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I wish I could say with reasonable confidence that I thought the financial crisis in this country would be short lived. I wish I could tell you how to make the most of a sagging 401k or assure you that there will always be enough jobs for any hard-working person who wants one. I wish I could tell you that the church has always come through when times are tough and that we have a plan to do so again. I wish and wish, but I cannot make these things so. The times that we live in are difficult. Friends have been laid-off. Family members raise valid concerns about having enough for their retirement years. On the surface, much seems about the same, but underneath, the shakiness of our economy makes us all uneasy. Chuck and I even went to the animal shelter yesterday to consider adopting another pet, and we learned that several of the dogs had been placed there by owners who have lost their homes. Can you imagine losing your job, your home, then your pet too? The uncertainty of this future is frightening for most of us. But there’s another emotion that has been getting to me lately too, and that’s anger. I’m angry that we’ve come to this given the many freedoms and resources we are privileged to have as a nation. I’d like to think there’s enough to go around, but it doesn’t take a monetary genius to see that excessive greed has been a driver in getting us to this point. Greed is the kind of sin that tells us – what we have is never enough. Millionaires want to be billionaires, and in the drive toward that goal, people become an obstacle, and the rules get bent or broken. I dare say that it will be difficult to weed out the people who are criminally responsible for their actions from those who, right or wrong, have learned how to manipulate the system to gain as much as possible. It also isn’t easy to say if only the banks and big corporations are the ones to blame of if the ease of consumer debt has given us all the false impression that we can have anything we want without thinking about whether we can really afford it. Still I’m still furious that the impact is so huge. I’d like to go on a Jesus style rant and turn over some tables, but I wouldn’t know exactly where to start. For Jesus, the focus was far more direct. He went to the temple during Passover and found a marketplace. Rather than finding a place of worship and reverence, he looked around and saw those who were taking advantage of the Passover pilgrimage to turn a profit – religious tourism at its finest. For John’s gospel this was the beginning of his conflict with the Jewish authorities that would affect his whole ministry and lead to their desire to rid the world of him. The greed he saw made Jesus angry to the point of a physical response. For someone who would go to the cross – willingly - that profiteering makes him this agitated makes me wonder exactly what he thinks of our current situation. Our current situation is definitely overwhelming. What can an individual possibly do when our whole economic system is a big old mess? Is there anything for us to learn from Jesus’ specific fury at dove sellers in the temple yard? Well, not surprisingly greed has been around a long time and preachers have been preaching against it for just about as long. This week I came across a really old, but highly applicable sermon from John Wesley’s repertoire on the spiritual importance of considering how we use money. Wesley’s monetary “trilateral” as it is known in Methodist circles is a three point sermon: “Gain all you can, save all you can, give all you can.” When I heard about his formula, I was certainly curious to know more. After all, I was kind of shocked to see his first statement, “Gain all you can.” In the era in which he lived, he certainly knew of folks who accumulated great wealth at the expense of others’ well being. Therefore, this first statement is probably the one with the most warnings listed after it. He says, “Gain all you can, but…” But don’t destroy the health of your body or mind to receive more. And also don’t hurt your neighbor, or your neighbor’s body or your neighbor’s soul either. Follow your own calling without wasting time to do so. Continue to learn, and by all means use whatever common sense you’ve been given. In the style of his day of long, detail-oriented sermons, this all went on for several paragraphs – but you get what I’m saying. There was a “first do no harm” principle to his understanding of gain. He applied this to things like tavern ownership and operating opera-houses too. He was skeptical of any kind of business that could potentially tempt others to sin. We might have a slightly different list today where we would point out the kind of unscrupulous business practices that may gain great wealth but lead to the harm of oneself or others. And the bar at Applebee’s probably wouldn’t be the first thing to come to mind if we were thinking about businesses that tend to profit greatest thanks to sin’s slippery slope. Interestingly enough, Wesley actually practiced what he preached. He was the highest earning preacher of his time. In an article by Keith Drury, I read that Wesley made the equivalent of $30 million dollars (conversion) in his lifetime – a figure that would be impressive to today’s mega-church preachers. But in his highest grossing year, when he earned $1.4 million in today’s dollars, he gave away 98% of it and lived off just 2%. Drury also said that when he died he left behind “only a few miscellaneous coins and a couple of silver spoons.” We might be tempted to think that Wesley and Jesus would have a duke out on this point about gain, but Jesus wasn’t opposed to gain, per se. In fact, in John’s gospel, one of the most famous Jesus sayings is that he said, “I came that they may have life, and have it in abundance.” Jesus though had the same problem as Wesley did – when that gain also had negative consequences by leading the person to get stuck in wealth accumulation as a goal in and of itself or if that gain swindled others out of abundant life – then Jesus had his issues. So what this leads me to is Wesley’s second point: Save all you can. Wesley was an advocate for simple living. If he were a bumper sticker kind of guy, he would have had two, one on each side of his car. The first would be “Live simply, so that others can simply live.” He abhorred extravagance in all forms. He preached that people shouldn’t want fancy homes, expensive clothes, or hard to find delicacies. In this section he talks about the sin of “elegant epicurism” and decries that we should, “Despise delicacy and variety, and be content with what plain nature requires.” He’d probably like today’s “slow food” movement. Now I presume we all have some favorite sins in this area. Saving is a concept far from today’s mindset. But he makes a good point. Saving, as my grandfather would tell you, is as good as earning. It puts money in your pocket. Wesley thought it was a good thing to have enough money for basic needs, to spend on yourself and your children so that you could be satisfied in daily living. He also wanted to be able to help others, so saving more would mean more to give away both to help those in the fellowship of believers and those who had great need. But here’s where I get to his second bumper-sticker. In point 6 of this section, he says, “And why should you throw away money upon your children, any more than upon yourself,....? Why should you purchase for them more pride or lust, more vanity, or foolish and hurtful desires? They do not want any more; they have enough already; nature has made ample provision for them: Why should you be at farther expense to increase their temptations and snares, and to pierce them through with more sorrows?” Wesley’s second bumper-sticker would surely say, “I’m spending my children’s inheritance.” He thought you would harm young people by giving them more than they really need. Now there’s a wake-up call for today’s indulgent parents! In softening his position just a little, he said that you could leave a generous child some money to do good, but if only one of your kids fit that description, that’s all who should get the inheritance. I know relatively few parents or grandparents who’d be inclined to follow that advice. When we go back to scripture on this point, it is clear that Jesus has a specific understanding about saving as well. Knowing churches like I do, I suspect that some of the profits of the dove sales at the temple were going back into the building – thanks to the comment from the Jews in this story. They say to Jesus, “This temple has been under construction for 46 years, and will you raise it up in three days?” Forty-six years of fundraising and building-projects is wearying. Saving for that takes us right back to the adornment dilemma; were they gaining so they could maintain the warmth and generosity of God’s house or so that they would be talked about as the ones with the cool Temple? Functional, simple – Jesus isn’t talking about a building, he’s talking about a ministry and a mission. The disciples remembered after he died that saving one’s life meant little compared to giving up. When Jesus gave himself up – remember - we all were saved. So it really is the third leg of this stool that makes this idea stand for Wesley. Give all you can. By the end of his sermon, he’s even changed the wording to “give all you have” and “give all you are.” The purpose of gaining and saving is really so that you have more to give away. Jesus gave it all. John’s gospel repeats this theme throughout. The greatest gift of all is to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. Jesus will give his life to the very people who make him angry enough to chase people away with a knotted whip. That’s giving it all. Amen. Link to Keith Drury’s article Link to Wesley’s Sermon (Use your browser's Back button to return to here.) |
