Luke 12:13-21

   Someone asks Jesus to help settle an inheritance problem with a brother. Jesus declines. He warns about the dangers of greed, and then tells a parable about a rich farmer with so much wealth he decides to build bigger barns to hold it all. But that very night, he dies. He learns, as we all must, that you can’t take it with you. 

   Jesus doesn’t say this man is wicked or evil. He doesn’t say he cheated anyone or exploited his workers. He says this man is a fool. Exactly why isn’t obvious, especially in our culture. He’s a success, right? But listen to the man’s monologue. In the first place, you have to wonder why he’s alone. Where’s his family? Where are his friends and workers? Then, notice how many times he says me, mine, my. In three verses, he uses first person singular pronouns eleven times. My crops, my barns, my grain, my, my, my. He sees himself as completely self-sufficient, and he sees all his wealth as his alone. There’s no hint of gratitude, no acknowledgement that “The earth is the Lord’s, and all that is in it; the world, and those who live in it.” (Psalm 24:1)

   At my father’s memorial service a few years ago, my brother told a story that took place during my family’s sojourn in Des Moines, Iowa. When my brother was 10, he was big enough and a good enough athlete that he made it onto the Little League team for 11- and 12-year-olds. His team ended the season at the bottom of the league. Maybe that’s why their coach decided he’d had enough and quit. The following spring, my dad stepped in as the coach. He started the team with fundamentals and moved them on to practicing more complicated plays like squeeze bunts and pickles. That year, they won the league championship. But, said my brother, that’s not what this story is about.

   My brother’s league sold popcorn to raise money for ball fields and umpires and such, the way Girl Scouts sell cookies. It was premium popcorn, and remember, this is the Tall Corn State, so standards were high. This was not your Jiffy Pop or even your Orville Redenbacher. This popcorn popped into cloud-like kernels the size of gardenias. It was 2 pounds for a dollar. My dad required the boys to wear their uniforms, including their caps, when went out to sell popcorn. My brother said they looked like a Norman Rockwell illustration. Under my dad’s encouragement, my brother’s team sold more popcorn than the other seven teams in the league combined. My dad drove my brother and three of his friends to several neighborhoods around town, and those four boys alone sold ten times as much popcorn as the rest of their team. But, said my brother, that’s not what this story is about.

   On the way home from their last popcorn sales trip, sitting in the back seat of my dad’s blue Oldsmobile, my brother and his three friends started imagining the prizes they’d win for selling this much popcorn. That was part of the incentive: If you sold a certain number of pounds of popcorn, you’d earn points worth prizes, and even more points meant even more and bigger prizes. My brother said it was like visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads. And then my dad looked in the rearview mirror and said, “You know, boys, if you share your points with the rest of the team, then everybody on the team will get prizes.” My brother said their first response was, “Share!?! What are you talking about!” But the boys thought it over for about five minutes and decided my dad’s idea was a good one. They shared their points with the rest of the team, the whole team won a trip to Minneapolis to watch the Minnesota Twins play, and every boy won prizes. My brother learned that by sharing what they had, they lifted up the whole team. And that, my brother said, was our dad – and that’s what this story was about. 

   By sharing, we lift up the whole team. It’s so obvious, isn’t it? Which is exactly why the rich man was a fool. 

   Now, this might be where a preacher could throw in some statistics about how the three wealthiest Americans own as much as the entire bottom half of the population; how big corporations, CEOs, and a handful of extremely rich people have vastly more influence on public policy than the average American; how wealth and power have become one and the same, even to the extent of undermining democracy. You might even speculate about what our society would look like if the ultra-rich and corporations paid more taxes, or if the minimum wage were increased. I recommend taking a look at books or articles by Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor, current UC Berkeley professor and author, but there’s plenty of literature out there explaining the economic, social and cultural reality that by sharing, we lift up the whole team.

   It’s so obvious. May God grant us all wisdom.