(Note: This blog entry is based on the text “How To Be Rich”, originally shared on July 27, 2022. It was the 227th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
“I’ve been poor and I’ve been rich. Rich is
better,” has been attributed to many. Jesus shows us a better way to be rich.
Today, we’ll see what that is.
Many of us were thinking about vast wealth
with the California Mega Millions lottery set at well over $1 billion as of
this writing. What would you do with all that money?
J. Paul Getty, the founder of the Getty Oil
Company, once said, “My formula for success is rise early, work late and strike
oil.” His art collection formed the
basis of the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. What would you do with oil company
money?
Today, Jesus speaks to us about everybody’s
favorite topic: the use of our money.
We don’t like to talk about money. I don’t
know why talking about money makes us squirm a little, other than maybe we
don’t want people to judge us, or we’re afraid someone will try to take it, or
we’re embarrassed by how much we give or don’t give.
But Jesus did. Jesus talked about money, and
the use of money, and the purpose of money, and the spiritual meaning of money.
In fact, he spoke about money more than any other topic except the Kingdom of
God.
He knew that money is an expression of
value, and how we use it is an expression of what we value.
I remember a professor in seminary saying,
“Don’t tell me what you believe. Show me your check book stubs.”
We see a good example of how Jesus regarded
money in Luke 12:13-21. Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem to die and a
crowd of thousands had gathered around him as he was teaching his disciples.
Then this happened in verse 13,
13Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher,
tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” 14But
he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?”
Jesus apparently had a reputation for wisdom and some popular authority.
Some random person in the crowd asked Jesus to settle a family dispute over
money. My family might be in America because of this same dispute.
My paternal great-grandfather came to the United States and never had
any contact with his family in Norway again. We don’t know why.
We have always known that we must have relatives in Norway, but we
couldn’t know who they were because our ancestor cut off all ties. They didn’t
know they had any family in the United States until the Internet age and we
made contact.
When Sally and James and I visited Norway in 2004, we were the first
people with the family name to see our family in about 120 years. They showed
me the family history book and next to his name it said, “we think he died.”
Our common relative came to the United States during a time that
Norwegians refer to as the 100-year hunger. It was also a time of
primogeniture. That is, the oldest son inherited everything from his parents in
order to keep the estate intact, and he was responsible for taking care of the
rest of the family.
Maybe our relative and the man in this Bible story had the same problem.
Maybe they didn’t like how their older brother was managing things. Maybe they
thought they should have more.
Jesus wasn’t going to allow himself to be drawn into family court, but
he uses this request as a teachable moment, continuing with verse 15.
15And he said to
them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of
greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”
You might have seen the 1987 movie “Wall Street” with Michael Douglas.
In it, his character, Gordon Gekko, gives a speech in which he praises greed as
a driving factor in the economy, a positive force in economic evolution. He
says, “Greed, for want of a better word, is good.”
You might also have seen the bumper sticker or T-shirt that was popular
around that same time and for some time after, that said, “He who dies with the
most toys wins.” The words were attributed to Malcom Forbes, who inherited a
bunch of money and then expanded it as an entrepreneur and self-promoting
publisher of “Forbes” magazine.
Jesus says just the opposite on both counts,
“Be on your guard against all kinds
of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”
And then he tells them why, in the form of a
parable, starting with verse 16,
16Then he told them
a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. 17And
he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my
crops?’ 18Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my
barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my
goods. 19And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods
laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’
I still remember my confirmation pastor’s definition of a parable as
earthly story with a single heavenly meaning. Jesus tells a parable about a guy
who had storage problems, problems that are familiar to us. Most of us would
not consider ourselves to be rich, but most of the world would.
It’s been said that the amount of stuff we have expands to equal the
amount of space we have to store it.
Whole industries are built around storing our stuff. Homes for the
average person have gotten bigger over the years and storage space is a huge
selling point. You can buy homes with a space for one car, or you can park your
car in your driveway and use the space for storage. You can buy homes with
spaces for two cars. Or three. Four. Five.
How much space do you need?
Jesus says, in verse 20,
20But God said to
him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the
things you have prepared, whose will they be?’
Leo Tolstoy, the Russian author of War and Peace and other
classics, wrote a short story with a similar message called, “How Much Land
Does a Man Need?”
A man who is greedy for more land hears about a group of simple farmers
with a lot of land. He offers to buy their land and offers a low price. They
counter by saying that, for 1,000 rubles, he can have as much land as he can
walk around from sunrise to sunset. But, if he doesn’t get back by sunset, he
loses his money and gets no land.
The man is ecstatic with getting the bargain of a lifetime. He starts
walking, but every time he thinks about circling back, he thinks that if he
walks a little farther he can get more land. He keeps walking. Then when he is
far, far away, he makes his loop and starts running to get back in time. He
makes it back to the starting point just as the sun sets, but he is exhausted
and he dies on the spot.
He is buried in a hole 6 feet long. All the land that a man needs.
Billy Graham once said that he had never seen a hearse pulling a U-haul.
No, you can’t take it with you, it’s been said, but you can send it on ahead.
Jesus teaches the lesson of this parable in verse 21,
21So it is with
those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”
Martin Luther, the
16th century Church reformer, once said, “I
have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all; but whatever I
have placed in God's hands, that I still possess.”
Look at what Jesus
doesn’t say. He doesn’t say that we don’t need money or shouldn’t have it. He
condemns those who only store treasures for themselves but are not rich toward
God.
What does it mean to
be rich toward God?
Tithing, or giving
10% of your income to the Church, is often mentioned as the standard for
giving, but is it?
One could argue that
giving 10% is too much.
The tithes and
offerings in Jesus’ day were the only source of funds for social service
programs, in addition to supporting the physical needs of worship and the
Temple.
The Romans taxed the people of Israel and
used the money to build and support the Roman Empire.
In addition, the Temple had its own tax
unrelated to tithes and offerings.
Our taxes fund socials services today,
beyond what we support through our giving.
And, even today, everybody has a good reason
not to give: I’m saving for college, I’m going to school, I’m paying off my
student loans, I’m saving for a house, I just got married, I just started a
family, I’m helping my children, I’m saving for retirement, I’m living on a
fixed income are all good reasons not to give anything but a token amount.
One could also argue
that tithing is not enough, if the standard is, as Jesus said it is, being rich
toward God.
In the New Testament, the tithe was a start.
Your offering didn’t start until after your tithe.
And, if tithing is
an expression of our gratitude to God, it’s pretty small. When you go to a
restaurant and you leave a tip of 10% today, what does our culture say about
that? You’re cheap!
Or, think about how
much you give on an average Sunday. Now multiply that by ten. Could you live on
that?
Or, what if we
didn’t ask ourselves how much we’re going to give, but how much we’re going to
keep?
But I think that
Jesus has a more enduring reason for warning us against thinking only of
ourselves financially.
Money is a means for
ministry, both personal and for our Christian community as a whole. When we
speak of being a good steward, or of stewardship, we are speaking of how we
manage the money that we have been given to manage.
Why are we blessed?
The whole sweep of the Bible says that we are blessed to be a blessing. To be
witnesses to the great gifts we have first received from God.
We don’t give because we have to. We give
because we want to. And if we don’t want to. If we immediately start to think
about reasons why we can’t give, or won’t give past a token amount, that’s a
spiritual problem.
What does the Bible
say is the root of all evil? It’s not money, as we see in Paul’s letter to
Timothy, 1 Timothy 6:10,
What’s wrong with
being eager to be rich? Greed is not good. It consumes the consumer.
Even the secular
world knows this. There is a popular saying among investors that, “Bears make
money. Bulls make money. Pigs get slaughtered.”
And what do
investors like Barbara Corcoran and Lori Greiner and the other sharks on “Shark
Tank” emphasize again and again for entrepreneurs? The importance of giving
back.
But there is a more
serious danger to greed: It makes money the object of our faith.
Martin Luther said,
“Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God.” What
do we put at the center of our life? What do we turn to and trust in?
Paul writes to the
church at Corinth, in 2 Corinthians 9:7,
Each
of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under
compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.
God loves a cheerful giver. Because giving
is an expression of our relationship with God. With what is central and
defining about who we are. It’s not about what we have to do, but what we get
to do.
What is more spiritually beneficial to us,
to receive or to give? We all know that one, from Paul’s words in Acts 20:35,
35 In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard
work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said:
‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ ”
What is the best way
to be rich? Let it flow from your heart and soul, who and whose you are, your
true self. Be rich toward God.
