There’s a saying... Enough
is enough!
But when it comes to earthly wealth,
It can be hard to know when enough is enough.
None of us are as greedy as those heartless people Amos criticized
In our first reading.
We’d never trample the needy and cheat the poor
Just to get more excess for ourselves.
But we might try to avoid thinking about the poor.
We might try to convince ourselves they’re not our concern.
Am I my brother’s keeper?
Wealth and poverty.
It’d be hard to find an issue that’s more timely, or more
constant.
Every day we hear news of the ups and downs of the markets.
The global market, the stock market, the job market.
The housing market, the food market.
The squeezed middle class.
The displaced workers, left behind.
Our sense of security bounces along with each blip in those
markets.
For many of us, that worry about security tempts us to hoard our
wealth.
It’s not that we want to roll around in a pile of money.
But we really don’t know how much it will take
To provide for our own basic needs.
To provide for our own basic needs.
My brothers and sister and I looked into
Nursing home care for my mother.
Nursing home care for my mother.
A typical, modest place in Massachusetts is over $400 a day.
Plus extra fees if you need added care.
That would be over $150,000 a year.
So, even if you manage to gather a really big a pile of money,
It can disappear very quickly later in life.
Or actually at any time.
So, how much is enough?
Recently there’s been a lot of attention given to the high
salaries of CEOs.
Back in the 1940’s, Peter Drucker, an early management guru, said
A company should never pay its highest-paid employee
More than 25 times its lowest-paid employee.
That large a gap would destroy a company’s sense of teamwork.
The sense that everyone was working toward a common goal.
The sense of unity—that everyone was in it together.
In the 1940’s, there were
some companies with that large 25-times gap.
A study this year showed that for the average Fortune 500 company,
The CEO now makes not over 25 times—but over 250 times—
What the lowest paid employee makes.
A gap ten times wider than the unbridgeable gap Peter Drucker feared.
Is that too much?
We can see today that gross inequities like the 250-times gap
Can threaten unity in a country as well as in a company.
If there’s ever an effort to enforce a cap like the 25-times limit,
I’m sure companies will quickly see an easy way to cut that gap.
They can simply fire their very lowest-paid employees,
And replace them with contractors.
A friend of mine, a Jesuit priest, spent years in Latin America.
He often spoke of the abject poverty of families living in dumps.
Literally—living atop the piles of trash and garbage in the
big-city dumps.
Still today, as each new truckload arrives,
The children scramble to scavenge through its garbage lode.
Digging for food to eat, or scraps of plastic or metal
That they might sell for a few pennies.
They live amid the disease, parasites, fumes, rats,
And other dangers of the garbage dump.
They have little food, clothing, shelter or schooling.
No medical care, no power and no hope.
The world is full of similar, equally heartbreaking stories.
Like the poor refugees fleeing war in the Middle East and Africa.
So what are we rich people to do?
Yes, we are the rich.
Compared to the world’s poorest, all of us here are rich.
We may not feel rich, but we are.
Rich in treasure, or in talent, or in time, or maybe all three.
Jesus gave us many stories to teach us what to do.
And he told us many times.
Share the gifts that have been given to you.
Share the wealth; give to the poor.
He condemned the rich man, Dives,
For ignoring poor, starving Lazarus lying at his doorway.
He said it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a
needle
Than for the rich to enter heaven.
He warned the man who had a great harvest
And planned to build new barns to store it all.
He told him to share the wealth, and store up treasure in heaven.
He praised the poor widow who gave only a small coin—
Because she gave all she had.
He told the rich young man that to be perfect
He should sell all he had and give to the poor.
Maybe that’s our simple answer—
Sell everything we have and give to the poor.
St Francis, St Dominic, newly canonized Mother Theresa,
St Jean Jugan whose relic is sealed in our altar,
And many others, have done just that.
Once when Jesus was visiting the home of Lazarus, Martha and Mary,
Mary broke open a jar of very expensive oil and poured it on his
feet.
Oil that was worth a whole year’s wages.
Mary was harshly criticized.
Told she should have sold that oil and given the money to the poor.
But it wasn’t Jesus who criticized her; it was Judas.
Jesus defended her, saying
You will have the poor with you always, but you’ll not always have
me.
So, selling everything and giving to the poor
Isn’t always the simple answer after all.
Clearly Jesus had a strong preference for the poor.
Yet, he recognized that there are other needs.
We all have to take care of our own basic, reasonable needs.
And sometimes even extravagant uses of wealth are justified—
It depends on the intentions, the motive, the potential good.
We live in an extremely materialistic society.
A world of greed.
But what can any one of us do about that now?
We can’t fix the gross pay-inequity problem today.
We can’t save all the dump children today.
What we can each do today, is look closely at ourselves.
We already share some of our treasure, time and talent.
But we should ask ourselves:
How deeply have I bought-in to the world’s culture of greed?
How strong a grip does Mammon have on me?
Am I sharing as much as I can?
As much as I should?
As much as I must?
We all have to struggle with that balancing act.
And it’s not easy, it’s hard.
But if we all do that, and do it well,
Then over time, together, we will
save the dump children.
We will solve the
problems of unjust, gross economic inequities.
And we will overcome the
world of greed.
To get there, we’ll have to step back from time-to-time—
At least once a year, because circumstances change—
And ask ourselves,
When is enough, enough?
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