Heirs of Warren Buffett, Heirs of God

What do you do if you’re Warren Buffett and you and your wife have three children? What is the most precious gift you can give your children? What, if any of your vast wealth, do you share with your children or bequeath to them? These are some of the questions which one of Warren’s children, Peter, answers in his recently published book and in an interview last week on National Public Radio.

As it turns out, Warren told his children as they approached adulthood that he would not bequeath his vast fortune to them. What he did do, however, was to give each of his children their share from the sale of a piece of property which he no longer had any use for, along with his continuing love and support, in encouraging each of his children to find their own way in life. In Peter’s case, he took his father’s gift of $90,000 over thirty years ago and used it to purchase some musical equipment so that he could pursue his love of music and launch a successful career in music.

More recently, his father has given each of his children a one billion dollar trust to be used to help others. Peter and his wife have decided to assist young girls in underdeveloped countries because they believe that developing their overlooked and neglected talents is critical to the health and well-being of their future marriages, families, local communities and nation.

I share this story with you because Warren’s approach to his children is similar to God’s approach to us. God has unlimited resources which he wants to bestow upon us, but he must do it in such a way as we can handle it. Today Kevin and Addy Willette will present their son, Davis Craig, to be baptized, and Chris and Melissa Kincaid will present their daughter, Emery Rae, to be baptized. God will adopt Davis and Emery as his own children in baptism. Kevin, Addy, Chris and Melissa will present their children for adoption by God, in part, because they believe that God will make their children heirs of his kingdom, giving them more than they could ever desire or imagine, an inheritance made possible by the love of God in Jesus Christ.

Davis and Emery will not receive their inheritance right away. In fact, they will not receive it until after their mortal lives are over and they enter more fully into the larger life which begins for them today as they receive a pledge, a down payment, that will allow them to do what Warren’s gift of $90,000 allowed his son Peter to do, to discover and nurture and develop the many gifts and talents that God has entrusted to them through the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will encourage and guide them as they discover how to multiply their talents. As they learn to be faithful with little, God will, like Warren, entrust more and more to them, with the promise, as we learn in our second reading, that we will reign with God forever.

Jesus’ revelation to John gives us a picture of what God is up to. God the Father sits on his throne. God the Son, the Lamb of God, sits on the right hand of the Father. God the Holy Spirit is the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing out from the throne and the Lamb, giving life to the tree of life, helping that tree grow and produce leaves for healing and fruits for nourishment.

Today Davis and Emery are grafted into that tree so that the Holy Spirit can begin to flow in their lives, so that they can produce leaves for healing and fruits for nourishing the broken and hungry people around them, whether through music or philanthropy, like Peter Buffett, or through investing in underperforming assets, like Warren Buffett, or in whatever way in which the Holy Spirit may guide and strengthen them as they grow in grace and in the knowledge and love of God.
One of the ways we will know that the Holy Spirit is present in the life of Davis and Emery is in their faith to do what they have never done before, just as Paul was able to detect a new and growing faith in the life of a man who had been crippled from birth to do what he had never done before, to stand up and walk. That is part of our responsibility as brothers and sisters in Christ, to encourage the faith that we see in each other, just as Warren Buffett knew that the best thing he could do for his children was to help them act on the promptings of the Holy Spirit, to have the faith to be grafted onto the tree of life, rather than being a mere extension of his own branch.

Last week I attended my 40th high school reunion. Our school motto is “Successus Fidelitate”, “Faithfulness is success.” It is our faithfulness with whatever God has entrusted to us that is the truest measure of a successful life. God promises us that in the end, whatever he may have entrusted to us in this life, with some more and with others less, depending on our capacity, if we are faithful, we will receive our inheritance which will be greater than any earthly inheritance we can imagine, even Warren Buffett’s. May we continue to discover that as we act in faith we are not alone, but that the very Spirit of God is guiding us and strengthening us to know and to do his perfect will in our lives so that we can reign with him forever in his eternal kingdom. AMEN.