Sunday Sermon with Dr. King #7

The Man Who Was a Fool

“Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee”
~Luke 12:20

This blog series is teaching me more than I anticipated and I am glad for it. There’s nothing better than learning MORE than what you thought you would. This sermon is to the point, clear, and concise. It is believed to have been preached in Detroit, Michigan in 1961**. Dr. King’s entire collection in Strength to Love* is a remarkable compilation and as I’ve said before: don’t take my blogs as an excuse NOT to read his original work. Trust me, go read the original work because it could change your life - no exaggeration.

In this sermon, Dr. King speaks from the parable of a rich man who seemed like he was living the life (here on Earth), with all material things afforded to him, plus social prestige and community respectability. However, Jesus called him a fool and he died that very night. Dr. King cites reasons why Jesus called him a fool but merely being wealthy was not one of these reasons. “Nothing in wealth is inherently vicious, and nothing in poverty is inherently virtuous” (p. 66). There were three specific reasons why he was called a fool: 1. “He permitted the ends for which he lived to become confused with the means by which he lived” (p. 66), 2. “He failed to realize his dependence on others” (p. 68), and 3. “He failed to realize his dependence on God” (p. 69).

1. “He permitted the ends for which he lived to become confused with the means by which he lived” (p. 66). This man became consumed by what Dr. King calls his external life, while his internal life was being left unattended. The external, devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by which we live” (p. 66), which includes “the house we live in, the car we drive, the clothes we wear, the economic sources we acquire – the material stuff we must have to exist” (p. 66), were his priorities. On the contrary, the internal, “spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion” (p. 66), were being ignored. But this imbalance is the very reason that he was considered a fool.

2. “He failed to realize his dependence on others” (p. 68). This fool was oblivious to everyone around him who helped him along the way because he did not attain his status by himself. Dr. King elaborates on the global issue of poverty and how we are all interdependent; interrelated. “All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly” (p. 69). But the man in the parable didn’t realize this because of his individualist attitude.

3. “He failed to realize his dependence on God” (p. 69). The fool thought that all he was creating was in fact, him creating it. He thought he was the Creator instead of realizing that he had been blessed with his wealth, crops, etc. Making God irrelevant was this man’s error. Dr. King touches upon how we see this in society through materialistic philosophy that it’s random coincidence that everything comes together, or in non-theistic humanism that focuses on humanity as God with a pedestal for science and everything man has invented. However, Dr. King, once again, cautions how this thinking brought atomic bombs and other evils into the world, citing Nagasaki and Hiroshima. “Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided man” (p. 73).

Dr. King ends the sermon with a great question that God asks in the Bible. I believe he was speaking to the balance of the three reasons that Jesus called the man a fool in the Bible verse from the Book of Luke. “What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world externals – airplanes, electric lights, automobiles, and color television – and lose the internal – his own soul?” (p. 73).

**King, M. L. (1963).Strength to love. New York: Harper & Row.