A woman once said to her pastor, "I enjoy your Bible classes very much. You get so much out of the text that isn’t there." What she meant, of course, was that he saw and explained things that were not evident to her.

Let’s take her literally for a moment. As we study the Gospel for today, let’s get out of it some of the things that are not there in order to see clearly the things that are there. It’s easy to read some unwarranted meanings into this parable - like putting on a suit of armor to keep the real point of the story from jabbing us. Let’s take off that armor of unwarranted meanings and expose ourselves to its possibly painful prodding of our personal Christian living.

First, this is not a condemnation of wealth. "Dives" is the Latin word for "rich," and this man certainly was. H…