Lord Jesus
Christ, you have told us that with God, all things are possible; grant us your
Holy Spirit that we might do the seemingly impossible and live by your economy
of grace ✠ in the name
of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Starting today, we are officially in our stewardship campaign to support our 2022 budget and the sermons for the rest of the month are going to engage with the Scripture readings by asking the basic questions of the what, how, why, and where of giving.
The
underlying message and theme of this campaign is “We are the Body of Christ.”
This is a truth that we know from Scripture, that the Church is Christ’s Body.
And for a Body to work well, all members need to be present and contributing.
Can you imagine if you woke up and your left leg just decided it was going to
stay in bed today? Or what if your right eye decided that, while it liked being
a part of the body, wouldn’t be contributing its gift of sight to the rest of
the body. Well, this is how it is in the Church. For us to be a vibrant parish,
we need the entire Body present, active, and contributing to the well-being and
health of the entire Body. Now, giving money is only one way of contributing,
but it is one that cannot be ignored.
And
the reason why money cannot be ignored is the immense power that money has in
our lives. There’s a reason why this isn’t a fundraising campaign, even if that’s
exactly what we’re attempting to do: raise funds for the church’s budget. But
this isn’t about fundraising because the goal isn’t achieved when we have a
balanced budget. Instead, this is a stewardship campaign because our goal is to
become faithful, generous, and good stewards of the gifts that God has given
us. And the difference between this being about you giving your funds versus
you being a steward of God’s gift goes by a very specific and special word:
salvation.
To
be very clear, I’m not up here singing for my supper. These sermons about money
aren’t so that I can be the Rector of a more prestigious church with a growing
budget. And I’m certainly not talking about it for four Sundays in a row
because people are yearning for someone else to tell them how to spend money.
But I’m preaching this sermon series because, for one, it’s what the Scripture
readings are pointing us towards; and secondly, whether we want to admit it or
not, we are all enslaved to money and the message of the Gospel is that of
liberation. So preaching that never addresses money is preaching that ignores
the fullness of God’s salvation for us in Jesus Christ.
Perhaps
you think I’m overstating the case. I would argue though that the primary landscape
in which we live, move, and have our being is economic. Nearly everything we do
happens on the stage of economics, and for us, capitalism. Think about how much
economic language has infiltrated the way we talk about other things. We speak
about investing our time or spending our weekends. One of the most brilliant theologians
of our time is an Episcopal professor at Yale, Kathryn Tanner. She’s written
extensively on this idea of our captivity to markets and finances that
permeates every aspect of our lives – self-identity, relationships, vocation,
and even religion. The heresy that is running rampant in many churches today
called the Prosperity Gospel is all rooted not in the grace of the Gospel, but
rather the norms of capitalism.
Consider
the fact that we have classes to teach children about all sorts of things – we have
Communion classes, in Confirmation, we cover a whole variety of topics, we give
families strategies for developing prayer routines at home. But when do we ever
teach our children about money? We don’t have to because it’s the water we swim
in – they pick up very early what is at the center of our lives and priorities.
The
Episcopal priest and author Robert Capon writes about an experiment to try.
Next time you’re at a family gathering that includes toddlers, children, and
adults, pull out a $20 bill and set it on fire. The toddlers will be
entertained by the mere sight of burning paper, but then will go about their
business. The school-aged children will look befuddled – why in the world would
someone do that? The adults will question you about where you got a fake bill
and what kind of stunt this is. The truth, of course, is that all money is fake.
But when they come to realize that you’ve burned a real bill, you’ll start hearing
the lectures about what that money could have been used for. Maybe some will
remind you that defacing money is actually a federal crime. But deep down, we
all know that the confusion and outrage at such an act comes from watching
someone destroy our false god. People are scared not at the loss of $20, but
rather at an act that threatens to upend our world. And that’s not a lesson we
have to teach our children because we resemble what we revere; we become what
we worship.
Nearly
every single problem in our personal and political lives is the result of our
lust for money. What is Congress fighting about right now? The debt limit and the
price tag of an infrastructure bill. What is Facebook in hot water over? For
putting profits ahead of ethics. What do couples often fight about? Money – who
makes it, who controls who, and who spends it. The Archbishop of Canterbury,
Justin Welby, has written that money is given the same power as death. In the
same way that we will do nearly anything to deny death, we will do nearly
anything for money. He notes that our worldview is defined by what we measure,
and in our society, we measure money and therefore are defined by it.
Think
about what money has the power to do – if I just say the word “reparations,”
your blood pressure goes up. Think about how many ball games and recitals have
been missed by parents who put in long hours in service of a paycheck, and how
much damage that has done to generations of children. That one, I know, might
cut pretty deep for a lot of us. And what is the defense most parents would
give – “What choice did I have?” And that’s exactly my point. If we do not have
a choice, then that makes us a slave.
We
like to think that we have power over money, but we don’t. And there’s a very
simple test that we can use to know whether or not we have power over money or if
money has power over us. It’s not a test I came up with myself, but rather it’s
the one that we heard Jesus give in chapter 10 of Mark. A man ran up to Jesus,
knelt before him, and asked about inheriting life in the Kingdom of God. I know
our translation said “eternal life,” but that’s a very misleading translation.
He’s not asking about getting into a banquet after death, he’s asking about being
a part of the Kingdom that Jesus has taught is coming on earth as it is in
heaven.
And
Jesus gives him a very simple and direct answer: Go, sell, give, come, and
follow. This passage is just one of many that lets us know that none of us
really take the Bible literally, as this is one the most literal things that Jesus
ever said. This man wasn’t able to do it – the text says that he was shocked
and went away grieving. The particular word used here for “grieving” is a fairly
unique one in Scripture. More than grieving, it means something like being darkened.
It’s used a few times to describe the feeling when an empire that has forsaken
God has fallen. And that’s exactly what’s happened – wealth had been his guiding
light and that idol has been extinguished by Jesus, who asked him not just to
burn a $20 bill, but to give up his entire bank account. And so he walked away
from Jesus. His money had too much power over him.
The
disciples are perplexed. In their world, as it is in ours, wealth was a sign of
success. Being wealthy meant that God favored you, that you were blessed, that
you were wise, successful, and good. How can it be that this man wasn’t fit to
be a disciple? Jesus says, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to
enter the Kingdom of God!” And to be clear, regardless of what’s in your wallet
or on your bank statement, every single one of us is rich, especially when the person
giving us this lesson was an itinerant and homeless preacher from the
backwaters of Galilee. We might not be able to charter a flight into orbit, but
Jesus is absolutely speaking to us.
And
not to be misunderstood, Jesus doubles down: “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.” This saying has a long
history of being explained away, but Jesus meant what he said. In other words, salvation
is impossible for us, regardless of how much money we have, how many favors we
can call in, how well connected we are. Money cannot save us, but it certainly
can damn us. And this is why Jesus links money to salvation – because we need
to be saved from money.
As
I’ve already mentioned, money distorts our relationships, it leads us to commodify
things that should never have a price put on them, it leads us to treat people
like objects and objects like people. But the most pernicious thing about money
is that it deludes us into thinking that we can become self-sufficient or that
wealth can make us enough. Yes, money can surround us with certain conveniences
and luxuries, but Stage 4 cancer doesn’t care about your net worth. In a
generation or two, no one will much remember how much money you had. Wall Street
isn’t concerned with making your life better, it’s concerned with you feeding
its insatiable appetite for more.
What
is so dangerous about money is that there is no such thing as enough of it. To a point, money can make us happier and more
relaxed. And this has been studied repeatedly, once your income is above
$70,000, the more money you have the less happy you are, because once we have
enough to cover the basics, we start to worry about money for money’s sake.
Yes, when you’re in poverty, having enough money to not worry about financial
ruin is important to your physical and mental wellbeing. But once we have more
than our “daily bread,” so to put it, we start worshiping at the altar of
wealth, and we become consumed by it.
The
liberation from this false god comes in giving money away. To be completely honest
with you all – this is hard. I stand before you as a sinner and a hypocrite who
is enslaved to money just like you all. Have I given away all of my money? No.
Have I opted out of capitalism? No. Do I get my money’s worth out of my Amazon
Prime membership? You bet. But I can also tell you that our family does give
some of our money away. Each year, at about this time, we sit down with our
budget and figure out what we expect our income to be next year. Before we decide
what kind of vacation we’ll take, before we decide whether or not we’ll get a
new phone, before we decide what kind of car payment we’ll have, we take 10% of
that income and we pledge half of it St. Luke’s and the other 5% goes to other
charitable organizations that we support.
To
be clear, 10% is a far cry from 100%, but it’s a start. And, trust me, most of
us can do quite well on 90%. Ten percent is a good, Biblical number, but it’s
not magic. Some can give more than 10% and, quite frankly, should. But if you’re
tempted to give less than 10%, there’s a very good chance that the false god of
wealth is the one convincing you to give less. Ten percent takes planning, it
takes intentionality, it takes sacrifice. In return for such giving, I can’t
promise that your relationship with money will be any easier. I can’t promise
that you still won’t stress about money. I can’t promise that you’ll receive
all good things in return. But I can promise you that you’ll start to see the
salvation that Jesus is offering us, where we live serving not the economy, but
rather the Kingdom of God.
And
the reason why Jesus tells us to not just burn our money or completely opt-out
of the economy is that he tells us to give it away. You see, salvation is never
personal, it’s always communal. Participating in the Kingdom is not something
we do alone, but with others. The goal isn’t getting rid of money, it’s choosing
to give it to someone else. We give money away to participate in a different
economy, the economy of God’s abundant grace, an economy where the impossible saving
of sinners like us not only becomes possible, but a reality.
