Preacher: Julia Baker
Scripture: Luke 16:1-13

“You cannot serve God and wealth.”

Metal hangers clank against each other. As do those words.

It’s a Friday afternoon at Goodwill and I am here after a long hard day of work at the hospital.

I rationally tell myself that I am here because I need a dress for a friend’s upcoming wedding.

I push down the deeper truth — I am feeling lots of contradictory and hard emotions I would rather not engage — work was hard, the news is constantly horrific and tragic, I am feeling distant from my partner after a hard conversation — I’m deeply in longing and pain and I reach for the easiest thing: distraction of stuff. The shiny well-rutted message that a new anything will fix all this ache.

I know what I should do is to go home and take a nap, write in my journal, run through the late summer woods, get and give a hug, 

Different parts of me try to take the inner microphone (or megaphone really) screaming at me…

criticism and guilt tag team — “here you are again! You know better than this…The lilies of the fields, Julia!” “All that is going on in the world and this, your arms are full of clothes!”

I got so overwhelmed with the inner chatter that I clanked all the clothes in my arms on the “unwanted” rack outside the dressing room and left the store. The warm summer day and fresh air hitting my body in its bundle of nerves.

I drive myself to the sea — the place for me such vast holding — and sit by the waters eventually coming to calm.

Looking at the expanse of water I place a hand on my heart — acknowledging all my sadness, longing, fear, anxiety letting it just be — my other hand is open in my lap and I pray feeling God’s love to permeate my pain and our larger pain, the wounds that drive me to the store at all.  

—

Your inner chatter and patterns around money might look very different than mine. But, my guess is that for most of us living in the capitalist, consumerist culture we are steeped in, the tentacles of avarice (a fancy word for greed) and the powers of mammon affect us in some way. Even if it is self-righteousness that we only shop at thrift stores (I have that part!)  — remember it is the same Jesus who talked about wealth that talked often of judging. 

But really, and here is where that self-compassion goes, how could we not be affected. We are constantly bombarded with the messaging that we are not enough – our bodies, our homes, our vacations, our very selves — and to fill that not-enoughness with the latest and greatest. The emphasis of – “looking good in the eyes of the world…”

We are also continually aware of poverty, and the weight of that while living our lives here of insurance policies, mortgage payments and a new line of Apple products…

I invite you to notice within yourself what parts of you come up when you hear the passage or think about money, wealth/poverty and greed in your life today, or the arch of your life. What master are you serving, have you served?

Notice your body – do your muscles tense with anxiety or guilt, is there a weight on your shoulders, a desire to hide from it the topic in discomfort or fear? 

Maybe there really is a “not enough” of money in your life, the constant stress of that is huge. 

Notice what is here and let’s welcome it all together to the compassionate gaze of Christ and pray for the Spirit to move in us this morning as we engage this topic. Maybe you also place a hand on your heart, open in your lap. Let us pray…

Jesus, you over and over spoke with challenging love out of desire to invite us deeper into you, your way of living in interconnected freedom with you, ourselves, others and the earth in life-giving ways. You know where we each are today and what we need, may the creativity of your Spirit move within us each and communally to hear your clear Word..

Amen.

—

Jesus spoke about money more than anything else. With stark clarity time and time again, as we heard in today’s passage. It can be really overwhelming to engage (like today’s passage). As an author, Elizabeth Oldfield writes in her book Fully Alive: 

In her chapter on this topic – Avarice: From Stuffocation to Satisfaction she says, “I am scared of Jesus…of the level of challenge…but I am or want to be more scared of what the collective avarice is doing to us, to our world.” 

In my life when I have made rigid rules to myself about money, seeking desperately to not serve the master of mammon, what has been most helpful is getting under the surface of the rules to what is driving my disconnection from God, self and others…

This seems in line with how Jesus treated money — pointing to the roots of it as a spiritual problem. 

As theologian Mark Baker wrote, “Jesus treated wealth as a spiritual problem. He did not just outline rules on how to earn, spend, and save money. Unless we address the fundamental spiritual issue, all our rules will just change the appearance of our enslavement. Jesus said, “Wealth is a power; you must decide if you will serve it or God.” Christ desired to free people from something from which they could not free themselves.”

Christ desired to free people from something from which they could not free themselves.

Something in me, that has been working so very hard, relaxes as I hear this…

I was reflecting this week on some of the places that Jesus speaks of money, and in this parable. Next to his words of admission, challenge and clear call there is almost always a deep WHY that speaks of that freedom…

I wonder if part of our longing for the material stuff of this world is that the deepest and strongest only antidote to it is God. The unquenchable hunger is in fact a gift to point us to God.

Thomas Traherne, a 17th century poet and cleric wrote of the snackish search for satisfaction that drives the pursuit for money and more things. He believed that this hunger was in fact a gift designed to point us to the Divine, His poem Desire calls it:

“restless longing, heavenly avarice…”

something within him that did 

“incessantly a paradise unknown suggest

and something undescribed discern — 

an urge that can’t be satisfied in dead material toys.”

—

When I think of the times in my life of most shalom — internally and externally (in relation to money and stuff) are the times when I have been most connected to what is most Real. 

A few thoughts on this as we close – 

1. The need for Relationship, Community – 

• We need each other as we wrestle with this stuff – communities of encouragement, accountability, honesty, generosity 
• I need people to speak of the pull towards unhealth, addiction, and get counsel around money and our choices
• We don’t do this much as community – to be real about money, its vulnerable 
• Community allows us to practice what vs. 9 in today’s passage, here in the The Voice translation says, 

“Learn some lessons from this crooked but clever asset manager. Realize that the purpose of money is to strengthen friendships, to provide opportunities for being generous and kind. Eventually money will be useless to you—but if you use it generously to serve others, you will be welcomed joyfully into your eternal destination.”

2. Flowing from our connection with each other comes an intentional practice of Gratitude – 

• In her poem, The Messenger, Mary Oliver writes –
  • Are my boots worn is my coat old, let me keep my 

Keep my mind on what matters,

Which is my work,

Which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished….

Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

Which is gratitude to be given a mind and a heart and these body-clothes, a mouth to give shouts of joy….

• Gratitude and awe literally re-wire our brains 
• How are you called to daily taste God in the goodness of what we are given here

3. Confession – 

• I am grateful that the church I go to there is a weekly confession in the liturgy – “Forgive me for what I have done and what I have left undone.” 
• The practice of confessing to ourselves, each other and God is vital in this work of orientation, checking what we are serving, realigning ourselves again and again to what is good and true, to the freedom we were made for.
• This world was made to be free in, give up all other worlds except the one to which you belong. 

4. Prayer, Contemplative Practices –

• Augustine wrote, “You have made us for yourself our hearts are restless till they rest in you.”
• What practices help your rest in God?
• For some these are contemplative prayer practices like centering prayer, meditation, others of us movement, dance, walking, running, music (my dad listens to a U2 song daily as part of his prayer!)
• What practices allow you to rest in God? 
• To quench our longings…
• What is your own going to the seas to open your hands?

—

In invite you to return to awareness of the parts of you that came up in the beginning….

What are you experiencing now? What did you hear? 

What is God calling to you to add or subtract in your life this week, it can be very small, that allows you to live more in sync with a life where Jesus is your treasure?

Let’s pray together…

God of such abundance, 

You have created us and a world that is full of such beauty and enoughness.

And in the world’s brokenness we don’t always rest in that truth. Guide us, give us courage as we seek to seek you, to rest in the Enough of you.

Amen.

—

Benediction: 

Go in honoring your truest longings, go seeking community, connection, abundance, gratitude and life in the fullness of Christ’s freedom.