Luke 12:13-21
Lead in: In Luke 12, a man wants Jesus to intervene to assure him that he gets his fair share of the family inheritance. Jesus refuses his request. Trying to fix the situation by intervening is a boundary Jesus will not cross. Interfering inappropriately creates a “rescue triangle” where the rescuer now
becomes the new perpetrator and then both the victim and the perpetrator turn against the rescuer.
Prompt: Do you recognize the rescue triangle in your own life? What roles have you played, victim, rescuer, or perpetrator, or all of them? What did you learn?
Lead in: In the parable Jesus tells in Luke 12, the rich farmer builds more barns to store his
overflowing wealth.
Prompt: Where in your life might you be filling your barns with just yourself in mind and leaving out God?
Lead in: Reflecting on the inevitability of death, someone once wrote, “Following Christ means striving to live with such generosity that when death inevitably arrives on our doorstep, we will greet death with the peace that comes from knowing that our lives have been rich in what matters to God.”
Prompt: If death were to arrive at your doorstep today on a scale of one to ten with one being not ready and ten being very ready, how ready are you? Give yourself a number and explain why.
Lead in: I’ve heard greed described in two words, “me first.” Without wanting to, it’s easy to slip into the habit of always thinking of “me first.”
Prompt: Knowing yourself as you do, where and when are you most prone to slipping into “me first” thinking? What can you do to change that?
Lead in: In Luke 12, Jesus tells the man who calls him teacher to, “Take care to guard against all greed, for though one may be rich, one’s life does not consist of possessions.”
Prompt: What do you think Jesus was trying to tell the man? How does that apply to you?
Lead in: In Luke 12, Jesus tells the sad story of the wealthy farmer who had accumulated so much that he built even bigger barns to store more when he already had enough. But then without
warning, the Lord came to him and said, “You fool! This very night your life will be demanded of you!”
Prompt: Knowing that someday our very life will be demanded of us, if you were to change anything about the way you are living your life today, what would it be?