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Taking Hold of the Life that Really is LifeSeptember 30, 2007 Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost A new biography was released this week entitled, The Billionaire Who Wasn’t, which chronicles the life and times of a man from Elizabeth, New Jersey named Chuck Feeney. Nearly fifty years ago, Feeney went into business with a couple of partners selling five-pack boxes of liquor to American sailors in ports around Europe, eventually expanding into a worldwide empire of duty-free airport shops. [1] By 1988, Forbes Magazine included Feeney in the top twenty of its four hundred richest people list, estimating his worth at the time at 1.3 billion dollars. The trouble with that estimate was that in 1982, six years earlier, Feeney had secretly and irrevocably transferred his entire interest in the business to a charitable foundation, keeping less than five million dollars for himself. Asked about this he said, “I did not want money to consume my life.” [2] He set up several foundations offshore for privacy and none of the pieces of the organization bore his name, which is almost unheard of in the world of philanthropy. He also refused to take tax deductions for his giving which would have exposed his largesse. When asked why he wanted to stay anonymous he responded, “I just felt I didn’t see the need for blowing a horn.” [3] In 1997 a legal quarrel with his business partners – who had not known of his philanthropy – outed him to the world. In the meantime, since establishing his foundations called the Atlantic Philanthropies, he managed to give away four billion dollars. More recently, he announced that he would spend out the entire value of the philanthropies by the year 2017, a corpus of another four billion dollars. According to Feeney, “If I have ten dollars in my pocket and I do something with it today, it’s already producing ten dollars’ worth of good, as opposed to writing a bill at five percent per year.” He believes people should start giving early in life. “Everyone knows when they’re born, but nobody knows when they die. It you want to give it away, think about giving it away while you are alive because you’ll get a lot more satisfaction than if you wait until you’re dead.” And, “It’s a lot more fun.” [4] I poked around a bit in the biography, newspaper articles, and his philanthropies’ website looking for Feeney’s primary motivators. In other words, I wondered what accounted for the choices he made? The closest I got to an answer came from one of the persons on the receiving end of Feeney’s generosity, the president of an educational enterprise. “What was so astonishing was Feeney’s wish to be ordinary,” he said. “Chuck would walk around in his raincoat and pop his head around the corner of a door. He has a very simple way of life. He cherishes fundamental values. He puts us all to shame. If Chuck Feeney was not a very successful businessman he would be a very successful Benedictine monk.” [5] Of course, all this could set up Chuck Feeney as some sort of paragon, which isn’t good for him or us, I suppose. As Feeney himself says, “I’d be the last person to tell a person what to do with their money. They’re entitled to do whatever they want.” And so they are, of course. All of us are completely entitled to do whatever we want with whatever we have. That’s a sacred value in our culture. We cherish our independent autonomy as among our most precious entitlements in our capitalist society. Still, it struck me that Feeney’s free exercise of his autonomy can startle a conversation about how we exercise our autonomy. “I did not want money to consume my life,” said the billionaire, with not a little irony. Our fixations around money, stuff, things and status can become so rigid and calcified that we also become immune to conceiving of alternative ways of understanding our material existence. Interestingly, Feeney’s five children seem grateful for his monetary eccentricity. They’ve scoffed at the idea that he gave away a fortune at their expense. One daughter commented, “It is eccentric, but he sheltered us from people using the money to treat us differently. It made us normal people.” [6] Again, there’s danger in setting someone up as a virtuous archetype. We don’t know enough and aren’t smart enough to draw generalized conclusions from these certain facts. So I’m not sharing Chuck Feeney’s story as a model for us in its details. On the other hand, if we step back from the personality and translate bare facts into a parable of sorts, the congruence of this story with the lessons we heard today seem too obvious to pass up. From a preacher’s perspective, the timing is serendipitous. So Jesus tells the tale of a rich man and a poor one. Tradition assigns the name Dives to the former, which comes from the Latin word for rich. Jesus assigns the name Lazarus to the latter, which means, “God has helped.” Lazarus is a desperate, hungry and pitiable man who Dives does not see lying at his gate, for no doubt Dives has more pressing matters to attend to. After all, he’s an important, wealthy figure in his community. Besides, his wealth is probably an indication of divine favor. The story then ends with this little exchange: “Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets: they should listen to them. [Dives] said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ [Abraham] said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’” [7] Lest you think this little story is a diatribe against wealth, per se, we should remember that Abraham was himself a very wealthy man, and within the logic of the parable, he’s hallowed above all others. Something more nuanced and important and true is at stake here than simple dichotomies. Something fundamental. So, what we’re interested in today is not setting up an iconic model, but exploring the truth of our own commitments. In this way, someone like Chuck Feeney may serve as a straw man for considering our own response to Jesus’ intrinsic message. Jesus had a lot to say about money. More of his teachings incorporated monetary themes than any other subject. Which isn’t to say he presents a thorough-going economic policy. But it does suggest he knows the quickest route to the heart of most people. And he also knows that neighborliness, that is, loving our neighbors as ourselves, invariably involves issues of economic disparity. Well, there are two issues really: Loving God above all things, and loving our neighbors as ourselves. When Chuck says, “I didn’t want money to consume my life,” he’s making a claim about ultimate concerns. It begs the question, Well, just what does consume his life? And then, we’re not so much interested in his response, but our own. And let’s be clear: we’re not promoting an anti-success message. On the contrary, excellent success is a very good thing. I’m guessing we all want our version of that when we’re at our best. Abraham is emblematic of this. Excellent success comes as a result of exercising our various talents to their utmost, of learning and growing and maturing, of using the good gifts that are ours to fashion excellent ends. Still, within these walls, we understand that some commitments are larger than others. And just one or two can set the ground beneath our feet or fill our lungs with breath. So while our parable seems to be a stern warning about wealth and poverty, the root issue is one of trust and faith. It concerns the answer to this question: What matters most of all? And, Does my life square with my rap? Do we believe in an invisible world of righteousness and truth and spiritual joy, or do we instead place our hope in things we can touch and see, handle and manipulate? Do we trust God or not? What does the evidence of our lives reveal? After all, it was the evidence of Dives’ life that caught him in the snare. Pretty basic, I know. Religion 101. But then, most often our true concerns boil down to one or two basic things. And given we’re receiving new sisters and brothers into our family today, it’s not a bad idea to review the basics. We’re all in this together, all thrown together around a common goal: learning to love God above all things and to love our neighbors as ourselves. As we go forward we’ll unpack all the ways we can live into this and day by day grow in our capacity to embody the truth we discover. The wonder is that we’ve been given to each other for this purpose. This is among the great gifts that are given to us – each other. I hope you discover this in time. A great wealth of talent, good will and generosity has been assembling here. It’s quite something, really. Everything we need has been provided to accomplish great and useful ends. Let’s take to heart the words Paul wrote to his friend, Timothy: “Because we have been so richly blessed let’s be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, storing up for ourselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that we may take hold of the life that really is life.” [8] Taking hold of the life that really is life….now that would really be something, wouldn’t it? __________________________ Previous sermon: Guest Minister: The Reverend Becca Stevens • Next sermon: Riding the Bus All past sermons |
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