True Riches

1 Timothy 6:6-19

It is amazing the amount of attention the Bible gives to material possessions. It warns about the delusions that wealth brings; how we humans make idols of our dollars. The Bible also directs our attention over and over again to the poor and the destitute. It asks brazen questions about how we earn and spend our income. So brash is the Bible about material possessions that any preacher who tries to reflect on this will be accused of “talking too much about money.”

I have heard this complaint before.

I was in the grocery store one day back in Philadelphia where I encountered a woman from my former congregation who I hadn’t seen in a long time. It was awkward for both of us because she and her kids had suddenly stopped attending church and I never learned exactly why.

After we exchanged pleasantries, I said, “We miss you. Is there anything that our church can do for you?”

The woman replied, “Yes, there is. You could stop asking for money all the time.”

I didn't know what to say. She had caught me by surprise and I didn’t have time to organize a reply. But I kept thinking about it. She was right: the church is always asking for money, but how would the church fund all the ministries and missions it is engaged in?

Some people do grow weary of being asked to give, but perhaps they would prefer the sort of church where the members aren’t asked for money. Instead, they take turns doing everything in the church, including cleaning the building, providing the music, preparing the bulletin, doing the preaching and teaching, and spending a year each in the mission field (because they have no money to give to missions). In winter, they dress warmly for worship because they don’t run the furnace and in summer, well, the bulletin would serve the dual purpose of bulletin and personal cooling device. They offer no child care, no children’s church and no youth ministry.

Quite frankly, a church that needs no money wouldn’t be much of a church at all. I’m glad to be part of a church that always needs money. It means we’re doing something, going somewhere, making a difference. What kind of church would the church be if it wasn’t always reaching out to help others in need? And the local church is, I would argue, the best place to open our pocketbooks.

We should recognize, however, that this isn’t the whole response. The argument that the church should be asking for money because of all the good stuff it does has merit, but any worthy charity can make that case. The church isn’t simply a charity with a religious sheen on it. Christians aren’t simply do-gooders who also pray. We should give not only to do good for others but also because it’s necessary for our own spiritual well-being. It’s part of the way we love God with all our heart, soul and mind.

The apostle Paul gets at this in the first letter to Timothy, when he addresses the negative impact money can have on our souls. Those who want to be rich and desire to be wealthy bring misery upon themselves and others. One of the early church fathers, John Chrysostom, describes the love of money as, “a plague that so seizes all, some more, some less, but all in a degree. Like a fire catching a wood, that desolates and destroys all around, this passion has laid waste the world…desires are thorns, and as when one touches thorns, in goes his hand, and gets him wounds, so he that falls into these lusts will be wounded by them, and pierce his soul with griefs…But since the love of money is a matter that is willed, not fated, its cure lies in a rebirth of willing, for did not our own choice cause it, and will not the same choice avail to extinguish it?”

We deceive ourselves when we yearn for carefree security that we try to imagine riches and wealth will bring us. This promise is constantly held out to us throughout our culture – winning the lottery, cutting the big business deal, the get rich Ponzi schemes, and the countless ploys for wealth constantly being fed to us through the media. St. Augustine described the irony of one who “by lusting after something more, is made less” (On the Trinity, XII.9, NPNF 1 III, 160). We are caught in the snare like a fish caught in a net.

Our folly for the desire for wealth creates a host of idols that keep us away from God, that essentially take God’s proper place in our lives. The temptation we face each day is tremendous. Perhaps the supreme temptation that any of us as believers face is trying to fit in. We crave acceptance and approval no matter what our age may be. Paul shares with Timothy that food and clothing are necessary. But the world grabs hold and yanks us into a fierce competition to look like one another. In striving for more and better, we become more and more like those around us who have “gained the whole world and forfeited their life” (Mark 8:36). Whether it’s wearing the right brand and style of clothing at school or buying a new truck with all the bells and whistles, when we allow ourselves to be preoccupied with these temptations, we hurt our relationships with others, ourselves and God. As the character Lou Mannheim said in the film Wall Street, “The main thing about money, Bud, is that it makes you do things you don’t want to do.” Because money and possessions become idols we lust after; desires we long for.

In verse eleven, the text shift gears. In verses 11-16, Paul presents a positive challenge to Timothy in contrast to his many warnings on wealth. Paul reminds him that Christians are empowered to resist greed because of their grounding in their faith. The challenge Paul lays out represents the life of faithfulness as a dynamic and vigorous engagement in the pursuit of what is good. We don’t do this on our own or by our own initiative. We cannot secure our own personal salvation. That has been done for us in Jesus Christ since God loved us first. Any pursuit of the good, of what is holy, of what is righteous, follows God’s initial action.

Beginning in verse seventeen, Paul shifts back to addressing those within and outside the Christian community, sharing ways the wealthy need to live; how the wealthy are to use their wealth to further the Kingdom of God so they will not be corrupted by their wealth. We, the wealthy ones of the world, are to be rich in good deeds, for that is where our true riches will be.

True riches are found in serving God, drawing closer to God through our merciful service to the poor. Paul tells them not to allow their wealth to make them “haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches.” Rather, Paul says, they should set their hope “on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.” And lest they miss the point, he spells it out: “They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.”

Notice he doesn’t say they should be generous and ready to share because that’s good for others, though no doubt Paul would agree with that. No, he says they should be “rich in good works, generous, and ready to share” because by so doing they “take hold of the life that really is life.” They should be generous because it’s one of the things that makes them, the givers, spiritually healthy.

At a church in a very dangerous neighborhood in New York City, a Puerto Rican woman, after getting baptized, came to the pastor with an urgent request. She didn’t speak a word of English, but through her interpreter she said, “I want to do something for God, please.”

“I don’t know what you can do,” the pastor responded.

“Please, let me do something,” she said in Spanish.

“Okay, I’ll put you on a bus. Ride a different bus every week and just love the kids.”

So every week she rode a different bus – there were fifty of them – and loved the children. She would find the worst-looking kid on the bus, put him on her lap, and whisper over and over the only words she had learned in English: “I love you. Jesus loves you.”

The boy didn’t speak. He came to Sunday School every week with his sister and sat on the woman’s lap, but he never made a sound. Each week she would tell him all the way to Sunday school and all the way home, “I love and Jesus loves you.”

One day, to her amazement, the little boy turned around and stammered, “I – I love you, too.” Then he put his arms around her and gave her a big hug.

That was 2:30pm Saturday afternoon. At 6:30pm that night, the boy was found dead in a garbage bag under a fire escape. His mother had beaten him to death and thrown his body in the trash.

“I love you and Jesus loves you.” Those were some of the last words he heard in his short life – from the lips of a Puerto Rican woman who could barely speak English. She brought the grace and love of God to a young boy who never asked for new toys, but probably would have liked one; new clothes, but probably could have used some; or anything else in the world, except love, the one thing money can’t buy.

Money will buy a bed but not sleep; books but not brains; food but not appetite; finery but not beauty; a house but not a home; medicine but not health; luxuries but not culture; amusements but not happiness; religion but not salvation – a passport to everywhere but heaven.

To be truly rich is to be ready to distribute and share what we have with the needy. I remind myself of this, along with our Session and Deacons, through a prayer by St. Ignatius Loyola that says, “Teach us, Lord, to serve you as you deserve, to give and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, to toil and not to seek for rest, to labor and not to ask for any reward other than that of knowing we do your will.”

What treasure do you have to share with others? We know the best things in life are free: loving family and friends, the satisfaction we get from helping others, and the blessing of good health. As stewards we trust that God provides and because of that trust we are free to create a legacy that cannot be consumed, destroyed or used up, but one that will grow, flourish and last for generations to come.

Generosity is a spiritual discipline, which means it’s one practice that helps us avoid developing a superficial faith. In fact, when we present the offering plates to God after the collection has been taken, the gist of our offertory prayer should be, “No matter what else we say or do here this morning, O Lord, this tells you what we really think of you.”

So yes, the church is always asking for money. But it’s also always asking you to pray, read the Bible, confess your sins, do good deeds and attend worship. All those things are good for our souls and help us go deeper into our faith. Thus, one blessing of attending church is that it provides us with an opportunity to give generously, for our own good.