Lectionary Commentaries for August 3, 2025
Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

In Luke 12:13–21, we once again find Jesus teaching in the midst of a large crowd as he continues his journey to Jerusalem. Someone in the crowd shouts out, asking Jesus to weigh in on a family dispute over an inheritance. Jesus refuses, saying he will not be their arbitrator, and instead tells the crowd a parable.

At first glance, the connection between the request and the parable may seem tenuous. But in truth, Jesus is doing what he often does: redirecting the conversation to expose a deeper issue.  Concerns about wealth are distractions, and concerns about future gains are misplaced, because one’s security does not come from money. It comes from God. One’s life, Jesus tells them, does not consist of possessions. 

A fool’s miscalculation

In this parable, Jesus tells us about a rich man whose fields produce a surplus harvest. Unsure how to store all this abundance, the man makes plans to tear down his smaller barns and build larger ones. He believes he will be able to store enough to relax for several years and live off what he has earned. We hear his internal monologue as he tells his soul that he can now eat, drink, and be merry.

It is at this moment that God appears and tells the man that he is a fool, because that very night he will die. What good will all his preparations be in light of death? 

Jesus ends the story by telling the crowds, “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God” (Luke 12:21). 

This story, which is unique to Luke’s Gospel, is one of the more jarring parables, for its original hearers and also—and maybe especially—for many modern hearers because we relate to the rich man. Many of us have 401(k)s or other retirement accounts (or want to have them), and Western society has taught us to dream of retirement years when we can eat, drink, and be merry. And so it doesn’t seem wrong that this man would seek to establish a plan for a future when he could relax. We are not told he gains his wealth by unjust means. We are not told anything negative about him at all until God appears and declares him a fool. 

That silence is part of the parable’s power. The man’s mistake isn’t how he made his money. It’s what he believed it could do for him. He put his trust in his possessions and not in God. That’s what made him foolish. 

It is disorienting to hear that he has miscalculated. But this disorientation is intentional because in disorienting us, Jesus can push us to a deeper truth about God and the Kingdom of God. 

For Luke, this truth is that wealth is a barrier and a distraction to following God because it makes us focus on the wrong things. In Luke 6:24, Jesus says: “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.” In Luke 14, Jesus will tell another parable of a great banquet, where the invited guests refuse to accept their invitations because they have lands and families to support. Jesus concludes that story by telling them that to become a disciple, you have to give up all that you have (14:33). In Luke 18, Jesus will meet a rich ruler who wants to inherit eternal life but cannot separate from his possessions and so goes away sad. Jesus will tell his disciples at that moment that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of heaven (Luke 18:25). 

They all have the same problem as the rich man on the night of his death and the brother in the crowd fighting over his inheritance: They are focused on the wrong thing. They are worried about what they possess and so have failed to focus on being “rich toward God.” Their hearts are with their earthly treasures, not with God.  

Treasures in heaven 

This is why, in the following section, Jesus tells his disciples that they don’t need to worry about their life, what they will eat and drink. Too often, this parable in Luke 12:13–21 is separated from the following text: verses 22–32. But they are tightly intertwined. We are not to worry about storing up wealth and what we will eat and drink, because God sees and provides, just as God provides for the ravens and the lilies. Do not worry about those things. Seek instead the Kingdom of God. 

In Luke 11, Jesus taught the disciples to ask God for what they need, trusting that God gives good gifts to his children. And here in Luke 12, Jesus is telling them not to worry about the wrong things. We have no control over the future. Stock markets rise and fall. Jobs come and go. We live and we die. We cannot change it by worrying. 

But in all of that, Luke stresses that Jesus invites us to trust, not in what we can build or save, but in the God who sees and provides. We cannot change the future, but we can follow God. We can seek after God’s Kingdom. We can turn our hearts and minds toward Jesus. Our possessions will not save us. 

But God can.  

During the Christian calendar’s “Ordinary Time,” Christians are invited to deepen our understanding of our faith by reflecting on the life and ministry of Jesus as depicted in the Gospels. But we can also grow in our understanding of the Divine by studying other parts of scripture. It’s fitting, then, that the lectionary asks us to reflect on the words of “the Teacher” (the main speaker in the book of Ecclesiastes, also called Qoheleth). 

But one might wonder: Why is the Teacher apparently so discouraged in the verses in the day’s reading? 

Ephemeral existence

One answer to this question is that he is bothered by the fact that he will die (verse 18). He knows well that no one lives forever and that an individual’s “life is short,” especially when compared with the seeming eternality of the cosmos.

All is vanity, says the Teacher.

The Hebrew word for vanity—hevel—most basically refers to a mist or vapor. The Teacher knows that just as the vapor from the pot boiling on your stove exists only for a moment and then disappears, so too are humans, and their efforts to secure their own advantages through wealth or pleasure, fleeting. As Ecclesiates 1:4 says:

A generation goes, and a generation comes.

Only Earth “remains forever.”

You can’t take it with you

But more than this, the teacher seems to lament that he can’t take his wealth—all for which he has toiled in life—with him when he expires. As 2:18 says: 

I hated all my toil in which I had toiled under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to my successor.

And we know from Ecclesiastes 2:4–9 that the Teacher was immensely wealthy. Like some Christians today in North America—especially compared to the material status of the rest of the world—the Teacher possessed a lot in this life that he could not take with him to the next, to Sheol—the grave, or abode of the dead in the Hebrew Bible. As Ecclesiastes 9:10 says:

There is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.

No control 

The Teacher, however, knows not only that he can take nothing with him when he dies. He also recognizes that when his life ends, he will have to leave all that he worked for to another person, and this person, not the Teacher himself, will enjoy the fruits of his labor. 

This, too, leads the Teacher to despair. 

By contrast, for many of us today, there is satisfaction in knowing that we can make arrangements to leave something of our wealth to others—our children, or a worthy cause perhaps. Still, even if one might diligently plan—by composing a last will and testament, say—in the end we really can’t control what happens to our material possessions after we are gone. 

Seeking advantage

One can’t help but wonder if the Teacher’s concern with what will happen to his wealth after he is gone is a sign that he has overvalued wealth. Indeed, the Teacher in Ecclesiastes has from the book’s outset been interested in discovering some “gain” or “advantage” in life that he can seize. He wonders:

What do people gain from all the toil
     at which they toil under the sun? (1:3)

The Teacher, it seems, is looking for meaning in life, what it is that makes people—including him—happy. 

Perhaps pleasure is the key: Ecclesiastes 2:1 says:

I said to myself, “Come now, I will make a test of pleasure; enjoy yourself.” 

But the Teacher discovered that “this also was vanity”—fleeting, not of genuine value. 

Perhaps wealth, achievement, power, and the fulfillment of any and all desire is the key. Despite the Teacher’s great riches, building projects, power over others, and sexual exploits, as 2:4–10 describes, he was again forced to conclude that all this also was fleeting, not the key to happiness and a fulfilling life:

Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent in doing it, and again, all was vanity and a chasing after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun. (2:11)

Looking in all the wrong places

Yet like Johnny Lee, who in his old country music hit was “Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places,” the Teacher in Ecclesiastes seems to come to understand that he had been looking for meaning and happiness, or flourishing in his short life—in all the wrong places.

We learn that the Teacher concludes that both his life and his wealth—along with efforts to enjoy his goods and control what happens to them—are fleeting, not long-lasting, and so not nearly as valuable as he had thought. They alone were not able to secure for him the meaning and happiness he desired.

As we read Ecclesiastes, however, we discover that the Teacher comes to a famous conclusion, one he repeats in some form at least seven times in the book. In light of all that he has discovered, he comes to believe that there is nothing better for humans than to eat, drink, and enjoy what we might have (for example, 9:7–9).

Has the Teacher’s discouragement regarding the fleetingness of life and the lack of value in all those things so many people believe will provide true gain in life—real meaning or happiness—changed to joy, that key Christian virtue? Has he realized that in light of the hevel of life and our sometimes wrongheaded pursuit of goods we think will fill our lives with joy but won’t (at least not for long), what we should do is slow down and enjoy the basics, the simple things—our food, our drink, our friends and family? Quite possibly.

If so, this is certainly a message that many modern people, caught up in the pursuit of well-paying careers and different sorts of achievements—but who, despite the plethora of things and achievements we hold, lack genuine happiness or flourishing—may well need to hear. Christian faith is not centered on the pursuit and enjoyment of wealth, power, pleasure, and status but the acceptance of the divine gift that frees us to a life of humble service.

The prophet envisions God as a tender, loving, intimate parent who shows mercy.

After last week’s powerful and problematic marriage metaphor from Hosea 1, this week’s oracle from the same prophetic book draws upon another familial metaphor: parent and child. The personal relationship between these two figures becomes a way to imagine God’s relationship with Israel. A two-week sermon series on Hosea, using these two metaphors, provides excellent opportunities to talk about portrayals of God in the Old Testament. Using two familial images, the metaphors highlight God’s relational qualities and reliable presence among God’s people. 

Several critical moments occur in this passage. God’s response to the situation seems to change as the passage develops. I divide the chapter into four sections, highlighting God’s movement from traditional judgment to mercy.

God’s love (verses 1, 3–4)

The passage first recounts the events immediately following the exodus event. Hosea returns to this liberating moment in the life of God’s people, when Israel was a child in need of care and instruction, in need of a parent.

God loves Israel, calls Israel, teaches Israel to walk, takes Israel into God’s arms, heals them, leads them, and feeds them. God takes care of the “newborn” Israel after their release from Egypt. God is an attentive, caring parent who nurtures a toddler and teaches them as they develop. 

We know that the prophet, Hosea, is depicted as a father in Hosea 1, but the images here are maternal too. Parents know the depth of joy felt when a toddler begins to walk for the first time. We know the joy of holding a child in our arms to express love and protection. These are tender moments of love and devotion. They express a level of intimacy within the relationship. God is not a distant parent or aloof being.

God is an attentive parent. 

The people’s response (verses 2, 7)

In verses 2 and 7, the people’s response to God’s compassion is highlighted. The people rebel. They run away from their parent. They continue to take actions that disappoint God. The prophet mentions idolatry in particular. 

Do the people not know or trust their parent God?

Are the people trying to find a new parent?

The prophet’s parent-child metaphor works here as the passage recalls children who do not always listen to their parents. The metaphor explores the power dynamics at play and the sense of powerlessness on the parent’s part to fully control their children’s actions.

God’s initial judgment (verses 5–6)

God’s preliminary response to the people’s actions is to punish and discipline. God threatens to send Israel back to Egypt and Assyria. God ponders a “hands-off” parenting technique so that larger empires will “guide” Israel. 

This divine response is what we have come to expect from the prophets. When the people disobey God, the prophets warn of God’s judgment. Their actions have consequences; their idolatry will cause them to be in bondage and ruled by other people.

God’s introspection and declaration (verses 8–9)

Something momentous happens between verses 7 and 8. 

God undergoes a change of heart, a rethinking of God’s intention to punish, a return to the intimacy of the parent-child relationship. It is a turning point in the passage. We might say there is a long pause, a deep breath, between these two verses as God moves from reaction to response.

Verse 8 provides four rhetorical questions in which God reconsiders God’s relationship with Israel. 

How can I give you up? How can I hand you over?

God’s compassion for God’s children causes God to reconsider the path of judgment. In a tender moment of care, God admits that God cannot just treat Israel like the cities of Admah and Zeboiim, which were destroyed with Sodom and Gomorrah. Devastation is not the pathway to a better future for Israel. 

So, God boldly decides: I will not execute my fierce anger.

Even though God could discipline, God decides against it. God declares that God does not have to engage in human activities like retribution and punishment. God is God, not a mortal. God can make a different decision. The Holy One of Israel can respond with compassion.

It is invaluable to linger over this portrait of God’s mercy as many faithful folks today understand (wrongly) the God of the Old Testament as a God of judgment and wrath. In Hosea 11, we have God turning from anger and destruction. We have a depiction of God that is actually found throughout the Old Testament. In Exodus 34:6, we read:

The LORD, the LORD,
a God merciful and gracious,
slow to anger,
and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.

This same understanding of God can be found in Numbers 14:18; Psalm 103:8; and Jonah 4:2. 

God chooses compassion, just like a good parent.  

As¹ Brueggemann and Bellinger say about Psalm 49, “The psalm is particularly important and surely pertinent in a contemporary society that is ‘rich in things and poor in soul.’”² As they suggest, Psalm 49 has something to teach us. We shall return to the lesson(s) to be learned, but note at the outset that Psalm 49 intends to teach. Verses 1–4 are full of the vocabulary of Israel’s wisdom tradition: “wisdom,” “understanding,” “proverb,” “riddle” (see Proverbs 1:2–7). It is clear why Psalm 49 is categorized as a wisdom psalm. Whether it was a part of Israelite/Judean worship is unclear, although the mention of “the music of the harp” makes this a possibility (see Psalms 33:2; 150:3). What are the lessons to be learned?

We are mortal

The most obvious lesson is that everyone—wise or foolish, rich or poor—will die. Verses 5–12 make this point, and it is reinforced in verses 13–20, which are not included in the lection. Verse 12 summarizes the lesson: “Mortals … are like the animals that perish.” In fact, we can infer that this line may reveal the riddle (verse 4) underlying the psalm: How are humans and animals alike?

This lesson is not unique to Psalm 49. Ecclesiastes, another product of the wisdom tradition, makes the same point (see Ecclesiastes 2:14–23; 3:18–22), as does Psalm 90 (see especially verses 3–6, 9–10). The reality of mortality is sobering, but it is not necessarily an occasion for despair. In Psalm 90, the reality of mortality draws the psalmist more fully into life: “So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart” or, better translated, “So teach us to make each day count …” The same can be said of Ecclesiastes, who, in the final analysis, invites his student to live fully and faithfully within their allotted time (see 2:24–26; 3:22; 5:18–20; 12:13–14). As for the psalmist of Psalm 49, who is the impoverished victim of wealthy oppressors (verses 5–6), they may derive some comfort from the fact that their wealthy opponents will die and cannot take their riches with them (see verse 17). But this could be cold comfort, for the psalmist will die too!

So, what is the advantage of the faithful? It seems to be that they accept their mortality and entrust life and future to God (verse 15), whereas the wealthy opponents seek to deny their mortality and to compensate by acquiring more riches, even at the expense of the psalmist and others in the psalmist’s position. From this perspective, the issue becomes one of trust (see verse 6).

Trusting God or trusting self and wealth

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “No one can serve two masters; … You cannot serve God and wealth” (Matthew 6:24). This verse clarifies the issue in Psalm 49. The psalmist’s opponents serve wealth; they “trust in their wealth and boast of the abundance of their riches” (verse 6). In short, they trust themselves, and they fail to trust God. So they have no qualms about getting ahead by persecuting the psalmist (verse 5), possibly even blaming the impoverished psalmist for being poor while congratulating themselves that God has blessed them—an ancient form of the Prosperity Gospel, perhaps?

What sets the psalmist apart is that they trust God. That the psalmist trusts God, rather than self or wealth, is evident in verse 15, even though it is not clear exactly what is meant by the affirmation that God “will receive me” (see Genesis 5:24; 2 Kings 2:1–12; Psalm 73:24). In any case, this trust in God enables the psalmist not to fear (or envy perhaps) the wealthy (verse 5; see also verse 16). 

The final verse of the psalm also suggests the difference between the psalmist and the wealthy opponents. The Hebrew of verse 19 differs slightly from that of verse 12. The New Revised Standard Version translates the two verses identically, but the New International Version captures the difference: “A man who has riches without understanding is like the beasts that perish” (emphasis added).

All will die, but the significance of death will differ. Those who trust themselves and their wealth die without understanding, like the beasts. The implication is that the psalmist and all the faithful die with understanding, unlike the beasts in the final analysis; that is, they die trusting God and entrusting life and future to God (verse 15). The implication, too, is that this manner of dying will affect one’s living—that is, one will live wisely and faithfully, knowing that life consists of serving neither wealth nor self, and thus refusing to exploit and oppress others for one’s own benefit.

Back to contemporary society

James L. Mays suggests that Jesus had Psalm 49 in mind when he taught about truly saving one’s life: “For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?” (Mark 8:36–37).³ Jesus could also have had Psalm 49 in mind when he said, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” (Mark 10:23), and when he told the parable of the rich fool (Luke 12:13–21).

I suspect that most readers of this essay live in and benefit from perhaps the wealthiest society in the history of humankind, and wealth easily distracts us. It’s easy for greed to become routine, even virtuous. It’s easy to idolize wealth and the wealthy, and to conclude that life does indeed consist in the abundance of our possessions (see Luke 12:15). It’s easy to overlook the way our wealth is attained at other people’s expense. It’s easy to trust ourselves and our wealth instead of trusting God. We need to hear the lessons of Psalm 49 that Jesus incorporated into the proclamation of the good news of God’s realm.

Notes

1. Commentary previously published on this website for July 31, 2022.
2. Walter Brueggemann and William H. Bellinger Jr., Psalms, New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge University Press, 2014), 229.
3. James L. Mays, Psalms, Interpretation (John Knox, 1994), 191.

The striking language and descriptions in Colossians 3:1–11 build on the claims Paul (whom I here identify as the author for simplicity) has developed since 2:6. In 2:11–15, Paul writes of the Colossians’ transformation (see also 1:13–14), which is at once an anthropological (2:11–12), christological (2:9–10), and cosmological (2:8, 13–15, 20) event. Importantly, the Colossians have, in their baptism, experienced a type of death, burial, and resurrection into new life with Christ (2:11–14; see also Romans 6:1–11). It is that experience of resurrection to which Paul alludes in 3:1: “So, if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God” (New Revised Standard Version).

This verse introduces Paul’s instructions in the whole of 3:1–11, which consist of moral imperatives grounded in the Colossians’ present form of (transformed) existence in Christ. Their transformation is, in other words, the condition for the possibility of new moral life for the Colossians. Thus, in the following I examine aspects of that change, as Paul describes it, rather than progress through verses 1–11 in a sequential order.

In 3:5, Paul gives a brief glimpse into “that life” (verse 7) the Colossians lived before their conversion. They were “earthly,” living in “fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry)” (New Revised Standard Version). Put simply, vice characterized their past lives, and such vices seem still to pose a threat (verses 8–9). Yet Paul writes that at the threshold between their previous and current lives lies a change that has transformed the Colossians morally. He uses multiple metaphors to describe that change.

As stated above, Paul uses a death-burial-resurrection metaphor. In so doing, he envisages two “spheres” of existence: One is constituted by the “power of darkness” (1:13) and characterized by sins like those he lists in 3:5. Yet, after dying, they are raised to new life in a new sphere of existence—the sphere of new life in Christ (2:13; 3:4). Through a religious experience of transformation that Paul describes as death, the Colossians have, to borrow language from 1:13, been “rescued” from one sphere and transferred (methistēmi) into the sphere of the resurrected Christ (New Revised Standard Version). In a real sense, their life is joined with the living Christ, who is now “seated at the right hand of God” (3:1). Such is not apparent to the ordinary observer.

Inhabitants of Colossae could surely recognize that this group of Christ-followers had somehow changed. Yet, that they now live as united with the resurrected Lord (who dwells in heaven) is simply beyond the scope of what can be perceived based on empirical evidence alone (in other words, with “earthly” senses). Such is, perhaps, why Paul writes that their “life is hidden with Christ in God” (3:3). In short, with a metaphor of death and resurrection, Paul describes a transformation that is not only moral but anthropological (people are changed through a powerful experience) and cosmological (change involves a transfer between spheres of existence).

Paul also uses clothing metaphors to describe the Colossians’ experience of transformation. He writes in 3:9 that they have “stripped off (apekduomai) the old self (ton palaion anthrōpon) with its practices” and have “clothed (enduō) [themselves] with the new self (ton neon)” (New Revised Standard Version). In the Septuagint and some Second Temple Jewish writings, changes of clothing can symbolize some type of change in one’s identity.^[1] Paul, likewise, sometimes uses clothing metaphors to signify a transformation in selfhood or identity (for example, Galatians 3:27; 1 Corinthians 15:53–54; 2 Corinthians 5:1–5).

Here in Colossians, the clothing metaphor functions to portray a human transformation at the most fundamental level of one’s existence: A person has changed so substantially that Paul can identify the pre- and post-transformation person as two selves—an “old self” and a “new self” (New Revised Standard Version). That change is so profound that it relativizes (though without erasing) ethnic identities and socioeconomic statuses. To combine this metaphor with the one discussed above, the old self has died and the new self lives in Christ and experiences ongoing transformation in the form of “being renewed in the knowledge of its creator” (verse 10). It is that premise of continued renewal that grounds Paul’s moral instructions in 3:1–11.

A new self must adopt a moral way of living that corresponds with its new sphere of existence. On that basis, Paul instructs the Colossians to “put to death … whatever in you is earthly” (New Revised Standard Version). Although the Colossians have undergone a significant transformation, their moral conduct must continually come into alignment with the way of the risen Lord and his followers.

It seems, moreover, that the Colossians have been pressured to conform to alternative teaching or “philosophies,” which also entail alternative ways of living (2:4–8, 18–19). In light of such pressures, the logic of Paul’s rhetoric in 3:1–11 comes into view: Against the grain of their environments, the Colossians have been transformed to the extent that they have become new people in Christ. Paul urges them now to discard vices like dirty laundry, as they did their old selves, and to clothe themselves with new virtues that are befitting of those who live in Christ (3:12–14).

The mechanism for such continued change is renewal (3:10) and growth “in the knowledge of God” (1:10). Paul, in effect, writes to the Colossians, “You have become a new person in Christ; continue to grow morally into the people you’ve become.”

Notes

1. For examples and discussion, see Frederick David Carr, Being and Becoming: Human Transformation in the Letters of Paul (Baylor University Press, 2022), 129–32.