18 Pentecost, C p 20, September 18, 2016
Jeremiah 8:18-9:1 Psalm 79:1-9
1 Timothy 2:1-7 Luke 16:1-13
One of my goals in preaching has been to show the connections between biblical writings. How were biblical writers influenced by other biblical writings and how did these influences affect their own writing? Obviously, New Testament writers borrowed whole-scale and reinterpreted in applied ways, the entirety of the Hebrew Scriptures and other intertestamental writings, such as the books called the Apocrypha.
One of my main interest has been to show how the Gospel writings mirror the concerns of the early churches, particularly the Pauline churches. All of the Pauline writings were not written by St. Paul but they did originate in communities where his followers regarded him to be a primary influence for their lives.
The chronological irony of St. Paul is that he wrote before the Gospels were written down. This confuses our chronological minds. Jesus came before St. Paul, but the presentations of Jesus in the Gospels came after the early writings of St. Paul and Paul's writing relate to us the habits and practices of the early churches. The early church had enough experience of socio-economic diversity to come to this reflection in the letter to Timothy about wealth. It is written there: The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. So in the Pauline churches there is proof that members had the ability to be people of means. One can note a diversity in the Pauline churches. In the writings to the churches it is stated that in Christ, there was to be no Jews, no Gentiles, no male, no female, no slave, no free and by extension, no rich, no poor, but a new creation. St. Paul believed that a person who was aware of the presence of the Risen Christ in their lives were free to remove ethnicity and socio-economic status to a secondary identity in their lives.
St. Paul's had an interesting personal economic philosophy. He wrote, I have learned how to be content in every circumstance. I know how to deal with times of adversity and want; I know how to deal with times of abundance.
What does this means? It means that being in Christ, should give us the ability to be rightly related to our current situation of wealth. Isn't that a worthy goal of our faith? To learn how to be content with whatever the material circumstances that comes to us in our situation.
If for the Pauline churches, it was proclaimed that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, how was that expressed in the churches to which the messages in the Gospel of Luke were first preached? In today's Gospel, we have read a parable of Jesus within the parable about the presentation of an oracle of Christ: You cannot serve God and wealth.
Is this a new economic philosophy of austerity? Does this mean that the only valid Christians are those like St. Francis of Assisi and Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta? You cannot serve God and wealth. So get thee to the monastery and the convent if you truly want to honor these words of Jesus in a literal way.
You cannot serve God and wealth. This saying is another way of applying the Ten Commandments in a new era. The teaching of the Ten Commandment instruct us to love God alone and not to make graven images. We are not to steal and we are not to covet. In the time of the early church, there was less concern about the worship of images of gods and goddesses, they were more concerned about the worship of wealth. The worship of wealth means that God is the one from whom we steal. Coveting expresses our desire, our worship energy, being projected on the wrong things for the wrong reason. Coveting is energy which could be used for worshipping God but instead it gets used to serve the material things that we desire wrongly.
You cannot serve God and wealth. This is quite a difficult saying since our wealth in life can be so demanding of our time and devotion. If we own a home, how much time do we have to spend taking care of it? If we own a car, how much do we have to spend in time and money for it? If we own clothes, we have to pay for them and then we have to spend time taking care of them, washing and ironing them. Everything that we own or possess as our wealth requires our time and further money to take care of. The question can easily arise: Do we own our wealth or does our wealth own us? Does our wealth command the further time, talent and treasure to serve the wealth that we possess?
How do we solve this dilemma of serving God or wealth?
I would suggest the following expansion of this saying of Jesus: You cannot serve God and wealth, but you can make your wealth serve God.
With this expansion of the phrase, we promote the right relationship and attitude to God and our wealth. If we acknowledge that God who is wealthy in being the owner of all that is, and if we understand ourselves to be God's children who share in the wealth of our heavenly parent, then we will join with God's program to use the wealth of the world to take good care of all of God's family on earth.
An incredibly important part of being rightly related to God and the wealth in this world is the gift of true enjoyment. It is the enjoyment akin to a child's response to seeing gifts under the Christmas tree. Wow! Are these for me? But the excitement is the awareness that all of God's wealth is for us, collective humanity. And we serve God with our wealth by using the portion of the wealth over which we have direct responsibility by helping to promote the family values of mutual care which is God's official economic program. From enjoyment of God's wealth shared with us, we can be inspired to the experience of gratitude and generosity.
So how can we make our wealth serve God? Enjoyment, gratitude and generosity liberate our wealth to become creative for God's purposes in our world.
It is common in American politics for people to give their money to the candidates who support their own particular view of the world. And some people give quite a bit of money. How do you and I give our time, talent and treasure to express our particular Christian values? One of the ways in which we promote our Christian values with our wealth is to give to the mission of the church. Fall season is the time to think about stewardship within our parish and when we give for the mission of Gospel here, it is a witness to an attitude switch as we acknowledge that God is the owner of all things and we are called to be stewards.
You cannot serve God and wealth; hopefully you and I are trying to learn how to use the wealth of our lives with enjoyment, gratitude and generosity to serve God as we support the spread of the good news of Jesus Christ in the words and deeds of our lives. Amen.
One of my main interest has been to show how the Gospel writings mirror the concerns of the early churches, particularly the Pauline churches. All of the Pauline writings were not written by St. Paul but they did originate in communities where his followers regarded him to be a primary influence for their lives.
The chronological irony of St. Paul is that he wrote before the Gospels were written down. This confuses our chronological minds. Jesus came before St. Paul, but the presentations of Jesus in the Gospels came after the early writings of St. Paul and Paul's writing relate to us the habits and practices of the early churches. The early church had enough experience of socio-economic diversity to come to this reflection in the letter to Timothy about wealth. It is written there: The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. So in the Pauline churches there is proof that members had the ability to be people of means. One can note a diversity in the Pauline churches. In the writings to the churches it is stated that in Christ, there was to be no Jews, no Gentiles, no male, no female, no slave, no free and by extension, no rich, no poor, but a new creation. St. Paul believed that a person who was aware of the presence of the Risen Christ in their lives were free to remove ethnicity and socio-economic status to a secondary identity in their lives.
St. Paul's had an interesting personal economic philosophy. He wrote, I have learned how to be content in every circumstance. I know how to deal with times of adversity and want; I know how to deal with times of abundance.
What does this means? It means that being in Christ, should give us the ability to be rightly related to our current situation of wealth. Isn't that a worthy goal of our faith? To learn how to be content with whatever the material circumstances that comes to us in our situation.
If for the Pauline churches, it was proclaimed that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, how was that expressed in the churches to which the messages in the Gospel of Luke were first preached? In today's Gospel, we have read a parable of Jesus within the parable about the presentation of an oracle of Christ: You cannot serve God and wealth.
Is this a new economic philosophy of austerity? Does this mean that the only valid Christians are those like St. Francis of Assisi and Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta? You cannot serve God and wealth. So get thee to the monastery and the convent if you truly want to honor these words of Jesus in a literal way.
You cannot serve God and wealth. This saying is another way of applying the Ten Commandments in a new era. The teaching of the Ten Commandment instruct us to love God alone and not to make graven images. We are not to steal and we are not to covet. In the time of the early church, there was less concern about the worship of images of gods and goddesses, they were more concerned about the worship of wealth. The worship of wealth means that God is the one from whom we steal. Coveting expresses our desire, our worship energy, being projected on the wrong things for the wrong reason. Coveting is energy which could be used for worshipping God but instead it gets used to serve the material things that we desire wrongly.
You cannot serve God and wealth. This is quite a difficult saying since our wealth in life can be so demanding of our time and devotion. If we own a home, how much time do we have to spend taking care of it? If we own a car, how much do we have to spend in time and money for it? If we own clothes, we have to pay for them and then we have to spend time taking care of them, washing and ironing them. Everything that we own or possess as our wealth requires our time and further money to take care of. The question can easily arise: Do we own our wealth or does our wealth own us? Does our wealth command the further time, talent and treasure to serve the wealth that we possess?
How do we solve this dilemma of serving God or wealth?
I would suggest the following expansion of this saying of Jesus: You cannot serve God and wealth, but you can make your wealth serve God.
With this expansion of the phrase, we promote the right relationship and attitude to God and our wealth. If we acknowledge that God who is wealthy in being the owner of all that is, and if we understand ourselves to be God's children who share in the wealth of our heavenly parent, then we will join with God's program to use the wealth of the world to take good care of all of God's family on earth.
An incredibly important part of being rightly related to God and the wealth in this world is the gift of true enjoyment. It is the enjoyment akin to a child's response to seeing gifts under the Christmas tree. Wow! Are these for me? But the excitement is the awareness that all of God's wealth is for us, collective humanity. And we serve God with our wealth by using the portion of the wealth over which we have direct responsibility by helping to promote the family values of mutual care which is God's official economic program. From enjoyment of God's wealth shared with us, we can be inspired to the experience of gratitude and generosity.
So how can we make our wealth serve God? Enjoyment, gratitude and generosity liberate our wealth to become creative for God's purposes in our world.
It is common in American politics for people to give their money to the candidates who support their own particular view of the world. And some people give quite a bit of money. How do you and I give our time, talent and treasure to express our particular Christian values? One of the ways in which we promote our Christian values with our wealth is to give to the mission of the church. Fall season is the time to think about stewardship within our parish and when we give for the mission of Gospel here, it is a witness to an attitude switch as we acknowledge that God is the owner of all things and we are called to be stewards.
You cannot serve God and wealth; hopefully you and I are trying to learn how to use the wealth of our lives with enjoyment, gratitude and generosity to serve God as we support the spread of the good news of Jesus Christ in the words and deeds of our lives. Amen.
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