Luke’s Fifth Rich Man Text (“Proper 25.5”)1
Texts: Luke 18:18-30;
Amos 5:6-7, 10-15
YouTube: https://youtu.be/bFPEumIIb0w
RECEIVING GOD’S REIGN AS A CHILD VS
INHERITING IT LIKE GENERATIONAL WEALTH
I want to begin by talking with you about inheritance this morning. For most of us here, I dare say we want the matter of who inherits any wealth we have left to be undramatic. We’d like our deaths and the matter of our wills to not create a ‘soap opera’ drama among our children.
In fact, there’s a great example right now on the last remaining day-time soap opera General Hospital, or simply GH as it’s known among us fans. (Streaming GH in the evenings is kind of a ‘guilty pleasure’ for Ellen and I.) Over its 63 years on the air, we’ve watched on and off. But I bring it up to talk about inheritance. Recently, the death of one a long-time character on the show, which coincided with the death of the 79 year-old actress, created quite a ‘soap opera’ with the reading of the will. Monica Quartermaine had married into the wealthy Quartermaine family, marrying the oldest son Alan. Even though Alan had a younger sister, Tracy, his wife Monica was the one who had inherited the lion-share of the Quartermaine fortune. In recent years, she and Tracy were the only surviving members of their generation. The children and grandchildren were a hodge-podge, since it is a soap opera, of mostly indirect descendants of Monica — children born of extramarital affairs and the like. And yet, at the reading of the will, everyone was shocked that most of the estate went to someone completely new, Monica’s long-lost blood sister from whom she had been separated as a child through foster homes. Yes, the inheritance of Monica Quartermaine’s fortune has been true to the soap opera genre. What a mess.
This has been a longer way around to introducing the fact that at the heart of the Book of Genesis are soap opera type dramas around family inheritance. Last week’s First Reading from Genesis 32 was the strange story of Jacob wrestling with a man throughout the night until that man gives him a blessing. At that point, we assume that he’s been wrestling with more than an ordinary man. Because the results are that Jacob has a new name conferred upon him in a god-like fashion. He’s no longer just Jacob, he’s Israel, a name meaning to “wrestle with God.” And his twelve sons will become the patriarchs of the twelve tribes of Israel.
But this very important story also has a context of soap-opera-like intrigue over inheritance. Jacob’s father Isaac had been involved in such intrigue with his older brother Ishmael. Jacob’s twelve sons would also get involved in a soap opera like struggle over inheritance, involving even the selling Jacob’s favorite son Joseph into slavery in Egypt. Jacob’s own story involves the fact that he was born just a few minutes after his twin brother Esau, so, according to the laws of the time, Esau would inherit the bigger portion. But that’s not what happens. Their mother Rebekah liked Jacob best, and so she helped Jacob cheat his brother Esau out of that birth-right, by tricking their now-blind father Isaac. Esau gets so angry that Jacob ends up fleeing home for many years. Jacob makes his way through adulthood on his Uncle Laban’s estate, marrying not one but two of Laban’s daughters — that’s right, he married his first cousins. (Remember: soap opera!) How he came to marry those daughters is a long story in its own right, with Uncle Laban making Jacob work for it.
When we come to last week’s story about Jacob wrestling all night with God, twenty years have passed, and Jacob has finally decided to try going back home. His brother Esau, who had wanted to kill him years before, is camped on the other side of the river from where Jacob’s camped. Wow! No wonder he’s wrestling with God through the night. After receiving the blessing of a new name, the next day he goes to meet his brother Esau, and something unexpected happens. Esau forgives him in a loving embrace. Many years later, his son Joseph will forgive his brothers for selling him into slavery. I guess it is the Bible after all, and not just a soap opera.
When does the matter of inheritance reach the level of soap opera intrigue? One significant factor is the size of the inheritance. More wealth at stake often means more contention. But perhaps the most important factor is the perception of inequality among the relationships of those who stand to inherit. Esau is the first-born child, but their mother likes Jacob the best. Joseph is actually the 11th born child of Joseph, but he’s the first-born of his favorite of the four mothers to his children — Rachel. So Joseph is Jacob’s favorite son, and he treats him that way. That perceived inequality between he and his brothers sparks all the soap opera drama to follow. It creates the drama of striving to justify one’s self as somehow being more worthy. And so the drama around inheritance also similarly lends itself to a thinking about your life in terms of just desserts — as playing the game of thinking in terms of winners and losers, in terms of those who deserve more and those who deserve less.
I think that we today have come to place in our culture, where most people don’t want their families to fight over stuff when we die. We devise our wills with equity in mind, rather than the age-old practice of more going to the first-born male. We want our children to think not so much in terms of inheriting what they deserve, but simply receiving what’s leftover from our lives as a gift. (We once again bump into the theme of thanksgiving [Proper 23C].) Wouldn’t you say that’s true? We’ve tried our best to treat our children with equity when we were alive, and we strive for the same equity in death.
Last week, the story about Jacob, plucked from the middle of his inheritance dispute with his brother Esau, was paired with two parables from Luke’s Gospel. We said that the moral of those two parables was about thinking more in terms of equity than inequality. The new way of being human that Jesus came to usher in as the “Son of Man” is about how to treat each and every person as a child of God whom God equally desires to flourish in their lives. The old way of being human is trapped into thinking in terms of the inequality of other human beings. We perceive reasons of why we are more worthy of getting our just desserts rather than some other. We might say that Jesus came to lead us out of inequality-thinking into equality-thinking.
This is what I think we see in the transition to this week’s Gospel. There’s only three verses between last week’s two parables and this week’s encounter with a rich man — the fifth such encounter in the middle section of Luke’s Gospel. They are a very important three verses. It’s the beloved seen where people are bringing babies to Jesus to bless them, but his disciples try to stop them. Jesus chides his disciples for doing so, saying, “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it” (Luke 18:16-17).
Why is this important? Because the next thing that happens is the beginning of today’s Gospel. A wealthy ruler comes to Jesus and asks, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He wants to know more about inheriting endless life in God’s kingdom. But notice the difference in language. A minute ago Jesus has talked about receiving and entering God’s reign as a child. The rich ruler starts talking about this in terms of inheritance. At the end of today’s reading, when Peter ‘reminds’ Jesus that they have given up everything to follow Jesus, Jesus returns to the language of receiving God’s reign. I think the difference here is about equality-thinking vs inequality-thinking. In Jesus’ way of thinking, each person is equally a child in God’s sight and needs to simply receive it as a gift, as “grace,” as something outside the human realm of who deserves what. The rich ruler is entrenched in inequality-thinking, so he thinks he must do something to deserve inheriting God’s kingdom. He’s not thinking in terms of simply receiving it as a gift like each of God’s children. His wealth has shaped his thinking about his relationships with others.
In fact, his extreme wealth will make it impossible to enter God’s reign precisely because of his insistence to think in terms of inequality in this life, the kind of thinking that has led to a great chasm between himself and the poor. The kind of great chasm we saw that a few weeks ago with the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man. In response to the rich ruler’s question today, Jesus essentially is telling him the remedy to the great chasm that will make it impossible for him to enter God’s reign. He must sell everything and give it to the poor. And follow Jesus. In other words, he must give up his inequality-thinking by first taking the radical step of actually making his wealth equal to that of the poor person who is his neighbor. His entrenchment in inequality-thinking requires a drastic remedy. Given his extreme wealth, much of it gained on the backs of the poor, this is the only way for him to obtain the equality-thinking which leads to entering God’s reign — to simply receiving God’s reign as a gift, not as a prize to be earned.
Siblings in Christ, let me close by sharing briefly an experience I had yesterday while protesting in the “No Kings” rally (October 18, one of the largest protests in history). A reporter from the Racine County Eye interviewed me at length, prompting me to think more clearly about why I was there protesting. What did I love about America that caused me to show up? I don’t know if I was clear yesterday, but in light of today’s reading and message, I would say this. What I love most about this country is its being founded on the truth that all people are created equal. To me as a follower of Jesus, I think this means that we all should have an equal opportunity to make our lives to mutually flourish with those of our fellow citizens. Contrary to a long human history of inequality-thinking, dominated by rich rulers like in today’s Gospel, our country is supposed to be about striving after equality-thinking. Do we appreciate how amazing that is in human history? It’s the first time it’s ever been tried on the scale of a large nation. I believe it’s at the heart of the new way of being human Jesus was showing us. And that it’s the key to receiving God’s reign as a gift.
But the current regime, led mostly by billionaires, is trying to lead us in the opposite direction, entrenched once again in inequality-thinking — winners and losers, friends and enemies. In short, it’s the direction which makes it impossible to enter God’s reign. How can we persuade our fellow citizens to return to following the ideal of equality-thinking, to renew our striving after the ideal of what it means that all people are created equal. I firmly believe that our faith in Jesus will be important to saving our democracy. Amen
Paul J. Nuechterlein
Bethania Lutheran Church,
Racine, WI, October 19, 2025
YouTube: https://youtu.be/bFPEumIIb0w
Note
1. We’ve been following the proposed structure of the middle section on Luke’s Gospel around six encounters with rich men — proposed by Ched Myers in Healing Affluenza and Resisting Plutocracy: Luke’s Jesus and Sabbath Economics. Today’s Gospel is the fifth of the six. This should clue us into a special emphasis by Luke since five of the six encounters are found only in Luke. This fifth encounter is the one exception, parallel with Mark 10:17-31 and Matthew 19:16-30. For an overview of the six encounters, see the Sermon Notes for Proper 26C.
