JESUS and MONEY

You have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment’. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, 'You fool!' will be liable to the hell of fire.

Jesus of Nazareth

Jesus wants his disciples to take to heart God’s ways and to do better than the Pharisees who maintained an external, superficial adherence. The Pharisees had hearts of stone beneath their religious lifestyles, secretly loving money and abusing people to get it. Jesus explained how his disciples should relate to the people around them and begins close to home, with how they should relate to each other.

The use of the word ‘brother’ in the quotation from Matthew 5:21-26 at the start of this Reflection should not be overlooked or underestimated, although that is not to say that Christians should not be equally tolerant of people who do not share our faith. The specific guidance is not to resort to anger to resolve conflict: it is not directed to disciples who caused offence but to those who respond in anger.

It‘s easy to see why this is foundational. It’s not only a very clear example of how a command about behaviour (do not murder) needs to be internalised but it’s necessary to maintain the disciples’ love for one another that should distinguish us from the rest of society. There will, inevitably, be occasions when Christians upset each other. But the person who is upset is not to resort to anger, name-calling or any other way to 'get even'. On another occasion, recorded in Matthew 18, Jesus explains how those who have been offended should seek reconciliation.

We have reflected on the importance of Christians relationships earlier in this series and the impact it has on Christian witness and evangelism. It's why Paul had to write so strongly to the Christians in Corinth. They had to reform the way they celebrated the Lord’s Supper, because it humiliated the poor believers, and the Christian businesspeople had to stop going to court when cheated by their fellow Christians. Rather, they were to try to resolve the fraud privately and, if necessary, suffer financial loss. ‘Why not rather be defrauded?’ Because personal financial loss was preferable to undermining the church's collective witness!

(This was not, of course, creating a licence for Christians to cheat each other. As Paul also makes clear in his letter, the fraudsters who are unrepentant should be excluded from the fellowship and the Christians refuse to do business with them again.)

Sadly, the history of the Church shows how poorly Christians have maintained a love for one another. Something that never ceases to amaze me is how some Christians who are tolerant of people who follow other religions are fiercely intolerant of their fellow Christians. In fact, it seems to me that the less the disagreement the sharper the conflict, with the same understanding shown to people from different theological traditions not being shown to those within the same local fellowship.

When strife between Christians began to emerge during the great revival in England in the 18th Century, John Wesley wrote to various people to foster mutual love. To his old friend George Whitefield, he wrote.

In Moses’ school we thought, and spake the same:
And must we, now in Christ, with shame confess,
Our love was greater when our light was less?

‘In Moses’ school’, refers to their time together at university, when they were united in the search for God. After they had both found God, when they were ‘in Christ’, their theology developed in different directions, and pushed them apart, and it was to their shame that their love or each other suffered as a consequence. 

An event in history that inspires me is the Moravian Revival of 1727. Christians of different backgrounds had been finding sanctuary from religious persecution for five years on the estate of Count Zinzendorf in modern Germany. Concerned about their theological divisions, and motivated by love for each other, they diligently pursued a common understanding, pausing frequently to remember together how their Saviour had died for them all. Then at a communion service the Holy Spirit came on the people in a special way and revival began. As one witness described it, the coming of the Spirit did not resolve their differences but made them easier to bear. I cannot but wonder what might happen today if Christians were similarly diligent to share love and eradicate disharmony!

I accept that Christians will have differences about theology and behaviour, and that sometimes those differences might run so deep as to make it impracticable for them to worship and work together. But that can be no excuse for the lack of love and concern. When Paul organised a collection to help the Christians in Jerusalem, he was asking mainly Gentile Christians to help Jewish Christians who could be not only critical of the Gentiles but who may have included some of those who had undermined Paul's ministry to the Gentiles.

As James reminded the rich and poor Christians who were in conflict, ‘Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God’. Jesus went further, 'Everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, "You fool!" will be liable to the hell of fire.'

This can be hard to swallow, especially if it involves financial loss or requires us to give money to fellow Christians we profoundly disagree with. But it is the starting point for Christians to be salt and light in society, to distinguish themselves as true disciples of Jesus of Nazareth and become able to recruit more disciples.

© All Souls Clubhouse Community Centre & Church and Philip Evans 2014.

Please feel free to copy, print and share these Reflections on a non-profit basis.

JESUS and MONEY

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them.

Jesus of Nazareth

Last weekend we began an overview of the financial implications of the Sermon on the Mount and we come now to what I think is the most astonishing statement Jesus made.

It’s easy for those of us who are not Jews to underestimate Jesus’ words quoted at the start of this Reflection! 'The Law' was the Torah, the guidance for life: in fact, I think that 'guidance' is a better translation of 'Torah', although that still doesn't quite capture all of the original meaning. 'The Prophets' summarises the corrective guidance given by God through men and women who spoke for God when society drifted away from the Torah. Together, 'the Law and the Prophets' were the sum and summary of all the God expected of his people and it had stood unchallenged for centuries.

Generations of Jewish scholars had interpreted and applied the Torah, some even to the point where the original intention was lost, such as when they criticised Jesus for healing people on holy days. But no scholar or teacher would have ever dared to try to set it aside. For Jesus of Nazareth even to suggest that people might think that was his intention would have been seen as the most arrogant presumption!

But then, Jesus goes even further. He said that he had come to fulfil the Law and the Prophets – to fulfil everything that God expects of people! That would have sounded like the most arrogant conceit, if not blasphemy!

As we shall see during the next three weekends, Jesus came to correct what the professional scholars taught and to restore God’s ways. The Torah had originally been given by God to a people who had specifically asked him what they should do to express their gratitude to him. It was not to be taken absolutely, like most of the Pharisees applied it. This was why the writer of Psalm 119 could see personal liberty and fulfilment in keeping the Law while most of the Pharisees and scribes (religious lawyers) taught it as restrictive censorship. It is why, for example, a farmer who should not work on a Sabbath could nevertheless rescue an animal that had fallen into a ditch.

Jesus fulfilled the Law by keeping every detail of it. He did not, of course, keep it as the Pharisees understood it but as the writer of Psalm 119 understood it, as God himself intended it. Jesus did not fulfill it superficially, theoretically or ceremonially but inherently, essentially and naturally, as only God the Son, the Messiah who uniquely never sinned, could possibly do.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus was teaching the lifestyle that God approves. On another occasion, Jesus explained, ‘The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works’ (John 14:10).

At the heart of the Sermon is Jesus' warning not to try to serve both God and money or to worry about the essentials of life that most people rely on money to get. We need to take that into our heart as well as our minds, to let it sink deep into our lifestyles.

Many of the Pharisees were lovers of money, in spite of being the most scrupulous observers of the Torah. Not all of them were hypocrites, however. Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea were sincere Pharisees and there is good reason to believe that Jesus' own brother, James, who later led the church in Jerusalem and wrote the earliest of the New Testament epistles, was also a Pharisee, although it was a long time before he accepted Jesus as Messiah!

But as Jesus explained in the Sermon on the Mount, God's people needed a quality of righteousness that exceeded even the best of the Pharisees. The key was not to be more scrupulous in their adherence to the dos and don’ts of the Torah, as if an external compliance was enough for God, or to be doubly devout in religious devotions like worship and prayer, but to absorb God's intent and principles into their lives.

In his great prayer of repentance (Psalm 51), King David acknowledged that, ‘You delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart’. Through the prophet Ezekiel, God promised to replace hearts of stone with hearts of flesh: see Ezekiel 11:19 & 36:26.

This is why our attitude to money and the ways we think about it are more important than how we get it and spend it. Our lifestyle choices must be more than obeying a set of rules. ‘Do not be conformed to this world', St Paul wrote, 'but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect’ (Romans 12:2). Such a transformation is necessary if we’re truly to live rightly as Jesus disciples.

© All Souls Clubhouse Community Centre & Church and Philip Evans 2014.

Please feel free to copy, print and share these Reflections on a non-profit basis.

JESUS and MONEY

For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus of Nazareth

The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus’ description of the sort of lifestyle that is pleasing to God. It develops his foundational principle that we should love God with our entire heart, soul, strength and mind and love our neighbours as ourselves, and it sows the seeds for everything else he taught. There may be some exceptions, but it seems to me that everything taught about lifestyle in the New Testament epistles – in passages such as Galatians 5-6, Ephesians 4-6, Colossians, Titus, James and 1 Peter – is the application of what Jesus taught in the Sermon.

Some scholars think that the Sermon was not delivered exactly as Matthew records it but that he collated things that Jesus said on different occasions. My view is that Jesus delivered the Sermon more than once and, like many preachers, said it slightly differently each time, but what Matthew records is an accurate précis of what Jesus said on one particular day.

We’ve looked at parts of the Sermon already in this series of Reflections but I think it useful to spend five weekends getting an overview and looking in particular at the financial consequences, so that we can become shrewd with money in the ways of the Kingdom of God. The quotation at the start of this Reflection expresses what Jesus was trying to impress on his disciples in the first section: that the lifestyle of his disciples is not adherence to a set of rules governing behaviour but attitudes that radiate from within to stimulate all of life.

The Sermon begins with a stunning reversal about who is society is blessed. It was as radical to Jesus original audience as it should be to us. On that hillside in Galilee, the people would have been familiar with the blessings God promised his people if they were faithful to him: ‘Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground and the fruit of your cattle, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock. Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out…The LORD will command the blessing on you in your barns and in all that you undertake. And he will bless you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you. (Deuteronomy 28:3-8)

Compare that to what Jesus said. ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit… Blessed are those who mourn… Blessed are the meek… Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness… Blessed are the merciful… Blessed are the pure in heart… Blessed are the peacemakers… Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake... Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account…’ (Matthew 5:4-11).

Those two lists are not incompatible but they do create very different impressions and I expect that a lot of people wanted one but not the other and were unhappy with what Jesus said.

We can, for example, enjoy material blessings such as a good harvest and healthy, productive cattle, and still be poor in spirit and meek. To be fully human, our practical living and enjoyment of life must be based on spiritual insight, knowing that we do our best and use all the technical skill we have but are nevertheless dependent on God alone for the blessings. Moreover, not only can we hunger and thirst for righteousness but our abundance is the means God gives us to be righteous. But I imagine that Jesus’ words were not what many of his audience wanted to hear! Perhaps this is why Jesus immediately assured them that living this was would make them the salt of the earth and the light of the world.

Salt prevents corruption and adds flavour; light exposes deceit and danger and illuminates a right, safe way forward. That is the role of Christians in every age. It may sound noble, and we might think it is a service that everyone would welcome, but it is why Christians are so very often not only out of step with the rest of society in which they live but at odds with it.

Before interpreting key sections of the Torah, Jesus warned his disciples – and the crowd around them who were listening – that their righteousness had to exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees. The Pharisees were in many ways the most religious people in Israel but in sticking ‘religiously’ to the rules most of them failed utterly to please God. ‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!’ Jesus said on another occasion. ‘For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.’ They made sure they gave to God one tenth of every herb they grew but they abused people terribly. They were lovers of money, as Luke records, and under cover of their religion ‘devoured widows’ houses’.

A lot of teaching about giving and stewardship by Christians that I have seen stops short at setting out principles and standards for making the most of God’s material blessings and fails to touch the deeper recesses of our avarice and covetousness. Much of this teaching is very helpful, and I have often learned a lot from it, but there is a risk that in keeping to rules that govern behaviour we might end up behaving more like the Pharisees than we would want to admit. And we would and fail to be salt and light in the world as Jesus intended. I plan to explore this further next weekend.

© All Souls Clubhouse Community Centre & Church and Philip Evans 2014.

Please feel free to copy, print and share these Reflections on a non-profit basis.

JESUS and MONEY

One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful in that which is another's, who will give you that which is your own?…You cannot serve God and money.

Jesus of Nazareth

We conclude the Reflection began four weeks ago, looking at the day Jesus confronted the Pharisees over their love of money (see Luke 14:1-17:10). The passage above, which we reflected on in detail two weekends ago, is critical to understanding everything that Jesus taught that day.

Luke continues his account with Jesus’ illustration of the consequences of loving money better than our neighbours. We’ve previously reflected on the story of Lazarus and the rich man and noted that the rich man’s offence was not ignoring Lazarus but of not inconveniencing himself to help. The two men may have come from opposite ends of the social spectrum but they were neighbours and the rich man, although he kept Lazarus alive with leftover food and other unwanted things, did not love his neighbour as himself. This had eternal consequences.

Jesus tells how both Lazarus and the rich man die but while Lazarus goes to be with Abraham in Paradise the rich man finds himself in hell (or Hades, the place of the dead, as some English Bibles translate it). But even there, the rich man was still acting like a rich man! He failed to realise that he his torment was the consequence of his own behaviour; he remains narrow-minded and still expects someone to serve him. He doesn’t ask to escape, only that Lazarus go and give him a sip of water.

In the story, Abraham represents God. The rich man asks Abraham to send someone back from the dead to warn his brothers about what awaits them. Abraham refuses: it is enough that they have ‘the law and the prophets’ – the Scriptures – he says. The rich man presses his point: they would listen to someone raised from the dead. Abraham disagrees. We now know that what Abraham says in the story is true in the real world because generations have failed to listen to Jesus of Nazareth, who did return from the dead!

Jesus closed this episode by warning his disciples – not the Pharisees, or the crowd, but those closest to him – against temptations to sin. He warns then not to put temptation before others but to rebuke and forgive those who do. We need to keep this in mind when talking to people who believe that in some way God wants all his people to be materially rich or that God will give material wealth in return for giving.While there are some teachers who are shamelessly use these arguments to excuse their love of money and enrich themselves, many are sincere Christians devoted to God and his people but wrong about this issue.

The disciples were not to be judgmental but they were not to lack good judgment. They asked Jesus to increase their faith but Jesus explains how even just a little faith will grow. The new birth that Jesus talked about, the need to be 'born again', as he explained it to Nicodemus (see John 3), is the start of new life. The difference being born again makes is not complete or manifest but it is fundamental and it will begin to make a difference to everything if it is nurtured and grows.

I don’t think it’s inappropriate to remember again the parable of the sower and the young plants that were choked by thorns, representing the deceitfulness of riches and the desire for things. Christians need to keep themselves clear of temptations and bad influences. I'm not suggesting we should refuse well-paid work, not enjoy the good things that come our way or accept hospitality from rich people but we must guard against being drawn into a way of life that will choke the spiritual life within us.

Finally, Jesus reminded his disciples that doing their duty as servants qualified them for no special privilege: ‘So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, “We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty”.’ I am reminded of St Paul writing to the church at Corinth, explaining that he preached the Gospel without taking a collection from them in order to go beyond the call from God to preach.

‘For if I preach the gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting. For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! For if I do this of my own will, I have a reward, but if not of my own will, I am still entrusted with a stewardship. What then is my reward? That in my preaching I may present the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my right in the gospel.’ (1 Corinthians 9:16-18.)

If more of the preachers who preach about prosperity understood that the Bible means by prosperity, they would follow Paul’s example. If more Christians were Kingdom shrew in the ways they interact with people, not shrewd in the ways of contemporary society, aspiring to lifestyles like Jesus outlined for his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount, then our ability and authority to make more disciples would be greatly enhanced. Our duty is to love and serve God, not money, and to use what wealth God has entrusted to us to serve the poor and vulnerable in society.

I'm sure the corrupt Pharisees who Jesus challenged thought they were being shrewd, mixing religious devotion with their love of money. But they were actually only out for themselves, worldly wise with a religious gloss. Next weekend, I plan to begin reflecting on the financial implications of being obedient to what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount, in order to see how to live shrewdly as Jesus meant his followers to be shrewd.

© All Souls Clubhouse Community Centre & Church and Philip Evans 2014.

Please feel free to copy, print and share these Reflections on a non-profit basis.