We continue today with the next act of discipleship—giving. There are subjects you’re not supposed to bring up in polite conversation: politics, religion, weight, money…Well, today we’re going to talk about two of those. We’re going to talk about how money is a critical part of our religious spirituality. No part of our lives is divorced from our spirituality, and so money is something that we do well to, from time to time, address from an honest perspective. In fact, Jesus discussed money more often than faith and prayer combined. Of his forty parables in the Bible, eleven directly concern money. That’s more than 25% of the time, on one topic alone!
The reason we don’t like talking about money in relationship to our faith, or in general, for that matter, is because for many it’s a deeply personal thing. There’s also a lot of value attached to money beyond simply what it is, a medium of exchange. Money not only reflects economic value in our world today, but it also affects social value. It reflects morality in some places. Money reflects the way we make choices, and depending on what choices we make with it, money changes how people view us as individuals and members of the wider society. And so it is that money is important, and as Christians we do well to talk about it. It’s not an off-limits topic, and the very fact that it makes us uncomfortable to discuss it, even sometimes, in relationship to how we live our lives, particularly as disciples of Jesus, is precisely the reason we need to discuss it. It’s important, so important that it makes us uncomfortable to the point of awkward silence when it comes up. So let’s be like Jesus and talk about money, shall we?!
Let us pray. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
An aphorism is a concise and pointedly expressive saying that contains a general truth, such as, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Life has loads of aphorisms, but perhaps some of the best known are the aphorisms surrounding money. We’re probably all quite familiar with one aphorism in particular—“Money is the root of all evil.” But there’re also those who’ll be quick to tell you that aphorism isn’t quite right. It’s more correctly, “The love of money is the root of all evil.” As such, misquoted, from the Bible in fact, it’s a malapropism, a mistakenly used word or expression in place of a similar-sounding one. (Just call me Dictionary Dan, why don’t you?!)
But there are oodles of money aphorisms. “Money makes the world go ‘round.” “A penny saved is a penny earned.” “Save it for a rainy day.” “The best investment is in yourself.” An oft repeated favorite, “Money doesn’t buy happiness, but it sure does help.” And perhaps one of the best, “Save your money, and your money will save you.”
These are just a few of the aphorisms about money…concise and pointedly expressive sayings that contain a general truth. What’s the truth here? Money is extremely important, might be one truth conveyed here, what with saying it makes the world go ‘round. But these aphorisms are also about how we use money—in particular, spending it…or not. A lot of aphorisms about money commend the virtue of frugality, or at least wisdom and prudence in managing money so as not to waste it, and perhaps even get more of it.
Money is important in our world. Money represents power, in particular the power of self-determination, in a lot of ways. If you don’t have money to pay for what you need, you’re at the mercy of others, and in our society, we don’t like the notion of being dependent on others. We want the ability to make our own choices and do our own thing without being beholden to anyone else. Money represents the power to shape your own life according to your own liking, largely. This isn’t to say that those who’ve got money don’t have outside influences on their lives, but money does allow such folks to have much more power over the direction those outside influences end up having over them than someone who doesn’t have that same sort of access to money. Money represents the power to determine more easily how your life will unfold…The more money you have, the more power you have to shape your own life the way you want. Hence why we have the aphorism, “Save your money, and your money will save you.” If you have money in the bank, when something arises—as is inevitably the case for everyone—that threatens to take your power to make your own choice away, you can reach into that savings, that rainy day fund, and the money you’ve saved has saved you.
And yet here we are today talking about the act of giving, and frankly, giving money. Often we’ll hear in the church, and from pastors and preachers in particular, that giving is about more than money. And to be sure, it is about more than money. But saying that is often a copout to avoid talking about money as giving altogether—because it’s unpleasant. The same way someone who knows the Bible actually says “the love of money is the root of all evil” ends up squashing any spiritual conversation about our relationship with money because, well, surely, it’s not my money but my love of money, and I don’t love money more than I should! So I’m off the hook for that one! And for that mindset, nothing comes of the important discussion about money, our relationship to it, and its bearing on our lives as Christians, as disciples of Jesus, the one who taught that “if you wish to be perfect,” according to Jesus in St. Matthew’s gospel, “go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.” Then, and only then, does Jesus say, “Come, follow me.”
So how are we as Christians to view money? And in particular, why is giving such an important act of discipleship? The very notion of giving the way the widow in today’s gospel account does fly in the face of popular wisdom, yet Jesus says she gave more with her penny’s worth of offering than all the rest who are putting in because “all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.” The world teaches us that we should save for that rainy day, a penny saved is a penny earned, the best investment is in yourself…the money you save will come back to save you. So this woman is foolish, giving it all, everything, away, yet here we are holding her up as a paragon of Christian faithfulness, and in particular a model for cheerful, faithful Christian giving. Have we lost our minds?
No—but we do see things differently as Christians. Or at least, as Christians we should see things differently. The first disciples of Jesus gave up everything to follow him. The reason for that was simple. Jesus preached a message that changed the very foundation of the world, that was different from the common message of greed, anger, backbiting, showboating, lust, excess, and general apathy peddled by the world then, and honestly, to this day. His was a message that life lived as God intends comprises loyal commitments, affection, exuberance about life, serenity, a willingness to stick with things, compassion, and a fundamental conviction that basic holiness permeates things and people. It’s the message about God’s perfect love. And what’s more, God was making it happen right now. Jesus and the first disciples went about sharing this message, and more and more people bought into it. It was a cause, a purpose, far greater than themselves individually. At its core, this message was that life as God intends is one lived in relationship with the world and each other. Life is as God intends when we live together for each other rather than separately for ourselves. And for the first disciples, and for us today, we give ourselves to this cause of reaching people with God’s love and therefore find true life.
Giving as Christians also entails sacrifice. This is none other than another way to reflect the sacrifice Jesus made for us. Jesus gave what should’ve been most dear to him, his very life, for our sake. He didn’t purchase our salvation with gold or silver coins, but with his very own life. And in a similar way, we as Christians give, like the widow who gave all she had, out of thankfulness for Jesus’ sacrifice for us. Our reluctance to give, when it rears its ugly head, as it’s necessarily bound to do by dint of our humanity, is the very love of money we often underplay living within us. We recognize the need in our world for that power to determine for ourselves what our lives will be like, so giving away that power is difficult. That’s the sacrifice, and it reflects Jesus’ own sacrifice for us. He gave up power in order to gain power to give us power…the power to give…
Giving as Christians, most importantly, is a reflection of our conviction in God’s promise that life is stronger than death. Giving embodies the very promise that what we value most isn’t the things of this world, but the relationship we have with God and what that relationship can do when everything that we have, everything that we do, everything that we believe is directed at God’s purpose. Giving saves us from ourselves and frees us for the abundant life God has already promised us in Jesus. Giving frees us from stagnating behind a dam of worry, greed, selfishness, shortsightedness, and negativity to gush up and surge with the love of God in our life, full of joy, peace, patience, kindness, and caring.
Our giving, and the money we give to the mission of the gospel, in this place, in this very place of Emanuel, touches people’s lives. What we’re doing here doesn’t make sense to the world, but it truly is the power of God to save us—and save the world. Money is important in our world, to be sure, but to us, God is more important, the most important. We are in the world, but not of it, and so we use the means of the world to effect God’s message of creative and redeeming love, the same way God first used the means of the world for death to bring about live. And so we use the means of this world’s corruption, the love of money, to work good for the sake of the world that God loves. The money we give here, given cheerfully and faithfully, isn’t simply to keep Emanuel going, but much more fundamentally and importantly about sharing the love of God, about touching lives that desperately need hope, patience, and encouragement. That’s why we give our money here, in this place, at Emanuel…to effect God’s message of creative and redeeming love.
As Christians, we give what we value highly because Jesus first gave what he valued most for us. He gave his life in perfect devotion to God’s will and merciful love toward us, revealing to us the heart of God. In our giving, the heart of Jesus shows forth through us. When we give of ourselves our heart and our mind are changed. To be more aligned to the heart and mind of Jesus…When we give of ourselves our heart and our mind are changed. It’s not a worldly aphorism, a concise and pointedly expressive saying that contains a general truth, but it’s most certainly the real truth—most certainly the God’s truth.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The Rev'd Daniel W. Spigelmyer, Jr. 