Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

I call the main character in Jesus’ story below, Bigger Barnes. Bigger Barnes lives with the all too common assumption that bigger is better. And so he spends his days trying to expand his ability to contain for himself his increasing surplus of goods. The reader gets the sense that Bigger is blinded by what drives him, and that whereas his barn is full, his life is empty. Jesus portrays him as a man by himself, alone and disconnected. Compulsively focused on himself, he misses not only the present moment but his raison d’être. Rich in his own eyes, he is poor in “what matters to God.” Soon he will realize that he has invested himself in the wrong things, in things that are fleeting and of no ultimate value. But now it’s too late.

Then Jesus told them a parable. “There was a rich man whose land produced a bountiful harvest. He asked himself, ‘What shall I do, for I do not have space to store my harvest?And he said, ‘This is what I shall do: I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones. There I shall store all my grain and other goods and I shall say to myself, “Now as for you, you have so many good things stored up for many years, rest, eat, drink, be merry!” But God said to him, ‘You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?” Thus will it be for the one who stores up treasure for himself but is not rich in what matters to God. (Lk. 12: 16-21)

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached a sermon about Bigger Barnes titled “The man who was a fool.” It appears in his book Strength to Love. On this day when our country pays tribute to Dr. King and remembers the vision and principles for which he gave his life, I will offer a few of his observations and commentary on this parable by highlighting one thread that runs through the sermon. The thread that King preached and followed is a thread of Jesus who variously has been called “a man for others” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer) and “a man with others” (Gregory Boyle). It’s a thread we see in Jesus’ teaching, work, and living that is especially timely for us Americans whose children and grandchildren see and hear a President who is incessantly self-absorbed (“the cancerous disease of egotism”) and intentionally divisive, expounding an “America First” agenda that is contrary not only to biblical principles and gospel values, but also to the American spirit as inscribed on the plaque that accompanies the Statue of Liberty. Dr. King writes:

The rich man was a fool because he permitted the ends for which he lived to become confused with the means by which he lived. . . .

The rich man was a fool because he failed to realize his dependence on others. His soliloquy contains approximately sixty words, yet “I” and “my” occur twelves times. He has said “I” and “my” so often that he had lost the capacity to say “we” and “our.” A victim of the cancerous disease of egotism, he failed to realize that wealth always comes as a result of the commonwealth. He talked as though he could plough the fields and build the barns alone. He failed to realize that he was an heir of a vast treasury of ideas and labour to which both the living and the dead had contributed. When an individual or a nation overlooks this interdependence, we find a tragic foolishness.

Whether we realize it or not, each of us is eternally “in the red.” We are everlasting debtors to known and unknown men and women. . . When we rise in the morning, we go into the bathroom where we reach for a sponge which is provided for us by a Pacific Islander. We reach for soap that is created for us by a Frenchman. The towel is provided by a Turk. Then at table we drink coffee which is provided for us by a South American, or tea by a Chinese, or cocoa by a West African. Before we leave for our jobs we are beholden to more than half the world.

In a real sense, all life is interrelated. All people are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality. (emphasis mine)

The rich man tragically failed to realize this. He thought that he could live and grow in his little self-centered world. He was an individualist gone wild. Indeed, he was an eternal fool!

We remember ourselves today to the faith, vision, and courage of Martin Luther King, Jr. who heeded God’s call to work to eliminate what he identified as America’s three major evils—the evil of racism, the evil of poverty, and the evil of war that jeopardize “the interrelated structure of reality” knit into the cosmos by the Creator Spirit.

READ here an excerpt from an all-too relevant 1967 speech given by Martin Luther King, Jr. called “America’s Chief Moral Dilemma” and click below to LISTEN to Dion’s 1968 classic “Abraham, Martin and John.”  It is sad, and an indictment on us as Americans who espouse liberty and justice for all, that our country and world are still so devastated by the unholy trinity of racism, materialism, and militarism.