Saint Mark's Church

Preached by Dcn. Paul Francke 

Back in grade school, when there was something big I wanted to pray for, I got all wrapped up in letting God know that the situation was really, really, really serious. I thought that if my prayers were a big, melodramatic production, that would increase the likelihood that God would give me what I wanted. And a melodramatic production called for the most solemn stage I could think of. Don’t ask me why, but it was a fenced clearing, beside a barn, in the middle of the woods. This clearing was in the bottom of a valley, or as they say, down in an old dark holler. Steps made out of railroad ties lead you there, down a steep hill, to moist earth that was easy on the kneeling knees. Night was the time for this, not because it was more solemn, but because the day had been spent playing Tetris, or Mike Tyson’s Punch Out, and there was a math test the next day, and I knew none of the questions would take advantage of my hand eye coordination in an 8 bit boxing ring. I had played video games instead of studying all week, and I knew I would fail my math test if God didn’t do something, quick. God heard me in that place, in the last hour before sleep, as I said ‘please’ over and over, but rarely apologized. God heard me thinking that if I could somehow trigger the inner sprinkler system and get some tears flowing, he’d feel sorry for me and send me a miracle.

I wanted God to say, “It’s okay, Paul. No Problem. I’ll make the test easy tomorrow. Just try to let me know more in advance next time.” When it came to math, I was a sometimes dishonest steward. Like that character in our Gospel reading, I took the mess I created and tried to get out of it by sketchy means at the last minute. I thought God would have pity on me, or even recognize my shrewdness, and cancel the debt I wowed. God had the power to give me an F, so I thought, but if I couldn’t make the grade the normal way, at least I could be pitiful enough to get a C.

But that is to think of our relationship with God in a ridiculous and very worldly way, because God doesn’t give grades. We can’t even begin to successfully bribe God, least of all in the way I imagined. This isn’t to say we shouldn’t ask things of God, it’s to say that asking something of God is fundamentally unlike asking your boss not to fire you because you didn’t get all the work done in time. That model is far, far from the point. God’s ways are not the ways of the dishonest steward and his sketchy boss because not only could we never bribe God or repay God for all he’s done, in fact there’s no depth to which we could sink that would make God ‘fire’ us anyway. God will never push us out if we so much as say ‘I’m sorry.’ To whom much is given, much will be required, but in the end God doesn’t love us because of our ‘utility’: he loves us simply because we’re his. And that fact – the fact that we’re loved not because of our profit-making but merely because we exist – is what leads us to give back.

We find ourselves wanting, even needing to give back to God because we are God’s and God is ours. Our parent, our friend, our source and destination, God doesn’t give us As or Fs. A free and true love, the Gospel narratives assure us, can be neither bribed nor bought, nor on the other hand can true love be sustained by threats. That would be something other than love. Our worse instincts sometimes suggest that money, power, pity or threat can get someone to remain in love with us, and although these things may trigger something sharp and contribute to dependency, that’s still too self-protecting to be Gospel love. The love that Jesus’ life exemplifies, that risky, beautiful, faithful, self-giving love, is sustained not by threats, but by the recognition that we are all one family, one body. No good parent or sister or brother would kick a sibling out of the family for not doing A-level work all the time. Likewise no good parent or brother or sister should be required to buy his or her way into the love of the rest of the family in any sense. That would be something other than real love.

But although we can’t approach Godly relationships in terms of keeping the bottom line or making a profit, that’s not to say those practices with money are always inherently bad. Money is a powerfully good thing when we keep it in its place. As a Seminarian friend reminded me the other day, there is a first order to reality and a second order: the first order is infinite, the second is finite, and the twain do meet, but we can’t treat a finite thing as though it were infinite. If we do, the results can be disastrous. Our collect this week reminds us of this – there is a order of ‘things that are passing away,’ and an order of ‘things that shall endure.’ Finite things are the site at which the infinite comes to us, and finite things all around us have the capacity to point to the eternal, and to incorporate God’s love. So it is that although we can never make money something like a God in our lives, still we can signify God’s love by how we use our money. This pattern goes for all sorts of things: we can’t treat power as though it were something like a God in our lives, and yet we can love God in the way we use our power – and we all have some power in most of our relationships. We can’t let food be something like a God in our lives, but we can love God by the way we enjoy and share our food. One of the places we see that at St Mark’s is the Saturday Soup bowl every week, and in the food cupboard; but this can also be true in a meal made for our families or close friends. We can’t treat sex as though it were something like a God. Still, God’s love, with its transcendence, its risk and its fidelity can be signified in all aspects of our relationships, certainly including our sexuality. Among many other places we’re reminded of that in the Song of Songs.

But of all finite things, Jesus warns us most persistently in the Gospels about money. Here, the danger is great. It’s of course honorable and necessary to make a living from our skills and be paid back by others for what we offer them, but in a shamelessly unforgiving economic system like ours, there is always the danger of our instincts being directed toward something too much like survival of the fittest, and not enough like the golden rule. (Unless we’re talking about Mr. T’s revision: “I believe in the golden rule: the man with the gold… rules.”)

Even though the potential for misuse of money is greater than with most finite things, the potential for a redemptive use of money is just as great. People who say money is the root of all evil misquote the Bible, which actually says: love of money is the root of all evil. People who say money is the root of all evil aren’t aware of the way money is currently used, for instance, in the One campaign, or work to end AIDS in Africa, or going back to our roots, the way the Apostles supported each other by holding ‘all things in common.’ Sharing resources with those who need it isn’t a recognition that money is dirty and must be quarantined (what would that say about the needy who receive it?), it’s a recognition that money is good, a light that can’t be put under a bushel. People who say money is the root of all evil don’t know how money is used in this church, to feed people week after week, to support the beauty of our worship and other efforts. When used not as a false God but as a sign of free, true love, money is nothing but good. I’m sure Jesus would have agreed after having told the rich young man to give all his money to the poor. Money used in that way can be a vessel of the hope of the gospel.

So we don’t use our resources to win God’s love, to bribe our way into a better situation, or to buy a place on God’s A list; we don’t use money as the dishonest steward does. We know that we can’t pay God back for all he’s done, and that he’s never just on the verge of firing us or giving us an F because we don’t make the cut. In fact we know that God’s love is as endlessly available as God’s forgiveness. When we feel how good that love is, when we live it in the sacraments and in the sacramental possibility of all finite things, and when we know that we can become channels of God’s love by how we live our lives and use the finite things entrusted to us, we find time and again the desirability of giving back. For us and for the world, that is very good news.