18th Sunday of the Year – The Question of Inheritance

We discussed about the loss of inheritance in one of our previous meditations. Inheritance comes to the central focus once again. Here is a man requesting Jesus to arbitrate between his brother and himself on the division of their inheritance. Inheritance is not just any property. It is the right of sons from the fathers in the Jewish legal system. A son does not have the right to the property that his father acquired by his hard work. But he has the right to the property that his father inherited from his grandfather.

Inheritance is a property that no good-minded Jew will ever squander. You might be remembering the story of Naboth from the Old Testament. King Ahab wanted to buy the vineyard of Naboth which was part of his inheritance. Naboth would not part with his inheritance like all Jews. Jezebel, the foreign wife of Ahab, got Naboth stoned to death with false accusations to illegally grab his property. Prophet Elijah storms into the presence of Ahab and prophesies the end of him and his wife. The duo meet their miserable end later during the time of Elisha (1 Kings 21:1–22:54). The story narrates how the link to the inheritance is etched in the heart of the Israelites. The rivalry between Esau and Jacob got aggravated when the latter cheated the parental blessing (part of the inheritance too) out of Esau by treachery.

We are discussing how important inheritance is for the people. They will give their life for it. Well! That is exactly the focus of the question that Jesus pushes us into. Inheritance is the property one is willing to trade his life for! Jesus would ask the question, “Is it worth losing your eternal life for temporary inheritance?” The inheritance one should worry about is that of the Kingdom of God, and not of this world. We will return to this focus later.

I kind of imagine the family background of this man who requests Jesus to arbitrate the inheritance division. He is apparently wronged. Every good father divides the property between his children and settles his house before he dies. It looks like the father could not do it. Maybe he died unexpectedly. Imagine this as the younger brother in the story of the Prodigal Son! Imagine the father died not long after he reinstated the lost son to the household. The older one resented him, and after the father’s death, he claims the whole property for himself. From this point, it is easy to weave the remainder of the story according to our own sense of justice and mercy. If we are not artificial about it, the story we make will exactly represent the state of our mind with regard to Christian values.

There is a little story in the Indian epic, Mahabharata, which deals with the question of inheritance between the children of two brothers. On one side are 100 brothers and on the other 5. The hundred strong had cheated the five out of their inheritance and would not return it. War was the only solution. The commanders of both armies went to meet the divinely powerful Krishna, a family friend for both parties. When they arrived, Krishna was asleep. The commander of the hundred brothers immediately took his rightful place at the head side of the bed to claim his superior bargaining capacity. The other one stood humbly at the feet. As Krishna opens his eyes, he sees the humbler one first and asks him what he wanted. He points out to the presence of the other commander and gives him the privilege of asking the support first. Krishna places two options. He has about a hundred thousand infantry and about the same number of elephants, horses and tanks (chariots in those days), and on the other side only he himself. The proud commander could not see through the need for divine power in a war on his side and chose the large infantry and equipment. The humbler one, as he had desired, got to choose the divine Krishna, and won the war.

The story brings us back to the focus of inheritance. It is a failure of perception to see that God and his Kingdom cannot be equated with the most valuable thing on earth, even one’s inheritance. God is the greatest inheritance one can get as the Psalmist says, “The Lord is my portion and cup” (Psalm 16:5).

When the young man had come to ask Jesus how he might inherit the Kingdom of God, Jesus lovingly asked him to sell all he had and distribute to the poor. The man went away sad because he was rich and could not bring himself to sell all he had.

After Jesus had narrated the story of the rich fool, we do not know what the response was of the one who asked Jesus to arbitrate the case. Perhaps, he was convinced that he was greedy and stopped fighting for the inheritance, or he might have realized that his brother was greedy, but it was not worth the fight if it did not guarantee him an inheritance in the Kingdom of God.

Live not for what is worth living but for what is worth dying for.