Someone asked Andrew Carnegie, who was arguably the richest person in America at the time, how much money he needed. “Just a little bit more,” he answered. Jesus warns us that possessions can be a trap. Even the richest person strives for more. He asked himself, ‘What shall I do, for I do not have space to store my harvest?‘ To what end, Jesus asks. You never find a Brinks Truck following a hearse. St. John Chrysostom said that the rich man needed to store in excess not in bigger barns but in the bellies of the poor. In a recent PBS special on the American Buffalo one native American commentator said that part of the conflict of cultures when the Europeans came to the New World was the concept of possessions. The white man would say “this land is mine” whereas for the native peoples the land was “ours,” for the good of everyone. Jesus challenges us to stop thinking about what more I can get to how to be a good steward of what I have.
