These questions are connected to the message, “The Consumption Assumption” from Sunday, April 24, 2022. You can watch it here.
Dive In: Read this passage in a few different translations (e.g. The Message, N. T. Wright’s The New Testament for Everyone, Contemporary English Version, Amplified Bible, The Living Bible); does your understanding change? Notice what is going on in your mind and spirit as you read it.
Reflect:
- If you stopped reading at verse 18, would you have any issues with what this farmer was planning to do? Why or why not?
- Marc said that this week he was going to leave us with something to think about. What did this passage and sermon leave you thinking about? How did it make you feel? Was there anything uncomfortable about either the passage or the teaching?
- Did you know that 25% of Jesus’ teaching was around money, wealth, and poverty? In fact, money and possessions are the second most referenced theme in the whole Bible — mentioned more than 800 times (including related words: wealth, gold, possessions, etc). Is this percentage proportionate to the amount of teaching / sermons you’ve received during your sojourn in church? What does this tell you about God’s priorities?
- Parables aren’t tidy stories with neat applications. They aren’t answers, rather they help us ask the right questions. What questions does this parable leave you with? What tensions does it leave us to wrestle through? How do you wrestle through what is prudent and wise and what is selfish, hoarding, and ‘foolish?’ Are there easy answers? What should guide as as we wrestle in an affluent society?
Digging Deeper: In all the parables recorded, this is the only one in which God speaks, and God calls this man a “fool.” A “fool” in Scripture is someone who is morally deficient. If we were to create a list of ‘moral deficiencies’ what would be at the top of your list — the BIG moral failures? Would miserliness be at the top? If not, why not and should it be? What does this tell us about the emphasis of our contemporary Christian theology?