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Timeless Tales - Part 1

Rev. Doug Pratt — March 21, 2010
 

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The Successful Failure
Luke 12:13-21

 
Our Love of Stories

We are a people who love and are endlessly fascinated by stories. We read them and hear them and watch them every day. Our mega-bookstores offer thousands of stories: rack after rack of novels, shelves filled with the biographies of famous people, and more shelves of history books. Our television screens fill up with stories: not just the sitcoms and crime dramas and so-called “reality shows” like American Idol and Survivor, but also news shows like 60 Minutes are focused around telling stories, as are talk shows like Oprah; and even our sports broadcasts drift from pure action into the human dramas. How many hours did Bob Costas occupy our screens during the Olympics with “up-close-and-personal” stories of the lives and travails of the athletes? Our movies, likewise, are filling the big screens with stories: true ones like The Blind Side about a real American family, and fake ones like Avatar about a planet and blue people that don’t really exist. Whatever they are, we love our stories. They entertain us, they enthrall us, we identify with them and project ourselves into them. And it’s always been that way with the human race.

The Bible is filled with stories that are among the most beloved of all time. And one particular Person in the Bible was renowned and revered for being a storyteller like none other. It was, of course, our Lord Himself. This week and next we will be revisiting a couple of his unforgettable stories, known as “parables.” We’ll be reading them not just for their entertainment value, but for the truths they bring and the way they can shape our lives. These are, truly, “timeless tales.”

A Modern Parable

Before I read today’s text, let me retell a story found in John Ortberg’s book When the Game Is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box.

THE TALE OF THE SUCCESSFUL FAILURE

Once upon a time in a land called Silicon Valley there lived a busy, important man. He routinely logged 12- and 14-hour days at his job, and often weekends as well. He had picked up an MBA, served on outside boards of directors, listened to all the best business gurus, and learned the leadership lessons of Genghis Khan. Even when he wasn’t at work, his mind was focused on business. He found the forty-hour week such a good idea, he would often do it twice in the same week. His wife tried to slow him down and remind him of his family. He knew they weren’t as close as they used to be, and he had never intended to drift away. It’s just that the wife and kids always wanted time from him, and he gave at the office!

One of these days, he kept thinking, when things settle down, I’ll spend more time with the kids. I’ll go to that church they’ve been going to on Sunday, and we’ll schedule a vacation. Probably in six months. He also knew he needed exercise, and should get a physical exam with a doctor (it was company policy to have an annual physical, but since he was CEO nobody enforced it on him).

Then one day the Chief Operating Officer came to his office. “Things are booming,” he exulted. “But we don’t have the capacity to keep up. We have inventory headaches you won’t believe. Orders for our new products are coming in so fast we can’t keep pace. We need to overhaul the operations from top to bottom, and then we can ride this wave. And we’ll be set for life.” They brought in consultants, talked with their bankers, and developed an aggressive expansion program that would consume all the top management 24/7 until it was completed.

And so, one night, as he sat at his terminal in his home office at 11 PM, his wife turned off the TV and headed to bed. “I’ll be there soon,” he said without looking at her, focused on the spreadsheets and projections on his screen. He felt like he was well on his way to being one of the Masters of the Universe, the Captain of his Industry. Meanwhile, unknown to him, an artery leading from his heart that had once been as supple as a blade of grass had become as dry and stiff as cement, its walls slowly clogging with chips of lipid and debris and plaque. For over a half century his heart had beaten consistently and steadily, 100,000 beats per 24 hours, pumping 14,000 pints of blood through his system. And suddenly it skipped a beat, and then another. He gasped for air and gripped his chest. His “widow maker” artery was shutting down.

His wife woke up at 3 AM and noticed he wasn’t beside her. She went to the office, found him slumped in his chair, and shook him to tell him to shut off the computer and come to bed. He slumped to the floor. The “911” call proved to be hours too late.

At the memorial service people got up to eulogize him, one after another. “A great businessman,” they said of him. “He was a leader, an innovator, a great success, a pillar of the community.” Then the casket was laid in the ground, and everyone left. And a soft voice from heaven echoed over the quiet cemetery. “You fool,” God said.

The Parable of the Rich Fool

Now let’s read the original version of this story, as told by Jesus.

Then someone called from the crowd, “Teacher, please tell my brother to divide our father’s estate with me.”

¹⁴Jesus replied, “Friend, who made me a judge over you to decide such things as that?” ¹⁵Then He said, “Beware! Don’t be greedy for what you don’t have. Real life is not measured by how much we own.”

¹⁶And he gave an illustration: “A rich man had a fertile farm that produced fine crops. ¹⁷In fact, his barns were full to overflowing. ¹⁸So he said, ‘I know! I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. Then I’ll have room enough to store everything.

¹⁹And I’ll sit back and say to myself, My friend, you have enough stored away for years to come. Now take it easy! Eat, drink and be merry!’

²⁰“But God said to him, ‘You fool! You will die this very night. Then who will get it all?’

²¹“Yes, a person is a fool to store up earthly wealth but not have a rich relationship with God.”

Luke 12:13-21 (NLT)

This ancient story certainly has a contemporary feel to it—because our human nature struggles with issues of wealth and success and priorities in every generation. Though the parable of the “Successful Failure” pretty well preaches itself, let me briefly point out the clear and obvious lessons it has for us. There are several mistakes this man makes. And these are mistakes that the young man at the beginning of the story—who is, in essence, trying to hire Jesus pro bono as his lawyer or advocate in a nasty family dispute over the estate and inheritance—is also on the verge of making.

Mistake #1: He fails to see the source of his wealth. When he discovers his tremendous windfall and record profits, his language is a window into his soul. It’s all me and mine and look what I have done. He has swallowed the lie we humans are suckers for: that we can actually control our world and that everything we have comes from our own talent and effort. What he should have recognized was the true Source, the Lord Himself. It should have been gratitude—not pride—that filled his mind and heart. He’s forgotten that his abilities, his body and mind, his opportunities and career choices, and the circumstances that all worked together perfectly to grant him material success, are ultimately from God.

Mistake #2: He fails to think about how God wants him to use his wealth. The thought of sharing, of giving back, of philanthropy and spreading the wealth apparently never came to him. All he thought about was his own pleasure, his own status, and his own future comfort. Scripture is filled with teaching about the importance of hard work, saving, preparing for the future and being prudent and careful in our investments. There’s nothing wrong with making and accumulating assets. But what does God want us to do with them? How much is enough? The Successful Failure never thought about these issues.

Mistake #3: He fails to see how short and precious life is. He mistakenly does all his planning for the future with the assumption that he will have many, many years. He doesn’t realize the value of each day’s opportunities, because none of us are guaranteed tomorrow. All the relationships he neglected would now never be made right; all the service to others he had put off in his pursuit of selfish goals would now never be performed. Deferring to some distant tomorrow what God wants us to do today may prove to be a tragic and permanent blunder, as it was for this man.

Mistake #4: He fails to invest in eternal things. All the material “stuff” around us will disappear someday. Only the spiritual realities will remain. There are so many cases of fortunes being made and lost in this world. Stock market and real estate crashes happen often enough that no one has any excuse for believing in the permanence of worldly things. It’s all transient. And even if we manage to maintain and constantly increase our wealth throughout our lifetimes, it’s all gone the moment we take our final breath. Two men were riding to their office on a commuter train one morning. One of them was reading the paper, and commented that a prominent businessman in their city had died the day before. “How much did he leave?” the one man asked. “Apparently everything,” the other replied. The Successful Failure in our story left everything behind, and so will we—except for our souls and our relationship with God, if we are wise enough to devote our efforts toward developing those during our few short years here.

Those are his four big blunders, the foolish choices that would haunt this man forever. Jesus told this story to warn us, so that we will choose a different path than the one he chose.

Real Success

Let me close by offering these two principles that spell out the biblical view of what real success is.

PRINCIPLE #1
Real success is measured not by what people think of us,
 but by what God thinks.

There’s no question that public recognition, respect, acclaim and status tend to be very big deals to us humans. We want to be appreciated and admired by family, friends, colleagues and community. It’s our natural human reaction. Clever employers and organizations have leveraged this; they understand that titles, public recognition and symbols of success often mean as much or more to us than the size of the paychecks. Make a man or woman a “Vice President” and they feel like they’re on top of the world.

But ultimately what will matter most is not what people think of us now, or even what people say about us at our funeral. The final verdict is pronounced on every life by God. Whether we realize it or not, we are all ultimately playing to an Audience of One. That’s why God’s last words about the man in our story are so tragic. You fool! He could have done so much good. Instead, his life was wasted on a preoccupation with things that don’t really matter.

PRINCIPLE #2
Real success is measured not by our possessions, but by our priorities.

It’s a good and biblical virtue to work hard, seize our opportunities and try to do as well as possible in our finances and career. But there are limits, and God most desires to see our lives in a healthy balance. When one or more of the worthwhile aspects of life are sacrificed in the pursuit of limited goals, we are taking a great risk. The man in our story was ultimately judged and found wanting not for the things he did, but the things he left undone. His mistaken priorities are a warning to us—and also a caution to be careful we not judge people according to the wrong measures.

Failure or Success?

Human history and the stories we love to hear are actually littered with examples of men and women who wanted it all, but ended up losing it all—from the rich and powerful (e.g., Napoleon, Hitler, Saddam Hussein) to the unnamed, like the man in our timeless tale today. And then there are those shining examples of people who turned their backs on the temptations of the things of this world to follow a higher dream and calling. Sometimes the world thinks of them as failures.

Jesus of Nazareth would certainly appear, on the surface, to be the Greatest Failure the world has yet seen. What wasted potential! Think of what He could have accomplished, what He could have accumulated, the money He could have made, and the power He could have exercised:

• With His ability to multiply loaves and fish, He could have opened up a chain of seafood restaurants and bakeries and made a killing.
• With His power to heal, He could have operated the most successful medical clinics in the Roman Empire.
• With His oratorical skills, He could have gone on the Inspirational Speaker circuit and charged huge fees.
• With His storytelling ability, He could have cranked out one bestseller after another.
• With His charisma and powers of persuasion, He could have been elected President or Emperor.

All that talent wasted and all that potential untapped. Instead, He was abandoned, humiliated and executed like the worst of criminals at the age of 33.

What a failure … from a human point of view. But in God’s eyes: literally, a Perfect Success!