if i could i would break into flower

...if i could i would no longer be barren

When I was just starting here, I asked a pastor-friend what was the biggest challenge to ministry. The answer he gave, surprised me. His answer was “affluence.” 

When he told me that, I retorted, ‘it’s not like you’re not serving in some wealthy suburb or anything like that.’ The truth was, he was serving a congregation that was probably less well off than we are.

He just looked at me and asked, ‘do you know how much it costs to corrupt a youth? You can do it for as little as $200, or so.” Then he said something that has always stuck with me, ‘the churches I’ve served, seem to have a remarkable inability to deal with the ambiguity, the moral dilemmas of money.’

And as much as we’re loath to admit it, he’s probably right…

We like to pretend we’re perfectly capable of handling our money on our own, on managing our assets ourselves, on spending and saving for our self; but the truth is, we know better.

I’m not advocating for a financial advisors or any of that silliness. No, what I’m talking about, is all the ways we’re more than capable of messing things up with money, the ways we betray the fact that we lack the wherewithal to handle money on our own; those fights we’ve had about money, those nights we lost sleep ove the state of the bank account, those awful rides home regretting the latest purchase of some other thing we plainly don’t need. 

On our own, we’re able to handle money just well enough to be dangerous; dangerous to ourselves, dangerous to others…

Money is complex. In God’s hands, money has a way of bringing out the best of us; and in the hands of sinners, well, money has a way of bringing out ambivalence, at best…

That’s why days like this are always such a challenge. 

In fact, when I was submitting the sermon title for the Hawk Eye, I couldn’t decide if I shouldn’t just bury to lede, forget to mention that today’s sermon is about the modern idol, money (mammon)…

Honestly, what we do with, and the way we talk about money, is ambiguous. We’d rather ignore the ambiguity, though. We’d prefer not to talk about money in the church, thank you very much. We don’t like to be confronted with our ambiguity in a place like the church, the church where we encounter the one real and living God.

The thing, though, is we’re stuck…

Jesus talked about money more than any other topic. Jesus doesn’t leave us to our own devices when it comes to idolatry. Jesus knows we’re pathetically incapable of freeing ourselves from those other gods we’ve bowed down to.

The truth that vexes us, is that if the church is going to be faithful to Jesus and his teachings, we can’t avoid the topic of money for long.

“When you give alms.” Jesus states. And just like prayer, we hear to follow Jesus, to believe in God, one must give alms. Giving away “our hard-earned money,” is non-negotiable for Jesus…

To which, of course, we should protest. Who am I kidding, of course we protest!

“Now Jesus, you’re asking for too much,” we argue. “After all,” we lecture our savior, “money is a private matter. It’s isn’t polite conversation… Now weren’t you talking about sex,” we say, pathetically trying to change the topic…

Unfortunately, Jesus isn’t fooled. 

Despite our best attempts, the appeal to manners, the way we get upset at the pastor and even our protests that we’ll never cross the threshold of a church because ‘all they talk about is money,’ Jesus is unmoved.

“When you give alms,” he says plainly.

Today’s Gospel is so great because Jesus just lays it all on the line. For once, someone is actually honest when it comes to money. For once someone, has a realistic grasp of what that death grip on “our hard earned money,” creates: idolatry, worship of money. 

Not only that, either, because Jesus also seems to be the only one in the room with a clear understanding about what money-worship looks like: obsession with what’s on our plates, apprehension over our appearance, anxiety about what assaults tomorrow may, or may not, bring upon “our hard earned money.”

…You know, when someone dares to paint an honest portrait of what our money-worship looks like, you can’t help but wonder why folks are so obedient to that money-god, why folks get so stiff in the neck when Jesus broaches the topic of money…

I have a suspicion, though. 

Honestly, I think we all actually already know how miserable worshipping the money-god is. That’s why we get so uptight when the topic of money comes up in the church, or anywhere else for that matter.

The truth is, we’d like nothing more than to be freed from the miserable money-god, but we’re also at an utter loss as to how we’d ever break free. To make matters worse, the best money management humanity can offer, isn’t any real help either! 

As my pastor-friend said, ‘we seem to have a remarkable inability to deal with the ambiguity, the moral dilemmas of money.’

No one seems to have the key to free us from our obsession to money. 

The wolves always seem to be howling at the door, and the best we’ve been able to manage in our wrestling with the money-god is apprehension, arguments and the like. That’s why we get so tense when Jesus starts talking about money, we don’t like it when someone, let alone Jesus, starts talking about that one thing we can’t seem to do anything about.

As sinners who’ve run after other gods, we’ve found ourselves trapped by those same so-called gods. And so, when anyone, let alone Jesus, calls attention to our bondage, we get upset. We get upset when folks start telling us what to do with “our hard-earned money,” because the truth is, we’ve already lost control. We know, deep down, that we can’t do anything with our hard earned money but hoard and squander it. We don’t like Jesus calling attention to the one thing we can’t do anything about.

And of course that’s the problem; because we each know, in our heart of hearts, that when Jesus calls for all our lives, he means it; all of our lives, money included. 

And perhaps that’s the only piece of Good News we’ve ever heard when it comes to talk about money… 

After all, we each know all too well about the trouble we’re capable of getting ourselves into when it comes to money, in fact we even know about the trouble the church can get itself into when it comes to money. 

When Jesus keeps harping on the topic, though; we’re stuck. We’re stuck, but we’re also freed. Jesus keeps bringing money up, whether we like it or not. Jesus keeps bringing us face to face with our inability to deal with the ambiguity of money.

Here’s the thing, Jesus keeps talking about money, not to teach us how to manage our money well or even to tell us to give it to him. No, Jesus talks about money so that we won’t be managed by it, so that we won’t be given to it. 

If we’d ever actually dare to sit still and listen to Jesus, let him have it’s way with us; we would hear Jesus’ talk about money, not as some plea to for donations to build a new sunday school annex or to make an ethical investment… If you’d listen, you’d hear the Word you’ve been hoping to hear for so long, the Word that can free you from Money’s tyranny.

Let me tell you the only thing I have any business telling you right now; Jesus dares to talk about money, because Jesus is making a claim on you.

Your money, it doesn’t belong to you, nothing does. In fact, you are no longer your own even. Your very life has been bought with a price.

When Jesus talks about money, Jesus is simply talking about the Word a pastor said over you long ago when your parents brought you up to the baptismal font, “in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, I baptize you.” 

It turns out that before you had a word in the matter, before you pledged yourself to the god of high-returns and respectable interest-rates, the one real and living God claimed you first. 

Yes, God’s claim impinges upon money’s claim, and that’s Good News, isn’t?

The kind of life Jesus is describing in today’s Gospel sounds good doesn’t it, a life as free as the sparrow and as faithful as the lily, maybe that list even sounds too good to be true? 

The terrible truth is, before the Gospel is Good News for sinners like us, it is always first one-part comedy and another part tragedy. Yes, the life Jesus is describing seems laughable, but when we actually open our hearts to the kind of life Jesus is talking about, the tragedy of our wretchedness is brought into high-relief. 

As we said, money is complex. In God’s hands, money has a way of bringing out the best of us; and in the hands of sinners, well, money has a way of bringing out ambivalence, at best…

So here, right now as you sit in the pew adjusting your weight to make sure your wallet is still tucked into your pocket, Jesus that thief has stolen, not your wallet, but your heart. And that larceny is the only act that can free you from money’s grip.

When Jesus comes to you right now, comes to you and announces that God claimed you before money did, announces that God’s claim not only came first but supersedes money’s claims.

So you, yes you, you who have trouble loving even your spouse when they infringe upon your bank account, you; Jesus dares to say, when you give alms. 

Jesus says this as the only one with the power and authority to say something like that to folks like us. Jesus says this as the one who steals your heart. Jesus says this as the only one with the power to get you to loosen your grip on your wallet. 

And when that happens, because it happens right now, you find that you’ve been held in God’s capable hands all along. As we like to remember, Martin Luther once noted that he had held many things in his hands, and he had lost them all. But whatever dear old Luther placed in God’s hands, that he still possessed.

That promise, that God’s been holding us -and God won’t let us go, is the only thing that can get priggish children of the light like us to true give alms, our entire life poured out in oblations. 

To the world, this promise might not seem like much, thus the overflowing mailboxes with pleas for money. But this promise, so despised by the world, is what Jesus gave his life for. This promise, so despised by the world, turns out to be the very ransom set for your life. This promise, so despised by the world, is the very Word that breaks into your life and robs you of your heart and makes you in to someone free enough to give alms.

Amen.