What matters to God

Knowing many things, having great possessions, actually being good avails humans of nothing. Time and life go on while we are here and after. Vanity is like smoke or wind - it all vanishes. Nothing is of much value or importance. One person can labor for a lifetime and when that person dies, the profits and accumulations might be given to one who did nothing to deserve it all.




The basic message is the old one of, “You can’t take it with you.” Instead of the meaning of the word “vanity” concerning superfluous clothes and cosmetics, I offer the word, “Fragile” or “symbolic”. Everything is sacramental, that is leading beyond itself. The theme here is that what is, is, and will not be, very soon. This text is not meant to be a bucket of cold water, but a reflection upon the shortness of life’s span and even more deeply, a pointing to the possibility of a life beyond the fragile.


There is an old saying, “You can’t take it with you, except the things you gave away.” We all might be looking for the loopholes, but there aren’t any. Do we wonder just what does “matter to God?” Luke’s Gospel stresses the centrality of holding on to Jesus as we saw last week with Mary’s sitting at the feet of Jesus while Martha was doing many other good things.


We all have things of great value, emotionally, materially, historically. We all have possessions. The thing is not what we possess, but what possesses us. We know that it is so easy to receive the gifts and not the hand Who offers them. Reception is sacramental; to cling to them for our value and identity is sacrilegious.


The man of the parable in today’s gospel reading is quite self-satisfied, even though it was the land that gave him his abundant crop. He is preparing himself for a life of easy self-reliance. Maybe his farming neighbors will think more highly of him, because of his bigger barn. He has lost contact with the fragility of his own life. Apparently he has not been sharing much and so he will take nothing with him. What seemed to matter to the man of the parable was himself and his personality establishment.


The parable does not say that he will not receive eternal life with God in heaven. The parable is meant to remind us all that life is short and fragile and what matters to God has to do with God’s becoming bigger within the human experience.