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"On Being Very Rich"
I can remember many years ago after just getting out of seminary, sitting in the back of Orchestra Hall. I could barely see that speaker up there in front at the Chicago Sunday Evening Club, and I thought to myself that must be the grandest place in the world to preach. Then I find out that we now have many, many times the audience that we had then, and I tell you it’s an honor to be here. There are not many clubs I belong to, but I can’t think of any club I’d rather belong to than the Chicago Sunday Evening Club. They do a marvelous job.

I want to begin by asking you a question. If you and I have relatively good health, a good name, and we are in favor with God and man — are we rich? These things in life are hard to measure, aren’t they?

A recent news article told about a small boy who had come in contact with a public utility live wire. It had been left unprotected and it burned one side of his f ace and paralyzed him. And in the courtroom the lawyer asked him to turn toward the jury and smile.

One side of his face did smile but the other side puckered up into a very gruesome kind of contortion. It took that jury only about 25 minutes to award him $25,000. I guess that’s supposed to be the certified worth of a smile. I think it’s not enough.

Those things that happen to us in life that we cannot help can take away from us the wealth that we have. And certainly part of our wealth is our smile.

A recent article in TIME Magazine is about a collector of old maps named John Walther. One day, that article tells us, Mr. Walther was taking a group of people through what is known as the map division of the Library of Congress on his 60th birthday. And he stopped in the midst of his animated talk about the job he had to do and the maps that were on the walls and the globes on pedestals, and he said, “You know I’m right where I want to be, doing what I want to do on my 60th birthday.”

I might add that John Walther is also very rich. Oh, not that collectors of old maps gain much money. They don’t. They’re not highly paid. But here he was rewarded on an anniversary in his life, doing what he wanted to do and being where he wanted to be. Could we ask for more?

The answer is “yes”. You and I will always ask for more. Being rich towards someone is a more complete life. Can you remember the first time that you thought you were in love, at least? I remember in my grade school days, I had been given at Christmastime a baseball mitt and a football. And I felt very rich towards those possessions until one day in the spring of the year I saw HER. I can’t even remember her name now. But in my obsession with her, I even forgot for a time the baseball mitt and the football. When someone comes into our life, life becomes richer and richer.

It is one thing to be rich towards maps or whatever other things seem precious to us. That’s a good sign of a certain richness in life. But being rich towards things is never, never enough.

Being where you want to be at any anniversary of your life, being with someone that you want to share your life with is rich indeed, but I know a greater richness.

The Book of Proverbs in the Old Testament has many wise sayings about our relationships with God and with people and with things. In the 22nd chapter of Proverbs it is written, “A good name is rather to be chosen than great wealth, and loving favor rather than silver and gold.”

What a terrible thing it is to see in our day young baseball players’ names now tarnished for generations to come by admissions of use of illegal drugs on or off the baseball field. Ask any of those who have been indicted or are about to be indicted, and most would tell you they would give all of their high salaries if they could once regain their good name and a reasonable amount of favor with their fans. No monetary value can ever be placed on a good name and to be in favor with God and man.

And the most important decisions that you and I make in life are relating to our relationships with others. To whom will we give our confidence? To decide with whom we will spend our years is a most important decision, second only to whom we will give our worship and our devotion.

I always feel sorry for those wives whose husbands tell me that they worship them. That must be an awfully stifling experience. We should not be an object of worship. Normal human beings don’t want to be an object of worship. But what do you give your worship and your full devotion to? To what do you give the fullest richness in your life? Toward what are you rich?

Being obsessed with things, even valuable things, is only a partially fulfilled life. We have a friend who lives near us in the little village that we go up to in Wisconsin. And in his place of business came a group of people who were telling him about snagging the nets when they went out fishing. Some of them were professional fishermen. And they were talking about a certain area where their nets were always snagged, and finally curiosity got the best of him and so he went out to the deep waters of that island and he dove down ever deeper. He did that for a couple of days and finally he saw in the murky dark waters what was obviously the top of the mast of a ship. And on that ship’s mast there were tendrils of nets flowing in the streams of water. He surfaced excitedly and got other divers to go down. They went down with sea lights and they found the Alva Clark and she had been sunk about one hundred years before. And now they found her. And they went down deeper with his meager diver equipment, and they found that the Alva Clark was in excellent condition. It became the obsession of Frank’s life to go down in that water and go underneath that ship with cables and inflated bags on either side and to surface that ship and take it over to some port and have it available for tourists, whom he would charge to cover the expenses.

So he sold his business, and moved his home and his family, and went down into that water repeatedly with minimal diving equipment.

We were there when the Alva Clark came to the surface of the water, and we had been over to Marinette, Wisconsin where it has been for several years on display in dry dock. This past summer they found that the people who had seen it once didn’t come back again, but everything mounted, the expenses, the necessity for people to work there, and the upkeep. Finally, Frank, this past summer, in a drunken frenzy, went out and tried to set fire to the thing that had seemed so precious to him. And when he was sobered up, he told those who interviewed him that he had come to a place in his life where he couldn’t handle his own obsessions and he had almost destroyed his own family. He had almost given up his good name.

Many, many within the sound of my voice could tell of times in your lives when obsession with wealth or fame, or whatever it might be, had so overcome your life that you came to the place where you hated the very thing that you thought you loved.

That’s not very rich. That’s being poor in spirit. But there are times when you can give that kind of complete devotion to someone. We must be very careful to whom or to what we give our devotion.

What obsesses your life? I don’t know what obsesses yours, but I can tell you that I can find an answer to those obsessions in my life in a story that is told about Jesus. One day he was walking with his disciples. It was toward the end of his earthly ministry. And he quietly asked them, “Whom do others say that I am?”

And they responded, of course, by saying, “Some think you are a great prophet — some think you are a reincarnation of David.”

And Jesus said, “Whom do you say that I am?” And Peter made the first recorded confession of faith. He said, “You are the Christ,” or as one translation has it, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”

Jesus looked quietly out over the fields. He said, “You are correct, Peter. But for a while, tell no one.”

What had happened? Peter had begun to move from the audience into the congregation. At the Chicago Sunday Evening Club and the Chicago Temple we know a lot about admiring audiences, and we love them. That’s good!

But our job is to move people from the audience into the congregations of their choice, whether it be the First United Methodist Church of Chicago, the First Baptist Church — wherever it is, from the audience into the congregation. And up to that time Peter had been an admirer of Jesus, a loyal friend.

He loved Jesus. But now he moved from that into a position of worship. Be careful to whom you give your worship. It is recorded that Peter became the rock upon which we could establish the church. My reading of the New Testament doesn’t say that it was Peter the personality upon whom we establish our church. It was his confession of faith upon which we establish the church. Peter had moved from the audience, an admiring audience, into the congregation.

What a great thing that is to see, and how rich his life became. And how rich your life will become when you move from being just an admirer of Christ or your recognition that he was a great teacher, to “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”

And upon you, when you make that kind of a confession, God can build his church. And I always know the difference between the admiring audience that comes to the Chicago Temple Sunday after Sunday, and they come from all sections of the world. And I am so glad to have them. But I know there is a core of believers on whom I can depend in that church and God moves through them. They have moved in their lives from the audience to the congregation.

Choose a church of your choice and be there when they need you, not just when the minister is popular and things are going well. But be there among the core of believers on whom God can depend.

That was the richest man I know, the Apostle Peter. But Peter had the same trouble we all do when first we make that confession of faith. He could not further believe that one so good, so able, so strong, so courageous, so winsome, so loving would also be crucified. He turned to Jesus and said, “No, you lead us and we will share in the wealth that will come to us.”

But Jesus turned to him and what did he say? He gave him the most difficult kind of an admonition. He said, “You know you’re like Satan. Don’t talk to me that way.” He recognized that what Peter would take from him would be the ability to bring reconciliation of God to his world. And he said, “Get thee behind me, Satan.”

You hear many, many preachers in our day, I think, who give way to the temptation Peter wanted Jesus to give way to. “If you follow him, you will be rich.”

Well, you will be. But we are not talking about monetary return. It may happen — it may not happen. If you become rich that way, and if you’re really a follower of Christ, you will give generously. That’s wonderful.

But what he was saying to us is that in all of our lives being rich toward Christ makes us the wealthiest people in all the world. The book of Proverbs goes on to say, “The rich and the poor meet together. The Lord is maker of them all.”

I don’t know — in our church, and I hope in yours — we could expand on that statement. We could say, “The rich and the poor, the short and the tall, the fat and the thin, the brown and the black and the white, and the people of renown and the people of little renown, and the people who are known and who are unknown will all meet together.”

For God chose no partiality, and his word is the same to all of us. That is one of the reasons I like my church I guess. I can look out across that congregation and it looks just like the United Nations. It really does, and I love that. I think that’s the way God wants us to live. And if we can’t do it within the church, and if we can’t make that kind of a witness to Chicago, which at times is tragically divided, who is going to make the witness? Who else?

Everything else seems to try to divide us into voting blocks, or according to where we live. But here is God, showing no partiality, moving into a congregation, “If you are going to be rich toward me, deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me.”

Now that is a supreme act of faith, my friends, a supreme act of faith. Those who are rich toward God through Christ, have a good name, are in favor with God and others — are rich, no matter what their monetary outcome might be. Becoming obsessed or rich toward Christ may or may not be accompanied by monetary wealth. But if it is, it just goes like night after day, you’ll give generously. Nobody even has to ask you to do that.

But remember, what Jesus was trying to tell Peter, and what I think we are sometimes forgetting in our public declamation, particularly in some television ministries — you cannot have the Christ without the cross. There is no way. It cannot happen. It will not happen. And if you’re going to be truly rich, you’re going to take a risk, and I cannot tell you that it is not a risk, for it is. You may throw your bread on the waters and it may come back toasted. But it may sink right to the bottom too.

We are not talking about a richness except a richness of the spirit. There is no one, there is no one, who has not made this leap of faith who is not rich in the deepest sense of the word.

Those who confess Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord are the richest people in the world.

What a privilege it is to speak to this audience, and I want to ask you to move into the congregation of your choice. You will be rich people indeed — very rich!

God bless you and keep you and may God make his face to shine upon you. Amen.

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