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Lord have mercy.
$40 million to play basketball for one season. Good work if you can get it, as they say!
Last week, I learned via radio news as I was driving home from a concert enjoyed in the Big City, where my professional basketball teams (don't snooze on the WNBA!) of choice reside, I learned the resident NBA team granted that jaw-dropping, one-year contract extension to one of its stars.
Friends, I like my professional sports distractions as much as the next diehard fan, but the fact that I was hearing this news story just a day after sending our mission's leadership team the most recent bad economic news for the people of our region, well, it made me yearn for an honest conversation about wealth in this country.
What I sent my team in an email was this from a Minnesota Public Radio story: "One notable exception is wages, which have stayed flat in Minnesota since last September while prices have risen by 3.7 percent, according to the latest Consumer Price Index. That means workers in the state have lost purchasing power."
$40 million is a gain of a lot of purchasing power, on the other hand.
Oh, I know some will call me a socialist for questioning the ethics of such a pay day. After all, people have the choice to tune out professional sports anytime they want, right? And if the people didn't value the entertainment, players and owners and TV stations wouldn't profit so handsomely from professional sports, right Pastor?
All true, but heavens, what a reflection that is on our earthly priorities, right?
We've determined that a young man with some athletic prowess should pull down a one-year salary equivalent to nearly 890 average income earning people in our state. I don't know what the word is to describe such failed principles ... But I guess the best that comes to mind for this writing is: tragic.
The numbers of families who line up at the door of our pantry each week continue to steadily grow, many for the first time ever. Our food bank network in Minnesota calculated that it served more people and distributed more food than ever before last year. I would bet a healthy amount of cash to say this year's year-end numbers will be even worse.
At our mission alone, our emergency shelter use is up; the number of people seeking hot meals in our mission's kitchen are up; we're offering more free clothing and laundry services to more people than ever. And I could go on listing stats that should dismay all of us.
Instead, let me make one last attempt to put a $40 million salary into perspective.
That sum would fund our mission's entire operation -- emergency shelter, nutrition programs, case management and apartment buildings — that serves more than 500 people per day for eight entire years. Lord have mercy, indeed. Amen.
Devlyn Brooks is the CEO of Churches United in Moorhead, Minn., and an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America serving Faith Lutheran Church in Wolverton, Minn. He blogs about faith at findingfaithin.com, and can be reached at devlynbrooks@gmail.com.