Do We Have to Talk About Wealth?

Sermon

Nothing ensures a wandering mind during the sermon quite like the topic of wealth and poverty. I do wonder how Jesus’ audiences heard all these parables—if they, too tuned out; if they were poor and gave him shouts of encouragement; if they were rich and got mad or felt guilty or changed their ways.

As we’re letting Frederick Buechner guide our sermons right now, here’s what he said on the matter. About wealth, he writes, “Jesus says that it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. Maybe the reason is not that the rich are so wicked they’re kept out of the place but that they’re so out of touch with reality they can’t see it’s a place worth getting into.” (Whistling in the Dark)

About poverty, he writes, “In a sense we are all hungry and in need, but most of us don’t recognize it. With plenty to eat in the deep freeze, with a roof over our heads and a car in the garage, we assume that the empty feeling inside must be just a case of the blues that can be cured by a Florida vacation, a new TV, an extra drink before supper.

“The poor, on the other hand, are under no such delusion. When Jesus says, ‘Come unto me all ye who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest’ (Matthew 11:28), the poor stand a better chance than most of knowing what he’s talking about and knowing that he’s talking to them. In desperation they may even be willing to consider the possibility of accepting his offer. This is perhaps why Jesus on several occasions called them peculiarly blessed.” (Wishful Thinking)

This is not the preacher’s favorite topic, especially as stewardship season is nigh upon us, but it is one of Jesus’ favorite topics, so here we go. We might call chapter 16 of Luke’s gospel “Rich Men and Lovers of Money,” and we pick up where we left off last week. We might think of today’s parable describing one of those people Jesus warned about last week—those who choose mammon over God. (Culpepper, New Interpreters, Luke, p. 315)

And sometimes, as one commentator noted, “… the biblical witness is not pretty. In this case, one person is rotting in hell, the second is living it up in the heavenly city, and the third is telling it like it is. But nothing changes, even after death. The rich man seems not to have practiced mercy in his relationships while he was alive, so why should we expect that he should suddenly catch on and be saved? …. [in Hades] he asks for mercy, but not forgiveness. He asks for water, but not life.” (Mark Harris, The Christian Century, September 12-19, 2001, “No way out”)

Theologian Amy Merrill Willis writes, “Luke’s gospel is constantly talking about money and the poor, often in ways that make middle class and upper-middle class Americans uncomfortable. My husband tells a story about the time he preached on Luke 16 and was met by an angry church member who exclaimed, ‘Why are you preaching about money? Why don’t you preach the Bible?’ Readers can be remarkably resistant to the Bible’s preferential option for the poor.” (https://politicaltheology.com/the-great-chasm-between-us-the-politics-of-luke-1619-31/)

Let me assure you that probably none of us in the sanctuary identifies fully with anyone in this parable—we are neither as obscenely rich as this purple-robed man nor as devastatingly poor as Lazarus. We are varying levels of middle-class, for the most part, and belong to a socio-economic class that simply did not exist in first century Palestine.

Nonetheless, we might find ourselves in some of the behaviors of the rich man. How often do we avoid eye contact with the person standing at the end of the off-ramp, holding a sign asking for food? How often do we mutter to ourselves when we hear someone rummaging through our recycling bin, looking for cans they can redeem for a dime? How often do we give the Street Roots vendor a dollar but not a cent more?

We who have much, and we who have enough, find it hard to look at the poverty that is all around us. Seeing people living in tents, seeing people begging for food and money, is terribly hard. It is hard to see a fellow human being suffer. It is hard to not feel guilty that we have so much—roofs over our heads, pantries filled to the brim, clean water available by turning on the tap. It is so easy to judge the poor—if only they worked harder; if only they kicked their addiction; if only they stayed on their meds. And it is so easy to take on the mantle of apathy, to be so overwhelmed by the sadness and the need that we just shut down that part of our hearts.

Maybe one of the reasons Jesus talked so much about wealth and poverty was so that people would not shut down. Maybe he was inviting them—and us—to see things differently, to see the poor, and the rich, differently.

It is clear, by reading scripture, that God really does exercise a preferential option for the poor, to borrow a phrase. That phrase was first used in 1968 by a Jesuit priest and was used by the Catholic bishops of Latin America. “In its early usage …the option for the poor referred especially to a trend throughout biblical texts, where there is a demonstrable preference given to powerless individuals who live on the margins of society. The liberation theology movement fully embraced the concept, particularly when they closely associated the poor and vulnerable with Jesus himself, citing Matthew 25, ‘Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me.’” (https://uscatholic.org/articles/201501/what-is-the-preferential-option-for-the-poor/)

In other words, by preaching about poverty and wealth, by telling parables about poverty and wealth, Jesus invites us to see with the eyes of God. If God loves this human being, then we are called to love this human being, to see him, to learn her name, to value their life.

Perhaps it will help to understand the roots of poverty in our present day. Several years ago we hosted Dr. Donna Beagle who teaches about generational poverty. From that event began the Interfaith Alliance on Poverty, a group of churches and synagogues that work to understand systemic poverty, to advocate for better policies that alleviate poverty, and to provide direct aid to the poor.

I will warn you that when you begin to understand poverty, you will realize the system is rigged to keep the poor where they are. But to quote rapper Ice-T, don’t hate the player, hate the game. Don’t hate, judge, or ignore the poor person; understand that we live in a culture where the rich are rewarded and poor lose out. The Guardian reports that “the wage gap between chief executives and workers at some of the U.S. companies with the lowest-paid staff grew even wider last year, with CEOs making an average of $10.6m, while the median worker received [just under $24,000].” Is it right to receive an annual bonus when employees have been laid off?

We talk about those sorts of issues in our Personnel and Finance Committees, acknowledging that across-the-board percentage raises help those of us who make more and don’t really help as much those who make less. The Presbytery is urging an 8.3% cost of living raise for church employees, because of inflation and other factors, and that is simply not possible for us. Who gets what raise? Who stays financially secure, and who suffers?

What would God do as CEO of the world? Would God be a Marxist, and everyone shares everything so no one is rich and no one is poor? Would God be a capitalist, so that those with talents and connections and education make more, and those without make less? God would be God, I suppose, and wouldn’t accept that particular job.

Now it may seem to you that I am, as noted earlier, preaching about money and not preaching the Bible, but I hope I’ve cleared that up. We talk about money, about wealth and poverty, on a Sunday morning because Jesus talked about it. And who is this Jesus? Who is this Christ? As one pastor says, “In Matthew 25, Jesus tells us he is Lazarus: He is that one lying at our door hungry and thirsty. He is that one imprisoned and cut off from ‘decent’ society. He is the marginalized one that you can just as easily walk by. That is God’s Christ who stands at our [door], knocking. When we answer, we may not find someone who looks like us, but we may very well find someone who looks like our God, if we are paying attention.” (Helen Montgomery DeBevoise, Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol. 4, p. 120)

I wish I knew what to do, but I don’t. I know that our congregation, like so many others, is involved in efforts that alleviate the suffering of people – people in Portland, people across the world in places like Ethiopia and Guatemala. I know that all our efforts are but a drop in the ocean when compared to the need. But it’s still a drop.

And I know that every time I don’t make eye contact with the person holding the sign at the end of the off-ramp, I feel guilty. Maybe that is God working on my heart. I hope so.