October 18, 2020: Thrive Financially!
Ecclesiastes 5:10-19 & Matthew 6:19-21, 24
Rev. Dr. Rhonda Blevins
Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income. This too is meaningless. As goods increase, so do those who consume them.
And what benefit are they to the owners except to feast their eyes on them?
The sleep of a laborer is sweet, whether they eat little or much, but as for the rich, their abundance permits them no sleep. I have seen a grievous evil under the sun: wealth hoarded to the harm of its owners, or wealth lost through some misfortune,
so that when they have children there is nothing left for them to inherit. Everyone comes naked from their mother’s womb, and as everyone comes, so they depart. They take nothing from their toil that they can carry in their hands. This too is a grievous evil: As everyone comes, so they depart, and what do they gain, since they toil for the wind? All their days they eat in darkness, with great frustration, affliction and anger.
This is what I have observed to be good: that it is appropriate for a person to eat, to drink and to find satisfaction in their toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given them—for this is their lot. Moreover, when God gives someone wealth and possessions, and the ability to enjoy them, to accept their lot and be happy in their toil—this is a gift of God.
______
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also . . . No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.
______
The tale of two men: a (mostly) true story.
Story #1. Jack was the apple of his mother’s eye. Her worst day was the day Jack was drafted to serve in the Vietnam War. Jack went off to war and came home a different person. Suffering from severe PTSD, Jack turned to alcohol to numb the trauma, but the alcohol would soon control him. His young wife left him. He couldn’t hold down a job. He pushed away everyone who loved him, and eventually ended up chronically homeless on the streets in Atlanta, Georgia. He got by with panhandling and the generosity of strangers who felt sorry for him. One day Jack discovered a trick—he showed up outside Faith Church just as people were leaving after Sunday morning service. Full of religion (and perhaps wanting to impress their church friends), the members of Faith Church were quite generous with Jack, responding to his ask with a pretty nice windfall for the day. So Jack, being no dummy, showed up after church the following Sunday, and the following, and the following. The members of Faith Church befriended Jack, and invited him to church. Jack started coming to church, and even became a member. This is the story of Jack.
Story #2. John was the apple of his mother’s eye. Roughly the same age as Jack, John avoided the draft and instead went to college where he majored in business. After college John got married and started a small business which grew and grew and grew. John became quite wealthy so that when he retired, he was living the “good life”: a beautiful house on the lake, a nice big boat, a couple of luxury automobiles in the garage, a vacation home in Florida, and a passport full of stamps from travels all over the world. This is the story of John.
Jack and John. Which of these two men would you say is thriving financially? Hold that thought.
Today, in the last day of our “Thrive!” series, the topic turns to financial wellbeing. Throughout this series, I have attempted to undergird each topic in the wellbeing series with theological concepts and scriptural teachings—today I will attempt to do the same.
You may have heard that Jesus spoke more about money than any other topic. That is partially true. For instance, 11 of Jesus’ 39 parables references money. And 1 of 7 verses within those parables talks about money. But here’s why it’s only partially true that Jesus spoke about money more than any other topic—Jesus often used money as an illustration for a greater point—using a common object to help people understand a more ethereal lesson.
But at the end of the sermon on the mount, Jesus speaks directly about money. “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” He follows that with teachings about worry. That’s no surprise, right? Apparently, folks in Jesus’ day worried about money just like we worry about money.
There’s a story of a guy named Joe; Joe was a worrier. He was usually seen with a worried scowl on his face, his body language downcast, as if Joe carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. His friends would call him “black cloud” behind his back joking about how he walked around like a black cloud hung over his head. Even his good buddy Bill, was in on the joke. But one day Bill saw Joe, and Joe was the picture of optimism. Radiant and buoyant, everyone noticed the change. Finally, Bill asked Joe what was different, what had happened to him. “Well,” Joe confided, “as you probably know, I have always been one to worry. I have decided that this is both unwise and unhealthy, so I have hired someone to do my worrying for me.” This surprised Bill, who asked, “But how much does this cost you?” Joe replied, “Oh, about $1,000 per week.” Incredulous, Bill asked, “But how can you afford to pay him?” Joe answered calmly, “That’s his worry!”[1]
When we think about financial wellbeing, if you’re like me, your first thought relates to having no debt, plenty of money in the bank, all the right insurance policies, a diversified portfolio, the ability to buy what you want when you want, travel to exciting places (back when we did that kind of thing.) That’s the American dream, right? Some of us are living the dream. Others of us are merely dreaming the dream. To some, this dream seems more like a fantasy than a goal. In our own church we have the “living the dream” crowd, the “dreaming the dream” crowd, and the “pipe dream” crowd.
But here’s what I believe about financial wellbeing through the lens of faith:
Thriving financially is less about attainment of money and more about ambivalence toward money.
Thriving financially is less about how big our bank account is and more about how little we care about such things.
In the words of Jesus, “You cannot serve both God and money.”
This culture in which we live and move and have our being makes an idol out of money.
Pope Francis, speaking to a crowd of roughly 20,000 people a few years ago in an area in Italy hit hard by recession, bemoaned any economic system that had “an idol called money” at its center. After listening to one gentleman lament his joblessness, Pope Francis said, “In this ethics-less system, there is an idol at the centre and the world has become the idolater of this ‘money-god’.”[2] Francis called for the advent of a financial system with people, not money, at its heart.
Sounds a little like Jesus to me.
This system in which you and I live and move and have our being plants this “American Dream” in our minds, convincing us it’s the only good and proper dream to have. Earn and spend. Earn and spend. Earn and spend. All this earning and spending may leave us feeling like little more than a cog in wheel. Our primary identity in this machine is that of consumer. Our data, bought and sold as commodities (if you’ve seen The Social Dilemma.)
King Solomon, living roughly 1,000 years before Jesus, thought by many to be the wisest person to ever live, recognized the futility of this kind of mindset when he wrote, “Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income. This too is meaningless.”
Fast forward about 3,000 years. Contemporary research has studied the relationship between money and happiness.
“A well-known 2010 study by Princeton researchers . . . found that people tend to feel happier the more money they make, up until a point . . . about $75,000 a year per person.” After that, happiness levels off. A more recent 2018 study out of Purdue University discovered that the happiness levels decrease when people earn more than $105,000.[3]
Some of you may be thinking, “I’ll take my chances!” Especially if you’re one of the 8 million Americans who have slipped into poverty since May.[4] If that’s you, your focus isn’t on “thriving” financially. You’re focused on “surviving.” If you are experiencing the trauma of job loss, of poverty, hear me say that that is not in God’s design. Poverty is a product of a system where cash is king and people are expendable. You need money to meet your basic needs like access to healthcare and a safe place to live.
But once you hit a certain level, “more money does not necessarily equal more happiness.” This is hard to comprehend, because it is countercultural. The system in which we live and move and have our being tells us that money will solve all of our problems. That’s simply not true.
As people of faith, we need to rewire our brains. We need to reprogram our relationship with money, because the highest ideals set forth by Jesus have people at the center, not money.
What does that “rewirement” look like in practical terms? John Wesley, in a sermon in 1789, put it as clearly and succinctly as possible: “Earn all you can. Save all you can. Give all you can.” “John Wesley wasn’t against people having money, nor did he think that money was evil. What mattered most was what people did with their money. For Wesley, ‘money is an excellent gift of God, answering the noblest ends. In the hands of his children it is food for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, raiment for the naked.’”[5]
Earn all you can. Save all you can. Give all you can. The mark of a mature faith lies in the last part of that three-part equation . . . generosity. We can only live into that if we aren’t terribly attached to money. Remember what I said earlier?
Thriving financially is less about attainment of money and more about ambivalence toward money.
Thriving financially is less about how big our bank account is and more about how little we care about such things.
Remember our two gentlemen at the beginning of the sermon, Jack and John?
John was the wealthy guy with a couple of waterfront homes, a shiny boat, luxury automobiles, an interesting passport and plenty of money left over. All of that money couldn’t cure his wife of 40 years of cancer. Sadly, she died. A few weeks after his wife died, John’s young pastor came to visit him in his home. The young pastor was impressed by the beautiful home, the luxury cars and the shiny boat sitting in the dock. The minister, making an attempt at humor, said to John, “If you ever need someone to housesit or drive your boat or cars feel free to give me a call!” John looked at the young minister and said, “You know, I used to think the good life was owning all of these things. As it turns out, all of these things own me.” The story of John.
Then there’s the other fellow, Jack. Chronically homeless. Alcoholic. Begging outside a church. Jack joined that church where the people were generous and inviting. Then one night, the pastor of the church was sitting down to dinner with his family in the church parsonage where they lived, when they heard a knock at the door. The pastor opened the door to find Jack. As you might imagine, the pastor supposed that Jack was at the door to ask for money. But Jack was standing there with a big grin on his face, holding out a plastic grocery bag, weighted down with something heavy inside. “Hi preacher!” Jack said with a near toothless grin. “Here’s my tithe for the week!” He handed the pastor the bag filled with quarters, nickels, dimes and pennies—presumably a tenth of what he collected on the streets during the week. The pastor’s first instinct was to hand it back, knowing that Jack needed that money more than the church did, but then he thought better, recognizing how important it was to Jack that he give that offering. “Thank you, Jack!” said the pastor. “God bless you, Jack!” The story of Jack.
What does it mean to thrive financially? Is it the big bank account? The nice homes? The luxury cars? The fancy boat? The stamps in your passport?
I would suggest that thriving financially is none of these things.
I would suggest that to thrive financially, we should earn all we can, save all we can, and perhaps most importantly, give all we can. Jack understood this. I’m not so sure John did.
How about you? What is your relationship with money? On a scale from 1-10 how attached are you to the green stuff, earning it, saving it, with 1 being “extremely attached” and 10 being “completely unattached?” I want you to thrive financially! I want you to earn all you can! I want you to save all you can! And yes, I want you to give all you can. And give it now, so that you can enjoy the spiritual benefits of generosity in this lifetime. After all, you can’t take it with you when you go.
[1] Jay Adams, What To Do About Worry (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1975), p. 5.
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/22/pope-francis-idol-money
[3] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/26/how-your-salary-and-the-way-you-spend-money-affect-your-happiness.html
[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/15/us/politics/federal-aid-poverty-levels.html
[5] https://www.gnjumc.org/earn-all-you-can-save-all-you-can-and-give-all-you-can/