Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”
Luke 12:13-21
In an age driven by spectacle, excess, and relentless growth, the modern world has become increasingly captivated by the pursuit of “bigger” and “better.” This obsession manifests itself in everything from urban skylines and corporate mergers to personal wealth and digital influence. At the center of this momentum stands a contemporary political figure who embodies and amplifies these values: Donald J. Trump. From a gilded oval office to overblown campaign promises—“the biggest,” “the best,” “never seen before”—Trump’s hyperbolic rhetoric and ostentatious persona reflect and animate a broader cultural propensity for extravagance.
The “Parable of the Rich Fool” recalls a wealthy landowner who invested in building larger storage bins because his bins were too small for his bountiful harvests. Convinced that greater reserves would secure his future and offer an improved standard of living, the landowner in this week’s Gospel lesson similarly operates out of a “bigger is better” paradigm.
The wealth and extravagance of the landowner is emphasized throughout the parable, but especially in his activity: he reasons; he hoards; he pulls down barns; he builds barns; and, he has the space and ability to encourage himself to spend more time relaxing, eating, drinking, and being merry.
Few reflect on this activity and other implicit details in the parable. It is unlikely, for example, that a wealthy landowner built the barns for himself. He more plausibly relied upon slaves or hired hands for the project. Ancient builders were often low-level subsistence workers who struggled to make ends meet. When one considers the social and economic stratification of the ancient economy, the building activity itself seems excessive. Expecting workers with limited resources to tear down one set of storage bins to build even bigger ones is a stark image of the systemic injustice embedded within the larger ancient economy.
The landowner’s greed extends beyond the hoarding of harvests. He possesses the wealth to tear down and rebuild, while others lack the resources to build anything at all. He has the privilege of commanding himself to relax and indulge, while others toil without adequate work or time for rest. With vast reserves, he stores grain for years to come, while others struggle to secure enough food to meet their most basic needs. The promise and lure of big, beautiful barns merely masks the adverse effects on society’s most at-risk populations.
Such a portrayal of excess and inequality sets the stage for the deeper interpretive work that Jesus’s parables command. Though they often seem straightforward and simplistic, the parables are layered and complex. They resist surface-level readings and invite careful discernment. This is evident in verse 15 when Jesus instructs the crowd to “see” or “discern” (horate; ὁρᾶτε)—a nuance the NRSVUE misses with the rendering “take care.” What, then, is Jesus inviting us to perceive through this story? What truth does the parable seek to discern and uncover?
We might be tempted to think that this is a parable about sharing, or a parable that teaches us to divide our resources evenly. From this perspective, the parable critiques the rich landowner for storing his surplus instead of sharing it with the poor. However, such a reading ignores the parable’s larger context. A request from someone in the crowd prompts the parable: “Teacher,” the person says, “tell my brother to divide (merisasthai; μερίσασθαι) the family inheritance with me.”
At the outset, the parable seems to center on the division of resources. But Jesus quickly turns this assumption on its head: “Friend, who set me to be a judge or divider (meristēn, μεριστὴν) over you?” (NRSVUE: “arbitrator”). Jesus is clear from the beginning—he is not a divider. This is not a story about how things should be divided among people. A focus on the appropriate distribution of goods or the fair division of assets misses this point. The parable calls for a different kind of attention.
Other details in the story hint at its deeper meaning. The landowner assures himself that he has ample goods, presumably the grain and goods he stores in verse 18. But God interrupts the landowner’s smugness with a sharp rebuke: “You fool!” The next line in God’s response presents a linguistic challenge. In verse 20, the Greek verb apaitousin (ἀπαιτοῦσιν), meaning “to demand,” has no clear subject. A literal translation might read: “On this night, they demand your life from you.” But who is doing the demanding? Who does “they” refer to?
For those familiar with Greek, the verb apaitousin is a third-person plural, so it cannot, as some translations imply, take “your life” (a singular noun) as its subject. Moreover, the verb is in the active voice (not the passive). I suggest that the plural verb refers back to the items mentioned in verse 18—all my grain and my goods. In this sense, the subject of the verb is both collective in meaning and not collective: it encompasses not just the grain he stores, but all of his possessions. He has reserved even more. In sum, rather than assuming that his life is being taken from him, it may be more accurate to say that his possessions are the ones demanding his life.
One final detail remains: translations like the NRSVUE often blur the distinction between two different Greek nouns. The original text uses both zōē (ζωὴ, meaning “life”) and psychē (ψυχή, meaning “soul” or “self”), but the NRSVUE fails to reflect this nuance in usage, rendering psychē as both “life” and “soul.”
Jesus begins the parable by telling the man in the crowd that his life (zōē, ζωὴ) does not consist of the abundance of possessions. He follows with a story about a wealthy man who reassures his soul psychē (ψυχή) that he has ample goods and can now relax. God’s reply echoes the landowner’s own language even as God works to overturn his logic: “You fool! Your possessions are demanding your soul psychē (ψυχή).” According to God, the landowner’s possessions don’t make his life better—they steal his very sense of being. He is no longer his own person. He answers to his things.
We should be careful not to overstate the distinction between “life” and “soul.” Still, I cannot help but wonder what is at stake in the differentiation. Perhaps Jesus warns the crowd that the wealthy cannot speak of life (zōē, ζωὴ) because they have lost their soul (psychē, ψυχή) to their belongings. Perhaps the differentiation suggests that the wealthy no longer know what life is because they have ceased to live it—their possessions have done the living for them; their participation in the unjust economic system has deprived them of right living, of living the way God intends.
Or perhaps Jesus recognizes that some things are beyond an individual’s control. In other words, he sees the poor laborers building the barns and knows that they aren’t responsible for the systems that divide the world’s resources unjustly. Jesus understands that we are not held accountable for the existence of such systems, but rather for how we navigate and respond to them. Is this what he is asking his followers to discern? Does he want them to name and call out unjust economic practices that falsely promise bigger and better results?
In a groundbreaking book on the parables of Jesus, William R. Herzog argues that parables are images of daily life that seek to expose social inequalities and the systems that maintain them. Drawing on the work of Paulo Freire and James Scott, Herzog demonstrates how Jesus’s parables challenge norms and imagine alternative realities in disguised discourses that negate dominant ideologies. In short, Jesus’s parables pose everyday realities as solvable problems. They give hope that the future is not fixed and assure their audience that the unjust socially constructed realities of daily life are not a given. The public script is subject to revision.
Building on the work of Herzog, I think the Parable of the Rich Fool participates in the visual codification of extravagance. It serves to expose both the social inequalities of the ancient world and the systems that maintain them. Yet, at the same time, it begins the process of imagining an alternative world—a world not measured by one’s worldly possessions but by their participation in the economy of God.
This story, then, exposes systemic inequalities and offers counter ideologies of reversal and subversion. It emboldens those who discern its meaning to question dominant norms and resist fixed narratives of oppression. Choosing to focus on the folly of a rich fool rather than implicit systems of injustice, such as income inequality and economic greed, interpreters get so lost in the formation of discipleship as a spiritual discipline that they miss the ways in which Jesus’s teachings disciple the world itself. In other words, this parable is less about individuals in need of teaching and more about systems of oppression and neglect in need of reversing.
On July 4, 2025, President Trump signed a massive spending and tax bill popularly dubbed the “Big Beautiful Bill” by the bill’s most avid supporters. The bill is anything but beautiful. It threatens to deepen poverty in America by cutting essential benefits like food assistance and medical care—programs that millions of low-income families rely on for daily survival. These cuts strip away access to basic health care and nutrition, pushing already struggling households even closer to crisis.
Rather than addressing the root causes of economic hardships—such as stagnant wages, the rising cost of housing, or a lack of affordable childcare—the bill targets the very programs meant to offer relief. Meanwhile, wealthier Americans and corporations remain insulated, benefiting from a system that increasingly diverts resources upward into the storage bins of the elite. It is particularly striking that Trump signed the bill on July 4, a national holiday commemorating the ideals of freedom and opportunity, even as the bill curtails the ability of low-income Americans to access the fundamental resources required for freedom and opportunity. In the end, Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” proves little more than another big beautiful barn—a grandiose spectacle that obscures the damage inflicted on society’s most vulnerable communities.
To conclude, this is not a parable about the equitable division of goods. The story of the rich fool is a parable about systems of power and neglect in need of reversing. It highlights an imbalance between the haves and the have-nots and calls for its listeners to reassess prevailing systems of domination that prey on the vulnerable under the guise of efficiency and productivity. It seeks to increase consciousness about wealth disparities and economic oppression, criticizing and dislocating economic norms by pointing to the absurdity of a “bigger is better” model.
Jesus lived his life modeling what it looks like to serve God. He fed the hungry, healed the sick, and overturned the tables of those who preyed on the poor. Unlike the rich fool in this week’s parable who willingly participates in an unjust economic system, Jesus beckons his followers to expose such systems and actively participate in the work of dismantling oppressive structures.
