He was born in Royston in 1901, raised in a Methodist home where his father was a farmer, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Georgia when he was just 19. After teaching economics there for a year, he decided to change vocations and dedicated the rest of his life to helping farmers in this state emerge from their poverty and make a decent living.

D. W. Brooks eventually became chairman of Gold Kist and an agricultural expert who advised six United States presidents and leaders of other nations from all over the world. But at the outset, he began humbly, organizing cotton farmers in Carrollton in the early 1930’s with the theory that by joining together, by sharing with each other, and by learning to use better techniques and improved agricultural products, those farmers could and would survive the Depression and become productive people.

In his autobiography, Mr. Brooks remembered what it was like back then:

". . . Farmers were becoming impoverished. Their income was getting less and less . . . and we were losing ground. In the meantime, I had become greatly interested in and had started studying farm cooperatives, not only in this country but throughout the world. I believed that farmers could do better if they had some good sound farm cooperatives to handle their economic problems. I felt there was no reason for the poverty and hunger they were facing . . . in fact, the farmer’s income was down to $72 per year." (From D. W. Brooks: An Autobiography, 1993, page 12

So D. W. Brooks put together the financing for those early cooperatives, including all of his own money, as he organized the farmers and helped to lead them forward with a sense of hope. Over the next 30 years, many if not most of them, did become highly productive and financially successful. And yet, D. W. Brooks, their leader and mentor, never sought to gain personal wealth for himself. Instead, he poured the profits back into the cooperatives and whatever income he made, he tithed 10 percent to the Methodist Church, which he loved and through which he served the Lord Jesus Christ.

Sitting there last August for the memorial service at St. Mark Methodist Church, I was overwhelmed by the legacy of this remarkable Christian man, who in the early 1990’s befriended me as one of his fly-fishing companions. And as President Carter, Ambassador Jim Laney, Bishop Bevel Jones, Mr. Tom Cousins, Pastor Mike Cordle and Mr. Brooks’s son David and daughter Nancy offered their tributes and prayers, the idea for today’s sermon came to mind, and I wrote it down on the cover of the bulletin: "Farmers-Market Theology." This morning, two months later, I want to tell you what I think that means.

Chapters 14 and 26 in the book of Deuteronomy help us see in our mind’s eye how that first farmers’ market worked. Moses, their mentor and leader who had organized them and led them out of Egypt toward the Promised Land, told those people about God’s plan. They were to till the soil, raise their crops, and, when the time for harvest came, they would bring the first fruits of all they had produced to the priest who presided over the place of worship.

The ritual included these words of reverence and remembrance: "I declare to the Lord that I have come into the land which He swore to our fathers to give us," and as the basket of fruit was handed to the priest, he put it on the altar to symbolize their gratitude and dedication to God.

When the worship was over, the priest distributed the first fruits of their labors to those who had little or nothing—the Levites, who were religious leaders; the sojourners, who were travelers and refugees living in their community; the fatherless orphans who could not provide for themselves; and the widows, who had no possessions or resources of their own.

The Bible has a name for that ancient ritual—it’s called tithing, whereby the people gratefully returned to God a portion of what they had received to be given to those who were in need. And the framework which held it all together was Farmers-Market Theology.

You see, those people believed that everything—everything—came from the Lord. The land where they lived, the ground they plowed, the seeds they sowed, the rain which came down, the strength to work and the harvest they enjoyed—all of it was a gift from God. So with grateful hearts and open hands, they brought the first fruits of their labors to be shared with others. Farmers-Market Theology—tithing to God and sharing with others—that was the framework for their life. Now, the question I put before you is this: Does it still work the same way in our lives today?

A father and mother, who wanted their children to be aware of the source of the food they were eating for breakfast one morning, put an orange, a piece of bacon, a glass of milk and an egg on the table and asked them, "Now where do you think all of these good things came from?" Their five-year-old daughter, without hesitation, answered "Kroger!"

The truth is, for the most part we city dwellers have lost touch with the farming heritage that helped to build this country and with those ancient Israelite people who tilled the soil and gave the first tenth of their produce to God.

But with all of that said, it seems to me that the age-old origins of Farmers-Market Theology—tithing to the Lord and sharing what we have received with those in need—that theological view of life is more urgent and relevant in our world today than ever before, because the gap between the rich and the poor is getting wider as our population on this planet grows larger. Here in the United States, the most affluent Americans—2.7 million of them who comprise the top 1percent—will have as many after tax dollars to spend as the bottom 100 million of our citizens, and that ratio has more than doubled since 1977. (From The New York Times, Sunday, September 5, 1999, an article titled "Gap Between Rich and Poor Found Substantially Wider" by David Cay Johnston)

If you translate those numbers into real-life situations, one in five of our children—15 million in all—will go to bed hungry tonight. They live among the 40 million poor people in this nation, families who struggle to get by on $10,000 of income per year. And right here in Atlanta, Georgia, there are an estimated 25,000 homeless men, women, and children on our city streets who have no place to live, no clothing to wear, and no food to eat.

Across the world, the statistics now indicate that one billion human beings are so malnourished and impoverished that they have no hope of survival. And in Africa alone, almost 50 million people are facing starvation today with no apparent solution in sight. (Statistics from Bread for the World, 1996)

You say, "Preacher, those numbers are staggering and I’ve heard them before. But if you’re about to tell us that Farmers-Market Theology can fix what is broken in this world, it just won’t work. The problems are too complicated and poverty is too widespread to be solved by such an unsophisticated system as tithing and sharing. It may have worked for Moses and the Israelites in the 13^th century B.C., but it won’t work for us today.

Well that may be so. But I find it interesting and important that by the first century A.D., those early Christians could have said the same thing. Surrounded as they were by the Roman Empire, with its vast network of commerce, trade, transportation and by the creation of great wealth for some and abject poverty for so many others, those first century followers of Jesus Christ could have said, "The problems are too great; the gaps are too wide. There’s nothing we can do."

But that’s not what happened. The book of Acts, chapter two, tells us that those early Christians in the city of Jerusalem were together and had all things in common . . . they sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to all, as any had need.

In other words, they tithed to God, they shared with others, and as they covered the needs in their own community, the rest of the New Testament record shows that they began to send their resources out to the mission stations across Asia Minor and beyond.

It happened to Sarah Cunningham, who lived alone in the mountains of Tennessee during the depression of the 1930’s. While D. W. Brooks and his fellow Georgians were starting their co-ops, a government agent was sent to visit the impoverished farmers in Tennessee to make small loans for seed and stock and subsistence aid. When he came to Sarah Cunningham’s home, he found her barely surviving on two acres of land with no one to help her.

He asked the question, "If the government should allot you a sum of money, what would you do with it?" Her cabin had a dirt floor, its windows were covered with brown paper, light poured in through the cracks in the walls, and the only heat came from a pot belly stove. But Sarah Cunningham, who was a Christian, looked at the agent and said, "I think I would give it to the poor."

The government did allot her the money and she used it to found a mission church which now stands where her farm house once stood. And years after her death, that church is still ministering to people in the mountains of Tennessee.

It’s called "Farmers-Market Theology" —tithing to God and sharing what we have received with those in need. Does it still work today? There’s only one way to find out, and that is to try it.

In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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