A Personal Explanation

I thought that for Easter I would interrupt the series of Reflections to give a personal word of testimony, explaining especially for new readers my background and why I write about the influence of money.

I became a Christian nearly 46 years ago. I'd been attending a youth group at a local church where each week there was a short talk about Jesus. As I lay in bed one Tuesday night near my 14th birthday, it struck me that if Jesus was really who I thought he was, that I needed to get right with him. I repented of my sin, committed to living as his disciple and then (as far as I can remember) fell asleep.

I began attending church regularly and getting involved in church activities. In time I got married, moved to the outskirts of London and had two daughters. On 19 June 1983, my family visited Westminster Chapel in central London. Dr R T Kendall, who my wife and I had first met a few years before, preached on 1 John 3:16 and it remains the sermon that has made the most impact on me, although I cannot claim to have lived up to it very well. I quote the verse as Dr Kendall did that day: ‘Hereby perceive we love because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.’

On 11 August 1996, I again visited Westminster Chapel. Dr Kendall was on vacation and the guest preacher was the Rev’d Tommy Watson. As he neared the end of his sermon, I felt an overwhelming premonition that what he was about to say would apply to me. ‘God has something you can do’, he said. ‘And by the way, perhaps you’re the only one who can do it. Or you’re the only one who God has earmarked to do the job. And if you don’t do it, it will be left undone.’

As he spoke, I was thinking, Is he really looking at me or is that a trick of the light reflecting off his glasses? Later, I concluded that it was just a trick of the light. Nevertheless, I soon began to pray about what his words might mean for me. A year later, I resigned from the civil service (government) department where I had worked for 26 years and started along the path that has led to where I am now.

As a civil servant, I'd specialised in the enforcement of court orders for debt. I continued with this specialism and after a few years it brought me into contact with a group of people who wanted to set up a charity to help people stay out of debt. I agreed to handle the administration and, unexpectedly, soon found myself visiting schools to teach 15-18 year olds personal finance skills. It was a very steep learning curve!

I wanted what I taught to be consistent with what I believed as a Christian and so began a Bible study that I doubt will ever end. Ten years later, I joined All Souls Clubhouse and it was there that I begin writing these Reflections. I don’t see myself as a minister teaching what Paul called ‘the whole counsel of God’ but as a catalyst, adding a little something to stimulate ingredients already there. Whenever I teach about money, I want people to end up thinking less about money and more about Jesus.

Jesus describes the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches and the desire for possessions as thorns that choke the spiritual development of individual Christians. More recently, two subscribers to the Reflections encouraged me to think how to express this in the corporate life of the Church, the Body of Christ. I struggled with this until last Friday.

Some readers will know that I've been unwell since November and that, if I hadn’t been, it's unlikely that I would have begun the series on JESUS and MONEY. Last Friday, after nearly five months without a diagnosis, we had a breakthrough when an MRI scan revealed two problems with my spine, one in just the place to cause the various problems in my lower abdomen. As I thought on this, I wondered if it might illustrate problems in the Body of Christ.

Christ is the head of the Church – no Christian doubts that – but in a strategic place on the Church’s ‘spine’ is the influence of money, disrupting the signals from the brain, or head, and causing parts of the body to malfunction. Like the problem with my spine, the point of disruption may not be significant, or large, but strategic.

I think James saw this. He wrote the first of the New Testament epistles and addressed it not to one but to many local churches where the influence of money was causing problems. Rich Christians were indifferent to the plight of poor Christians and the poor Christians were impatient with their rich brethren. That’s why James wrote about perseverance through hardship, the barrenness of faith without works, the responsibility and humility that should accompany wealth, favouritism based on economic status, the need to control our tongues and ‘wisdom from above’ – all of which are fundamental to authentic Christian discipleship.

We all need more light on this. When I finish the current series of Reflections, I may begin a series on James’ epistle, to explore three themes. (1) How should the Body of Christ function? (2) What is the influence of money that prevents this? (3) How can we restore the Body? 

Postscript

Dr Kendall is currently teaching at Kensington Temple in London and his Sunday sermons are on preparing for Jesus’ return and the revival that will immediately precede it (he it calls, 'Isaac'). I’ve been influenced and helped by Dr Kendall's insights into this this since he first spoke about them at the Word & Spirit Conference at Wembley in 1992.

I recommend first listening to the sermons he preached at Kensington Temple on 12 May 2013 called The Midnight Cry and Staying Ready, before listening to the current series that began on 9 February 2014 with The Awakened Church. You can find them at www.kt.org/media . 

© 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? No servant can serve two masters… You cannot serve God and money.

Jesus of Nazareth

Jesus of Nazareth gave the above warning when he confronted the religious establishment of his day over their love of money. The ‘little’ he referred to is material wealth gained through a love of money; the ‘much’ is spiritual wealth that is, ultimately, true riches. I’ve already made the point in this series of Reflections that our attitude to money and the ways we use it are part of our character development and influence what responsibility we will have in the Kingdom of Heaven: everyone will get the responsibility they can handle. In last weekend’s Reflections, I mentioned the two parables where Jesus explained this that are recorded in Matthew 25:14-30 and Luke 19:12-28.

In both parables, a man going abroad gives resources to his servants. In one of the parables, three servants get different amounts, which I think refers to our individual talents and gifts; in the other, ten servants all receive one mina (or pound), which I think refers to the Gospel message we all have. On his return, the man rewards his servants with varying degrees of responsibility, based on what they did in his absence.

The parable in Matthew is the third of three illustrations in which Jesus explains the responsibilities of his followers between his ascension and return. The servant given five talents makes five more, the one given three makes three more but the servant given just one talent buries it in the ground for fear of displeasing his master. The master had distributed the talents according to each servant’s ability, so that the two who returned double did equally well but the servant who returned only the one that he’d been given was rebuked. All he had needed to do to be equally successful was to return just one more.

Jesus repeated the lesson in the parable that Luke records because his followers still thought his mission would culminate at Jerusalem with his proclamation as King and the immediate overthrow of Roman rule. Of the ten servants each given a pound (or mina), we hear only how well three of them did. One returned ten times as much and another returned five times but one of them returned to his master only the one that he’d been given. Like the servant in the other parable, he’d hidden what he’d been given and was rebuked. And he gave the same excuse: that his master was a severe man whom he feared.

In both parables, the masters turned the excuses back on their useless servants. 'I will condemn you with your own words, you wicked servant! You knew that I was a severe man, taking what I did not deposit and reaping what I did not sow? Why then did you not put my money in the bank, and at my coming I might have collected it with interest?'

I’m sure that neither master was agreeing with his servant’s assessment but only saying that if the servants had really believed them to be severe men, they should at least have acted consistent with that belief. They should have deposited with bankers what they had been given, so their masters could have at least received interest on the money.

To invest the money like this would have been far from ideal. Interest, called usury across the ancient world and forbidden in the Torah, was widely considered immoral even where it was legal. Only severe men who hoped to reap what they had not sown took interest. But if the servants had really believed what they said about their masters, the interest would have been better than nothing at all!

Consider this. When the useless servants hid what they had been given to trade with, what did they live on? Perhaps I’m pushing my application of the parables a little too far, but I hope you will see what I’m getting at. The servants who traded presumably earned enough to live on and gave to their masters the net profit. After all, businesspeople throughout history have used some of their profit for food, housing, clothing and other living costs. But what did the servants who didn’t trade live off? Did they forget whose servants they were and hire themselves out to other masters? Did they beg?

So with us. If we don’t ‘trade’, or live, with what God has given us, what are we living on? Have we forgotten whose servants we are? If we follow the ways of society, are we actually serving money and not God?

The Sermon on the Mount describes how we love God with our whole being and love our neighbours as ourselves. But if we don’t live that way, and if we allow money a disproportionate influence in our lives, so that it distracts us from the Gospel and compromises our discipleship – what then? Are we in fact useless servants who hide what God has given us to live on?

If you’ve been tracking your spending, as I’ve described in the past two Reflections, please keep it up. I plan to explain how to use the information 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

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where 

thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither 

moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.

Jesus of Nazareth

Jesus told his followers to lay up ‘treasure in heaven’, not on earth; he told a rich, young ruler to give all his wealth to the poor, so that he might have this treasure; he told a corrupt tax collector that he had found salvation when he pledged to give away most if not all his wealth by compensating the people he had cheated and giving generously to the poor. In other passages in the New Testament, the treasure is referred to as reward, true riches and receiving a prize and symbolised by crowns, sceptres and thrones. There are two key questions. 

What is treasure in heaven? In two parables, recorded in Matthew 25 and Luke 19, Jesus explained that treasure in heaven is responsibility in the Kingdom of God. In both, a man going abroad gives resources to his servants and, on his return, rewards them servants with varying degrees of responsibility, based on what they did during his absence. I plan to look at these parables more closely next weekend.

Can money buy treasure in heaven? I’ve often hear it said of money that we can’t take it with us when we die but we can send it on ahead. I know what people mean by that but I fear it may, inadvertently, create a wrong impression. Using money as Jesus described does not ‘purchase’ treasure but, like all obedience to God’s ways, it transforms people. The ‘transformed’ people get the treasure they can cope with. But if Christian lives revolve around money, God will not be able to trust those people with true riches.

I think it was a pastor in the 17th Century who likened receiving a heavenly reward to jars being filled up. Each jar is filled to the brim and it is no use the smaller jars complaining that the bigger ones get more because each is filled to its capacity. The treasure is not something we can earn but people get the maximum treasure they can accommodate.

As I wrote in a previous Reflection, I think Jesus included the passage about money in the Sermon on the Mount because he did not want his followers to be deterred from living the way he was describing by the financial implications. I invite you to re-read the entire passage: Matthew 6: 19-34.

Jesus went on say, ‘The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!’ If our eyes are healthy, able to see the spiritual as well as the material, our bodies can be full of light; but if our eyes have been blinded by what we see around us in our capitalist, consumer society, our bodies will be full of darkness. If capitalist, consumerist ‘light’ is inside us, how great is our darkness! It’s no wonder if we cannot see where we are or know what to do about it!

Does our blindness extend to the ways that we earn money and the motivations behind our spending decisions? How vulnerable are we to concerns about our credibility and status? How important is it for us to lay up sufficient treasure on earth, so we can feel secure about our futures? How easily is our desire for ease and entertainment exploited by advertising and sales talk?

After reminding his disciples of how well God cares for flowers and birds, and assuring them that they were even more valuable to God, Jesus set out this paradigm for handling money.

1. Don’t be anxious about material things like food and clothing or, by extension, anything else that money can buy.
2. Make seeking God’s Kingdom and righteousness the sole lifestyle priority.
3. Trust God for basic needs.

Some translations say ‘give no thought’ to material needs but that goes too far: Jesus was warning against worry and fretting, not sensible forethought and planning. Jesus wants his disciples to make their lifestyle choices and daily spending decisions based on what is right, not what is cost effective. If we believe in a God who can underwrite our obedience to the way of life he wants us to live, the challenge is to live in the courage of that conviction and accumulate treasure in heaven.

With that in mind, I return to the exercise I explained at the end of last weekend’s Reflection: to record your spending for month. If you’ve begun doing that, take your spending record so far and sort everything you've bought into these categories.

(1) Survival costs. These are the things that we cannot avoid paying for and they will differ depending on where we live. They will probably include rent or mortgage, water, food, basic clothes, fuel (perhaps electricity or gas), personal hygiene (soap, toothpaste and the rest) and medication. They may include essential transport and communication (like mobile, telephone and internet access). Include any overdue bills you're repaying, and any loans or other credit repayments for survival costs you could buy outright. And, of course, include national and local taxes.

(2) Lifestyle choices. These things are not essential but they make life more pleasant for us. They include non-essential clothing, jewellery, gadgets, leisure activities and entertainment. Include any loans and other credit repayments for lifestyle costs you incurred in the past but are still paying for. I’m not suggesting that these things are unimportant, only that they are not essential to maintaining our homes and staying healthy.

(3) Giving.This includes giving to a church or charity or to any good cause or worthy person, expecting nothing - nothing at all! - in return.

You may not want to share this detailed information with anyone else but the important thing is that you know where your money goes. The reason should become clear during the next couple of Reflections.

© 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

As for [the seed] sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful.

Jesus of Nazareth

In this Reflection, I will mix metaphors but I do it on good authority. John wrote of Jesus, ‘In him was life, and the life was the light of men’. Two weekends ago, we reflected on Jesus saying that he was ‘the light of the world’ while he stood in the Temple treasury. John records Jesus’ words on another occasion: ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life’ (see John 1:4 & 8:12). The metaphors I’m mixing are light and life because they help us put into context Jesus’ words at the start of this Reflection.

Jesus of Nazareth told the parable of the sower often and we have versions of it in Matthew 13, Mark 4 and Luke 8. A man goes to sow seed on an area of uncultivated, common land. Some seed fell by the public footpath to be eaten by birds; some fell on rocky ground where it began to grow but, because it couldn’t push roots far down, it withered when the sun came up; some fell among thorns which choked the life of out of it; some fell on to good soil and grew to maturity to produce a crop of up to hundredfold – that is, 1,000%. As Jesus explained the parable, I won’t repeat him here.

I suspect this was Jesus’ favourite story for explaining both his essential message and his method for spreading it. Jesus described the process again when he said, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honour him’ (John 12:24-26).

The life of God, in Jesus, is the light of the world; the time of his glorification was the moment of his death. It’s no different for his followers. When Jesus met his disciples after his resurrection, he told them, ‘As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you’. To spread the good news of Jesus, to be the light of the world (to quote Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount), we have to die. Jesus’ way is the way of a Christian.

The life in a grain of wheat is barren unless it goes into the ground, where it begins to disintegrate. As it falls apart, losing its own shape and form, gradually something new sprouts and grows and breaks through the earth. In time, it forms a head that contains many more grains of wheat, each with its own life that is the life of the original grain. And when those grains go back into the earth, the process is multiplied.

That’s how Christians die and live. To live as any person’s disciple is to forsake our own lifestyle, to ‘die’ to it, and to adopt the teacher’s ways. We see this in the Gospels, where Jesus’ closest disciples were repeatedly out of step with him. They criticised those who anointed Jesus with perfume, they wanted to call down judgment fire on the towns that rejected him and they thought the coming of the Kingdom of God meant the immediate end of Roman rule. Again and again, they had to adjust and adopt Jesus’ ways of thinking and doing.

But this sort of dying to self is not at all the way of the consumer societies in which most of us live today where we're easily choked by its thorns: the cares of the world, the deceitfulness of riches, the desires for other things the cares and the pleasures of life. We may not have the spiritual life choked out of us to the point of spiritual death but neither do we grow to maturity to produce a crop.

Christians are to be ‘the light of the world’ but if we're disciples in name only, not really living as Jesus taught, lost among and largely indistinguishable from the thorns growing around us and limiting our own development, then we cannot be light and we lack the lifeforce necessary to mature to produce more grain, more disciples. I want therefore to conclude this Reflection by encouraging you to take the time necessary to examine your own lifestyle, to see if your spiritual life is being choked by the environment where you live and work.

For the next month, track all the money you spend: list the payment of every bill; list every chocolate bar, magazine, coffee and snack you buy. List the cost of your food and fuel and clothes. And list your regular giving and the coins you drop into a charity box. Record every single penny and cent you spend or give away.

This exercise is what people must do to take control of their money if they’re struggling to make ends meet or already in debt. But I have a deeper reason for suggesting it, even if your income comfortably exceeds your living costs.

Tracking every penny helps to bring alive the reality of our lifestyle, especially those of us who live in a society where wealth is venerated. It reveals our true priorities and shows the gap between who we think we are and the person we actually are. It also shows the gap between who we are and who we ought to be as disciples of Jesus of Nazareth. It shows how entwined we are among the thorns!

I’ll explain what to do with the information next weekend, when we reflect on treasure in heaven.

© 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

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.

Jesus of Nazareth

A rich young ruler approached Jesus with a profound question: What must I do to obtain eternal life? As the story is told in three of the four gospels (Matthew 19:16-30, Mark 10:17-31 & Luke 18:18-30), it’s important.

I doubt it was the first time the man had asked the question or that he had ever received an answer that satisfied him. He may have taken the courage to ask again, watching Jesus’ openness and kindness in welcoming young children. He may also have heard Jesus tell the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector praying in the Temple and how the latter ‘went down to his house justified’.

Jesus gave the young ruler what was probably the same reply he had heard many times before: keep the commandments. By that, Jesus meant the Ten Commandments. The man replied that he had done that since his childhood and Jesus did not seem to doubt it. As a Jew, the man was not claiming any moral or religious perfection, free from all sin and wrongdoing, only that he had lived a sincere and devout life. Jesus then said something new, ‘But you lack one thing’, and told him to give away his wealth to the poor, so that he would have treasure in heaven, and to follow with his disciples.

I plan to look at treasure in heaven later in this series but now I want to focus on what the young man lacked. Some have assumed from Jesus’ words that he lacked poverty and have concluded that this is the preferred situation for all ‘true’ Christians. This, however, cannot be correct because the New Testament mentions rich Christians and there is nothing in the Bible to suggest that it is wrong to be wealthy (only to love wealth).

The thing the devout ruler lacked was trust: unequivocal trust in God. Jesus’ words revealed that the man’s trust in God was incomplete but he could not bring himself to complete it by transferring to God the trust he had in his inherited wealth, by giving it away.

As the rich young ruler walked away, sorrowful, Jesus told his disciples just how hard it is for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God: harder than for a camel to crawl through the eye of a needle! This startled the disciples. ‘Who then can be saved?’ they asked. I expect they were thinking of themselves because none of them had come from poor families. We ought to be just as startled and concerned!

By comparison with our grandparents and with most of the people living in the world today, those of us living in consumer societies are rich! We may not consider ourselves rich compared to the people we see on television and in magazines but our affluence is sufficient to occupy us with secondary things. When he don’t worry about where our next meal is coming from, we worry about how it will taste; when we have many clothes to choose from, we fret about our image; when we have too much leisure time, we strive for novelty. This keeps our perceptions anchored in the material dimension, so that we tend to think of the ‘spiritual’ as no more than an appreciation of literature, music and art. Although the ability to appreciate these things do distinguish us from animals, and is evidence of how we are created in the image of God, it's only by being ‘born again’ – or ‘born from above’, as Jesus’ words to Nicodemus could be better translated – that we are able to see and enter the spiritual dimension.

In Money and the Meaning of Life, Professor Jacob Needleman, writes, ‘Theoretically, philosophically, I may be quite willing to accept that there is a higher reality… But when it comes to money – ah, that is usually quite a different matter… Everywhere [money] is still understood, often even more forcibly than in matters of illness and death, as representing the “real world” – the “bottom line”.’ I think that describes the situation of many people today: whatever they believe about ‘God’, they are persistently distracted and kept earth-bound by the immediate demands of money and materialism. ‘Who then can be saved?’

Jesus assured his disciples that what is impossible for people is possible for God. Sometime later, they saw the truth of this when they met Zacchaeus, a rich tax collector who had prospered from the corrupt practices of his profession (see Luke 19:1-10).

As Jesus passed through Jericho, a crowd gathered. Zacchaeus was a short man who could not see what was going on and, because of his reputation, nobody would let him through to the front of the crowd. He therefore ran ahead of the crowd and climbed a tree. As Jesus passed by, he paused, looked up, and asked Zacchaeus if he could stay at his house.

We don’t know what Jesus and Zacchaeus talked about but we know the result: Zacchaeus publicly promised to give half of his possessions to the poor and to repay everyone he had cheated four times over. Did this amount to what Jesus had told the rich young ruler to do: to give away everything? I don't know but Zacchaeus was an accountant and, if he began to do his job honestly, he knew it was the end of his affluent lifestyle. He realised that money would not be nearly as important to him anymore.

Jesus’ interpretation of Zacchaeus’ commitment was, ‘Today salvation has come to this house…’ Did Zacchaeus hear what the rich young ruler had wanted to hear? If it was, it was because Zacchaeus was prepared to do what the ruler would not.

Even after people commit themselves to living as Jesus’ disciples, old ways can be difficult to shake. In the parables of the sower, Christ likened the deceitfulness of riches, the cares of this world, the pleasures of life and covetousness to thorns that choke the Word of God and spiritual growth. That is the subject of next week’s Reflection.

© 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

I am the light of the world.

Jesus of Nazareth

After last weekend’s Reflections, it’s fair to ask, How can money have been the root of all evil? Would Lucifer have used money in eternity? Did Adam and Eve use money, even on the most literal interpretation of the early chapters of Genesis?

A tool is defined by what it does, not by what it’s called. Money is a means of valuing goods and services and of exchanging them; of getting things and getting things done. Whether people use seashells, gold coins, paper notes or computer data, it’s all money. I cannot say what Lucifer used to fulfil his ambition of autonomy and self-aggrandisement but, whatever it was, it was effective. He was realising his ambition and many angels were banished from heaven with him.

When Adam and Eve were banished from Eden, they set about fending for themselves. Generations later, Nimrod was ‘the first on earth to be a mighty man’ – a king. Nimrod means ‘to revolt’ and when Genesis says that he was ‘a mighty man before the Lord’, it does not imply he served God but quite the opposite. He gained ascendancy over his neighbours and founded a settlement called Babel where the people decided to ‘make a name for themselves’ by building a great tower high enough to reach even to heaven. That building project failed but the city continued to prosper and became Babylon. All of this was before money as we know it was invented but there nevertheless existed a means of trading and accumulating wealth that fed their ambition.

This sort of ambition had crept into the lives of the religious establishment in Jerusalem and was the basis of Jesus’ confrontation with the Pharisees that we reflected on last weekend. He criticised them for exalting what is an abomination before God: the love of money.

With this in mind, we look at Jesus’ great statement, ‘I am the light of the world’. When Jesus said that, he was standing in the Temple treasury. This was the place where the people bought their offerings: it was where the rich liked to impress people by giving huge sums of money and it was where, later, Jesus watched a widow throw in her last coins in dependence on God. Historians tell us the metal containers were designed in such a way that the money made a lot of noise on its way in, so that it was obvious whether someone gave much or little.

During the great religious festivals, the treasury was kept illuminated 24 hours a day. Jesus was there the day after the Feast of Booths had ended and so the lighting had been turned off when he stood there he stood to announce, ‘I am the light of the world’.

Traditionally there were two sources of light in the Temple: in the Holy Place, the light from the candlestand with seven branches where a special oil burned, symbolising the Holy Spirit; in the Holy of Holies, where God’s own glory shone between the golden angels on top of the Ark of the Covenant. But when Jesus was there, there was no divine glory in the Holy of Holies because the Ark had been taken from there a long time before. And so the most brightly lit place in the building on important occasions was the treasury.

The love money, the root of all evil, grows in dark places but when the fruit and flowers push through into the light, it’s the light of the treasury, not the glory of God from the Holy of Holies. Just as today the brightly lit shop displays tempt us to accumulate stuff we neither need nor wanted until the brightness dazzled us, so television, movies and magazines illuminate celebrity vices as if they were virtues we should all share: pride, pretention, boasting, conceit, vanity, ostentation, covetousness, extravagance, immodesty, lust, sexual immorality, innuendo, filthy language, jealousy, bravado and callous ire.

Jesus is the light of the glory of God and John wrote this about him: ‘The light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.’ It's in our nature to shun the light of Jesus and it’s no wonder he said that it’s harder for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God than for a camel to squeeze through the eye of a needle, which is the subject of next weekend’s Reflection.

Postscript

Jesus is the light of the entire world, not only the Jews, and the treasury was not only a false focus in the Temple. Traders and bankers were allowed in the Gentile Court, turning into a marketplace the area where foreigners were permitted to come in their search for God. I have often wondered how much the Temple authorities charged for the market stalls.

I think the Gospels record Jesus chasing out the traders and bankers on two occasions. First, early in his public ministry, as recorded in  John 2:13-1; again, a few days before his crucifixion, as recorded in Matthew 21:12-14, Mark 11:15-17 and Luke 19:45-46. Of these, Matthew recorded something important that happened afterwards: ‘And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them.’ Jesus was a light to the Gentiles and he returned the glory of God to the Gentile Court!

Revised 16 March 2014
© 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

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.

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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