In 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. preached a sermon entitled, “Why Jesus Called A Man A Fool.” His text was Luke 12:16-21, the parable of the rich man who had a bumper crop and decided to pull down his old barns and build larger ones where he would store all his grain and goods.
Pastor King notes that the man was not called a fool simply because he was rich. Things had come together for this man in such a manner that he had far more than he needed. What made him a fool was his assumption about himself and his relationship to others. With his riches, he said, “I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”
The point of the story: “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’”
King notes that the man made relaxing, eating, drinking and being merry the goal of his life. King further notes the use of the word “I.” The man assumes that it is all about him. He does not acknowledge his dependence on others, those who worked his land and built his barns.
King talks about our interdependence. Those who are rich in our nation did not become rich without the work of others. He also reminds us of the way “the black man made America wealthy.” The wealth the nation derived from cotton was produced on the backs of an enslaved people. That work remains unpaid.
Pride and arrogance make us blind to our dependence on others. Ultimately, it makes us blind to our dependence on God for our very being and for our purpose in life, which is to love one another as God has loved us.
King applies this blindness to the kind of religion we make up for ourselves:
“Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of people and is not concerned about the slums that cripple the souls—the economic conditions that stagnate the soul and the city governments that may damn the soul—is a dry, dead, do-nothing religion in need of new blood.”
King echos Jesus who calls us to feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, care for the sick, and visit those in prison. And the prophet Micah who tells us what God requires of human beings: We are “to do justice and to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God.”