Sermon: Danger!

Texts: 1 Timothy 6:6-19; Luke 16:19-31

Date: September 30, 2007

Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church

            We’re going to begin with a little pencil and paper exercise suggested by the authors of the Seasons of the Spirit Bible study curriculum.  Complete this sentence: “Wealth is…”  Do that three times. 

            Turn to someone sitting near you, if you would, and compare notes.

            Anything interesting come up?

              Did anyone finish the sentence by saying that wealth is…DANGEROUS!  If not, much of what Jesus had to say about wealth has fallen on deaf ears.  Virtually every gospel story in which wealth is a topic would have blinking red lights and sirens around it if one were to add sound and light effects to the lesson being taught.  Woot-woot-woot!  Danger! Danger!   G.K. Chesterton, ever eloquent, said it like this: “There is one thing that Christ and all the Christian saints have said with a sort of savage monotony. They have said simply that to be rich is to be in peculiar danger of moral wreck.”

            The gospel parable today was about as subtle as a freight train, wasn’t it?  You caught it, didn’t you, where the rich man wound up—“in Hades, where he was being tormented.”  Hades, where is that, somewhere south of the border, isn’t it?  Oh, Jesus means HELL, h-e-double toothpicks, I’ve heard of that.  Poor little rich guy.  Well, it’s just a story…

            Anyone finish the sentence “Wealth is…” with something like “what I have”?  Any wealthy people in the room?  I had to smile when I was reading a little inspirational article that was reprinted in the Rolling Bay Presbyterian newsletter.  The writer begins by saying, “They say that money does not bring fulfillment.  I suspect that many of us would agree—but it would only be a hypothetical response!  Most of us don’t have the opportunity to experiment with whether indeed wealth would make our lives more satisfying or fulfilling.”  Do you see the irony of addressing words like those to a community like ours? 

I was directed in a lectionary blog this week to a websight called “Global Rich List.”  I commend it to you.  At this site you are invited to enter a number in dollars, pounds, euros or yen that represents your annual income.  Then you click on a little button labeled “show me the money” and are taken to a screen depicting 100 little humans standing like tin soldiers representing the whole human race.  A red arrow points out where you stand among the human population in terms of your wealth.  The further over to the right you are, the more people in the world there are who are poorer than you.  It calculates which percentage you are in, and tells you your global ranking based on figures from the World Bank Development Research Group.  I entered the salary you pay me as your pastor.  Guess what?  Based on this figure, I am in the top .98% of the world population in terms of wealth.  I am wealthier than 99% of the rest of humanity.  In terms of my rank, I am the #59,029,289th richest person in the world.  That’s without John’s income or our interest income stirred in, which bumps us up.  But I was already standing all the way over to the right.

            Just for kicks I entered the salary of a friend who earns about $22,000 a year working for a school system.  Even she is in the top 10% globally.  The average worldwide income is $5000.  (That’s the average, not the mean.)  According to a note at the bottom of the Global Rich List website, the 225 richest people in the world have a combined wealth of $1 Trillion.  That is equal to the annual income of the world’s 2.5 billion poorest people.[1]

            Oh, now I’ve distracted you by mentioning the 225 richest people.  Those we think of as the real rich people—the ones who have more than we do.    We can keep pretending that the word “wealth” doesn’t apply to us as long as we restrict ourselves to comparisons with the people who are above us on the rich list.  Or focus on the various payments we are making.  One of George Carlin’s one liners may resonate with you: “I don’t own any stocks or bonds.  All my money is tied up in debt.”  But even if that’s true, it’s debt you have some hope of paying off.  So—sorry to be the one to tell you, if this is news to you—if you’re in this room, you’re probably rich.

            So this is good news and bad news, isn’t it?  Good news: we’re not starving; our kids have access to education; we have a roof over our heads, and some other stuff, too.  Bad news: we’re in grave spiritual danger.  Not that we’re necessarily in the handbasket-destination-HELL, but if we take the gospel seriously, we have to recognize that we might climb into that handbasket any time. 

            So.  According to the text in 1 Timothy, is it the money itself that is a problem?  No.  What is it?  It’s the love of money.  “But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.  The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.” [1 Timothy 6:9-10] 

            My spiritual question is, can you be involved with money over the long haul and not fall in love with it?  I’d certainly like to think so.  I’d like to be able to stand up here and say to you that I don’t love money.  That I have a utilitarian view of money, that my relationship with money is strictly platonic.   I don’t love money; we’re “just friends.”  

              But I can’t lie and say I don’t love what my close personal friend money can do.  I appreciated the way one article I read put it.  She pointed to the mixed bag of feelings we have about money, saying we love, fear and trust it all at the same time, probably more than we love, fear and trust just about anything else.  “Look what it can do: it provides not just food, clothing and shelter, but also vacations, health care, education, small and large toys, respect, access to beautiful and important people, fine linen and sumptuous feasts—just about all we need from day to day. We love what it offers.”[2]  Take one moment from a vacation we had in Norway last summer.  John and I spent a July evening on our room’s balcony in a historic hotel on a beautiful fjord, watching the sun set while drinking a delicious bottle of red wine together.  Loved it.  Take an invitation we recently received—for a mere $2600 each, John and I could attend a dinner with presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in a Bellevue home on her campaign swing next month.  Access.  We’re not planning to attend, but it would be fibbing to say I don’t love being invited.   

            Can you love what money can do without loving money itself?    I keep going back to something I read in an article about addiction.  This was about alcohol addiction—the article said everyone will become addicted to alcohol if they are exposed to it in sufficient quantity over a sufficient period of time.  Is that true of having money?  Will one be inevitably seduced into love of money given enough exposure?  I don’t really know.  But I don’t want to be in denial.

            “The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”  When I read that word “root” my mind went to a scene in one of the Harry Potter movies when the young wizards and witches were given the assignment of re-potting Mandrakes.  (I’m lucky to have a Harry Potter authority in the house; I told our daughter Karen what I was looking for and she had a text in front of me in minutes.)  Anyone here know what a Mandrake is?  Hermione, as usual, answered the question in class, sounding “as though she had swallowed the textbook:  ‘Mandrake, or Mandragora, is a powerful restorative…It is used to return people who have been transfigured or cursed to their original state.’

            “‘Excellent,’ said Professor Sprout.  ‘The Mandrake forms an essential part of most antidotes.  It is also, however, dangerous.  Who can tell me why?’

            Hermione’s hand shoots up.  ‘The cry of the Mandrake is fatal to anyone who hears it.’”  The class now notices that there is a heap of earmuffs on the table near the potted Mandrakes that need re-potting, and Professor Sprout instructs everyone to take a pair and make sure, at the signal, that their ears are completely covered.  When the class is ready, the teacher pops a plant out of the pot and the students see instead of roots that there is a small, muddy, extremely ugly baby with pale green, mottled skin, bawling at the top of its lungs. (In the movie version they make an awful noise that the audience gets to hear for a moment.)  The Mandrake root has to be stuffed into a bigger pot and covered with dirt so that only the leafy part of the plant is visible again. They don’t like being re-potted, flailing their fists and gnashing their teeth, so it’s a messy business. After the Professor demonstrates, she gives the signal to remove the earmuffs and points out that “As our Mandrakes are only seedlings, their cries won’t kill yet…However, they will knock you out for several hours.”[3]             

I’m sure this is a bit of a metaphorical stretch, but I wonder if the Mandrakes aren’t a bit like money.  Money and Mandrakes are both powerful and dangerous.  The cry of the Mandrake can stun or kill if you’re holding on to it outside its pot.  Money has a kind of siren cry as well that can stun the conscience or kill the soul.  The siren cry of money makes us think that what we want is the same thing as what we need.  Money is forever squalling at us that we can never have enough; it relentlessly screams, “More, more, more!” 

But like the Mandrake, it can be a powerful restorative.  The Mandrake is a healing plant, “used to return people who have been transfigured or cursed to their original state.”  Money can likewise be used to bring about healing and justice.  We caught a little glimpse of this on Bainbridge Island this week.  Greg Mortenson spoke at the high school about his book Three Cups of Tea, which several agencies had been promoting as a subject of the “Kitsap Reads” program; I’d guess that there were at least a thousand people who went to meet him last Wednesday night.  Mortenson has taken on a personal mission to build schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, believing that educating children, especially girls, is a path to peace.  He raised the first $12,000 to build a school and took the materials to the village that had shown him healing hospitality.  Since then his agency has been responsible for building dozens and dozens of schools for poor children. 

His story is compelling.    Some local people took on some fundraising in advance of his appearance.  His “Pennies for Peace” project, which invites children, particularly, into sharing a penny at a time (that’s where our Caring Coins have gone during September), attracted a little over $12,500 here.  And other Kitsap county donors kicked in something over $85,000 to his agency to build more schools.  Here we have an example of how funding schools might change us back from the curse of being enemies to our original state, brothers and sisters in the large family of God’s children.  Money in this case is going to be an antidote to the chasm of enmity and unequal distribution of wealth that yawns between us and the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Can we somehow put earmuffs on our souls while we handle money, moving it from this pot to that?  Can we manage to handle it without being knocked into un-conscience-ness or even spiritual death by its squalling for more and more and more?  Can we use money for the cause of love without falling in love with it?  I’d say the jury is still out on that.  But listen again to the sage words of 1 Timothy:

“As for those who in the present age are rich (this is us, listen up!), command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.  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.” [1 Timothy 6:17-19]         

[1] http://www.globalrichlist.com/

[2] Hinkle, Mary  http://maryhinkle.typepad.com/pilgrim_preaching/2004/09/gates_and_table.html

[3] Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets New York: Scholastic Press, 1999, p. 92-93