J.C. Penney

By Jeffrey A. Beer Jr. –

When I was growing up and would get off the bus, I would often get the mail for my mother.  And sometimes in or under the mailbox would be a white package with the words  “JC Penney” printed on the outside.   Certainly we are all familiar with this super-chain of clothing stores and their phonebook sized Christmas catalog.  But what I only recently learned about was the fascinating story of its founder, James Cash Penney.

He started the first JC Penney store in 1902, and by the 1920’s, his empire included many stores nationwide, real estate, farms and a dairy.   Penney was a very wealthy man but he was also very generous with his money.  He gave a considerable amount of his wealth away every year, and helped to open hospitals and schools.  But when the stock market crashed in 1929, and the Great Depression started, Penney and his family suffered a major financial crisis.  He lost almost everything, and like many Americans during this time, had trouble paying his bills.  His financial state declined so badly that he became very sick and had to spend time in the hospital.   He would eventually recover both physically and financially, but he never stopped giving to charities.

I’m sure that when he was having trouble making ends meet and had practically nothing left, a side of James Cash Penney regretted all the money he had given away for so many years.   But as he was getting back on his feet, a reporter asked him, “Mr. Penney, do you regret all those millions you have given away to charity now that you are virtually broke and have to start over?”   Mr. Penney replied, “My only regret was that I didn’t give away more.  The things I gave I still have in the way of hospitals, churches and orphanages.  It’s the things I kept that were lost forever.”   Penney’s generosity is remarkable, and though we probably don’t have a personal fortune to share with others, we can learn about giving from his example.

This Sunday’s reading from the Gospel of Luke is very complex and a difficult parable to understand.  In short, a man’s business manager is fired because he was wasteful with his boss’s money.   So in an attempt to get on the good side of other people so they might give him a home, the manager deflates their debt to his boss by foregoing his own commission or excusing interest.  Although the manager was being selfish and manipulative, he is in fact commended by his former boss because by discounting the people’s debt, he was able to at least collect a percentage of the money owed to his boss that might otherwise never have been paid.

After the story, Jesus talks about using our money to make friends with those who can provide a home for us, making the point that if a dishonest person is smart enough to make preparations for himself here on earth, a faithful person would be even smarter and use their wealth to make arrangements for themselves in heaven. The reading ends with a more familiar line, “No servant can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and mammon” (mammon means wealth or prosperity).

It is difficult to absorb the lessons of this parable, but I think it basically comes down to how we use our possessions- whether it is our money, our skills or our time.   We spend our money, we use our talents, we allocate our time to many different things.  But the question is, are we spending these things on taking care of our wants here on earth- material possessions, popularity and the like? Or are we spending them on a higher goal- serving God and each other through our generosity with these things?  We can’t do both.

Many times we need to choose to serve God and not our own wants.  And the lesson of this week’s reading is a lesson J.C. Penney learned eighty years ago- when we give to others, we are making eternal preparations. We can only lose what we try to keep for ourselves when we focus on building our own prosperity instead of serving God.  Maybe we should take our cue from James Cash Penney and make an effort to be a little more generous with all that we have and in the end, get to keep it all.