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Foundry United Rev. |
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Sermon Series: The Economics of Jesus “Jesus and Wealth” Sunday, February 14,
2010 |
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Rev. |
This coming summer Mick
Jagger turns 67… and he looks better than when he was 40… not fair. The
Rolling Stones’ biggest hit is a song he wrote entitled “Satisfaction.” “I can’t get no
satisfaction.” Mick Jagger says the song
is about alienation from commercialized culture, an inability to find
anything authentic, anything that satisfies the deepest longings of the human
soul. He wrote it after the Rolling Stones’ first concert tour of What do you do if all your
dreams come true and there is still something missing? The story of the rich
person who came to Jesus because he had everything but something was still missing
in his life is one of the handful of stories about Jesus that appears in
Matthew, Mark, and Luke—all three of the synoptic gospels. Each of the
gospels tells it a little differently, but the basic storyline is the same. Jesus comes to the same
conclusion all three times the story is told. Jesus says: “How hard it is for
those who have wealth to enter the In Eugene Peterson’s
translation, Jesus says: “Do you have any idea how difficult it is for people
who have it all to enter God's kingdom?” Notice that in the story
Jesus is just making an observation. He is not making a political statement.
He is not being a Marxist. He is not being a Democrat. He is not being
judgmental about people who are wealthy and affluent. He doesn’t say what he
says with any kind of disdain. By all accounts, Jesus hung
out with affluent people often… people who could afford to hold large
weddings and big parties and generous meals. Once he saw a rich tax collector
named Zacchaeus in the crowd and invited himself to be his house guest,
presumably his disciples, too. Jesus seems quite comfortable around wealthy
people. So he isn’t judging them.
It is almost as though he feels sympathy for them … a little sorry for them.
How hard it is for people who have wealth to enter the What is the This is very interesting.
This story uses four terms, so far as I can see, interchangeably. The story begins with the
rich person asking what he must do to inherit eternal life. That’s one term
“to inherit eternal life.” Jesus tells him to sell all he owns and give
the money to the poor so that he will have treasure in heaven. “To have
treasure in heaven” is a second term. When the rich person is
unwilling to do this, Jesus says: “How hard it is for those who have wealth
to enter the kingdom of heaven.” “To enter the kingdom of heaven” is a third
term. Then the people who heard
this say: “Who then can be saved?” “Saved” is the fourth term. So far as I can see, Jesus
is using these four terms interchangeably—eternal life, treasure in heaven,
the Eternal life means that you
have entered and are living in the They are all metaphors for
a quality of relationship. They are all expressions for community, belonging,
brother-and-sisterhood. Peter after hearing all
this says: “Lord we have left our homes and followed you.” Jesus says: “Truly
I tell you, there is no one who has left house, or partner, or brothers, or
sisters, or parents, or children for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will
not get back very much more in this age, and in the age to come eternal life”
(Luke 18:29-30). Whatever you give up for
the kingdom, you gain much more—this community of people who are your family
in a way even your families are not your family. So Jesus is not scolding
wealthy people or criticizing them, he is simply saying that it is
particularly difficult, not impossible, but difficult for those of us who are
wealthy to have the best possible life—a life full of community and sharing
and belonging. Imagine what it would be
like for any of us to move to Cité Soleil right now. Most of us here have
money and possessions beyond the imagining of many of the people of Cité
Soleil even before the earthquake. How long, if ever, would it take for us to
experience a sense of brother-and-sisterhood with the people of Cité Soleil
if we were to move there without giving our riches away? It might be
conceivable, maybe it would be possible, but how hard it would be. Our wealth
would create an almost impossible barrier for us to overcome. A friend told me about a
friend of hers who got invited to fill in a hand at a bridge game and it
turned out to be at Bill Gates’ home. It was a very uncomfortable experience
for her. How many people do you think manage to feel relaxed around Bill
Gates? Bill Gates said he had to leave Facebook because he could not keep up
with the friend requests. Whatever happens on Facebook, which I think is fun,
it was no fun for Bill Gates. I am sure Bill Gates is a
great guy and has lots of good friends, but wealth does create divides between
people. Jesus was not condemning
anybody; he was not judging anybody; he was making an observation. I have not talked to Gordon
Cosby since Bill Branner’s funeral. My loss. Gordon Cosby retired this past
December as pastor of Church of the Saviour. He was 91 at the time of his
retirement. The Church of the Saviour
in Adams Morgan has an absolutely amazing history. More mission has emerged
from that community than maybe anywhere else. Some people used to call
Foundry “Church-of-the- Saviour -Lite.” At the Church of the Saviour
you had to take a class at least one night a week for a year before you could
become a member. We’re lite in comparison to that. The last several times I
had talked to Gordon Cosby he was working on one final big project. The
Church of the Saviour tended to be primarily white and middle-class. He was
creating groups made up of a calculated mix of people of different races,
economic backgrounds, and those coming out of incarceration. He told me it
was perhaps the hardest thing he had ever tried to do. At some point, he
said, it is going to have to involve wealth-sharing, but he said the figuring
out how to share wealth and maintain healthy relationships within the groups
would have to be done very, very carefully. In the story in the Washington Post about his retirement,
Gordon Cosby said that what he learned from the groups was this: "We
thought change should come from the top, but it turns out the bottom might be
the top. The groups,” he said, are "closer to what I think God loves
than any I've ever been to."[i]
Wealth gets in the way of
relationship; it gets in the way of community. It gets in the way of
belonging. It gets in the way of love. It gets in the way of love. I am an affluent American,
as most of us are, compared to the rest of the world. So it is hard for me to
think and talk about this. It is hard for me to think that there might be a
better life than the one I have. The only way to find out would be to give up
my possessions and try to find out. But what if this is the good life? What
if I have the good life everybody around the world longs for and I give it up
and can’t get it back? I understand how the rich person whom Jesus told to
give everything he owned to the poor and follow him felt. It would be a pretty
big gamble. You all know about the book
The Year of Living Biblically? It
was written by a Jewish man who decided to follow all the biblical teachings
and laws for a year. This inspired a Christian named Ed Dobson to spend a
year trying to live like Jesus. He wrote a book called A Year of Living Like Jesus. Ed Dobson says that when he
first started the experiment there was a youth minister in a large church in
town who decided he wanted to do the experiment with him. The youth minister
started the beard and began reading the Gospels every week. After a few
weeks, he told Dobson, "I can't live like Jesus. I work full time in a
church!"[ii]
“Blessed are the poor, for
yours is the When John Paul II visited We will never know, most of
us, because we are just like the rich person in this story. I don’t mean this
sermon to be a downer. It is just that most of us will never know if there is
something better than this or not, because we are not going to sell all we
own and give it to the poor. We are going to hold onto our homes and condos
and apartments and cars and pensions. Of course, we will. So we will never know if
there is a better life that we are missing. Jesus thought there was. Only a few verses after
this story of the rich person in Luke is the story of Zacchaeus, the rich man
into whose home Jesus invited himself to be a house guest. While Jesus is
visiting there, Zacchaeus makes an announcement: "Look, half of my
possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of
anything, I will pay back four times as much." Jesus says, “Today salvation
has come to this house” (Luke 19:8-9). It is sort of an
uncomfortable story. Was Jesus suggesting Zacchaeus could buy salvation by
giving his money away? No, I think Jesus was just making an observation. I
don’t think he was praising Zacchaeus or being a Marxist or a Democrat. I
think he was just making an observation. I think he was simply
saying that Zacchaeus was removing from his life a whole bunch of stuff that
had kept him from knowing the quality of community and relationship and love
called salvation, or the I usually try to have a
sort of upbeat ending to my sermons. I don’t have one this morning. I think
Jesus would tell us to get rid of some of our wealth and privilege. I don’t
think he’d necessarily tell us to increase our giving to the church or
charity for the sake of doing good. I don’t think that is his emphasis. It may
be a byproduct. I think Jesus would
tell us to divest of our wealth so we could experience another kind of
richness. I’m not going to tell you
to do that. I am not sure whether it would work out. It seems a gamble to me.
So you are going to have to decide for yourself whether or not to trust
Jesus. www.foundryumc.org |
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