When I was a seminarian 45 years ago, the seminary launched a campaign to raise one million dollars ($1,000,000) to erect an impressive and very expensive steeple on the chapel. The Director of Development quipped, “This campaign is our seminary’s one million dollars protest against materialism.” Of course, this remark was pure sarcasm.
However, we have just witnessed in the burial of Ruth Graham, wife of famed Billy Graham, a genuine and powerful protest against materialism. Ruth was buried in a plywood casket, costing only two hundred dollars ($200) and built by an inmate in a Louisiana penitentiary.
One would have thought that one of such fame and accessible wealth would have been buried in a gold casket, or at least in a copper or bronze one. Not so! Ruth was buried in the simplest, and cheapest way possible, yet adequate and sufficient. In a day when people at large are enamored and captivated by material things, including most Christians, Ruth’s example should speak loudly to our hearts in condemnation of our materialistic desires. And may her tribe increase.