Castles in the Sand
August 26, 2012
D. Robert Chance
Luke 12:13-21
The Parable of the Rich Fool (Luke 12:13-21)
Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”
14
Jesus replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” 15 Then he said to them, “Watch out!
Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.”
16
And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. 17 He thought to
himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’
18
“Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my
surplus grain. 19 And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink
and be merry.”’
20
“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what
you have prepared for yourself?’
21
“This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”
13
Introduction...
The scene was beautiful. The ocean stretched out to the far edges of the horizon. It was a
beautiful day, the breeze just enough to bring a cooling touch to the hot air of August.
I sat in my beach chair and soaked in the relaxing and life renewing sun, absorbing the smells of
the beach, the tingle of the sand in my feet, the shade of my umbrella. I had a cup of early
morning coffee in the cup holder in my chair and all was good in the world.
The beach was almost empty, sea gulls flew overhead and occasionally a flock of sea birds
would soar by in single wing formation. The beach stretched out before me, a mixture of white
and eggshell sand with hundreds of broken shells left from the last high tide.
Halfway between the soft, warm sand where I sat and the hard flat wet sand where the waves
broke ever so gently upon the shore lay a stretch of sand 25 or 30 yards wide, a mixture of wet
and dry sand, pools of water and an open invitation to come and play in the sand.
As I looked out I noticed a small boy digging feverishly in the sand, building something, but
what it was I couldn't yet determine, indeed if even he knew what he was building. He had one
of children's toy shovels with a short wooden handle and a blue plastic shovel head stapled at one
end of the shovel. I would later come to learn that the boy was 10 years old and his name was
Ben. Ben was joined by his small sister who played as children often do along side of him but
totally uninvolved in any meaningful way what so ever with him in the construction of whatever
it was he was building. Their mother, wearing a brown on the bottom and red on the top bathing
suit sat, relaxing a few yards away reading her own book and seemingly somewhat oblivious to
all the activity of her children.
I looked around and took in the other sights and sounds of the beach. It was early yet but the
beach was becoming a growing hub of activity and sound. But my eyes kept coming back to the
little boy named Ben.
Whatever he was building he was accomplishing with astonishing effort and soon it began taking
shape. It was a wall of some kind. He was intense, deliberate and dedicated in the building of
this wall. First, he would dig down in the sand forming a trench, some 10, 15, and then 20 feet
long. Then he would build a new wall, going off in a new direction, connecting at one corner
and then another. He had no paper plans of course but it was clear that Ben had a plan in his
mind and while no one else knew where he was going with all this feverish activity he certainly
knew.
It went on for hours. In the grand scheme of things Ben was building walls surrounding and
defining his kingdom. Woe to any child who dared to enter Ben's kingdom to try and dig or join
the project. Ben wasn't open to help. He didn't want help. It was Ben's kingdom and Ben was in
charge. First the walls, then the pools within the walls, then the castle. At one point I mentioned
the unfolding scene to Mary and she took up interest in being another distant observer of the
whole drama. At one point Mary proudly proclaimed "Isn't that cute, look, Ben is so kind, he is
building a special place for his little sister to make her own walls and castle. After nodding in
not quite agreement I watched for a few minutes and I turned to Mary and said..."I don't think so.
Ben has essentially ejected his sister from his kingdom and built a small pool for her to sit in but
well outside of his walls. Mary looked on and agreed, "I should have known better". He wasn't
building a pool or a wall to bring his sister into his kingdom he was building another wall to shut
her out.
Ben worked all day, off and on. Occasionally he would disappear, coming back later to continue
the project. He was go down to the ocean, run in the surf for a bit but always come back to
building his Kingdom, making the walls stronger and more well defined and clearly more
articulated as HIS kingdom.
I took great note of Ben and his building activities. I couldn't help but think of the scripture and
what Jesus said about just such a thing. Remember…? Luke, Chapter 12.
13 Someone
in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with
me.”
replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” 15 Then he said
to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an
abundance of possessions.”
14 Jesus
16 And
he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant
harvest. 17 He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’
18 “Then
he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and
there I will store my surplus grain. 19 And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up
for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’
20 “But
God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then
who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’
21 “This
God.”
is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward
(The Parable of the Rich Fool) (Luke 12:13-21)
Ben may or may not have known but I knew and kept thinking how futile it all was. All that
work, all that effort, all that exclusive-ism and within a few short hours the tide would return and
wash Ben's kingdom out to sea. By day's end not even a trace would remain.
Indeed, Ben had an on-going battle with the sea and as soon as he got a wall in perfect position,
perfect construction, exactly where he wanted it a wave would crash in and undue much of what
he had just built.
But Ben never quit. He never gave up. He never relented. It was his kingdom, his domain, his
plan and the rest of world was oblivious to Ben. Building his kingdom and keeping all others out
was what Ben was about and he was serious and faithful to his call.
1. We are not all that different from Ben. We devote our whole life to building our castles
in the sand, to building walls to defining who we are, that which is ours and to keeping
others out.
It was easy to see the futility of all of Ben’s hard work and frenetic activity. He was fighting the
inevitable coming in of the tide and all his work was soon to be washed away.
I’ve been there. Done that. So have you.
We spend our whole life giving and giving and giving to our job and the day we leave we’re
history.
We skip our kid’s music concerts, and school plays to cut the grass, or work on the car, or clean
the house and we’re just building barns that won’t really matter.
We chase after “things”, forgetting that there real living and real value has little, if anything to do
with “things”.
It was easy to see the foolishness of the rich young ruler in Jesus’ parable devoting all of his
energy, and time and money and spirit not knowing he would be called home that very night but
it is so much harder to see our own foolishness, our own misplaced priorities, our own “building
of barns”.
Look back over your life. What have you given your best to; your job? Climbing up the career
ladder, acquiring bigger houses, living in better neighborhoods, gathering down at the local pub
to pass the time with your buds?
2. In the end it is all so futile. It is all so wasted. Sooner or later God will beckon us and
what we have spent our whole life building, accumulating, storing up for ours self will be
over.
Suppose your life ended tonight.
What would you want to be remembered for?
Did you send the “thank you” notes to people you really wish you had?
Do you spend the time with your children or your grandchildren that may never come back on
the window of opportunity again?
Have you stopped to smell the roses or are you just booking it on down the trail not seeing all the
beauty and joy of the journey?
We’re all going to die. It’s not a question of “if” but “when”.
We should live our life for the people that are most important to us.
We should live our life for the diamonds that truly matter, not the baubles we confuse with
diamonds.
We should learn to sing and laugh and dance and jump for joy with the people we are blessed to
share the journey with.
Somehow, we all know that mopping the floor, mowing the grass, waxing the car, weeding the
flower bed, cleaning the floors, washing the dog aren’t the things that really what we want to
devote our first and our best to.
It’s not that building new barns or building castles in the sand aren’t a part of life it’s that we
always have to keep them in perspective.
3. Live for the right things. Build the right kind of castles in the sand. They will not sink,
they will not be washed out to sea, and they will not be a lifelong exercise in foolishness and
futility. They will last forever.
* Build and pursue that which last, that which is worth our life...spiritual castles, not physical
ones. One is always temporary, one is always eternal, and we all know which is which.
After 44 years in the ministry I’m still amazed at how often people make it sound like coming to
church, reading the Bible, praying and singing together and gathering in fellowship is a sacrifice
or something they do for me. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Paying attention the spiritual dimension of
your life is the very best gift you can give yourself. It’s God’s gift to all of us and our gift to
each other to be able to build and pursue this spiritual castle we call “church”.
* Build to include, not exclude those with whom we share our life. Tear the walls down and
build entrances, wide and tall for others to come and share the kingdom with us.
Ben worked so hard to keep others from helping him. It was HIS castle, his trench, his wall. He
wanted no help and accepted none. Marybeth went down to dig with him but Ben ignored her,
making it clear he wanted no help.
Let others in. Let others join you. Let others make the journey with you. Join with others in the
living out the things that count. Tear down the walls. Love others, trust others, share with those
closest to you your inner self, who you really are, what matters to you. Life is too precious;
friends are too rare to squander them, to throw them away over disagreements, to ignore the help
we give one another.
* Work for that which lasts not that which fades, is forgotten or is washed out to sea with the
next changing of the tides.
* Live, love and enjoy the beach for all it's worth today, none of us are guaranteed tomorrow
anyway.
We all to plan but too often we fail to enjoy the blessings of today because we’re looking too
much at tomorrow.
Today has more than enough joy for today for us to take in, to enjoy and to revel in.
Blessings abound, don’t miss them.
Windows of opportunity are there, don’t fail to open them.
Doorways open to a new day are in front of you, go through them.
Enjoy today – we never know what tomorrow brings.
Closing...
Long long ago Mary, myself and two friends traveled every day from Bethel Kentucky to
Lexington.
We took turns car pooling together. Bob Parker
already had a PHD in engineering, and had worked
for a number of years for Chevrolet working on
designing and building 6 cylinder engines.
Howard, like myself was younger and fresh out of
college on his way to a graduate degree in either
ministry or theology.
Mary was on her way to a day of work at the Animal Sciences Department at the University of
Kentucky and my two friends and I were on our way to a day of study at Lexington Theological
Seminary where we were in pursuit of our degrees.
It was early in the morning, maybe 6 or 6:30 at the latest and our eyes were still filled with sleep
from the night before. We traveled along the Interstate (I-64) at 60, 65 miles an hour and the one
rocky hillside after another rolled into one another. The fields were broken by acres of corn or
tobacco.
Homes were dotted along the way from place to place and the highway was largely devoid of
traffic at that early hour of the morning.
In order to pass the time of day and keep engaged with the driver, lest he fall asleep at the wheel
we noticed and talked about the surrounding country side, the politics of the day and about
anything else that would pass for conversation.
One day we noticed a new barn going up alongside an old and well worn day that was probably
100 years or old more. We discussed how much life had changed since that first barn went up
and how much more it was change once the new was finished. We watched with interest the
whole process of building a new barn and we marveled at how quickly just a few men were
accomplishing the task. I still remember like it was yesterday how much discussion we had
around the building of the new barn and somehow we brought politics, theology, scripture,
history and the future all into it. The scripture of the foolish young rich man came into
discussion and it took on new meaning and new power as I attached it to the very building of a
new barn before my eyes.
Years later I would make the same journey down the same highway and I have often looked for
the new barn we all watched go up and commented on to such depth of thought. I’ve never
really identified it again. Too many years, too much change, too many barns, too many homes,
too many new sub-divisions, and houses to know which barn it was for sure.
I wonder though…whatever became of the man who owned that field?
Whatever became of the man who owned the barn?
Whatever happened to the family that lived there?
Life goes by in a hurry and there are so many things we never really know or questions we just
can’t answer.
As I watched Ben build his sand castles and surrounding walls in the sand I couldn't help but
remember the scene from long ago and far away in Kentucky.
700…800 hundred miles away,
45 years, endless stretches of highway,
Unimaginably different life styles and a life time of history, of life and death removed the
two scenes joined together in my mind.
My own life was flashing before my eyes.
What had I lived for?
Had I devoted my life to new building new barns and new walls only to see them wash away in
the sand or with the changing of the tide?
Had I devoted myself to that which lasts, that which is eternal, that which is worth living my life
to?
Were God to call me home today would I have done what I wanted to do with my life, sown the
seeds that would produce the harvest I desired and made a difference with my life?
I hope so.
I'm glad I got to watch Ben. Thank you Ben for reminding me of something so important, so
eternal, so deep that I couldn't miss the lesson. Ben was having fun building his castles and he
devoted so much energy and so much spirit to a task that washed away at the end of the day.
What about you?
It’s one thing to have fun building castles in the sand, dig holes for your sister to sit in so she
can’t come into your kingdom but it’s quite another to spend your whole life chasing after all the
wrong things, keeping the people who are special to you out of your heart and ignoring what
truly counts.
Your life isn't over yet? Are you living for what really matters? Are you building that which
counts or are you feverishly building walls to shut people out and lock yourself in?
It's never too late. No matter what you have or haven't been doing with your life now is the time
to come back to God, now is the time to connect with the Lord, now is the time to begin anew
living your life for what truly counts. The tide comes in and goes out every day that much I can
promise you. What you devote your life to in between is up to you. What's your decision?
20 “But
God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then
who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’
21 “This
is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward