Money
One of the things that we’re going to be doing during this Forbidden
Four sermon series is to begin sort of tackling all those topics that we
were told we should NEVER bring up, especially around strangers, but
even among families and friends. A lot of were told by our parents that
there were certain topics you shouldn’t bring up in polite company, things
you shouldn’t talk about, if you didn’t want conflict to break out at the
dinner table, or an argument to begin amongst friends—and yet, it just
seems that the very topics that people don’t want to talk about are the
very things that matter, that really matter in life. How weird that some
folks don’t want us to talk about the stuff that really matters in life! Why
in the world are we so scared of these topics? Well, I think the reason is
because they REALLY DO MATTER…religion, sex, politics,
money…everyone of them are major, major elements of our lives, and its
weird that we would think its best, that we choose not talk about the most
important things in our lives, to sort of wall of such important parts of our
lives to our friends, as if somehow they didn’t exist, or they were just too
sensitive to talk about.
Well, I just think that’s wrong, to be honest. I mean, we know Jesus
talked about everyone of these topics, and he must have had a reason—
he must have known that they meant something, something really
important. Sex is not “just” sex, money is not “just” money, politics is not
“just” politics, and religion, religion is not “just” religion. Everyone of
these topics are important because they mean something, and what they
mean has everything to do with our values, what we hold to be most
precious or sacred or valued in our lives. What we say and believe
about each of these things says something about us and what we value
in this world. Now, God knows we can disagree about everyone of these
topics, but I don’t think we can pretend they don’t matter—they do, and I
don’t want to live in a world where I can’t talk and discuss and maybe
even argue about the things that really matter to me. Its OK to disagree
about every one of these topics, but I do think there is something wrong
with the idea that we can’t discuss the things that really matter to us—I
mean, I don’t want to live in a world with friends and colleagues and
sometimes even strangers where I can’t talk about what I think really
matters in life, knowing that there is plenty of room to disagree and still
love and honor and respect each other. So, having given my pitch about
what why we need to talk about this stuff, I wonder what my topic is
again…(INSERT CABARET VIDEO CLIP HERE)
Oh, that’s right. Money. One of my least favorite things to talk about. I
like talking about sex or religion—that seems easy compared to money!
When my father was still living, the two topics we always talked about
were Alabama college football, which is one of my favorite topics, and
money, my least favorite topic, and how we both didn’t have enough of
it. Yuck! Yet, in the end, my dad and I had some great conversations
about money and its value, and when he found out I was going to be a
pastor, he just rolled his eyes and said, “Now, there’s a formula for life-
time poverty!” When I told him that making a lot of money didn’t matter
to him, he just dismissed that, and told me, “Well, you may not miss the
money, but you’ll miss what it brings you!” He got it, I think, because he
knew that money in and of itself doesn’t mean anything—after all, its just
paper and metal and few digits on a computer screen, or a lot of digits
on a computer screen, if you’re lucky!
Money doesn’t mean anything in and of itself—it has no value, it has no
meaning for any of us until we place meaning on it, the moment we
decide that money means something to us, the moment we say or
believe that if we have money or more money, we will have X, Y or Z—we’
ll have security, or social standing, or more of the stuff we want, or more
of the stuff we think we deserve. And each of those things, each of them
have a spiritual value—money is just the way we talk about what we
really care about. That is why Jesus didn’t say that money was the root
of all evil—it doesn’t mean anything in and of itself—but he did say THE
LOVE OF MONEY is the root of all evil. Loving money is the problem,
and loving what it can do for us is the problem, he says to us. Everyone
of us in this room has a different understanding about the meaning of
money in our lives—our lack of money or our desire for more of it, or the
messes that money has gotten us into and the messes that money has
gotten us out of. And if I am right in saying that money is just the way we
talk about what we really care about, when we decide that we won’t talk
about it, what we are really saying is that we don’t want to talk about
some of those things that we really care about—about the security we
think money brings us, or the stuff we think we want, or maybe even the
stuff we think we deserve, or the values of each of those things—to talk
about money is to talk about what we really care about, and a lot of us
don’t really want to do that, because there is a side of us that worries
that if people saw what we cared about, if they saw our checkbook, they
would be horrified. That is why most of us feel uncomfortable when the
topic comes up between us and our friends, or family. And you know
what? We get especially uncomfortable if it comes out of this place—the
pulpit, the church, our faith community, each other in this place. I can’t
tell you how many times people have come up to me and said, “I left XYZ
church because all they did was talk about money!” It just feels
uncomfortable to connect the spiritual with the material, doesn’t it?
And did you know that it’s the number one topic that we fight about in our
relationships with our partners—in fact, it is the number one reason why
couples fight, hands down, no competition! And, of course, fights about
money in those relationships, or even in churches, they really aren’t
about paper and metal and computer digits—fights about money are
fights about priorities, about values. Look at my checkbook and you look
at my priorities, you are looking at what I care about. It literally lists off
my priorities, check-by-check, bill-by-bill—quite literally, a listing of what I
care about.
That is why we fight about money with our partners, because we aren’t
fighting about money—we are really fighting over conflicting values
around where our money should be spent. And because money means
more than dollars and cents, because money means something and is a
sign of what we really care about, we are especially uncomfortable when
ministers and churches bring up this topic. And believe me, most, if not
all ministers and churches, hate, hate bringing up the topic. Why?
Because if we were really truthful with ourselves we would know that we
are not really talking about money—we’re really talking about values,
and that is far more uncomfortable than talking about paper and metal. I’
d rather talk about sex any day, so you’re lucky next week, Sharon!
When I was living in Seattle a few years ago, I worked in the library of a
large law firm and one partners of that firm was father of your favorite
billionaire and mine, Bill Gates. When I was living up in the Northwest,
there was much talk and really, much criticism of this man’s son, Bill
Gates because of the fact Bill was not known as the most generous &
charitable billionaire on the block. Now, keep in mind, we at the law firm
NEVER, never said anything like that, especially in front of his daddy, but
in the general Seattle community, there was a sense that Bill was not
giving away enough of those billions he possessed and so there was a
lot of criticism directed at him and his wife, Melinda, for their perceived
stinginess. Eventually, they began a foundation called THE GATES
FOUNDATION whose mission was to help Bill give away some of those
billions.
A friend of mine who was a pastor in Portland, Oregon, told me a story
about Bill’s generosity. My friend was on the board of a non-profit
agency which was on a capital campaign to build a homeless shelter for
youth in the city of Portland. This agency had applied for a sizable
grant from the Gates Foundation and months later they really hadn’t
heard anything. One day the mail arrived and the director of the agency
opened up a pretty simple first class envelope, only to discover a check
for one million dollars to the capital campaign for the homeless shelter!
Needless to say, she about had a heart attack! There had been no
indication, no phone call, no nothing that a million dollar check was
coming in the mail! It’s a remarkable story, really, one in which I have
based of few of my own personal fantasies on—open the mailbox, and
poof, I’m a millionaire! Pay off my student loans! Buy a house!
Woohoo! But its not likely to happen, I suspect.
Jacob Needleman, a philosopher who teaches at San Francisco State
University, wrote a book a couple of years ago called MONEY AND THE
MEANING OF LIFE, and he makes a comment in the book that goes
something like this: “Our lives are a hell not because money is so
important to us, but because it is not important enough!” And what he
means by that is that we have failed to recognize that money means
something in our lives—it is a symbol of what we care about, and if we
fail to recognize and use our money as if it is a sign of our values, then
we will, as the saying goes, know the price of everything and the value of
nothing. We will miss the reason why Jesus points to that widow in the
Temple as a person who truly gives everything, whereas the wealthy
man really gave nothing at all. It is to fail to realize that the worth of any
gift is measured by what it costs the giver, and not by the dollar value of
the gift. That is why million dollar checks from Bill Gates are simply
million dollar checks from Bill Gates—and not really an act of generosity
because it simply never cost him anything, it didn’t mean much when you
have 999 other million dollar checks in your wallet. What these stories
point is that possibility that where we spend our money for most of us,
perhaps not for all of us, the most realistic marker of what we care
about. So, when Jesus points to that widow who is giving more than she
should have, he is pointing to the fact that her great passion is readily
visible. She gives her all to the God who has given everything to her,
and that everything is not all that much, but unlike the other person in
the story, she knew who gave it to her—she never doubted who she
owed everything to. She knows what matters most and that is God and
so she shows it this way, by giving out of her need rather than her
excess. She does not hold back and say “I will give you this and this, but
not this.”
“Not this.” How many of us have said that to God, and to ourselves as
well? And again, money is just a vehicle for Jesus to commend a woman
who gave everything to God. What she gave that day in the temple was
a reflection of her values. The actual amount of the money she gave
meant nothing in the great scheme of things, but the meaning and value
of that money as an expression of what she really cared about meant
everything. This story, this famous story really isn’t about giving to the
church —it’s really about the stewardship of our lives to God—and
realizing that we are to give everything to the God who has given us
everything. It’s about giving ALL of our lives over to God, including
those things we we’ve held back thinking that these things were simply
un-givable. It’s about our own personal struggles with giving to God
those things that we feel we can’t do without—security, a partner, wealth,
prestige, family, control of our lives, and all those things in our lives that
we think we can’t do without. It is all those things in our lives that we say
to God, “Not this—take this instead.” This widow put all her fears about
what the future might be like without those two coins into the very hands
of God when she gives away what she may think will give her security.
That is what we are called to do—giving up those things to God that we
feel we cannot do without.
You see, money is the vehicle for Jesus to point out that we really are
called to give everything to God—including those things we feel we can’t
live without. For us, it may mean that we have to give up to God those
things that make us feel secure in this world—those things we have
refused to give over to God—our sexuality, our finances, our
relationships, our friendships, maybe even our bitterness, maybe even
our anger--and believe that healing and newness and the best of those
things will meet on the other side of giving ourselves to God. The
wealthy man, the Bill Gates of our story, who gave a lot of money gave
nothing, really, and the woman who gave all the money she had, all that
she had, she gave away her fear about not having enough over to God,
something Bill character in our story never did. She gave away her fear
the moment she put those coins in the temple treasury, turning over to
God the false security she thought those coins might have given her.
So, the next time you talk about money with your friends and family—and
I hope you do, because talking about this topic really is important,
remember these things:
1) First, you’ve got to be brutally honest with yourself about what
money means to you before you can enter into a conversation with
someone else about it—you’ve got to figure out what the priorities you
have in your life by looking at what you do or do not spend your money
on. And this really does mean looking inside to see what really matters
to you, and being honest with yourself. Now, what you may see may not
please you, and it may not be a pretty sight, but if the meaning of money
comes up, this is a moment to be honest with yourself, and with someone
else.
2) Secondly, the moment money comes up, know that you aren’t
talking about dollar and cents, and digits on a screen, you are talking
about core values and core priorities—and that is why people get very
uptight when you talk cash, because we all instinctively know that what
we are talking about are those things that money does or does not
bring—power, prestige, security, safety, priorities, and for some of us,
the very meaning of life for some of us—there is a reason why suicides
spike during hard economic times, especially among those who have lost
all their money. Knowing that truth makes easier to understand why it’s
hard to talk about these things—and it makes it harder to talk about
them. But it should also make you aware that just because you are
aware of the real meaning of money, about the way it shows forth our
priorities, know that someone else may not be able to handle it, and you
may just have to respect that, and not push it. Talking about money is
never JUST talking about MONEY, it’s about talking about what we really,
REALLY value in life.
3) Thirdly, when you do talk about money and our struggles with it
and the meaning it has for our lives, know that we are usually talking
about those things in our lives that we need to turn over to God. If we
use money as a security blanket, we probably need to turn over that
need for security over to God, so that God can truly make us secure,
safe and sound from the craziness and uncertainty of life. If we use
money to make us feel better about ourselves, with the things we buy
ourselves, we probably need to turn over that desperate ache of being
empty over to God, so we can be filled with the peace that comes from
knowing and being known by God. If we use money to numb ourselves
from our pain, if we use shopping as a way of not looking within and
dealing with our broken heart, or shattered spirit, we probably need to be
feeling that pain, because pain shows us that we are hurt, and we need
to do those things in our lives that get us well—numbing the womb never
lets the body knows that its in crisis.
So, I ask you, and I ask myself, what is that we are keeping from God,
what are those things in our lives that we don’t want to give over to
God? What are the un-givable things in our lives that we are unwilling to
put into the hands of God? Check out your checkbook; it may give you a
clue. I know what mine are—its those things I say “Not this!” to God
when God approaches them, asking me for yet more of my life. I cannot
do without this or that. And yet I can and we can. Jesus is so clever
pointing to the widow in the Temple—he knows that money for most of us
represents so much—it represents prestige, security, it represents our
values, it represents our lives. In the end, this is not a story about
stewardship of our money—it is the story about the stewardship of our
lives. May we, you and I, have the courage to answer God with “yes”
when God approaches those un-givable things in our lives and asks for
them—may you and I say, “Yes, and this as well!” when the God of the
universe asks us for this part of our lives.
