William Blake once defended his art by saying, ‘The wisest of the Ancients considered what is not too Explicit as the fittest for Instruction because it rouzes the faculties to act’ (Blake 2008: 702). Parables, too, can ‘rouze the faculties to act’—partly because they, like visual art, can have ambiguities that provoke divergent responses from interpreters.

Jesus’s parables focus extensively on issues of money and power. Jesus in Luke’s Gospel declares, for example, that wealthy elites should stop being ‘lovers of money’ (16:14) driven by greed. He chastises elites for their love of possessions and disregard of the poor (e.g. 14:7–24, where Jesus expects his wealthy host to ‘invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind’ to a feast). Jesus links the elites’ striving for money with their lack of concern for human beings, and this connection between riches and unrighteousness can only be broken by giving to the disadvantaged without expecting anything in return (14:12–14; see also 16:9, 19–31).

According to ancient farming manuals (written by and for elites), the rich man could be seen as a shrewd agribusinessman who hoards his crops until he can secure a higher price (e.g. Cato, On Agriculture 3.2), but God—in the only divine appearance in Jesus’s parables—calls the man a fool (see also Proverbs 11:26: ‘people curse those who hold back grain’). The rich fool exemplifies those who do not strive for the kingdom of God, whose treasure is material goods and ‘the abundance of possessions’ (12:15), and who do not care for those around them by selling their possessions and giving alms (12:33).

The man is foolish because he does not realize that ‘his’ abundant harvest comes from and ultimately belongs to God and that he has a responsibility to use it as God would want (see Isaiah 5:8). The man only ‘dialogued with himself’—in a soliloquy that includes referring to himself with ‘I’ or ‘my’ eleven times (12:17–19)—which demonstrates his isolation and lack of community. Jesus’s parable thus portrays the greed of a rich man who withholds perishable food from others who may be perishing. As Theophylact notes: ‘You have available to you as storehouses the stomachs of the poor which can hold much. . . . They are in fact heavenly and divine storehouses, for he who feeds the pauper, feeds God’ (Stade 1997: 147).

The ability to empathize—‘suffer with’ other human beings—becomes the decisive element in understanding what God requires and what this parable wants (12:33–34). Such privileged people attempt to use their wealth to protect themselves from the vicissitudes of life, but that effort erects barriers harming their relationships with others and with God.

A striking commonality thus appears in these images. In each one—in a darkened room, sitting outside under a tree on his vast property, or inside his well-appointed house—you see a person isolated, alone, out of touch with his fellow human beings.

In Rembrandt van Rijn’s painting, whether he is a money changer or the rich fool, the man’s avarice is clear (e.g. in the ways in which it participates in the genre paintings that depict greed). But, like Ebenezer Scrooge before the appearance of Marley’s ghost in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, judgement has not yet appeared. Nonetheless, viewers are warned about the ultimate futility of avarice by the portrayal of this elderly man who should by now know better.

In Adriaen Collaert’s print, in case the image is not enough to open viewers’ ‘spiritual eyes’, the quatrain warns how riches lead ‘mortal men’ to vice, though any hints of judgement are difficult to discern. In the background of the print, for example, life goes on. But does the cross-shaped object in the distance foreshadow Jesus’s death? Perhaps, yet any direct foreshadowing of the rich man’s fate in the landscape seems unlikely even for those with ears to hear and eyes to see.

James B. Janknegt’s painting, like many interpretations of the parable, makes the judgement clear by portraying the angel of death standing before the rich man and uttering the fateful declaration of doom. It is distinctive, though—if not unique—in its simultaneous portrayal of Jesus’s emphasis on the importance of building community.

All these images, whether implicitly or explicitly, illustrate that building God’s community (e.g. selling one’s possessions and giving alms) results in ‘an unfailing treasure in heaven’ (12:33).

References

Blake, William. 2008. The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake, ed. by David V. Erdman (Berkeley: University of California Press)

Gowler, David B. 2024. Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press)

Stade, Fr Christopher. 1997. The Explanation by Blessed Theophylact of the Holy Gospel according to St Luke (House Springs, MO: Chrysostom)