The writer Patricia Datchuck Sánchez offers a great insight in her commentary on this week’s readings:

In an effort to lead her young charges on an exploration of their values, a second grade teacher gave the following assignment to her class. Take a large piece of poster paper or cardboard and draw a line down the center. On the left side of the paper, write “Needs”; on the right side, put “Wants”. Then, either draw or cut pictures out of old magazines, which illustrate your needs and wants. A few days later, when the assignment was due, the classroom was filled with colorful and candid reminders of the materialistic matrix within which Christianity is challenged to make an impact. Little fingers and small hands had cut out images of video game systems, giant-screen color televisions, ten-speed bicycles, as well as ice-cream sundaes, cookies and a large assortment of candies. Unfortunately, many of these pictures were posted on the side of the poster labeled, “Needs”! Obviously the teacher had her work cut out for her. To distinguish needs from wants and then to discern true needs from false and frivolous ones is no easy task; it is, in fact, a lifelong process which requires continued evaluation. Had the same assignment been given to a classroom of adolescents or to a group of adults, would the results have been different? Or would the pictures simply have reflected the tastes and appetites of older people for sports cars, designer and name brand clothing, speed boats, luxurious homes, and the life-styles of the rich and famous. Would the more mature person also have skewed the line between needs and wants?

This coming Sunday is the 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time. The parable is not  unique to Jesus – consider this passage from Sirach 11:18-19

¹⁸ A man may become rich through a miser’s life, and this is his allotted reward: ¹⁹ When he says: “I have found rest, now I will feast on my possessions,” He does not know how long it will be till he dies and leaves them to others. 

It is possible Jesus’ parable finds its roots in Sirach even if it is not directly dependent upon it. The parable stands within the Wisdom tradition of Israel in which it is held that having or seeking wealth can be a person’s downfall (cf. Ps 49:1-20; Sir 31:1-11 – as well as outside the canon of Scripture in 1 Enoch 97:8-10; 98:3).

The parable warns against covetousness (12:15) and greed (12:21), set with the larger framework of the dispute over inheritance and a series of sayings concerning anxiety over the necessities of daily life, such as foot and clothing (12:22-31). The immediate context is the dispute and the declaration by Jesus that the measure of a person’s life does not consist of the abundance of his or her possessions.

This coming Sunday is the 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time.  “Take care to guard against all greed” The text uses two verbs (horate & phylassesthe) in the present tense imperatives, i.e., continual action, in other words “continually take care” and “continually guard yourself from.”  Perhaps this is a Lucan warning that the human condition is akin to alcoholics and their desire for alcohol, we are never cured of our greediness. We are always in recovery; always in need to watch out for and to guard ourselves from this evil power in our lives.

The word phylassesthe is rooted in the word pleonexias (definitions from Lowe & Nida’s Greek-English Lexicon)

1. “A strong desire to acquire more and more material possessions or to possess more things than other people have, all irrespective of need.” The word is usually translated with greed, avarice, or covetousness.
2. “taking advantage of someone, usually as the result of a motivation of greed.” The word is usually translated with exploitation.
3. When pleonexia is used in the Septuagint it is always for the Hebrew word betsac which carries the idea of “unjust, illegal, dishonest or evil gain”. It is similar to the “plunder” one gains through violence.

This coming Sunday is the 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time. One of Jesus’ hearers was having trouble with his brother about the proper division of an inheritance. Jewish laws of succession covered most cases (cf. Deut. 21:17), but there was sometimes room for doubt and in this case the man who spoke up felt that an injustice was being done. His brother was clearly in possession and he wanted Jesus to persuade him to quit his claims. He does not ask Jesus to decide on the merits of two claims: he asks for a decision in his own favor. He seems to be acting unilaterally for nothing indicates that the brother had agreed to have Jesus try the case. The man is taking Jesus as a typical rabbi, for the rabbis customarily gave decisions on disputed points of law. 

Jesus is interrupted in his instruction of the disciples. Besides being rude, the interruption betrays an insensitivity to what Jesus has just said about matters of essential importance. Jesus sees behind the question the very greed he warned the Pharisees about (11:39–42). 

Jesus’ admonition in 12:15, “Take care to guard against all greed, for though one may be rich, one’s life does not consist of possessions,” provides a commentary on the previously narrated request for arbitration, warning against the danger of the possession of material wealth, even when it is inherited. Life is defined not by objects, but by relationships, especially to God and his will. Several OT passages state the same perspective: Job 31:24–25; Ps. 49; Eccles. 2:1–11, and Sir. 11:18–19.

Jesus refuses to be recruited as the arbitrator in a dispute over the division of family holdings, addressing instead the dispositions out of which he apparently perceives the man’s dispute to have arisen. He uses the opportunity to tell a parable about the trap of possessions.

Image credit: The Parable of the Rich Fool | Rembrandt, 1627 | Gemäldegalerie, Berlin | PD-US | also known as The Money Changer