Money and Loving God

A sermon for the 21st Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 23
October 13, 2024, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, AR

Readings: Mark 10:17-31

Last week, divorce; this week, give all your money away. Come on, Jesus, this preacher is just asking for an easy week! We read today that Jesus is approached by a man, whom we learn has many possessions. He is a rich man. He runs to Jesus and kneels before him. We can see his sincerity. Unlike those encounters Jesus has with the Pharisees, this man is not trying to trap Jesus. He really wants to know: What do I need to do to inherit eternal life? Jesus sees this man’s sincerity, his heart, which is why he answers in the way that he does. 

Keep the commandments, Jesus says. Jesus quotes the second half of the 10 Commandments: don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t commit adultery, don’t bear false witness, don’t defraud, honor your parents. The man’s doing that. He has those last six Commandments of the 10 Commandments down. He’s good. Or so he thinks. But what about the first four of the 10 Commandments? Did Jesus blank on those real quick? Are they not as important? No, Jesus omits them on purpose, and that omission is incredibly telling. 

The last six of the 10 Commandments correspond to the second great commandment: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. How do we do that? Well, to start, we do not murder, we do not steal, we do not commit adultery, we do not bear false witness, we do not defraud, we honor our parents. All of these the man has kept since his youth; he loves his neighbors like he loves himself. But what about the first four of the 10 Commandments? Those are: you shall have no other gods but God alone; you shall not make for yourself any idol; you shall not invoke with malice the name of the Lord your God; and remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy. Those four commandments correspond to the Greatest Commandment: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. We love God by keeping those first four commandments. 

Jesus, to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid; Jesus knows us better than we know ourselves. He knew that man with many possessions. He knew that while that man did very well at loving his neighbor as he loved himself, he was short on love of God. His wealth was more important to him than God; his wealth was a bigger priority than God; he loved money more than God. That is what was standing in the way of his discipleship, of his growing in God, of his following Jesus. His money had become an idol, his god, in the place of God Almighty. But God says: You shall have no other gods but me, and you shall not make for yourself any idol. 

And so with love, Jesus tells the rich man, You lack one thing. Just one thing to loving God with everything that you are. Go, sell all that you have, give the money to the poor, you will have treasure in heaven, and follow me. Jesus is not saying sell all you have and buy yourself a place in heaven; such an idea defies the very notion of inheriting eternal life. We cannot buy our way into heaven; we cannot buy salvation, or grace, or God’s love. It’s all a gift. Instead, Jesus is inviting him to give up everything that separates him from God in order to become a disciple. But it is going to cost him. Discipleship costs all of us; there is a cross to carry. The man cannot do it, and he goes away, grieving, his head hung low, his hands clinging to his idol instead of opening up to eternal life.  

Can we talk truth for a moment? Money has power. So much so that Jesus refers to wealth as Mammon, the name of a false god. Money has power, perhaps more than anything else, to become an idol, especially in 21st century America. Whether we have an overabundance or not enough, we see a kind of salvation in it, a promise for life. We quite literally measure our worth by how much is, or is not, in the bank, instead of measuring our worth based on whose image we are created in. So like that dragon in the Lord of the Rings, if we are not careful, we cling to our material possessions with a self-consuming greed. We cling to our idol, our god, and our greed distorts the generous humanity that Jesus calls us to embody–it pulls us away from his call to lay everything down in love.  

Because we know that material possessions have this power, we are called to be disciplined against those effects, to fight against its consuming power. How do we do that? We give it away. Some people, like the man in the gospel today, are called to give everything away. They are called monks and nuns, and yes, The Episcopal Church has those. Their poverty shows a radical dependence on the grace and goodness of God. That may not be our call. And yet we are called to give some of our money to the Kingdom of God. Traditionally, we are called to give a tithe, 10%, to the Kingdom. When we get to the root of it, whether we are at 1% or 10% or 20%, we are called to give sacrificially to the Kingdom of God. If it doesn’t hurt a little, if it doesn’t affect our lives and how we live in this world, it doesn’t count as a sacrifice. 

This year, I am asking all of us to prayerfully consider how God is calling us to sacrifice for the kingdom in 2025. St. Luke’s has stood for 158 years, testifying to the gospel of Jesus Christ. That does not happen by accident. It only happens when we all sacrificially support and do the work. You will get a pledge card next week. Pray on it. 

But there is a bigger picture here. It has to do with our spiritual health and the state of our souls. When we give sacrificially, we prevent our wealth from becoming an idol. We remember to put our trust, our faith, in Jesus Christ, instead of in the things of this world that pass away. We resist the power of greed and avarice, and embrace poverty of spirit. Jesus says, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. When we rely on God’s grace, we realize that Christ has given us all that we need for real life. And we dive into the depths of that blessed life.

After this passage, we never see the rich man again. But Mark leaves it open. The man leaves today, head hung low, holding on to the small vision of life that he can fit in his pocketbook, his worth based on possessions. But I wonder what happened to him in the days, months, years to come. I believe at my core that the grace of God, the call of Jesus, continued to pursue him, to shake him up, to call him to a bigger vision of life–one in which his value is not determined by possessions, but by being a child of God. His story is not over yet. I believe that at my core about him, because I believe that’s exactly what God does with us. Our story isn’t over yet either. For the same grace and love and life of Christ call to us, day by day, inviting us to true and real life; inviting us to see our worth, not based on the zeroes in our bank account, but on our baptism into the death and resurrection of Christ, our identity as children of God. Don’t be deceived: following this call from Jesus will involve sacrifice; there will be a cost; the cross is there. But, my friends, there is life, too. For unlike the idols of this world, which always lead to sin and death, in Jesus is life. Life everlasting and eternal. True life and worth in the grace and goodness and love of God, gifted to us as our inheritance in abundance.