Dave Faulkner. Musings of an evangelical Methodist minister.
This week a family situation affected my preparation and I’ve had to get out what I preached three years ago on today’s Gospel passage, Luke 17:5-10. When I read it, I realised I didn’t want to say a lot that was substantially different from then, maybe just to clarify that the servants in the passage may be not so much slaves as people who are in debt to the master (just as we are to Jesus).
So if you want to follow what I’m preaching this morning, the original is here.
This is a sermon I wrote in 2007. When I deliver this live on Sunday morning in worship I shall of course be amending some of the references. For example, at the time both my parents were alive, we and my sister’s family were living somewhere else, and our children were small. The iPod reference will be changed to the upcoming iPhone launch. And so on. So this is not the exact script, although it is close.
1. Family
It was an interesting week to read Jesus’ words in our Gospel reading today:
‘Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple’ (verse 26).
You see, on Thursday, my parents moved house. Having moved after retirement from London to Hertfordshire, they have now reached an age where they need to be nearer family. Moving near us is not practical, because who knows where we shall be living in a few years’ time? So they decided to move near my sister and her family in Hampshire. I spent Thursday and Friday helping them move in.
How do you read my actions in the light of Jesus telling me I should hate my parents? How do you interpret their decision that it was more realistic to move nearer their daughter than their minister son? Did I fail to hate my parents as Jesus instructed, by giving them some time I should perhaps have devoted to ministry? Or did they recognise that I should put following my call first by moving near my sister? Is the church right to think she can send me anywhere, while expecting my sister to be the one who cares for our elderly parents? If so, then my calling also affects my sister, brother-in-law and nephews.
So how radical should I be? If I am also to hate my ‘wife and children’, then should I do what some Methodist ministers in earlier generations did, and send my children to boarding school? Some missionaries in the developing world still do that – either sending their kids back to the UK or locating them at a school provided by the missionary society. Or should I even be like some radical missionaries who left their wives at home? The cricketer turned missionary C T Studd did that. And these issues are not limited to ministers and missionaries. Many people have to move with their job. If they have felt the call of God into their career, then similar questions arise.
And other questions pop into my mind. Should we take what Jesus said literally? If we do, what does that make us? If we don’t, do we dilute what he said and compromise our discipleship? How do we relate Jesus’ words here to other parts of Scripture that seem to contradict them – ‘Honour your father and mother’, for starters? Isn’t that commandment all the more relevant today in an age of family breakdown?
I think it starts to resolve not simply around the words Jesus uses, but the way he speaks. Like the Jewish and Semitic people of his time, he would speak in extreme terms to make a point, as we do sometimes. It’s like drawing a cartoon to emphasise certain things. Fact fans will like to know it’s called ‘Semitic hyperbole’, but most of us just have to know it’s this blunt and exaggerated form of speech in order to get a message across.
That doesn’t mean we dilute it, but we do look for the meaning underneath it. Jesus honoured his own mother at the crucifixion, when he arranged for John to look after her. But he also said that those who followed his teaching were his mother, brothers and sisters. So I think he calls us to honour our parents and care about our families, but he won’t allow us to make an idol of them.
There are ways in which the Christian church has made an idol of family life. Single adults, divorcees and widow(er)s in the church will have ready examples. I did when I was single. When moving on from my first appointment, I came across a circuit that only wanted to engage a married minister with children. I’ve seen ‘family service’ leaflets with logos featuring two parents and two children. Widows and divorcees tell stories of being under suspicion after they lost their loved ones from members of the same sex in the church: people assumed they were sexual predators.
Now obviously, as someone who is now married with two children, I don’t mean to demean family life, the importance of marriage vows and the like. But I think he envisages the possibility of obedience to him conflicting with the demands of family. While we mustn’t neglect our families, we can neither use them as an excuse for disobedience to Christ’s call. Family might even call us to do things that are displeasing to Christ, and we have to resolve who will direct our lives, Christ or others. We did not sign up for a hobby when we joined the church, but for the daring and costly life of faith.
And that takes us to two other challenges Jesus makes in this passage.
2. Life
Listen again to Jesus’ words in verse 26 – and on into verse 27:
‘Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.’
Hate your life. Carry the cross. Those two things go together. To carry the cross was not to bear a burden of the general suffering life dishes out to all without discrimination. To carry the cross was to be a condemned person, on the way to execution. In his extreme language here, Jesus surely speaks of discipleship being something where your own life is of no matter to you. It is the willingness to risk. It is being prepared to follow him, knowing that the consequences may involve suffering. That is, suffering inflicted on us by the world, because we have faithfully, humbly and lovingly pointed to a different way, the way of Christ.
Well, this too touches a raw nerve with Christianity as we have conceived it. Just as Jesus makes obedience to him more important than our families (even though a certain strong kind of family life would be a good witness today), so he also calls us to hang loose to life itself. Yet we often talk in the church about the ‘sanctity of life.’ Probably the great majority of Christians generally oppose abortion, euthanasia and infanticide, just as we believe murder is wrong.
Now again, I hold traditional views about those subjects. Life is a gift of God. We should not take it away. However, if it is a gift of God, it may be that he asks for it back. He may ask us to give it up. Whose life is it anyway? It is God’s, and we are only looking after it for him.
But holding lightly to life is not something that comes naturally. Several of you know that at the beginning of this year, I had a health scare. During a routine medical, blood was discovered in my urine, and I was referred urgently to hospital for tests. During the two weeks between seeing my GP and going to the hospital where I got the all clear, I was terrified – not least, because of our young children. Giving up life, had I had to face it, would have been appalling to me.
Yet older generations of Christians have much to teach us about this. In a day of medical advances and increased life expectancy, some of us (not all) have become rather detached from death. But the stories about heroes of our faith challenge us to see this differently. Here is just one story:
When James Calvert went out to Fiji in 1838, he was told by the captain of the ship on which he sailed that he was going to a land of cannibals. The captain tried to dissuade Calvert from going by saying, ‘You are risking your life and all those with you if you go among such savages. You will all die.’
Calvert replied, ‘We died before we came here.’[1]
They had died to sin. They had resolved to risk their lives for the Gospel. Dare I say they were closer to the classical belief in the resurrection from the dead than we sometimes are? They hadn’t been shaped by the practical atheism of our day that thinks this life is all it is. Nor were they so consumed by the vision of heaven that they were no use on earth. Their vision of heaven and the resurrected life was so vivid they could take this attitude to physical death. What would happen to today’s Church if we adopted their robust Jesus-centred faith?
3. Possessions
Well, if Jesus hasn’t already attacked two sacred cows in the Church – family and life – he goes for a third at the end of the reading:
‘So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions’ (verse 33).
Hold on, you say, possessions are the big thing in the world. We know we live in a consumer society. Aren’t we in the church different?
If only we were. Last night I watched an Internet video created by a Microsoft employee, which showed a woman demanding a divorce from her husband. The punch line was that it wasn’t a real marriage; he had a t-shirt on saying, ‘advertiser’, and she wore one saying, ‘consumer.’ Some Christian commentators are saying it’s uncomfortably like the church.
We have made church into a consumer exercise. Listen to the way some people hop from church to church and their reasons for doing so. We make decisions about finances and purchases in ways that are not radically different from the world. Was I the only one in the Christian church taking an unhealthy interest in the launch of new iPods this last week? We teach it to our kids. Recently I read about the Christian couple who read a Bible story at dinnertime with their children. One night they read the story of Jesus and the temple tax, where Jesus sends Peter fishing, and he catches a fish with a coin in its mouth. Their son was impressed. He asked to go fishing with his Dad and catch a fish. ‘Yours can have a computer in its mouth and mine can have a new toy’, he declared. Can it really be that surprising if Jesus wants to say some hard things about possessions?
Again, isn’t he being extreme? Give up all your possessions to follow him? Even Jesus at his death still owned some clothing for which the soldiers cast lots (Luke 23:34). He hadn’t turned down the support of some wealthy women who had provided for him and his disciples (Luke 8:3).
Maybe we get a clue to our response not from Luke’s Gospel, but from Luke’s sequel, the Acts of the Apostles. There we see how the Early Church put this into practice. They had all things in common and would sell possessions to help those in need (Acts 2:44f; 4:32). Ananias and Sapphira were not condemned for failing to sell all their possessions, but for being dishonest about their actions (Acts 5:3f).
I believe Jesus challenges us to put our money and goods at one another’s disposal. I believe he calls us to model a radically different lifestyle from the world around us, rather than just being religious consumers. The world rightly expects from what it knows about us that we will help the needy. What it doesn’t always know is that we base that on such a sense of belonging to one another as well as belonging to Christ. We may express it in a community gathered in a particular geographical location, from a monastery to a group of Christians moving into the same neighbourhood to an extended household. But we need not. What matters is holding of things in common. What matters is the willingness to help those who need it. What matters is the holding together, rather than the sitting apart as isolated individuals, which is one symptom of chronic consumerism.
Conclusion
What’s at the heart of all this? Probably what’s at the heart of this passage – the two parables about counting the cost. Following Jesus is not an easy option. I had a chat with one of the men from the removal company my parents used. On discovering my profession, he said it must be nice to be able to believe what I did in such a wicked world.
Actually, it isn’t the easy option to believe. Because Christ-followers don’t simply believe certain things to be true. Christ calls us to live what we believe. And what Jesus calls us to live out if we believe in him touches such basic values as family, the sanctity of life and material possessions. It would be wise to count the cost before believing, rather than thinking it’s a nice way to feel good in a bad world.
It’s about following someone who himself counted the cost – and paid it. In incarnation. In crucifixion. But who did it ‘for the joy that was set before him’ (Hebrews 12:2). May we see the joy set before us, count the cost, and follow his example.
[1] Stephen Brown, Don’t Let Them Sit On You, p 140.
I’m back, although not fully recovered yet. So here is a slightly shorter than usual Bible talk. Please excuse the regular water-sipping in the video!
If you ask most average Christians what the main purpose of the Church is, the most popular answer is, worship.
But in this life that is at best an incomplete answer. It may be true in the life of the world to come, but right now there is more than worship to do as the Church. There is mission as well as worship.
Look in our passage how the living waters, the river of God, ultimately coming to symbolise the Holy Spirit, may start flowing at the Temple in Ezekiel’s dream but they don’t remain there. They flow out to bless the surrounding world.
Let’s look at the flow.
Firstly, in the river beginning at the Temple, mission starts at the place of sacrifice.
Ezekiel’s dream or vision is of a rebuilt Temple after the return of Israel from exile in Babylon. It was the centre of worship and the place of sacrifice. Therefore, this vision says that sacrifice is not just about the benefits for the personal worshipper. It goes out and beyond.
As Christians, we see this most clearly in the Cross of Christ. His death ends all need for sacrifices for sin. It was the ‘one full, perfect, and sufficient oblation’ as the Anglican Book of Common Prayer puts it.
We receive the benefits of the Cross when we come to faith and when we confess our sins every week. It is comforting and healing to know that this is the sign of God’s enduring and faithful love for us, the love that anchors our lives.
But for Ezekiel, the river of life begins at the place of sacrifice. And for Christians, the Cross also means that God will pour out his Spirit, and when he does the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice will be seen as not merely for us but for the whole world. It is what happened at the first Christian Pentecost. The Spirit falls, Peter preaches the Gospel, people of many nations hear, and thousands profess faith.
The first thing to remember, then, is that our blessings are not for us alone. That’s why I can’t stomach attitudes to church that sound like consumerism: what’s in it for me? What do I get out of this, never mind anybody else? Perhaps one of the classic examples is the older person in a declining church who says, ‘All I care about is that this church is here to see me out.’ That is a selfishness that cannot sit in front of the Cross of Christ.
Secondly, also in the river beginning at the Temple, we see that mission is launched in worship.
The river of God, the water of life, the Holy Spirit, does not simply bring joy, refreshment, and power to worship. The river flows from the place of worship to the world.
Again, there’s a challenge to our consumer attitudes to church. Worship is not just a personal bless-up. Yes, there are times when God blesses us graciously out of his sheer love for us. And sure, we often come in great need of blessing ourselves. But worship is not fundamentally a ‘getting’ experience. It is a giving experience. And it takes us beyond Sunday, into Monday and on from there.
What happens on Sunday is part of what equips us for Monday. That’s why an organisation like the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity came up with something called ‘This Time Tomorrow’, where a church member is interviewed in the Sunday service, asked what they will be doing in twenty-four hours’ time, and how people might best pray for what they will be doing then.
Or come with me to an American church that has, over the exit from the building, put the words ‘Servants’ Entrance.’ We go out from worship on mission in the world, showing God’s redeeming love in our words and our deeds.
The Holy Spirit is always thrusting us out into the world with the love of God. In the Gospels, after Jesus has his amazing spiritual experience at his baptism, he next goes into the wilderness. Some English translations rather tamely translate the Greek to say that the Holy Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness, but it’s actually more forceful than that. In at least one of the Gospels, the writer literally says that the Holy Spirit threw Jesus out into the wilderness. The ‘throw’ part is related to where we get our word ‘ball’, and it makes me think of a cricketer in the field on the boundary, positively hurling the ball all the way back to the wicketkeeper with considerable force.
You and I have come to worship today for a purpose. Yes, we may need some blessing or comfort, but what we haven’t come for is, so to speak, just to be tickled by God. We have come to encounter the Holy Spirit, who will energise us for our daily witness in the world.
Thirdly, in the river flowing from the Temple, we see that mission is to transform creation.
The river gets deeper and deeper, even to the point where no-one can swim in it. And for someone like me who can’t swim at all in the first place, that’s scary!
But it’s scary in a good way. What we see here is the awesome power of God transforming creation. Take the reference to life teeming in the Dead Sea, where the extreme saltiness is usually a killer. I visited the Holy Land in 1989, and on the day we went to the Dead Sea, some of my friends got into the water and floated – I’m sure you’ve seen pictures of that there. But for me, the salt was so intense even in the air that my eyes stung and I couldn’t even look in the direction of the water to see my friends, let alone take photos on my camera. And I am a keen photographer.
That’s how salty it gets there. So for Ezekiel to see the salt water become fresh and be filled with fish and other creatures is an image of a miracle.
Then look at the trees on the riverbank, which bear fruit every month rather than every year, whose ‘fruit will serve for food and … leaves for healing’ (verse 12). Reading that from a New Testament perspective makes us think of the way this passage is an inspiration for the Book of Revelation, where trees line not a river but the Holy City, and whose ‘leaves are for the healing of the nations.’
Yes, there are marshes where nothing changes, just as there are many who are resistant to the Gospel of God’s grace in Christ that calls everyone to repentance and faith in Jesus. But overall what we perceive in Ezekiel’s vision is a foretaste of the day when God will make the new heavens and the new earth, where everything that is broken in creation is healed, where relationships with God and one another are reconciled, and where all pain, war, and suffering is abolished.
What does that mean for us? It means that our encounter with the Holy Spirit through the Cross of Christ and through worship throws us out into the world as bearers of God’s love in a multiplicity of ways. The Holy Spirit sends us to call people back to God through Jesus. The Holy Spirit sends us to be people who heal relationships. The Holy Spirit sends us to be people of peace, not violence. The Holy Spirit sends us to bring good news to the poor and the wounded. The Holy Spirit sends us to restore broken creation, not because we are afraid of what will happen to this planet, but because we are full of hope about God’s good intentions for his creation.
When we come to worship each Sunday, the presence of God equips us for these tasks. When we leave gathered worship each Sunday, we go as commissioned officers of God’s kingdom.
There is no teaching video from me this week: today is my Sunday off for the quarter.
I’ll be back next week when we look at the fourth of the seven churches in Revelation, Thyatira, where we consider the thorny question of tolerance.
It’s hard to avoid the idea that we live in tumultuous times. Vladimir Putin has on more than one occasion threatened the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine or against Ukraine’s supporters. Our economy is going into a recession. Nurses are relying on food banks to make ends meet. Some food banks are running out of supplies. And don’t get me started on the turnover of Government ministers and Prime Ministers. We have had no peace since COVID.
In our reading, Jesus speaks to disciples and others who he knows will also face tumultuous times. Despite popular opinion (and the headings in the NIV) he is less speaking about the end times of all history and more prophesying what life will be like forty years hence when Rome crushes Jewish resistance and destroys the Jerusalem temple – an event that would feel like the end of the world to his listeners.
And here we are on Remembrance Sunday when we remember the slaughter of World War One, the so-called ‘war to end all wars’, and the Second World War, twenty-odd years later.
What Jesus teaches here helps us live through such crises. For sake of simplicity – and I confess it has been ‘one of those weeks’ again – I am taking my points from Ian Paul’s excellent article on this passage.
He makes six points. Yes, six – but they are each brief and to the point. Here goes.
Firstly, however big the catastrophe, God’s purposes are bigger. It’s natural to be frightened, to despair, to ask questions, and to consider desperate actions. But nothing knocks God’s purposes off course. God prevails. God has more free will than any of us, including those who use their free will for the most unspeakable evil.
Whether it’s the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, the Cuban missile crisis, or the threats of a little despot in Moscow, God always holds the trump card. His kingdom has come and is coming. He will prevail. Keep your faith in him.
Secondly, don’t be surprised if we’re picked on.
12 ‘But before all this, they will seize you and persecute you. They will hand you over to synagogues and put you in prison, and you will be brought before kings and governors, and all on account of my name.
Jesus prepares his listeners for possible persecution. We know that a few years before Rome took down the Jewish revolt there was the great fire in Rome, and the Emperor Nero made the Christians into scapegoats. It is a regrettable but common action by evil people to pick on minorities and victimise them or pass the blame.
In our day we have seen similar things happen, where minorities have been targeted. Only on Wednesday this past week, the fast food chain KFC mistakenly sent a promotional message out in Germany that said this:
“It’s memorial day for Kristallnacht! Treat yourself with more tender cheese on your crispy chicken. Now at KFCheese!”
That their systems should accidentally put together the anniversary of the destruction of Jewish synagogues and other organisations, marking the time when it was no longer safe to be publicly Jewish in Germany, is an horrendous reminder of evil regimes picking on minorities.
True Christianity will always be a minority. If we are pursued unjustly, let us not be surprised. But as with catastrophes generally, let us remember that God is sovereign and in charge. We may or may not escape trouble, but he will bring good out of it.
Thirdly, give testimony to Jesus. If we do end up on the wrong side of the authorities or of those wielding power, do not be ashamed of Jesus.
13 And so you will bear testimony to me. 14 But make up your mind not to worry beforehand how you will defend yourselves. 15 For I will give you words and wisdom that none of your adversaries will be able to resist or contradict.
Trouble becomes our opportunity to tell that powers that be that their only hope of salvation is not in their own might but in Jesus Christ and him crucified. The power of the Holy Spirit comes to us in our difficulty and inspires us with divine wisdom. This may or may not help us in the short term, but be sure that the testimony will be there for the long run and be recalled down the generations. Our words are not just for our contemporaries.
Fourthly, stay rooted in Jesus.
8 He replied: ‘Watch out that you are not deceived. For many will come in my name, claiming, “I am he,” and, “The time is near.” Do not follow them. 9 When you hear of wars and uprisings, do not be frightened. These things must happen first, but the end will not come right away.’
Of course I hope we’d stay rooted in the teaching of Jesus anyway, but all sorts of people make outlandish claims that exploit a time of crisis or catastrophe. That does mean they are sound or true. Jesus and his teaching remains our plumbline all that is good, beautiful, true, and worthwhile.
Fifthly, expect division.
16 You will be betrayed even by parents, brothers and sisters, relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death. 17 Everyone will hate you because of me.
When the pressure is on it will be on everyone and it will come close to home, even into the home. Remember how before the Berlin Wall fell people did not even know whether they could trust members of their own family, because they might be members of the dreaded Stasi. They could be reported to the authorities and imprisoned.
You may say this is not good news, and it isn’t, but what Jesus does here is he prepares us. Don’t be surprised by these terrible things, he says. This is why it is important to stay rooted in him and his teaching. If you don’t, then you will succumb to the pressures and may turn. But if you do stay rooted in Jesus, then you have a solid basis for holding firm even in the face of the worst betrayals.
Sixthly and finally, endure to the end.
18 But not a hair of your head will perish. 19 Stand firm, and you will win life.
When our kids were at school, it was recognised that the renewed emphasis in recent years on exam success – plus, I would suggest, the pressures of pushy middle-class parents – meant it was important for the school to teach them how to be resilient.
You hear a lot about resilience today. There has been so much talk about mental health issues resulting from the COVID-19 lockdowns. You can find all sorts of practitioners offering to teach resilience to adults as well.
And Jesus calls his followers to a spiritual resilience. Stand firm, he says. Other parts of the New Testament make similar calls on Christian disciples. To be faithful is to stand firm. Be resilient in your faith.
And although Jesus doesn’t explicitly say so here, the assumption in the New Testament about standing firm is that like all the difficult things we are called to do as Christians, we are promised the help of the Holy Spirit in fulfilling what Jesus calls us to do.
It doesn’t mean we won’t be knocked down. It does mean we shall keep getting back up to our feet.
Conclusion
You may think that I am painting a gloomy picture. What I want to do is bring before you a vision of realism combined with hope.
The famous writer on business leadership, Jim Collins, spoke about what he called the ‘Stockdale Paradox.’ This is how Carey Nieuwhof paraphrases it:
Jim Stockdale was an American Vice Admiral captured and imprisoned during the Vietnam War. He was held and tortured for seven years.
Stockdale said the first people to die in captivity were the optimists, who kept thinking things would get better quickly and they’d be released. “They died of a broken heart,” Stockdale said.
Instead, Stockdale argued, the key to survival was to combine realism and hope. In Stockdale’s words:
“This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end–-which you can never afford to lose–-with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”
There is no getting around the fact that catastrophes in life are grim. We cannot afford to play pretend under the pretence of hope.
But as Christians we do have good news for those seasons. God is still in charge of the universe, and his Spirit enables to continue witnessing to Jesus and enduring in faith.
My paternal grandfather was one of eight children. There were six brothers and two sisters. By the time their parents had both died, so too had two of the brothers – they lost their lives in World War One. So when the estate came to be divided up, there were four surviving boys and the two girls.
However, the will left the estate entirely to the boys, with nothing for the girls. My grandfather thought this was unfair and said to his brothers that they should share the inheritance with their sisters.
But his brothers refused to share with their sisters. And moreover, for his troubles, my grandfather and grandmother, along with my father, who was a small boy at the time, were thrown out of the family home. They put their limited possessions in a wheelbarrow as they went to find somewhere else to live.
Where there’s a will, there’s a war.
A former Superintendent of mine told me that one skill he wasn’t trained for at college was breaking up family fights at the crematorium after a funeral.
‘Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me,’ says a member of the crowd to Jesus (verse 13).
If the person was not the eldest child, they might feel aggrieved. For in Jewish tradition the eldest son received the ‘double portion’ of the estate – twice as much as his younger siblings.
So surely this is a justice issue? And surely Jesus will speak out?
No.
Jesus knows something else is at work. Not justice, but greed.
‘Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.’ (Verse 15)
Well, how contemporary does that sound? And whether or not we are all wealthy, we are surrounded by it in our society, where much of our economy depends on people buying what they don’t need. And we’re certainly surrounded by it in Surrey, to the extent that when I first arrived in this area one of the other ministers asked at a staff meeting, ‘Is the Gospel against Surrey?’
And the indoctrination starts young. At our first Christmas here, our children felt the odd ones out because they didn’t go skiing in December. The next summer, our son was told he hadn’t had a real holiday because he hadn’t been on an aeroplane.
When we think life is about the abundance of possessions, we are saying ‘No’ to God. We are replacing the one true God with a rival false god called Mammon.
Make no mistake, a lot of the language in our society around possessions is religious. Think of all the times you have been told that a particular item is a ‘must-have’. Is it really? That’s the language worship and idolatry. God is our only must-have.
But, you say, there are certain possessions that we need in order to live and function in our world. I agree with you. We cannot live without material things. God made a material world and we are material beings. Of course we need certain things. I am not about to suggest that we should all sell up and disappear to become hermits.
It makes our use of money and possessions into a spiritual exercise. The way we use what is given to us needs to be as much a matter of prayer and discernment as anything else we do.
I want to suggest three principles we need to remember if we are to treat money and possessions in a godly way.
The first is stewardship. What do I mean by this? That what we have is not ours but on trust to us from God, and that we manage it on his behalf. I think this is the meaning of Genesis chapter 1, where God makes human beings in his image and tells them to rule over the earth. The earth does not become the possession of people, because God made it, but God makes human beings to be his stewards, his delegated managers, looking after it wisely for the Master.
You’ll notice I’m using the words ‘steward’ and ‘manager’ interchangeably. A steward is a manager. And the thing about managers is that they are not the people with final authority. They only have delegated authority from above. And that’s our position. Items do not ultimately belong to us. We manage them on behalf of our God, to whom they truly belong.
In that sense, it’s tricky even to use the word ‘possessions’, even though Jesus uses it. Because in the final analysis it is God who possesses them, not us. They are on loan to us from God, and we shall be accountable for our trust.
The farmer in Jesus’ parable takes no account of this truth. He is going to make decision about all the grain himself and for himself (verse 18).
In fact, if we’re not careful, the big problem is not that we possess things but that things possess us. How dangerous is that? We no longer have self-control, because other things control us.
And in that sense, we are involved here both in idolatry and in addiction, something the farmer accidentally confesses with his desire to ‘eat, drink and be merry’ (verse 18).
Are there any possessions in our lives where we need to hand them back to God? Do we need to say, Lord, I’m sorry that I have treated this item as if it were wholly mine. Here it is, I return it to you. If you let me keep it, I will use it for your glory.
When we came to Surrey we realised that there was a popular but expensive hobby: golf. However, I already had an expensive hobby, and that is photography. The cost of using what I consider proper equipment as opposed to a smartphone is high. It therefore means that I have to be careful with my spending on new equipment. Photographers talk about people who suffer from GAS – and before you think that’s an unfortunate antisocial bodily problem, I should tell you that GAS stands for Gear Acquisition Syndrome. Even unbelieving photographers know that the continual lust for just one more piece of equipment is misguided and dangerous. I have to be sure I am dedicating the gear I use to God and not to myself.
And that leads me to the second principle: prayer. How are we going to show we have regard for God in the use of those things he has entrusted to our care? Surely a major part of the answer is that we consult him. That means prayer. Tragically, the farmer in Jesus’ parable has no place for prayer. All he does is gather the grain for his own benefit. Think of the poor who would have suffered from not having what they needed, had this story been true.
We have a recent example of this on a major scale in our world with the Russian blockade of Ukrainian grain and the millions facing starvation as a result. That’s what happens when you think you can do what you like with worldly goods, and when your belief in God is either non-existent or mere lip service.
In some cases, God has already given us the wisdom we need in order to know what to do with material things. The Bible shows us plenty of things about his general will for life and the world.
But in other cases we need the step of discernment that prayer provides. Last week when preaching about the Lord’s Prayer I told a story about how some years ago I had been thinking about buying a computer but wasn’t sure whether to spend that large amount of money, until I received a word from God from a friend who had no idea I was contemplating this.
Recently we had to replace our big desktop computer in the study, because our old one was causing too many problems and it’s a necessary piece of equipment for my work and for modern life. But I also have a laptop computer that I take with me to meetings, and last year the manufacturer said that it was now too old for them to provide support for it if it went wrong. So I’ve researched what would be a good replacement, and I think I know.
However, even though I have looked at examples of my proposed replacement online and seen one or two go for attractive prices, I have not bought one yet. For every time I see a replacement I feel uneasy. Without a sense of peace from God I’m not happy to proceed.
Why? Prayer can make it clear it’s right to buy, it’s wrong to buy, or it’s right to wait. And that’s where I am at present, waiting. It’s God’s call, not mine. I can cope until then.
The third and final principle here is giving. In the parable, the punchline is that God castigates those who don’t give.
‘But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?”
‘This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich towards God.’
(Verses 20-21)
‘Not rich towards God.’ Put another way, not a giver. Being rich towards God has echoes of Jesus’ language elsewhere about ‘treasures in heaven’, which we know means giving and other good deeds.
If we want a good way of dethroning Mammon in our life and worshipping the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, then giving will aid us in that goal.
Now just to raise the issue of giving is to risk navigating a tricky subject. Christians disagree about how much we should give. It’s also a sensitive issue at present with rising inflation and other bad economic conditions.
Some Christian argue we should all tithe, that is, give one tenth of our income. They usually say it should all go to the local church, and any other giving should be on top of that.
It’s tricky to translate tithing directly from the Bible, because it was not usually a tenth of income but a tenth of the crops they harvested. But what is clear is that our giving should be proportional to our income, because the Apostle Paul says as much in 2 Corinthians 9.
It’s certainly also important in biblical terms to give to the poor (or those working with them) and to the cause of Christian mission. You can see examples of these in the New Testament, notably the book of Acts but also in some of the instructions the Apostle Paul gives to those early churches in his letters.
Forgive me for not giving you a simple answer. I would simply say that giving is part of our stewardship and must also be approached in prayer. Just make sure that in praying about your giving you are not saying, ‘How little can I get away with giving?’ but ‘How much can I give?’ The former would be like the farmer; the latter would be like a Christian disciple.
There’s no teaching video for Easter Day, I’m afraid – watch the video to find out why.
No video teaching this week – I have some time off and I’m putting my feet up at home.
It’s Trinity Sunday, and I’m sure you can find some good material elsewhere on the Internet on that theme.
See you next week, God willing.
No worship video from me today as I’ve had the week off, but here instead is a reflection from my Superintendent Minister Keith Beckingham, created for today’s church anniversary at Byfleet Methodist Church.
My two churches have combined to help produce a video carol service. In a year when the traditional gathering in the church building under candlelight was either impossible or impractical, various people offered to read the traditional lessons and be recorded on video.
Meanwhile, I downloaded some videos of carols from Engage Worship – their offer of these videos was really the genesis of the project. I added a humorous video from the Bible Society which has a timely word for this season of the world that we have been enduring.
So put aside sixty-seven minutes and twenty-one seconds, kick back, and enjoy these carols and the message this service brings.
Big Circumstance 