Proper 20: Does God care if you drive a convertible?

If you were the big winner in this week’s lottery, would you give it away?  Warren and Patricia of Hoquiam, Washington did just that.  They were the lucky winners of a Mega Millions jackpot of 90 million dollars.  Of course, after taxes, they took home a mere 40 million dollars.  How did they splurge and spend the cash?  The first thing they did was to move into a smaller home. That’s strange isn’t it?  Then they took care of some family members. O.k. that’s normal. Finally they put together a business plan for giving much of the money away.  This couple has given away millions so far, mostly to well known charities, serving a wide variety of causes.  “For us,” Warren said, “we put the emphasis on how to give the money away.”  And now they’re living about the way we always have.  For Warren and Patricia, their use of money was based on their spirituality.

 

The words “money” and “spirituality” are seldom found in the same sentence.  But, Luke spends a lot of time speaking about to money and possessions. We can be certain that in his own community there was some tension between rich and poor, and he took a special interest in addressing it. If we define spirituality broadly as how we stand before God and relate to others, then money is an inevitable and important aspect of Christian spirituality.

Jesus was not an economist, and we cannot expect from the Gospels master plans applicable to 21st-century economic conditions. What we can expect is that Jesuswill be the greatest teacher who will give us wise principles that can direct our thoughts and actions about money and possessions.

In today’s Gospel we hear what is traditionally called the parable of the dishonest steward.  He is said to have been squandering his employer’s resources. The parable concerns the ingenious plan the steward devised to save himself from personal and financial ruin. There are two ways to interpret his plan. In one interpretation the steward is simply dishonest. He cheats his employers and involves others in his plot, thus setting up the possibility of blackmailing them in the future. In another interpretation he forgoes his own commission, sacrificing a short-term gain for long-term security. In either case it appears that the steward’s strategy is so clever that even his former employer had to admire it. The point of the parable is that many people in our world display enormous intelligence and energy in financial matters in comparison with the little attention that they pay to what Doctor Shawn called in our Bible Study “the positive” and what I would call  the state of their souls. Life is about more than what we are to drink or eat or what we are to wear. The industry, creativity and tenacity that go into making money and securing one’s financial well-being often far outweigh the time and effort given to life’s important questions: Who am I? What is my goal? How do I get there?

Money and spirituality do not belong to separate realms. The parable in today’s Gospel makes that clear. And it urges us to apply some of our intelligence and energy to things of the Spirit just as we devote it to the stock market, to money and possessions, and to using money wisely, to being trustworthy and honest in money matters. Money is never a substitute for God.

Today’s reading from the prophet Amos indicates that greed, exploitation of the poor and dishonest business practices are nothing new and that they have been and still are sinful in God’s eyes. The psalm reminds us: “Though the LORD be high, he cares for the lowly.” These readings reinforce Luke’s message that We as Christians live out our faith in a world of economics and politics. How we deal with money and spirituality reveals much about who we are and how we relate to God and to others. Money and Spirituality are connected.  It is up to us as spiritual persons and believers to figure out what that connection is for ourselves.  Please open your prayer books to page 208 in the middle of the page and  pray the prayer for stewardship with me:

O merciful Creator, thy hand is open wide to satisfy the needs of every living creature: Make us, we beseech thee, ever thankful for thy loving providence; and grant that we, remembering the account that we must one day give, may be faithful stewards of thy good gifts; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, for ever and ever.

Amen.