Church of the Good Shepherd

How many of you want to be really, really rich when you grow up? 

How many of you want to be the best most faithful Christian when you grow up?

Can we do both?  Jesus spent a lot of time warning the people who followed him who wanted to be really rich that they might be giving up something else.  He warned against hoarding money or making more than one can possibly use.  He warned us not to keep it all for ourselves.  Money, he said, is most often the very thing that keeps people from being able to follow Jesus and to be the very, very best most faithful person they can be.

Do you know that in the bible there are five hundred passages about how to pray and there are five hundred passages about faith, but there are over two thousand passages about money and possessions and how they can take the place of God in our lives.

Now, like you I would like to be very, very rich.  Indeed I bought the non-winning lottery ticket last week.  I allow myself to do that when the prize is over forty-million dollars.  I figure I want to be very, very rich if I am going to have my life so disrupted by money, and for a few hours I think about what I would do with all that money.  Of course, I plan to give a lot of it away, but I also plan many more things that benefit me.

And that is the power of money.  It makes us think that because we have it, we are somebody more special than those who do not.  It makes us even think we are worth more than people who do not have as much money as we do.  Indeed it can even keep us from thinking about other people at all.

So, this is a real dilemma, isn’t it?  On the one hand we have to plan to take care of ourselves, to save and earn a good living.  And on the other, we cannot become so obsessed and greedy about making money and keeping it and investing it to make more money that that becomes so important to us that we forget everything else, especially God.

This story that we heard this morning from the gospel of Luke is about a man who had so-o-o much money and so-o-o many things that he had to keep building bigger and bigger barns to store them all. He didn’t share what he had with others even though he had enough to last him several life times.  And then God came to him and said, “Okay, your time is up.  You valued things so much that you lost your chance to share them with others; and now you are leaving them all behind and others are going to get them anyway.”

What Jesus was trying to say is that we need to balance our lives between wanting the things that money can buy in this world, having enough to care for ourselves and our families and valuing the things that God values.

What do you think God values as much as people in this world value money?  (people, health, water, sunrises, sunsets, the ocean, friends, chocolate, etc.)

Also think about this: Jesus taught us that he loved the poor.  Jesus taught us that God’s favorite people were those who didn’t have many chances or many “things”: the kids who get second hand toys or who live in Africa and are born with AIDs; the poor who don’t know how to get out of the gangs of the city; the poor who don’t know how to read or write or even how to drive a car or earn a living.

Those are Jesus’ favorite people and he really wants us to think of such people as our favorites too and to share what we have with them.

And Jesus was always warning people who have a lot of money – that’s why there are so many passages about money in the bible.  He warned them that they need to be aware of not destroying the very good things that God has given them with their greed for money.

God doesn’t want our possessions to possess us.  God wants us to let GOD possess us.

Sometimes I think grownups need to give away money, not because they get something for what they give, you know, like buying a TV set or a new car, but so that they can practice not being greedy, so they can practice making room for God.  I think sometimes they need to practice giving away money so they can grow their souls larger.  The man in the story today had squeezed his own soul out of shape by his hoarding (do you know what hoarding means?).  He hoarded all his money and crops and other things so that he squished his soul away.

And I wonder if we don’t need to practice “giving away” even when we are young.  Let’s think about ways we can let God possess us and not things.  I think practicing now, and every day of our lives, is a way to grow our souls larger and larger so that they are bursting with love for God and all of God’s people.

What about if we give away something we value to someone else or to the church, or to a hospital, or to a place that helps the poor?  What could we give that we love, and would be useful for the people we give it to?

How can we practice sharing?

There is an old saying that money doesn’t buy happiness.  But I have found that money given away with no strings attached buys a lot of happiness for the person who gives it away.  They become “smiley-er” and happier.  They see things more cheerfully.  And I think that’s because their souls are growing.

So may this be a soul growing week for you, for all of us.  Think about what you can give up or give away, no strings attached, something that will benefit others.  And if we can teach others to do the same, think what a wonderful place this world would be, filled with souls that are growing so big that God’s love is shown everywhere!

Wouldn’t that be wonderful?  Let’s pray for it, shall we?

Amen.

The Rev. Dr. Gale Davis Morris
Church of the Good Shepherd