Amelia Church of Christ - Christian Church in Amelia, OH near Cincinnati in Clermont County

This is message #4 in our Games People Play series. I owe the outline of this message to Tom Ellsworth who is a preaching minister in southern Indiana.

In 1930, Charles Darrow was unemployed and broke thanks to the Great Depression. He sat down at his kitchen in Germantown, Pennsylvania and sketched out some street names on a piece of oilcloth. The street names were from Atlantic City that he and his wife enjoyed visiting in more prosperous times. He used names like Boardwalk, Park Place, and Baltic Ave. He had found some scrap pieces of wooden molding from a construction company that he used to cut little houses and hotels. He got free paint sample squares from a hardware store to decorate his properties. He found some play money from an old game and used colored buttons as markers.

Then he and his wife would sit down with his creation each night and play what they called “the game.” They couldn’t afford any other entertainment except playing “the game.” Family and friends began to join them, and they all loved “the game.” They asked Darrow to make more. Eventually someone suggested that they call the game Monopoly.

Darrow soon became inundated with requests for Monopoly, so he offered it to Parker Bros. who originally turned him down, but later they purchased the game from Charles Darrow after FAO Schwarz put in an order for several hundred sets of Monopoly. Darrow eventually became the first person in America to become a millionaire from the sales of a board game. It really is a true rags to riches story.

Today, Monopoly is the best selling board game in the world. It is distributed in 26 languages and in 80 countries. Over 200 million sets have been sold. More than 5 billion little houses have been manufactured.

During WWII, people would insert escape maps, compasses, files, & real money was in Monopoly boxes to help our POWs escape.

The longest Monopoly game on record is 99 hours. That is board game dedication.

Almost everyone in this room has played Monopoly at some point in your life. What life lessons did you learn when you played Monopoly with your family and friends? Did you get any insights into the character of those who played with you? Did the "real person" in you come out as you played the game? Are you a cutthroat player or do you extend grace as you play? Do you find yourself greedily hoarding your resources, or do you give a "rental" break to those who are struggling to stay alive in the game?

As we’ve been saying all along in our Games People Play series, there’s nothing wrong with Monopoly the game. But we run into problems when we take the lessons we learned in Monopoly and then begin applying them in our lives.

Today we’re in Luke 12. Jesus often taught important lessons by using parables, or stories. A parable can be described as an earthly story with a heavenly meaning. Today we’re going to read Jesus’ Monopoly parable.

Let’s start in Luke 12:13. “Someone in the crowd said to [Jesus], "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me." Jesus replied, "Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?" Then he said to them, "Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions."

And he told them this parable: "The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. He thought to himself, 'What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.' " Then he said, 'This is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods.

And I'll say to myself, "You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.'" "But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?'   "This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God." (Luke 12:13-21, NIV)

There are now over 100 varieties of the Monopoly game: Junior-Monopoly, Coca-cola Monopoly, Dale Earnhardt Monopoly, Star Wars Monopoly, Lord of the Rings Monopoly, there’s even a Bibleopoly. If you want to own Caesarea Philippi, you can in Bibleopoly.

But using Jesus’ parable, we can discover three more versions of Monopoly. Parker Bros. has never marketed these versions of the game, but these are versions that a bunch of people play in their lives everyday.

The first version of Monopoly that Jesus warns us about is Social Monopoly.   We play social monopoly when we let material things monopolize our Relationships.

The man who came to Jesus said, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” The man and his brother had allowed money or material things to come between them.

Money has separated more families than probably any other cause. I heard a true story of several children whose mother had passed away. During the funeral service, while all his other siblings were at the funeral home mourning the loss of their mother, one brother slipped out of a funeral service, drove to his mother’s house, and cleaned out all her valuable possessions.

Money is the number one stress point in marriages. If money was a key to marital happiness, wouldn’t all these rich celebrity couples you see in the National Enquirer be the happiest in the world? Wouldn’t Jen and Ben still be together? I know some of you are still broken up over that one. But instead of being marriage glue, binding couples together, money issues are often marriage scissors, cutting couples apart. Our marriage vows state that we will stay together “for richer or poorer,” but 56% of all divorces are rooted in irreconcilable financial issues.

What relationships in your life have been damaged or destroyed because of money or stuff? A marriage, a brother or sister, a friend?

Let’s go back to our story from Luke for a second. Isn’t it interesting that the man came to Jesus and did nothing but ask about money? Think of how ironic this is: The man stood in the presence of Jesus, the one who could give him an eternal inheritance, and the man just squabbled over money.

He was so concerned with the physical that he missed the spiritual. Keep that thought in mind because we’re going to come back to it.

There is a second version of Monopoly that Jesus warns us about. Sensible Monopoly.   We play Sensible Monopoly when we let material things monopolize our Reasoning.

Jesus told his audience,   "Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” (Luke 12:15, NIV) When Jesus said, “Watch out!” he used a military term for guard duty. A military guard post is always staffed. There is always someone keeping watch because the enemy is unpredictable. You never know when an attack is coming. Jesus tells us that’s the kind of guard we’ve got to put on this issue in our lives.

He then goes on to say, “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”   The key word is greed. Jesus doesn’t tell us to guard against things. He tells us to guard against greed.

The issue isn’t the amount; it’s the attitude. The man in Jesus’ parable was rich, but he wasn’t condemned for being rich. He was a talented farmer, but he wasn’t condemned because he was good at his job. He was ambitious, but his ambition wasn’t condemned. In fact, the Bible condemns laziness, which is the opposite of ambition.   Ecclesiastes says, “If a man is lazy, the rafters sag; if his hands are idle, the house leaks.” (10:18, NIV)

Using our God-given abilities, and talents, and opportunities honors the Lord. What got the fellow in our parable into trouble was his selfish reasoning. His greed.

Police officers in Wheeling, IL arrested a Wal-Mart cashier of purchasing things on stolen credit card numbers. When people would come through her line, she would lift their credit card numbers and then use those stolen numbers to purchase things at the Wal-Mart where she worked. How did they catch her? She signed every one of the receipts with her own name so she could get the employee discount. That’s funny and that’s stupid, but that’s greed. That’s what greed does. Greed turns us into silly, ridiculous people with no common sense.

There was a recent survey that asked Americans how much more money they would need to make each year in order to be comfortable. The average answer was twice my current income. I need to make twice what I’m making now in order to live comfortably. It’s interesting that this was the most common answer, regardless of how much the person currently made. If they made $30,000 a year or $300,000 a year, the answer was the same. I would need to double my annual income to be comfortable.

This is greed gone insane because we are already among the richest people on the planet.  I bet if I were to ask you, “How many of you are rich?” there wouldn’t be too many of you who would say that you are rich.      When we think “rich,” we think of Donald Trump rich.  Paris Hilton rich.  Oprah Winfrey rich.      Bill Gates rich.  If that is the definition of rich, then you’re right.  There isn’t a rich person in this room.  But, if we were to look at ourselves compared to the rest of the world, we might see things differently. 

Take a minute and ponder these questions.

1. Does your family own a car?  Any car.  Even if it is a 25-year-old grocery getter.

2. Do you have a room to sleep in?  Any room.  Even if you have to share it with brothers or sisters.

3. Do you have more than one pair of shoes?

4. Do you more than two pairs of jeans?

5. Do you have more then 5 shirts?

If you answered yes to even one of these questions, then you are rich in comparison to most of the world’s population.  Let’s try to really put this in perspective:  If your combined family income is more than $25,000 a year, then you are among the top 2% wealthiest people on the planet.  Try to imagine your entire family living on less than $10 a week.  That is more than 1.1 billion people in the world have to live on.

More perspective for us to consider: Last year, America’s largest company, Wal-Mart, brought in as much money as the entire economy of Sweden.

In 2004, teenagers in the US spent $169 billion.  That averages out to $91 per teenager per week.  Keep in mind that 1.1 billion people have to live on less than $10 a week.

Nearly half of the 6 billion people in the world are poor.  1.1 billion live in extreme poverty, which is defined as getting by on less than a dollar a day.  These households cannot even meet the basic needs for survival.  They are chronically hungry, unable to get health care, lack safe drinking water and sanitation, cannot afford basic education for their children, lack basic shelter and basic clothing, like shoes.

Now, let me ask you again. How many of you are rich? But even though we are among the very richest people in the world, we still have an insatiable greed that just does not make sense when you see what we already have.

Let me give you some stats from the 2002 Federal Reserve statistical release – consumer credit debt is at a record $1.6 trillion, and it is increasing at $1000 per second. The average American family spends $400 a year more than it earns. Consumer debt has doubled in the last 12 years. 23% of person’s take home pay goes to credit debt, and that does not count mortgages.

Those statistics are truly insane, and yet this is what greed does. It monopolizes our reasoning, and it leads us to make non-sensical choices that we wouldn’t make otherwise.

There is one more version of Monopoly that Jesus warns us about, and this is the most dangerous version of all: Spiritual Monopoly.   We play Spiritual Monopoly when we let material things monopolize our Religion.

The man in our parable had two spirituals issues at stake.

First of all, the man never saw beyond himself. The man in Jesus’ parable uses “I” or “My” 11 times. These possessive pronouns possessed him. He was looking no further than himself. Tom Ellsworth said, “If you’re looking to yourself wisdom about material things, you need a new advisor.” We’re just not very good at making sensible, disciplined decisions about our stuff. We’re good at rationalizing.

Now, did you notice that the man in our parable was already rich? Jesus tells us that he was rich even before this huge harvest. He’s not trying to figure out what to do with newfound riches; he’s trying to decide what to do with his surplus. He doesn’t know where to put it, he doesn’t know how to save it, but the one thing he does know is that he is going to keep it. He’s not going to give it, he’s not going to share it, he’s going to keep it.

We can relate to that. Only in a country as rich as America can we now diagnose a psychological disease called Obsessive Hoarding. Recently, there was a fire in a New York City apartment that injured 19 people, including 14 firefighters. The fire burned for four hours because the apartment was filled, floor to ceiling, with hoarded belongings. Firefighters had to use saws and other tools to cut through piles of computer components, books, clothing, metal gates and wooden planks that were stored in this apartment.

There are approximately 32,000 self-storage businesses in the United States today. These storage businesses house 1.3 billion feet of rentable storage space. Rubbermaid alone sells more than 100 million storage containers a year. Comedian George Carlin said, “The essence of life is trying find a place to put all your stuff.”

There is so much surplus in our country that a new profession has emerged. Are you ready for this? People are now going into business as professional organizers. For an average of $75 an hour, these professional organizers will come into your house and help you organize all your clutter. $75 an hour! I don’t know about you, but I think I may be in the wrong business.

It seems that everyone is looking to build a bigger barn. But Jesus’ challenge to us is to build better attitudes, not bigger barns. To build an attitude that sees beyond ourselves.

There is a second spiritual issue that the man in the parable struggled with. He never saw beyond this world.

He had everything planned out. He was going to build bigger barns to store his crop, and then he was going to   “take life easy; eat, drink, and be merry. But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself.”

And then Jesus says, “This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.” (Luke 12:19b-21, NIV)

The man never saw beyond this world. All he saw was his stuff and his comfortable life, and then God said, “Tonight your comfortable life is over. Now what?”

When we don’t see beyond this world, we grab, we accumulate, we hoard. We buy into the cliché philosophy that says, “He who dies with the most toys wins.” You want to know the truth? All the stuff that you have accumulated, you know what it is going to be one day? It’s going to be a royal pain for your children to sort through after you die. That’s all that your stuff will be one day.

Remember what we said earlier about the man in our parable? He was so focused on the physical that he missed the spiritual. That’s why this version of Monopoly is so dangerous. Because as we acquire more and more stuff, we can miss Jesus.

Check out this prayer from a man named Agur. It’s recorded in the Old Testament book of Proverbs. Agur prays, “…give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, 'Who is the LORD ?' Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God.” (Proverbs 30:8-9, NIV)

How many of us could honestly pray this prayer? “God, please don’t make me poor. Otherwise I might steal and dishonor you. But also, please don’t make me rich. Otherwise I might begin to rely on myself alone and forget about you.” That’s a tough, gut-level prayer. But it points out the dangers of having a lot of money and a lot of stuff. The danger is that we think that we already have all we need. We think we are totally self-reliant. We focus on ourselves and all our toys…and we leave God out of the mix.

At the end of every game of Monopoly, everything goes back into the box. It doesn’t matter if you won or lost. It doesn’t matter if you wound up filthy rich or flat broke…everything goes back into the box.

At the end of our lives, everything, including us, will go back into a box. At the end of your life, your money, your riches, your possessions, your acquisitions won’t mean diddly squat. What will matter is what you decided to do with Jesus Christ. Will you be like the man who asked Jesus to straighten out his inheritance problem? Will you be in the very presence of Jesus and miss him because you’re blinded by greed? Or will you accept the spiritual inheritance that he offers to all of us?

When he died on the cross, Jesus offered us a get out of spiritual jail free card. His grace is a free gift for the asking. Will you accept it today?

Mike Edmisten