Proper 13 C, 3 August 2025.  The Rev. Dr. John D. Golenski.

Luke 12:13.  “Teacher, tell my sibling to divide the family inheritance with me.”

Whenever I hear this portion of Luke’s Gospel, I am carried back to an eerie parallel in my extended family’s history. One of my maternal uncles, Zephyr (everyone called him “Fee”), one of my mother’s younger brothers, returned from the Second World War in one piece. He had served in the Allied Persian Corridor Logistics Corps, which had built and maintained the route for almost half the lend-lease materiel sent from the US to the Soviet Union. They had helped the Russians to repulse the German invasion of 1941-44. Fee’s parents proudly displayed a photo of the “Big Three” meeting at Yalta. In the background, Fee is standing at attention as one of the honor guards.

While deployed in the Middle East, Fee had remained connected to his religious faith by volunteering to assist the chaplain, a member of a missionary religious order, the Fathers of the Sacred Heart, who coincidentally staffed several local parishes and a small seminary and academy in Fairhaven MA, where Fee had grown up. There was talk of his going to seminary once the war was over. He felt drawn to missionary work, especially when linked to practical development work. When he returned to civilian life, he began plans become a member of the order and train for missionary work in the Middle East. His mother encouraged him in this direction, but family affairs intervened. Although he didn’t possess the charisma and charm of his older brothers, he really understood how to manage an enterprise. In the Army, he had demonstrated a talent for coordinating the work of groups. So, when one of the family businesses, a service station on Route 6 near the Cape Cod Canal, looked like it would fail, my grandfather begged his son to replace his older brothers as manager. Fee rapidly turned the business around. By the time he was 40, he was running everything, and the business was thriving. This lifelong bachelor, who lived at home with his parents, was a roaring success.

Always thorough, he asked the family attorney to draw up a set of estate documents (will, power of attorney, etc.). In those documents, he expressed his intention to leave his estate in equal portions to his siblings and their children (whom he informed of the arrangement) with one unlikely exception. If one or both of his parents survived him, then everything would go to them. My grandfather died very soon after these documents were drawn up, and everyone expected his wife would soon follow him. She had recently suffered a massive stroke and was living with round-the-clock care at home.
Not long after his forty-eighth birthday, echoing the man in the parable, Fee died suddenly. The medical examiner determined that he had succumbed to a cerebral aneurysm. He simply did not wake up one morning and left his mother as his sole heir. I will spare us all the gory details of the years of acrimonious family meetings, litigation, and broken relationships that followed. Almost all of Fee’s siblings have since gone to their graves without speaking to each other. Over the years I have wondered if amity in our family would have benefited if Fee had failed and closed the business. I can hear Jesus’ admonition: “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Then, he tells the parable of the rich man who tears down his barns to build bigger ones for the abundance of his crops.

Speaking as God, Jesus says to the wealthy man of the parable, “You FOOL! This very night your life will be taken from you. Who, then, will benefit from your abundance?” Aphron, the Greek translation of Jesus’ word, is unprecedented in the four canonical Gospels. It’s the kind of insult one would never use in a polite liturgical context. Rather, it is what one would fling at a Boston driver in commuter traffic. Scripture scholars (beginning with Thomas Jefferson) have analyzed the language of the Gospels to identify the actual voice of Jesus. When in the text handed down to us Jesus expresses himself so strongly, I sense we are hearing the true Messianic voice, the so-called true words (ipsissima verba Jesu). What was the voice of Jesus in Uncle Fee’s life? The call of a missionary vocation or the demands of filial duty to provide for aging parents?

Now, today, in multiple war zones in eastern Europe, Africa, and in the Middle East, we are presented with a vast tragedy of starvation. Yet, the earth, through the diligence of farmers and logistics experts, brings forth sufficient food for all humankind. It is human conflict, fired by envy and greed, which creates the barriers to the banquets of God’s realm. What if (one small what if) my Uncle Fee had brought his logistics expertise to efforts to share the abundance of the victors in a committed life of service? Would this one person’s choice to serve God’s realm have made a difference?

Today, we gather to worship, sing, and share the bread and wine. In the deepest sense of symbol, our giving thanks by sharing this meal, shows forth the divine realm, where peace is the modus vivendi. Let us bring to bear whatever abundance we have stored in our barns—our experience and expertise, our influence with political leaders, our voices for those who cannot speak for themselves—to work for the peace of God’s realm.