Jesus Talks Money

[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, on October 21.]

Mark 10:23-31
I recently was told that in the Gospels--Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John--Jesus speaks about money in 288 verses. The number seemed a bit inflated to me because, often when Jesus tells a parable involving money--like the parable of the dishonest steward or the one about the unforgiving servant, He’s only using a story involving money to tell us about other things, like the importance of being wise in our dealings with others or the need to forgive others as God forgives us for Christ’s sake. 

Even last week’s gospel lesson found Jesus speaking about money only as a way of warning us against letting anyone or anything get in the way of trusting Him alone as the way, and the truth, and the life. 

But this week, Jesus takes the subject of money head-on, tackling it for what it can and is for many people in our world, the single-most death-dealing idol of all.

So, let’s take a look at today’s lesson, Mark 10:23-31. Verse 23: “Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, ‘How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!’ The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, ‘Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!’”

The rich man who had asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life had just walked away, saddened that Jesus told him to sell all that he had, give the proceeds to the poor, and then follow Jesus. It was a stunning moment. Here was Jesus, a powerless, penniless street preacher telling a man whose wealth meant that he was accustomed to getting his way that if he wanted eternal life, he would need to get rid of his favorite god and instead rely entirely on Jesus for forgiveness and eternal life.

The disciples must have viewed this encounter uncomprehendingly. Jesus looks at them and says, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!” And then, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!” The two statements differ. The first one says that it’s hard for the wealthy to get into the kingdom, to have eternal life. The second one tells us that it’s just hard for anyone to get into the kingdom.

“Wait a minute!” we might say. “I thought that we gained entrance into God’s kingdom as a free gift of undeserved grace (or charity) granted to those who turn from sin (or, repent) and trust, believe in Jesus. Can something be free and difficult at the same time?” 

Of course it can be! The life of Christian discipleship is both free and difficult! The only way we can, day in and day out, take hold of the life and salvation that Jesus offers is to let go of our favorite personal insurance policies: the things we use to validate our worth, prove our significance, make us feel secure. 

Our old selves, with their sinful obsessions, selfishness, and idols have to be crucified so that our new, eternal lives can happen. Truly, if we’re going to live with the God we meet in the crucified and risen Jesus, we must submit to the daily destruction of our safe, ego-centered worlds so that God the Holy Spirit can undertake the construction of our new, never-ending lives. 

Jesus tells us elsewhere, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Mark 8:34) 

The gift of new life from Jesus is free, but taking it can involve painful separation from the things, the ways of life we love, as the rich man with whom Jesus had just spoken learned. 

A man once told me about an affair he’d had and the decision he and the woman with whom he’d had the relationship to end it. “We loved each other deeply,” he told me. “It wasn’t physical. She accepted my imperfections and affirmed my worth and potential.” The two of them ended things because they knew continuing would displease God and violate their marriage vows. 

Leaving behind our favorite sins in order to grasp the gift of new life reserved for those who follow Jesus is hard. We can’t keep unrepentantly following our sins if we want to follow Jesus. The gift of life Jesus offers is worth any sacrifice, including the sacrifice of our sinful rebellions against God. “If anyone is in Christ,” the apostle Paul writes, “the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

Jesus goes on in verse 25: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” 

I’m guessing that Jesus reverts to talking about money because He sees the disciples’ shock at his assertion that money has the potential to drag us into hell, away from God. Their shock is understandable: In first-century Judea, where Jesus lived, wealth was regarded as God’s affirmation of the rich person’s faith. Wealthy people were thought to be more righteous than poor people. 

Such thinking didn’t end in the first century. A friend once told me about going to a couples’ Bible study, most of whose members took it as a given that people were only poor because they weren’t right with God. Yet Proverbs 28:6 tells us, “Better the poor whose walk is blameless than the rich whose ways are perverse.”

Wealth in and of itself isn’t the problem, of course. It’s how we view it, whether it controls our decision making and priorities or not. Theologian Richard Foster says that money is a power; either we will control it or it will control us. 

The apostle Paul doesn’t say that money is the root of all evil of course, but he does say that, “...the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” (1 Timothy 6:10) 

It is exactly against the grief of separation from God that Jesus warns us today. Jesus asks us to imagine a large camel threading the eye of a needle, then tells us that those who carry their wealth around as their security blanket, their god, cannot possibly make into the kingdom of God. 

How important is money in our lives? One way to determine that is to see how generous we are, not just to the church and other not-for-profit entities, but in our everyday lives. Speaking personally, I pray to be more generous, less concerned with getting or keeping and more concerned with giving away. 

Jesus says: “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.” (Luke 12:48) That applies to us all, whatever our incomes.

Verse 26: “The disciples were even more amazed, and said to each other, ‘Who then can be saved?’ Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.’” 

“If a rich man can’t be saved,” the disciples ask, “what hope is there for anyone to enter God’s kingdom?” 

Life with God is only possible because of God’s grace given to us in Jesus. Wealth may allow us to get more medical care and buy better food before we all eventually die, Jesus is saying, but it’s impossible to buy life with God. 

Yet God makes it possible for anyone to be saved from sin and death, saved for life in God’s kingdom: By entrusting our entire lives to Jesus the Christ. 

As the Bible reminds us: “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12)

Verse 28: “Then Peter spoke up, ‘We have left everything to follow you!’” 

Despite common folklore, Peter and the other fishermen were probably themselves wealthy people. Franchises to fish the waters of Galilee were rare and expensive in the first place and those who did have those franchises made lots of money. We know from the Gospel of John that two of the twelve, James and John, were part of a family fishing business that employed others. So, Peter’s question is more than a disinterested theological inquiry. He’s like the overachiever looking for extra credit. “We’re OK, right? We left everything behind to follow You, Jesus.”

Jesus doesn’t answer Peter’s question directly. Instead, Jesus points the disciples--including you and me--back to faith, back to turning away from the love of wealth that will keep us from claiming the gift of eternal life through Jesus. 

Verse 29: “‘Truly I tell you,’ Jesus replied, ‘no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—[free and difficult] and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.’”

The God we meet in Jesus, crucified for our sins, risen for our eternal salvation, offers infinitely more to those who worship Him and Him alone than all the wealth of this dying world possibly can. 

It’s out of consideration for the overwhelming grace of God in Christ, offered to rich and poor alike, that Paul wrote to the first century church in Ephesus: “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” (Ephesians 3:20-21)

The world may put those who dare to be Jesus’ disciples on its bottom rungs, but we know that in the upside-down kingdom of God, the “first will be last, and the last first.” If last place is where we can be with Christ, now and in eternity, that’s exactly where we should always want to be. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Americans and Our Stuff

"Possession is nine-tenths of the problem" (Dr. Winston O'Boogie, aka John Lennon)

I agree with my son who, when linking to this piece from becoming minimalist over on Facebook, said that the greatest threat to Americans, spiritually and in every other way, is our materialism.

In 21 Surprising Statistics That Reveal How Much Stuff We Actually Own, Joshua Becker catalogs some bracing facts, some that really might surprise or even shock you.

A sampling:

1. There are 300,000 items in the average American home (LA Times). [I worked for an inventory service when I was in college, counting by hand, items in grocery, discount, drug, and hardware stores from Columbus to Portsmouth, Lancaster to Nelsonville. It was tedious. But I have a feeling that counting items with the same techniques we used before the advent of bar codes and scanners would be more daunting in my own condo than counting the merchandise in those stores was.]

5. The United States has upward of 50,000 storage facilities, more than five times the number of Starbucks. Currently, there is 7.3 square feet of self storage space for every man, woman and child in the nation. Thus, it is physically possible that every American could stand—all at the same time—under the total canopy of self storage roofing (SSA). [I find myself chuckling almost every time I see the signs for self-storage facilities, imagining people walking into the units to store themselves overnight.]

7. 3.1% of the world’s children live in America, but they own 40% of the toys consumed globally (UCLA). [No mention is made here of how many children spend hours playing with the boxes in which their toys have been packaged.]

15. Americans donate 1.9% of their income to charitable causes (NCCS/IRS). While 6 billion people worldwide live on less than $13,000/year (National Geographic). [We ignore Jesus' words, I think, to our own eternal peril: "From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked" (Luke 12:48).]

19. Over the course of our lifetime, we will spend a total of 3,680 hours or 153 days searching for misplaced items.The research found we lose up to nine items every day—or 198,743 in a lifetime. Phones, keys, sunglasses, and paperwork top the list (The Daily Mail). [I threw this one in because I so identify with it. It's frustrating, but it really is one indicator of having too much stuff, I suppose.]

Becker writes:

The numbers paint a jarring picture of excessive consumption and unnecessary accumulation. Fortunately, the solution is not difficult. The invitation to own less is an invitation to freedom, intentionality, and passion.* And it can be discovered at your nearest drop-off center.

I think that he's right. In the past few years, I've been flushing lots of my possessions, taking some to places like Goodwill, Volunteers of America, and Salvation Army, while taking books and some recordings to Half Price Books, more for the privilege of divestiture than for money, because Half Price doesn't hand out a lot of that. I've also enjoyed giving a lot of my classic vinyl records from the 60s, 70s, and 80s, to my kids.

Possessions and all that goes with them can hold us down. My seminary professor and mentor, Pastor Bruce Schein, used to tell us to never have so much or be so rooted in a place that we weren't ready to move on a day's notice. Schein was warning us, in part, against identifying our lives too much by our stuff, houses, neighborhoods, and such.

This wasn't just advice of practical expedience for future pastors. For all of us, being so tied to what we own that we're not able to respond to what God may be calling us to do at any given time can destroy our eternal souls.

Jesus once told a man, "Follow Me." The man evidently was drawn to Jesus, but said in reply: "Lord, first let me go and bury my father” (Luke 9:59-60). What's interesting about this exchange is that we don't know if the man's father was dead, or even sick, yet. The man was tied to a place, to a way of life, maybe to his stuff, and so, asked if he could hold off following Jesus for a while.

The man was looking for the right time. But the right time to follow Jesus is now, no matter how inconvenient or hard as it can be to do so.

I do often wonder these days whether the times I've left one place to go to another was really done at the prompting of the Holy Spirit. (I'm serving the fourth church I've pastored in thirty-two years.)A recent unexpected encounter at the Cincinnati airport with members of the second church I served has only added to questioning my motives for moving to the next church.

For all my uncertainty on that score though, I am sure that the unwillingness to move when Jesus says, "Follow" is wrong and often prompted mostly by both our natural difficulty with change and our revulsion at the prospect of moving our stuff.** Sometimes, we have reason to wonder, I think, if we own our stuff or if our stuff owns us.

And that is precisely the issue Jesus confronts the disciples (both first- and twenty-first century varieties) with when He says: "...it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God" (Matthew 19:24).

There's nothing inherently wrong with wealth. Nothing intrinsically evil about stuff.

But they both present a strong challenge to our souls in that they can become the means by which we identify ourselves and the definition we put on what it means to live.

Possessions allow us to insulate ourselves from the realities that most people in the world for most of history have had to deal with, to, in a sense, become gods unto ourselves. All of our stuff makes it harder for the truth about human sin (our sin), our need of God, and our accountability to God and to our neighbor, to penetrate our minds, consciences, and wills.

Jesus once told a rich man who earnestly sought Jesus out that in order to be free--in order to grasp the outstretched hand of God that offers to change us from God's enemies to God's friends for eternity--he needed to sell all his possessions, give to the poor, and follow Jesus.

Had Jesus been approached by a poor man, He likely wouldn't have given the same prescription. To be sure, Jesus still would have told the poor man to follow Him, whether that meant hitting the road or following Jesus right where he already lived. But, it's likely that the poor man would have other things of which his soul and his life would need divesting in order to allow him to take hold of Jesus.

But, as a member of the US middle class, I do stew about the power of stuff over my life and I stew about the power of materialism over our culture.

Materialism is a belief system, a religion that worships a false idol whose only desire is to appeal to our human egos and love of creature comforts.

As such, it drives a wedge between the God/Man Jesus Who came to save us from our sins--from our desire to "be like God" which materialism represents--and us, between life with God and us, between authenticity and us, and between eternity and us.

I think it's time for me to repent (again) of my materialism, to follow Jesus, and to clean out my closet for a trip to the local thrift store.

*I notice, with satisfaction, that Becker uses the Oxford comma.

**I wrote a song about the challenge of living with the possibility of God calling us away from places where we've grown comfortable and happy, especially with the friends we've made. It starts out:

Feeling fine
Drinking wine
Spending time with my friends
Love exchanged
Evil tamed
I thought it would never end
But when you're talking with the Holy Spirit
He may give you a call and you'd better hear it
Following Jesus is a Jenga game
He's going to tear down your bricks
You won't be the same

(c) 2016, Mark Daniels

[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]