What school of financial management do you attend? Is
it the one where you tally your income, make a budget, and follow the budget?
Maybe it’s the one some friends of mine used to teach their children how to
budget. They would take their paychecks, cash them, and then divide the money
into envelopes marked rent, food, utilities, and so on. Or maybe you don’t
bother with a budget anymore. You keep it in your head. You know how much you
make, about what taxes you’ll owe, about how much you spend. You mentally track
whether or not you’ll have any month left at the end of your money. Or maybe
you do what a scientist is portrayed as doing in a science fiction story I read
years ago. When he got paid he cashed his check. He had two bowls in the entryway
of his home, one labeled “us” and one labeled “them.” At the end of the year,
he would gather up what was in the “them” bowl and send it off to the Internal
Revenue Service. When the IRS remonstrated with him that they could not accept
cash, he read them the part on the dollar bills that said, “This note is legal
tender for all debts, public and private.”
Let me propose something. No matter what school of
financial management you currently subscribe to, imagine for a few minutes
enrolling in the “Consider the Lilies School of Financial Management.” Imagine for
a moment what it would be like to worship God instead of money.
I know none of us think we worship money. We all
worship God. We would never worship
money. But suppose we did worship
money. It might be something like this.
If we had a lot of money, we’d be worried about losing
it. And we probably wouldn’t think we had a lot anyway, because we could think
of all the reasons we might need more. If we didn’t have much money, we’d still
be worried about getting more. We might give money away, but we’d want to be
really careful about how much, because we might need it. Either way, we’d worship
what we have or worry about what we didn’t have.
Matthew’s Gospel tonight focuses on blessings, God’s
blessings. Yet for most of us, life seems far too complicated to do that. It
seems too busy, too hurried; too worried, to stop and know we are blessed. And
besides, we might need more someday. Or we might run out of what we have. Some
years ago I read a description of our current culture that went like this. “Our
culture is entirely materialistic: an impersonal self sliding through life in a
bubble of technology, intent on enhancing its physical and emotional comfort,
jealously guarding its sovereignty, perpetually distracted by consumption of
goods and services.”[1] That’s
quite an indictment. Most of us find it pretty offensive. We’re not like that. We
worship God. We go to church.
Yet it’s no more of a cultural comeuppance than what
we hear from Jesus today. If we’re offended by the description of our
materialistic culture that I just read, how do you think Jesus’ followers felt about
having their behavior compared to Gentiles? Jesus says, “Therefore do not
worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we
wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your
heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the
kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you
as well.”[2]
The primary reason both the statement I read and the
scripture can be offensive – to us, and to Jesus’ followers in his own time –
is that they’re addressed to an in crowd. Both indictments of behavior
are aimed at people who know better. In the one case it’s us: religious
observers, religious attendees, those who show up at church, people who listen
and read scripture. In the other case, it was synagogue goers, observing Jews,
people who listened and read Torah, the Hebrew Scriptures. Then, and now, both
statements serve as a warning about our worship of something other than God.
Observing Jews in Jesus’ time were told by their
Rabbis and by reading and hearing Torah that obedience to God meant giving alms
in the community. And giving alms meant letting go of some of what they had. It
meant the possibility of not having enough if there was a famine. It meant the
possibility of having to work harder to get or gather if there wasn’t enough.
The Christian scripture also tells us that if we
worship God we will give alms in our community. And giving alms means letting
go of some of what we have. It means going without something we want. And many
of us can’t work harder to get or gather because we’re paid a salary and
working longer hours just means unpaid overtime.
What Jesus tells us is that the “Consider the Lilies School
of Financial Management’s” doors are open for those willing to enter. To enter
those doors we can to repeat to ourselves until it becomes part of our nature:
·
We are blessed.
·
We have enough.
·
We can share.
·
We can give.
·
We will worship God only and always.
At our Baptism, whether we like it or not, we are enrolled
as members in the “Consider the Lilies School of Financial Management” and into
a life of blessing.
So join me tonight in repeating after me:
·
We are blessed.
·
We have enough.
·
We can share.
·
We can give.
·
We will worship God only and always
(The congregation repeated the
words above after I said them.)
We are created by God to lead a life of blessing. Even
when we don’t feel particularly blessed. We can wear God’s blessings like a
garment, and we will never need to worry about what we put on. We can feed on
God’s blessing and we will never be hungry again. We can drink God’s blessing
like the living water it is, and we will never thirst again. Put on your
garment of blessing. Eat, drink, and be blessed. Worship God only and always.
AMEN.
The
Rev Nicolette Papanek
©2015
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