Today we remain on that hillside along the northern part of the Sea of Galilee somewhere near Capernaum, listening to our rabbi deliver his ‘sermon from the mount’ to us, giving us the preamble to the constitution of a new church, a new covenant that he brings as the Word of God incarnate.
In the portion of his sermon that we heard last week, our Lord challenges us with his game-changing use of love in the face of fear – compelling us to opt out of a spiral of retributive violence and into redeeming process of restorative love. Rather than worrying about self-preservation, Jesus commands us to perfectly love each other as God love us, exhibiting a charitable and sacrificial love to everyone, including strangers and enemies… even if it costs us our own life, as it did him.
This week, the challenge from our Lord is no less provocative… he’s challenging us again to faithfully examine our relationship to God and to Mammon.
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| 1909 painting The Worship of Mammon by Evelyn De Morgan |
The Greek work mamonas (μαμμωνάς) calls to mind more than just wealth, the term is connotes greedy pursuits and concern with worldly riches. Indeed, our relationship with money and riches is often the subject of our Lord’s lessons – he has more to say about it than many other topics. This is not surprising since money represents value and power and Christ’s kingdom is established on counter-cultural notions about what and who is valued and how power is to be used and shared.
Recommended blog read (http://www.godmammon.com/2007/04/welcome-to-god-mammon.html). “According to Jesus, God and Mammon are 2 masters. You can't serve both. But, Jesus praises the shrewd money manager, and lauds those who grow their wealth in his parables. Huh?... This blog seeks to make sense of what the Bible says about money and wealth.”
Some of you already know that Jesus doesn’t preach against money or wealth itself as if it’s inherently a problem. What he’s constantly calling our attention to is how materialism seduces our affections and attention away from charitable and self-sacrificing love toward God and neighbor, and how wealth is to be shared in our common life together.
Surely, Jesus was preaching to many people who had very little… if fact, it’s likely that a good number of them actually grappled daily with the realities of finding food for their families and struggling to maintain dignity in the moment, much less hope in a better day. We could, this morning, continue to explore how this sermon/message might have been heard by people in such dire circumstances back then, as well as how people in similar circumstances today – in developing countries, in rural or inner city poverty, etc. – hear good news in this part of his sermon.
However, this morning, know that ‘people of means’ also were hearing Jesus’ message. In the Gospel lesson today, by talking about adornment with clothing while invoking Solomon’s grandeur as well as contrasting service to God with service to our pursuit of wealth, the Spirit is clearly speaking to us who live with material abundance all around us, yet often suffer from a sense of scarcity.
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(image from United Methodeviations blog: http://doroteos2.wordpress.com/2009/05/29/in-god-we-trust-in-church-we-dont/) |
In God we trust
We need look no further than the money on our pocket right now to remind ourselves of our often convoluted relationship with Mammon. On the very currency that we carry and covet is printed “In God We Trust.” Really?!
“In God We Trust” You might expect this powerful statement of faith to appear on large, symbolic monuments or church buildings… but we’ve chosen to weave it into the very fabric of our daily concerns, having it revealed every time we transact business/commerce, as if to suggest that each exchange of monetary value we engage in is also interconnected with our faith or religious values. Really?!
In a more critical mood, I might wonder if the printed motto should more accurately say, “in God we want to trust… but in the gold standard we really believe.” Or, “because we believe God is on our side, we expect we should be rich.”
If you look into the history of how this motto migrated from a phrase in our national anthem in the 19th Century to being imprinted in the mid-20th Century on the most basic commodity that is traded and shared among us, you’ll discover that the placement of this statement of faith on our money was not without controversy. And, whatever religious convictions this symbolic act might have originally been meant to reinforce, it has certainly come to represent a troubling struggle for most of us – how to truly trust in God’s providence while also focusing so much on our own desires toward gaining more worldly wealth.
Our individual desires for more power, control, and comfort in our lives can seduce us away from our Christian call to care for our neighbors, especially the ‘least of these.’ Through the temporal distractions that wealth can provide, we can be tempted into believing that we’ve somehow ‘earned’ the right to be self-indulgent or that we’re in charge of our own destiny.
And, more insidiously, worship of Mammon can become an addiction that spirals us to very dark places of desperation when we begin falsely believing that our deepest well-being and satisfaction can be achieved if we only possess ‘more.’ Jesus warns us against being possessed of this hopeless state of being. We can’t be devoted to truly serving God while also worshipping the illusory promises of wealth.
So, it’s not really the wealth or money that’s the issue, it’s the character of our habitual attitudes and priorities – how and why we ‘spend’ our time and talent. Are we participating with Christ in the growing of our true family under God based on charitable and self-sacrificing love, or are we seeking to establish our own kingdoms?
Recall again the motto on this dollar bill – In God We Trust. Really?! Do we really trust God? Do we have faith that God is ultimately in control and that we can safely offer/surrender all of who we are and our needs to God’s mission?
My own lack of trust…
Examining my own life, some of my habitual priorities and behaviors certainly don’t suggest that I truly believe that God is trustworthy.
I’ve been tempted and seduced into putting myself into the center of the garden, believing that because I’ve eaten from the tree of knowledge I’m somehow more wise or capable that I really am – like I’m the only one who is keeping it all together and making things happen.
If it’s gonna get done right, or done at all, I need to do it. No one is looking out for me except me. In the end, it’s up to me. “God’s not going to pay my mortgage or put food on my table,” says the doubting, self-centered inner voice. As if that justifies my willingness to turn away from trust in what God does provide and expect in return.
I worry about money – how much to I ‘need’, where more is going to come from, will it be enough… now and in retirement.
I prioritize pleasing myself more than pleasing God in how I use time and treasure.
I get anxious trying to manipulate and control time… wrestling and bargaining with my calendar and the clock to fit in everything that I believe needs to get done in a logical, efficient order… again, seeking to satisfy my own needs more than serving our Lord.
And, so, you start to see the problem that Jesus is addressing in his sermon. What begins with some simple realities about basic responsibilities can turn into worship of idols other than God and worries about things that are ultimately unsatisfying and beyond my control anyway.
And where are you? Several verses before what we heard this morning, our Lord points out that “where our treasurer is, there our heart will be also.” If we were to make your calendar/schedule public… if we were to publish your bank records and credit card statements… what would they reveal about your priorities, which master you’re serving, and where do you place your trust?
Recalibrating
Our other lessons today can help us recalibrate our attitude and attention.
The Psalmist today calls me / us to humble serenity – don’t try to be more than we really are… keep our feet on the ground and our soul content with a quiet heart with hope in God. (Psalm 131)
Paul, in what we heard from one of his letters to the Corinthians (1 Cor 4:1-5), sings a similar tune of humility and focus: we’re servants Christ and stewards of God’s wisdom, not Masters of our own fortunes, nor judges of others.
The prophet Isaiah has God reminding us that even when we wonder where God is amid our mortal concerns, God is always with us, looking out for us like a compassionate parent… who even has our names tattooed on the back of his own hands.
And, in his popular Bible paraphrase called The Message, Eugene Peterson renders part of the Gospel lesson this way, “Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don't get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes…. What I'm trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God's giving. … Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don't worry about missing out. You'll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.”
If you’re putting cash in the offering plate today,
or the next time you have paper currency in your hand,
pause and remember our Lord’s life.
Re-read the motto we’ve put our symbol of wealth
“In God We Trust”
Jesus is challenging us to believe that.
Examine how we’re focusing our attention and utilizing our resources.
Worship more than worry.
And, be awake and alert in our relationships with others.
Whose goals do we have in mind?
What love is motivating us?
In whom do we place our trust?
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