the recipient of those riches, and also, in some way that we need to fathom, their beneficiary.
How strange to think of God as the beneficiary of our bestowing what we value! The turn of phrase (“enriching towards”) is not common, but there is a parallel in Romans (10.12): “The same being is Lord of all, enriching all those who call upon him.” So, “enriching towards” is directed at the one who is the recipient of those riches.
If we spiritualise the moral and make the bestower of the riches rich in goodness rather than rich in goods, we risk missing the point of the parable altogether. It is a point that Jesus makes repeatedly elsewhere — admittedly with greater clarity. “Being rich towards God” is an idiomatic way of referring to the Christian practice of almsgiving. It gives the reader a theology for the act of giving alms, by showing that a gift made to meet the needs of a fellow human being is really a gift given directly to God.
This interpretation of the parable is not my own. The case is made by a scholar, Joshua Noble. He argues that the real conclusion of this Gospel passage is not Luke 12.21 but 12.33 (which is an optional verse in next Sunday’s Gospel): “Sell your possessions and give alms.”
One reason that I find Noble’s argument convincing is that it suits Luke’s preference — evident elsewhere — for concrete over abstract. I have noted this before as a feature of Luke’s Beatitudes (“blessed are you poor”, not “blessed are the poor in spirit”, Luke 6.20, Matthew 5.3). Another reason is that I am convinced that Luke’s is the simplest interpretation of the Greek of verse 21, which we need to understand as something like “bestowing riches upon God”.
The parable of the rich fool suggests that, when we bestow our riches on other people instead of ourselves, we are really bestowing them on God. It recalls the moral Jesus draws from the parable of the sheep and the goats: “Just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me” (Matthew 25.40).
Scholars who make us question the meaning of verses of scripture which we thought we knew are a blessing to Christians. Their life’s work is to “search the scriptures” (John 5.39), but not to undermine our faith. Instead, by fine-tuning our reading of scripture, they enrich us by “enriching God”.
