NRSMark 10
17As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" 18Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. 19You know the commandments: 'You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.'" 20He said to him, "Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth." 21Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, "You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me."22When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.
23Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!"24And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! 25It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." 26They were greatly astounded and said to one another, "Then who can be saved?" 27Jesus looked at them and said, "For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible."
NRSDeuteronomy 26
1When you have come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it, 2you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the LORD your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his name. 3You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, "Today I declare to the LORD your God that I have come into the land that the LORD swore to our ancestors to give us." 4When the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the LORD your God.
NRS1 Corinthians 16
Now concerning the collection for the saints: you should follow the directions I gave to the churches of Galatia. 2On the first day of every week, each of you is to put aside and save whatever extra you earn, so that collections need not be taken when I come. 3And when I arrive, I will send any whom you approve with letters to take your gift to Jerusalem. 4If it seems advisable that I should go also, they will accompany me.
May the blessing of the Lord rest and remain upon you always, for the sake of Jesus. Amen.
Every New Year’s I make the same two resolutions that I’ve been making for the last 12 years: one, I will eat when I’m hungry, and two, I will rest when I’m tired. Sounds simple enough, right? But every year I get off track. I promise myself that I will only eat when I’m truly hungry, but as time wears on, I’m eating when I’m stressed, I’m eating when I’m bored, I’m eating when I’m watching TV, I’m eating when I’m getting ready for dinner, I’m eating after I’ve eaten dinner, until pretty soon, I’m eating all the time.
The same thing happens with my second resolution, to rest when I’m tired. Now I’m a person one of those people that need a reasonable night’s rest to function well the next day, and optimally, that means about 8 hours in the sack. I’m lucky to get six. I tell myself, “Get into a routine. Start getting ready for bed early. Allow yourself time to cycle down.” So fine, I’ll just read a little, or I’ll just watch an old movie, or I’ll just lie quietly in my bed, breathe deeply, and pray gently. Three hours later I’m looking at the clock and starting to panic because I have so much to do in what is already the next day.
Eat and sleep. Bears do it, bees do it, even chimpanzees do it. It should come naturally, but not for me. I have to focus. I have to plan. I have to be disciplined, otherwise, little by little, I begin to wander. A sliver of pumpkin cheesecake here, an extra helping pasta fazool there, or just one more chapter, or just one more episode on Netflix, and the next morning I’m starting the day off dead tired while I munch on a bearclaw because I’m such a bad person!
So, okay, I’m thinking I’m not alone. Yes? No? Right. There’s a reason the Lord thinks of us as sheep. We wander. We get distracted. We get ourselves into tight spots without even knowing how or why we got into those tight spots. We have a genius for getting off the stick and falling off the turnip truck. Eating and sleeping are two of my nemeses, but even more powerful and more common is the struggle we so often wage with money.
Now some people, I know, are excellent money managers and maintain a rigorous, logical control over every nickel and dime they come by. I once had an associate pastor – a dear man -- who told me he could not imagine how some people go out and spend money just to feel better. I’m sure he was quite sincere. I think he wore the same pants and shoes to work every day for the three years I worked with him. At first I thought he might have multiple pairs of the same shoes and pants, but no, same pants, same shoes, which led me to an unhealthy fascination with the seat of his pants. As the fabric became thinner and thinner, I just knew that any day he would be busting out all over. Never happened! At one point I actually invited him to hang out with me for a couple of days to see firsthand how a person might spend money just to feel better. (What can I say? I have a big heart.)
Can we all agree? Money is hard, and not just on a personal level. I think I can safely say without exaggeration that the whole world is in crisis over money. Nations are teetering on the precipice for their handling, or rather, mishandling of money. Any day now I’m expecting the European Union to approach the Disney Corporation with an offer to buy the whole country of Greece and turn it into one big theme park. (Think about it: Mickey Mouse and Hercules take on Scrooge McDuck and the Medusa in a colossal battle of competing economic theories. It could work!) So no wonder we have so many hang ups and miscues in our own individual finances. Either we cling to our money too tightly, or we fritter it away too lightly, which probably goes a long way toward explaining why Jesus spoke about money so often.
More than sex, more than drugs, more than rock ‘n roll, Jesus habitually talked about money. This Sunday’s gospel is a perfect case in point. Jesus is approached by a man who wants to know what he must do in order to inherit eternal life. After learning that the man has religiously kept all the commandments since his youth, Jesus challenges him: “Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come follow me.” When the man turns away shocked and grieving, Jesus doesn’t run after him. He doesn’t offer him another deal. He doesn’t say, “Oh, just kidding,” but rather, Jesus proceeds to shock and grieve his own disciples by adding, “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” When the disciples react with confusion, remembering that the disciples are not the sharpest tools in the shed, Jesus doubles down, saying, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
Does Jesus hate rich people?
Does Jesus think we should sell all we have, shun wealth, and live hand to mouth as a demonstration of our faith? No. Jesus included the rich and poor alike among his followers, and nowhere does he prescribe enforced poverty on members of the church. What Jesus does say is that nothing – not job; not family; not food, clothing, or shelter; and certainly not money – can stand between us and our allegiance to the kingdom of God he embodied. In one of his parables Jesus likened the kingdom to a pearl of such great worth that a merchant was so seized of heart and imagination that he sold all his other wares in order to possess it (Matthew 13: 45). For Jesus and those who would be his disciples, the kingdom is everything, in comparison to which all else is just stuff.
The reason that Jesus spoke so often about money is that more directly than anything else money competes for our allegiance to the kingdom. Jesus teaches that the Father knows what we need in order to live and thrive, “But,” he added, “seek ye the kingdom of God; and all these things shall be added unto you” (Luke 12: 31; KJV). Money, on the other hand, teaches, “Let me take care of you, and once you have everything that I can give you, then you can seek the kingdom.” The catch is that money never lets you off the hook. Money is intrinsically addictive because by its very nature money creates an insatiable appetite for more and more, such that you can never have enough. You may recall what the Duchess of Windsor once said, “You can never be too thin or too rich.” Spoken like a true addict.
So how are we to live in this money-crazy world? Where money is the universal medium of exchange, how do we have money without money having, owning, and possessing us? Jesus said that for mere mortals like us, this is impossible, but not for God. So what does God have for us that enables us to live without selling our souls to the marketplace? God has a plan for us.
Now when I say plan I don’t mean a 348-page study document subsumed under 12 headings with various graphs, pie-charts, and Venn-diagrams. Remember, the Lord is working with sheep, so to keep it simple God handed down to Israel a very easy, uncomplicated plan that entailed taking a yearly share of one’s crops and produce to the Temple in an act of covenant renewal. In Israel’s earliest days these offerings might be burnt, or later, used in a community celebration, but the real point was to demonstrate who was boss, God or Mammon. By letting go of even a portion of what was clearly precious, every Israelite family could declare their allegiance to the God of heaven and earth. In the first generation of Christian life Paul adapted the ancient Israelite practice by teaching his congregants, “On the first day of every week, each of you is to put aside and save whatever extra you earn, so that collections need not be taken when I come” (1 Corinthians 16:2).
But why every year, or every week? For that matter, why does the church have to set aside four or five Sundays out of every year for a stewardship drive? Couldn’t we just hand out a couple of flyers, send out an email blast or a One Call message and just be done with it? You all know how hard it is to stick to a healthy diet, or get appropriate rest, or keep to an exercise schedule, or simply make time for prayer and reflection. How much harder is it to keep money from taking over our lives and blinding us to the reality of God? Given the nature of wealth, its seductions and allure, money is always turning us around.
When I was younger, I used to say, “If I die.” I now know there’s no if about it. Likewise, there’s no if about money getting the upper hand in our lives, it’s only a matter of when. And when we, like sheep who have strayed, find ourselves worshiping at altars of gold and silver, we have to push the reset button. We have to come before the altar of the Lord to make the sacrifice of thanksgiving, week by week by week, otherwise we don’t stand a chance. How else can we resist the naked materialism of popular entertainment or the constant barrage of consumerist advertising? Except for this little space and time on Sunday morning, is there any other realm of your life where you’re not being baited or bullied by the incessant wail of the market?
But what if this little time and space on Sunday morning goes away? What if the windows are shuttered and the doors are locked? What if the word of the Kingdom goes unspoken? A couple of weeks ago I heard from our bishop that seminarians are now being told that sometime in their career they should expect to have another source of income besides ministry because so many churches can no longer afford a full-time pastor, or for that matter, share a pastor with another one or two congregations.
If the church is reduced to a bare remnant, like Israel in Babylon, then what? Will people suddenly turn bad? Will mothers and fathers stop loving their children? Will charity suddenly disappear from the face of the earth? No. I guess the only real difference will be that more and more and even more people become mere cogs in the vast machinery of getting and spending, when they could be living, giving, celebrating agents of the Kingdom of God.
In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
