You Can’t Take It with You

Luke 12:13-21

June 12, 2016

Mark S. Bollwinkel

            What would you do if you won the lottery?

            Quit your job?  Pay off all the bills?  Buy a new house?   The motto of the California State Lottery is, “Imagine the Possibilities!”   The idea of receiving millions of dollars by chance is intoxicating to many, as if all that money would make your dreams come true.

            Yet it turns out that money, earning it or spending it, is one of the biggest stress factors in our lives.  Maurice Chevalier once asked, "Why is there so much month left at the end of the money?"  How to manage money is a constant challenge and is rarely any fun. 

            If you are unemployed, moving to a new community for a job or losing sleep over debts money matters are no fun at all.
            So what would you do if you won the lottery?

            Jack Whittaker won one of the largest individual lottery jackpot in United States history on Christmas Day 2002.  He won $ 314.9 million from the Powerball lottery, choosing to receive a cash payment rather than annual installments.  He received $113 million after taxes.

            Mr. Whittaker was already a millionaire building contractor in West Virginia.  He immediately pledged to tithe 10% of his winnings to three pastors that had helped him along the way.  He has made good on those commitments.  He has been very generous to a variety of charities and his family.   He is building two churches, feeding and clothing poor children and building senior citizen housing in his community.

            And…since Christmas Day 2002, he has also been charged with assault and drunken driving.   He was a regular patron of the Pink Pony strip club outside of Cross Lanes, West Virginia, where he was known for giving very generous tips to the dancers.  In August 2003 he was drugged and robbed of $500,000 in cash from his Lincoln Navigator by two employees of the club.

            His wife and family have been so overwhelmed with requests for donations from around the world that they have had to become more and more reclusive.    It has even affected his granddaughter, Brandi.   Mr. Whittaker once told the Associated Press, “She’s the most bitter 16-years-old I know.”

            When charged with yet another drunken driving citation he told a TV station, “It doesn’t bother me because I can tell everyone to kiss off.”

“He just reminds me of a kid in a candy store,” says Gerald Abreu, former minister of the Tabernacle of Praise Church of God in Hurricane, WA.    “I think Jack believes in God and trusts in God.  I just think that some of these things have overwhelmed him and I think he’s struggling right now,” said Michael Osborne friend and co-worker.¹

            Money in and off itself is no evil.  Scripture tells us “…the love of money is the root of all evil…” (I Tim 6:10)  

It is important that we provide for our material needs and comfort in this life.   Earning an appropriate income, saving for our future, taking care of our families is an essential and noble duty.   Christians are called to be good stewards in managing wealth.   Yet so often it seems if money ends up managing us.

            In our gospel lesson this morning Jesus tells the Parable of the Rich Fool.   He tells the story in response to brothers arguing about how to divide the family inheritance.  They would like Jesus to mediate the dispute.  The Lord refuses, warning them of the power of greed, warning them of misplaced priorities.  The parable itself describes a rich man who invests in bigger barns thinking it will do his soul good, only to die that very same night, unable to take his possessions with him.   Jesus concludes, “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.”

            This July I will celebrate my 40^th year of ordained ministry.  After all that time I am very much aware that whenever the topic of money comes up in church folk always expect the preacher to ask for more.  Eyes glaze over.  People stare at their feet or the ceiling, checking their watches to calculate how long this is going to go on!

            It’s like the story of the man who lived alone in the Irish countryside with only a pet dog for company.   One day the dog died, and Muldoon went to the parish priest and asked, “Father, me dog is dead.  Could ya’ be sayin’ a mass for the poor creature?”  Father Patrick replied, “I’m afraid not; we cannot have services for an animal in the church.   But there are some Methodists down the lane, and there’s no tellin’ what they believe.  Maybe they’ll do something for the creature.”  Muldoon said, “I’ll go right away Father.  Do ya’ think $5,000 is enough to donate to them for the service?”  Father Patrick exclaimed, “Sweet Mary, Mother of Jesus!  Why didn’t ya tell me the dog was Catholic!”

            More than a lesson on charitable giving, our Biblical lesson this morning is trying to tell us about the hold money can have on our hearts.

            In the Sermon in the Mount Jesus says, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21).  Comparing our passions for lotteries with church giving does illustrate where our hearts are.

            In 2003, 59 Protestant denominations in the United States, including the United Methodist, with a total of 48 million members, gave $31 billion to their churches. In 2012 those same denominations reported 45 million church members contributing $29 billion; that’s a 6% decreases in both membership and giving during that decade.² 

In comparison, during 2014, 173 million Americans, about 60% of the adult population, spent $ 70.5 billion on lotteries.³

$29 billion for all churches.  $70.5 billion for the lottery.

“For where your treasurer is, there your heart will be also.” 

            Such statistics suggest that many more Americans have their hearts in the dream of the lottery than they do in the promises of the church.   This, in spite of the sociologists suggestion that governments increasing dependence on income from gambling, is nothing more than an indirect tax on the poor as lower income folk disproportionably play.   This in spite of the illusion of winning something for nothing.  Michael Orkin, a professor at Cal-State Hayward calculated in his book, What are the Odds (W.H. Freeman & Company; 1st edition, January 1, 2000), “Put in perspective, if you buy 50 [lottery] tickets a week, you’ll win the jackpot on average once every 30,000 years.”

            Governments are more and more eager to offer gambling as a way to raise budgets because we are more and more eager to invest in that jackpot dream.  That is happening at the same time fewer of us are investing ourselves in the church.

We yearn for meaning in life, something to make sense of the stress under which we live.  We want joy in our lives seemingly stifled by routine.  We want to make a difference in the world.   Yet fewer and fewer of us think that can happen in a church.  Yet it would seem that more and more of us believe our dreams will come true by winning the lottery.

In 2012 the average church member in America gave $763 to their church for the year; that’s $14.60 per week.²  In the Accounting Principals' latest Workonomix survey, the average American worker is shelling out more than $20 a week on coffee at Starbucks.

If people see their church as a center for transformation, where people’s lives are being changed for the better, they will make an investment not a donation.  If joy and expectation are shared and celebrated in a church, people will write their first check each month to the church not wait to see what’s leftover after all the other bills are paid.  If people discover inspiration beyond their world and life in a church, there will never be a budget deficit but a challenge to manage all the money coming in.

Jesus says, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Eleanor Boyer’s heart is invested in her town of Somerville, New Jersey and her church there.   In 2003 she announced that she was giving all of the $ 11.5 million she had won from the New Jersey lottery to her church and other charities in her town.   Although she could have used some of the money, she adamantly said she did not need it.   When asked how much of the lottery winnings she would give away, she simply said, “All of it.”⁴  [So if you do win the lottery be sure to see me right away!]

The challenge for Christians is not how much money we have but we do with it.   It tells us where our hearts are.  John Wesley, founder of the Methodist movement said, “Earn all you can, save all you can and give all you can.”

I do not intend to diminish the real stress and pain of those going through economic hard times right now.   And…metaphorically each and every one of us here has won the lottery.   That you and I get to live in the United States of America and enjoy the privileges and prosperity of this community makes us all wealthy beyond measure.

            Jesus would have us become “rich in the things of God”.  We do that by investing in those places which transform lives, share joy and inspiration.   The only eternal value money has is how we spend it to foster love in this world.  Certainly we have got to take care of our families and meet our obligations.  But Jesus warns us that even if we win the lottery, we don’t get to take it with us.

Amen.

1          USA Today 2/12/04, CBSNews 12/27/02

2          Eileen W. Linden, ed., Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches 2012, National Council of Churches, NY

3          CNN Money, February 11, 2015

4          Douglas Lawson, More Give to Live, ALTI Publishing, 2001, pp. 59-60.

5          Gallup, December 16, 2013