Make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth.
Jesus of Nazareth
After telling a story about a dishonest estate manager who conspired with his master’s debtors to reduce the amounts they owed, Jesus said, ‘Make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth’ (see Luke 16). I plan to look closely at the story of the dishonest manager and Jesus’ subsequent comments in a later Reflection but now I want to focus on the phrase, ‘unrighteous wealth’. The original Greek word for ‘wealth’ could be better translated as ‘mammon’ and in last week’s Reflection I explained that mammon is money personified, money that seeks to motivate and control us.
The Pharisees probably accumulated their wealth illegally or unethically. On another occasion, Jesus accused them of devouring widows' houses, and covering it up with a pretence of long prayers, and of neglecting both justice and mercy. That sort of behaviour was bad enough. But what made their wealth profoundly unrighteous was the way they loved and used it for their own glorification. Even when they gave to the poor, they turned it into extravagant pageants. Jesus warned his followers, ‘When you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do…that they may be praised by others’.
Paul of Tarsus later described the love of money as the root of all evil (see 1 Timothy 6:6-12). Although modern translations tend to dilute his warning, saying that the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils, so leaving open the possibility of other roots and other evils, I think the traditional translation accurately expresses what Paul meant. We can see this when we look at the Bible’s explanation of the origin of evil.
The Jewish prophet Isaiah likened King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon to Lucifer, who was once God’s favourite angel. ‘How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! … For you have said in your heart: “I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation on the farthest sides of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High.”' (Isaiah 14:12-14).
Lucifer had it all. Or almost! But his ambition was to be like God. He did not want to be God but to be like God. He wanted autonomy and self-sufficiency; he didn’t want all that he had and enjoyed in dependence on God but with independence. He therefore fell from his exalted position and became the devil.
When the Bible explains the origin of evil in the world, it has the devil, in the guise of a serpent, tempting Eve with the same ambition: not to be God but to be like God (see Genesis 3). To some degree, that same ambition, to be like God is in all of us. This is sin at its most fundamental! It motivated Nebuchadnezzar’s grand projects to develop Babylon and his desire to conquer the holy city of Jerusalem. It was the self-sufficiency and self-fulfilment the devil sought to provoke when he tempted Jesus in the wilderness. In James’ epistle, the boasting of the businesspeople who made their plans for prosperity without reference to God is branded not just arrogant but ‘evil’!
The great tragedy of the Parable of the Prodigal Son is that neither of the brothers realised how well off they were on their father's estate. The younger took his inheritance early and went off to live independently; the elder stayed at home but saw himself more as a slave than a son. The sad truth is that we are more flawed than we like to believe and unable to see just how much God loves us; the great wonder is just how much he does love us in spite of that, as illustrated by the father in the parable. (See Luke 15:11-32.)
When Jesus told the Pharisees to use their unrighteous wealth to make friends, I do not think he meant to imply that they should continue to accumulate more, only that they should use what they already had well. How to do that is the subject of a later Reflection on what Jesus said about treasure in heaven.
The great tragedy of the Parable of the Prodigal Son is that neither of the brothers realised how well off they were on their father's estate. The younger took his inheritance early and went off to live independently; the elder stayed at home but saw himself more as a slave than a son. The sad truth is that we are more flawed than we like to believe and unable to see just how much God loves us; the great wonder is just how much he does love us in spite of that, as illustrated by the father in the parable. (See Luke 15:11-32.)
When Jesus told the Pharisees to use their unrighteous wealth to make friends, I do not think he meant to imply that they should continue to accumulate more, only that they should use what they already had well. How to do that is the subject of a later Reflection on what Jesus said about treasure in heaven.
Paul’s use of the metaphor, the root of all evil, is graphic. Roots usually are ugly tangles that grow underground, out of sight, from where they feed flowers and fruit that are very different. The love of money is a root that grows in our unconscious minds, out of sight and rarely thought about, that feeds our desires. We see some of its fruit and flowers in the greed, vanity, excess, pretention, ostentation, snobbery, selfishness and so many other vices that the celebrity culture admires as virtues.
I plan to explore this subject further next weekend, when we look at Jesus’ announcement, ‘I am the light of the world’. I think it’s particularly relevant that he said it while standing in the Temple treasury.
© All Souls Clubhouse Community Centre & Church and Philip Evans 2014.
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