"Why Jesus Called A Man A Fool."
(Yeah)
I want to share with you a dramatic little
story from the gospel as recorded by Saint
Luke.
It is a story of a man who by all standards
(Yes, Speak, doc, speak) of measurement would
be considered a highly successful man.
(Yes) And yet Jesus called him a fool.
(Yes) If you will read that parable, you will
discover that the central character in the
drama is a certain rich man.
(Yes) This man was so rich that his farm yielded
tremendous crops.
(Yes) In fact, the crops were so great that
he didn’t know what to do.
It occurred to him that he had only one alternative
and that was to build some new and bigger
barns so he could store all of his crops.
(Yes)
Take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.’"
(Yes) That brother thought that was the end
of life.
(All right)
But the parable doesn’t end with that man
making his statement.
(My Lord) It ends by saying that God said
to him, (Yes) "Thou fool.
(Yes) Not next year, not next week, not tomorrow,
but this night, (Yes) thy soul is required
of thee."
(Yes)
And so it was at the height of his prosperity
he died.
Look at that parable.
(Yes) Think about it.
(Yes) Think of this man: If he lived in Chicago
today, he would be considered "a big shot."
(My Lord) And he would abound with all of
the social prestige and all of the community
influence that could be afforded.
(Yes) Most people would look up to him because
he would have that something called money.
(Yes) And yet a Galilean peasant had the audacity
to call that man a fool.
(Yes)
I’d like for you to look at this parable
with me and try to decipher the real reason
that Jesus called this man a fool.
Number one, Jesus called this man a fool because
he allowed the means by which he lived to
outdistance the ends for which he lived.
(Yes) You see, each of us lives in two realms,
the within and the without.
(Yeah) Now the within of our lives is that
realm of spiritual ends expressed in art,
literature, religion, and morality.
The without of our lives is that complex of
devices, of mechanisms and instrumentalities
by means of which we live.
The house we live in—that’s a part of
the means by which we live.
The car we drive, the clothes we wear, the
money that we are able to accumulate—in
short, the physical stuff that’s necessary
for us to exist.
(My Lord)
Now the problem is that we must always keep
a line of demarcation between the two.
(My Lord) This man was a fool because he didn’t
do that.
(Yes)
He didn’t make contributions to civil rights.
(Yes) He looked at suffering humanity and
wasn’t concerned about it.
(Yeah)
He probably gave his wife mink coats, a convertible
automobile, but he didn’t give her what
she needed most, love and affection.
(Yes) He probably provided bread for his children,
but he didn’t give them any attention; he
didn’t really love them.
And so this man justly deserved his title.
He was an eternal fool.
(Yes) He allowed the means by which he lived
to outdistance the ends for which he lived.
(Yes)
Now number two, this man was a fool because
he failed to realize his dependence on others.
(Yes) Now if you read that parable in the
book of Luke, you will discover that this
man utters about sixty words.
And do you know in sixty words he said "I"
and "my" more than fifteen times?
(My Lord) This man was a fool because he said
"I" and "my" so much until he lost the capacity
to say "we" and "our."
(Yes)
This man talked like he could build the barns
by himself, like he could till the soil by
himself.
And he failed to realize that wealth is always
a result of the commonwealth.
And oh my friends, I don’t want you to forget
it.
No matter where you are today, somebody helped
you to get there.
(Yes)
In a larger sense we’ve got to see this
in our world today.
Our white brothers must see this; they haven’t
seen it up to now.
The great problem facing our nation today
in the area of race is that it is the black
man who to a large extent produced the wealth
of this nation.
(All right) And the nation doesn’t have
sense enough to share its wealth and its power
with the very people who made it so.
(All right) And I know what I’m talking
about this morning.
(Yes, sir) The black man made America wealthy.
(Yes, sir)
We’ve been here—that’s why I tell you
right now, I’m not going anywhere.
They can talk, these groups, some people talking
about a separate state, or go back to Africa.
I love Africa, it’s our ancestral home.
But I don’t know about you.
My grandfather and my great-grandfather did
too much to build this nation for me to be
talking about getting away from it.
[applause] Before the Pilgrim fathers landed
at Plymouth in 1620, we were here.
(Oh yeah) Before Jefferson etched across the
pages of history the majestic words of the
Declaration of Independence, we were here.
(All right) Before the beautiful words of
the "Star Spangled Banner" were written, we
were here.
(Yeah) For more than two centuries, our forebearers
labored here without wages.
They made cotton king.
With their hands and with their backs and
with their labor, they built the sturdy docks,
the stout factories, the impressive mansions
of the South.
(My Lord)
Now this nation is telling us that we can’t
build.
Negroes are excluded almost absolutely from
the building trades.
It’s lily white.
Why?
Because these jobs pay six, seven, eight,
nine and ten dollars an hour, and they don’t
want Negroes to have it.
[applause] And I feel that if something doesn’t
happen soon, and something massive, the same
indictment will come to America—"Thou fool!"
That man said he didn’t know what to do
with his goods, he had so many.
Oh, I wish I could have advised him.
(My Lord) A lot of places to go, and there
were a lot of things that could be done.
There were hungry stomachs that needed to
be filled; there were empty pockets that needed
access to money.
America today, my friends, is also rich in
goods.
(My Lord) We have our barns, and every day
our rich nation is building new and larger
and greater barns.
You know, we spend millions of dollars a day
to store surplus food.
But I want to say to America, "I know where
you can store that food free of charge: (Yes)
in the wrinkled stomachs of the millions of
God’s children in Asia and Africa and South
America and in our own nation who go to bed
hungry tonight."
(Yes)
There are a lot of fools around.
(Lord help him) Because they fail to realize
their dependence on others.
Finally, this man was a fool because he failed
to realize his dependence on God.
(Yeah) Do you know that man talked like he
regulated the seasons?
That man talked like he gave the rain to grapple
with the fertility of the soil.
(Yes) That man talked like he provided the
dew.
He was a fool because he ended up acting like
he was the Creator, (Yes) instead of a creature.
(Amen)
And this man-centered foolishness is still
alive today.
You know, a lot of people are forgetting God.
people just get involved in other things.
(Yes)
But I tell you this morning, my friends, there’s
no way to get rid of him.
One day, you’re going to need him.
(My Lord) The problems of life will begin
to overwhelm you; disappointments will begin
to beat upon the door of your life like a
tidal wave.
(Yes) And if you don’t have a deep and patient
faith, (Well) you aren’t going to be able
to make it.
(My Lord) I know this from my own experience.
(Yes)
I grew up in the church.
I’m the son of a preacher, I’m the great-grandson
of a preacher, and the great-great-grandson
of a preacher.
My father is a preacher, my grandfather was
a preacher, my great-grandfather was a preacher,
my only brother is a preacher, my Daddy’s
brother is a preacher.
So I didn’t have much choice, I guess.
[laughter] But I had grown up in the church,
and the church meant something very real to
me, but it was a kind of inherited religion
and I had never felt (My Lord) an experience
with God in the way that you must have it
if you’re going to walk the lonely paths
of this life.
(Yeah)
But one day after finishing school, I was
called to a little church down in Montgomery,
Alabama,
a year later, a lady by the name of Rosa Parks
decided that she wasn’t going to take it
any longer.
She stayed in a bus seat, and you may not
remember it because (I do) it’s way back
now several years, but it was the beginning
of a movement where fifty thousand black men
and women refused absolutely to ride the city
buses.
And we walked together for 381 days.
(Yes, sir) That’s what we got to learn in
the North: Negroes have to learn to stick
together.
We stuck together.
[applause] We sent out the call and no Negro
rode the buses.
It was one of the most amazing things I’ve
ever seen in my life.
And the people of Montgomery asked me to serve
as the spokesman, and as the president of
the new organization—the Montgomery Improvement
Association that came into being to lead the
boycott—I couldn’t say no.
And then we started our struggle together.
(Yeah)
Things were going well for the first few days,
but then about ten or fifteen days later,
after the white people in Montgomery knew
that we meant business, they started doing
some nasty things.
(Yes) They started making nasty telephone
calls, and it came to the point that some
days more than forty telephone calls would
come in, threatening my life, the life of
my family, the life of my children.
I took it for a while in a strong manner.
But I never will forget one night very late.
It was around midnight.
And you can have some strange experiences
at midnight.
(Yes, sir) I had been out meeting with the
steering committee all that night.
And I came home, and my wife was in the bed
and I immediately crawled into bed to get
some rest to get up early the next morning
to try to keep things going.
And immediately the telephone started ringing
and I picked it up.
On the other end was an ugly voice.
That voice said to me, in substance, "Nigger,
we are tired of you and your mess now.
And if you aren’t out of this town in three
days, we’re going to blow your brains out
and blow up your house."
(Lord Jesus)
I’d heard these things before, but for some
reason that night it got to me.
I turned over and I tried to go to sleep,
but I couldn’t sleep.
(Yes) I was frustrated, bewildered.
And then I got up and went back to the kitchen
and I started warming some coffee, thinking
that coffee would give me a little relief.
And then I started thinking about many things.
I pulled back on the theology and philosophy
that I had just studied in the universities,
trying to give philosophical and theological
reasons for the existence and the reality
of sin and evil, but the answer didn’t quite
come there.
I sat there and thought about a beautiful
little daughter who had just been born about
a month earlier.
We have four children now, but we only had
one then.
She was the darling of my life.
I’d come in night after night and see that
little gentle smile.
And I sat at that table thinking about that
little girl and thinking about the fact that
she could be taken away from me any minute.
(Go ahead) And I started thinking about a
dedicated, devoted, and loyal wife who was
over there asleep.
(Yes) And she could be taken from me, or I
could be taken from her.
And I got to the point that I couldn’t take
it any longer; I was weak.
(Yes)
Something said to me, you can’t call on
Daddy now, he’s up in Atlanta a hundred
and seventy-five miles away.
(Yes) You can’t even call on Mama now.
(My Lord) You’ve got to call on that something
in that person that your Daddy used to tell
you about.
(Yes) That power that can make a way out of
no way.
(Yes) And I discovered then that religion
had to become real to me and I had to know
God for myself.
(Yes, sir) And I bowed down over that cup
of coffee—I never will forget it.
(Yes, sir) And oh yes, I prayed a prayer and
I prayed out loud that night.
(Yes) I said, "Lord, I’m down here trying
to do what’s right.
(Yes) I think I’m right; I think the cause
that we represent is right.
(Yes) But Lord, I must confess that I’m
weak now; I’m faltering; I’m losing my
courage.
(Yes) And I can’t let the people see me
like this because if they see me weak and
losing my courage, they will begin to get
weak."
(Yes)
And it seemed at that moment that I could
hear an inner voice saying to me, (Yes) "Martin
Luther, (Yes) stand up for righteousness,
(Yes) stand up for justice, (Yes) stand up
for truth.
(Yes) And lo I will be with you, (Yes) even
until the end of the world."
And I’ll tell you, I’ve seen the lightning
flash.
I’ve heard the thunder roll.
I felt sin- breakers dashing, trying to conquer
my soul.
But I heard the voice of Jesus saying still
to fight on.
He promised never to leave me, never to leave
me alone.
No, never alone.
No, never alone.
He promised never to leave me, (Never) never
to leave me alone.
And I’m going on in believing in him.
(Yes) You’d better know him, and know his
name, and know how to call his name.
(Yes)
Don’t be a fool.
Recognize your dependence on God.
(Yes, sir)
Centuries ago Jeremiah raised a question,
"Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?"
He raised it because he saw the good people
suffering so often and the evil people prospering.
(Yes, sir) Centuries later our slave foreparents
came along.
(Yes, sir) And they too saw the injustices
of life, and had nothing to look forward to
morning after morning but the rawhide whip
of the overseer, long rows of cotton in the
sizzling heat.
But they did an amazing thing.
They looked back across the centuries and
they took Jeremiah’s question mark and straightened
it into an exclamation point.
And they could sing, "There is a balm in Gilead
to make the wounded whole.
(Yes) There is a balm in Gilead to heal the
sin-sick soul."
And there is another stanza that I like so
well: "Sometimes (Yeah) I feel discouraged."
(Yes)
And I don’t mind telling you this morning
that sometimes I feel discouraged.
(All right) I felt discouraged in Chicago.
As I move through Mississippi and Georgia
and Alabama, I feel discouraged.
(Yes, sir) Living every day under the threat
of death, I feel discouraged sometimes.
Living every day under extensive criticisms,
even from Negroes, I feel discouraged sometimes.
[applause] Yes, sometimes I feel discouraged
and feel my work’s in vain.
But then the holy spirit (Yes) revives my
soul again.
"There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded
whole.
There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick
soul."
