Money, Possessions & Eternity (viii)

 

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.

                       (Mk.10:25)

In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’

(Acts 20:35)

Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount”.

(Luke 19:8)

 

In the Parable of the Sower, some seed falling amongst thorns.  Jesus explains that ‘the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the Word, making it unfruitful’ (Mk.4:19).  It’s a graphic picture of the dangers facing a Christian who has not tamed their relationship with money.  Failure here renders us ‘unfruitful’.  We might wonder whether the perennial spiritual immaturity of the British Church, and her lack of evangelistic effectiveness has its roots here, rather than in any perceived lack of training?  It isn’t clear that Jesus is saying that such aren’t in fact Christians, but it isn’t a healthy state of affairs either way.

Cyprian, one of my favourite Early Church Fathers, who was ordained Bishop of Carthage (N. Africa) in 249, and who led the Church through the ferocious Decian persecution, thundered: ‘The property of the wealthy holds them in chains … which shackle their courage and choke their faith and hamper their judgment and throttle their souls. They think of themselves as owners, whereas it is they rather who are owned: enslaved as they are to their own property, they are not the masters of their money but its slaves’.

This has a very different feel to any version of the ‘Prosperity Gospel’ that is so prevalent within the Church today, but it is much closer to the atmosphere of the Parable of the Sower.  We have re-iterated throughout this series that there is nothing wrong with money per se, and even wealth (though it is possible that there is a level of personal financial worth that could never be justified by Scripture).  The problem lies not with money, but with our relationship with it, our setting our heart on it (Ps.62:10).   This makes the question of our finances one of the more complex areas of discipleship to work through.  There are no easy answers…  no boxes we can tick and then be sure we’ve done all that is required.  Giving to the poor can be every bit as sinful as hoarding wealth to ourselves (Matt.6:1-4).  But when we believe it can give what only God can (its deceitfulness), or when we allow our anxiety about, and caused by money (worries of this life), or the greed it feeds (the desire for other things) to distract us from Jesus, or drown out His call to discipleship, the Word of God loses power to shape us in the Image of Christ (Mk.4:14). 

There has been at least one person for whom the love of money proved to be the deciding feature of their life.  We learn about him in Mark 10:17-31.  He lacked only ‘one thing’.  The only thing keeping him outside of the Kingdom was his love of money.  Jesus’ call for this man to sell what he had and give to the poor (Mk.10:21) is rooted in His love for him.  Jesus longs to liberate this man’s soul from the thorns that choke it.  But it turns out that ‘it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven (Mk.10:25).  It’s ironic really – Jesus is calling him to invest his money where he will get much greater benefit, but tragically he settles for a much lower yield.  Jesus isn’t saying here that every Christian must sell everything and give to the poor.  But equally, we shouldn’t conclude that He never calls a Christian to do so.  What He does command is that we ‘do good, be rich in good deeds, and generous and willing to share.  In this way we will lay up treasure for ourselves as a firm foundation for the coming age’ (see I Tim.6:18-19).  

A generation after Cyprian, one of the Church’s greatest theologians, Basil of Caesarea, taught his congregation that ‘The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry man; the coat hanging in your closet belongs to the man who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the man who has no shoes; the money which you put into the bank belongs to the poor. You do wrong to everyone you could help but fail to help’.  In a world of walk-in wardrobes, such a sermon is likely to be dismissed as extreme, possibly manipulative.  But we ignore it at our peril.  To stand before Christ having stored His money in a closet is not something we will likely thank ourselves for.

Questions

What would you make of a Church that only had one class of people in it (i.e. a ‘working-class’ Church, or a ‘middle-class’ Church)?

 

How can parents disciple their children in a godly use of, and relationship with money?  How can the Church support that more effectively?

 

Review your Spending Diary.  What have you discovered about yourself as you have recorded your spending and gifting habits?  How do you feel about the way you use money?  Is there anything you would like to change?  How can your group support you in this?

 

Read I Tim.6:3-10 & 17-19

Is Paul’s teaching on contentment something we are supposed to apply to all Christians (Phil.4:11-13)?  What is contentment?  Is it incompatible with working to achieve a higher lifestyle?  …or with appreciating that which God richly provides for us to enjoy (I Tim.6:17)?

 

What kind of temptations and traps are ‘those who want to get rich’ liable to fall into?  What constitutes ‘wanting to get rich’? 

 

Do you really think that love of and the pursuit of money is as spiritually dangerous as Paul says here (see e.g. I Tim.6:10)?  How should Christians guard themselves against such dangers? 

 

Do you agree with Basil of Caesarea (see notes above)?  How can you measure whether someone is rich in good deeds?   Why do you think Paul doesn’t give percentage figures on what should be given away?

 

Who benefits when we are generous and willing to share?  Why do you think we are so reluctant to follow Paul’s advice here?

 

Memory Passage:

So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.  You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.  I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.

Rev.3:16-18

  

Going Deeper:

We have been blessed with more wealth than perhaps any previous generation of Christians.  If you have a net worth of £75,000 you are in the top 10% of the world’s wealthiest people!  If we earned £25,000 for 40 years, we’d have had a cool million passes through our hands over the course of our working life.  It is a vastness of the resource that is simply unimaginable to most Christians throughout history, or throughout the world today.  It makes the question of our relationship with money and possessions one of the most pressing issues of discipleship we face.  And yet we are strangely blind to the vast tracts of Biblical teaching that address it.  Many of us have never systematically studied the Lord’s revealed will on these matters, and still fewer have disciplined themselves to abide by it.  When we stand before the Lord on the Day, we may find that this is our singular greatest point of failure.

Jesus taught us that where our treasure was would be where our heart proved to be also.  This might explain why so few of us have the desire for heaven and the New Creation that has characterised so many of our brothers and sisters throughout the generations of the Church. So much of our treasure is (wrongly?) invested in this age, rather than the age to come.  A wealthy plantation owner invited John Wesley to his home, and after they had ridden for a day over his property they had seen but a fraction of the plantation.  ‘Well Mr. Wesley, what do you think?’.  ‘I think’, Wesley replied, ‘you will find this difficult to leave behind’.  And in the meantime, he may have found it hard to care about the age to come.  And that will have had all kinds of ramifications for how he was able to live as a disciple of Jesus.