“21^st Century Discipleship:

Redefining Financial Freedom”

(Luke 12:13-21 and Luke 18:18-30)

          Over the last few weeks, we’ve talked a lot about discipleship: what does it mean to really dive in as a follower of Jesus, as opposed to sitting on the sidelines?  Today’s Scripture texts invite us to focus on an area of Christian discipleship that gets a whole lot of press in the gospels: the way we deal with our money.

          First we encounter the rich fool in Luke 12.  Notice, he is not an unjust man.  Nowhere is he accused of cheating anyone to acquire his wealth; it would appear he’s earned it all legitimately.  He is a fool, quite simply, because he thinks he can secure his life on the basis of his stuff.  He looks around, sees his possessions increasing, and assumes the solution is to rent out a few more storage units to hold it all.  Then, with “ample goods laid up for many years,” (Luke 12:19) he’ll be able to rest easier at night. Except that he doesn’t have many years after all; that night is it. William Willimon sees his logic this way: “Get the stuff piled high enough, deep enough, it’s a barrier against death and misfortune.  And for such thinking, Jesus calls him a fool.”[1]

          Our stuff can’t save us.  And we can’t take it with us.  But I’ll bet most of us can see at least a little of ourselves in this character.  I mean, who among us doesn’t find ourselves tempted to accumulate things?  Don’t you wish the gospel weren’t so hard?

          And it’s only a few chapters later in Luke (which, by the way, is absolutely full of money talk) that we find this story of the rich young ruler in chapter 18: “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” he asks.  Jesus first simply invites him to keep the commandments, and notice it’s the rich man himself who implies that doing so doesn’t feel like enough.  “I have kept all these since my youth,” he says, but then why is he asking?  Do we sense a lack of fulfillment in his reply?  But when Jesus lays on him this incredibly difficult alternative: “Go, sell all you own and distribute the money to the poor,” the man goes away sad, for he is very rich. 

Why would Jesus ask such a thing?  And why issue this statement about it being easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God?  What’s wrong with money?  What’s wrong with having possessions?  I guess Rich Mullins used to say “there are a lot of people coming to the [kingdom] Banquet, and God doesn’t want all the luggage to deal with.”[2]  But there it sits, this text, and we may not like it, but the conversation isn’t difficult to understand.  “What must I do, teacher?”  Oh sure, he had to go and ask, so now these words would sit there, clear as day, and stare us in the face, too: “Sell everything you have and give the money to the poor.” But it’s so hard.

          We ran across a story recently about a millionaire, giving his testimony.  “Everything I have I owe to God,” he says.  “I remember the turning point in my life. I’d just earned my first dollar and I went to a church meeting. I only had that dollar in my pocket and I had to give it all to God’s work or give nothing at all.  I decided to give it – everything I had – to God.  God has blessed me ever since.”  There was an awed silence as he returned to his seat.  As he sat down, an elderly woman leaned over and said, “I dare you to do it again!”

          Because it’s so hard.

          In fact, I suspect few biblical passages are more squirm-worthy among comfortable Western Christians than those that address our wealth head-on.  But as Maurice Sendak says, “Surely there must be more to life than having everything.” God knows it’s all too easy for us to become attached to our stuff, and that attachment can become a huge stumbling block to our faith.  It’s not impossible for God to help rich folks like us make it to heaven, Luke reminds us, but it sure is hard…

Let me be clear - reading through the Scriptures, I certainly have not encountered a God who wants people without enough money to feed their kids to give all they have to the church.  There may be seasons in our lives when things are so tight we can’t give as much as we’d like to.  But if we’re honest with ourselves, the particular individuals, and particular seasons to whom those last sentences apply are relatively few and far between in a congregation like ours.  Far more of us fall into the category of having so much stuff we’re tempted to build those bigger barns (or garages, or homes). Far more of us resist the call to give away what we have, not because we have so little, but because we have an awful lot.

Pastors certainly aren’t immune to the temptation.  We’re preaching to ourselves today, as much as we’re preaching to you.  We’ve told you plenty of times how easy it is for us to slip into wanting just one more gadget, just a little nicer kitchen, just a little something extra for our kids … But try as I might, I simply can’t find in the gospels a handy little quote from Jesus that gets us off the hook here, that implies what we do with our money doesn’t matter all that much.  Instead, a whole lot of times, Jesus gets right up in our faces about it.  As William Willimon puts it: “Rich folks beware.  It’s hard to read the Gospels and come to any other conclusion except that those with much wealth are in big trouble.”[3]

          It’s so hard.

I have to say, this is a congregation that clearly gets it about the importance of sharing your money with others – last week’s incredible support of the Alternative Gift Fair is but another example in a string, this fall, of beautiful displays of congregational generosity to specific mission causes.  What is less clear is whether we, like the first disciples, squirm enough under the weight of today’s gospel words.  Has the fact that Jesus says such audacious things about money gotten inside us?  To the point where every financial decision we make, we try to make from a gospel perspective?

Last week Donna and Bob talked about tithing, giving 10% of their earned income to the church.  That’s been the benchmark in our family as well – ever since Ken and I were little wee ones in Sunday School.  And I’ve got a little secret for you, we have to look all the way back to the Old Testament for a standard that’s so lenient on our budgets.  As you’ve seen this morning, the New Testament invites us to give it all away!  (Now which is the kinder, gentler half of the Bible, folks?)

          If 10% isn’t a step you’re ready to take just yet, you might appreciate the way C.S. Lewis puts it:

I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare.  In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements… is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little.  If our [giving does] not pinch or hamper us, I should say [it is] too small.  There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our [giving] excludes them.[4]

          In other words, it’s supposed to be hard.

          But as Tom Hanks says of baseball, in the movie “A League of their Own,” “it’s the hard that makes it great.”

          Because there is a freedom that comes from hearing Jesus’ challenges to us about money, too. 

I realize there is an off chance that at this point in the sermon you haven’t heard the “freedom” piece just yet.  You may be hearing a lot of “ought to’s” and “really should’s” and “whatever you do, don’t be like those poor fools in our gospel texts.”

But what’s at stake here truly is a redefinition of financial freedom.

First, Jesus strong words about money are offered as invitation, not as law.  He always preserves our freedom to walk away, and making the tough financial decisions that are a part of faithful discipleship is no exception.  While it might be in the best interest of those setting our annual church budget if Jesus forced everyone to live this way, Jesus himself will have none of that. In fact, Shane Claiborne imagines the first disciples a little uneasy with his strategy: “Why must you make it so hard?  We need some rich folks here, Jesus, we’re trying to build a movement.” And yet Jesus lets the rich young man walk away.”[5] 

Second, anything we actually give away, by definition, we are free to give.  For instance, I don’t have a choice when it comes to shelling out at least some money for a place to live, food to eat, some form of transportation to get me where I need to go.  But when it comes to our family’s weekly checks to the church, or the spending we got to do last week at the Gift Fair, that’s the fun part – that’s where the free choice comes in.  In Andre Gide’s words, “Complete possession is proved only by giving.  All you are unable to give possesses you.”  I thoroughly enjoy exercising that kind of freedom.

But perhaps most importantly, Jesus offers us a freeing shift in perspective.  If you think about it, the definition of financial freedom we tend to operate with is simply the one our culture has fed us.  You know it well: you haven’t really arrived until you have the enormous house, the pricey cars (preferably a few of them), the huge bank account, the designer clothes filling up your walk-in closet.  But even if you came close to achieving those things, the sheer space, insurance, and maintenance requirements for that kind of financial “freedom” would get overwhelming in the everyday present, much less trying to figure out what to do with it all when we depart this life. Jesus relieves the pressure.

Claiborne puts it this way:

One of the things I think Jesus is doing is setting us free from the heavy yoke of an oppressive way of life.  I know plenty of people, both rich and poor, who are suffocating from the weight of the American dream, who find themselves heavily burdened by the lifeless toil and consumption we put on ourselves.  This is the yoke we are being set free from.  The new yoke is still not easy (it’s a cross, for heaven’s sake), but we carry it together, and it is good and leads us to rest, especially for the weariest traveler.[6]  

In other words, we all know we don’t have to come to church on a Sunday morning to feel pressure about how to spend our money – anytime we walk into a store or turn on the television, we’ll find plenty of pressure already there.  It’s just a question of which yoke we are willing to bear, the yoke of the American dream or the yoke of Christ.

So Jesus invites us to question where our sense of obligation comes from.  Who’s telling you that you need this, that, and the other thing?  Is their advice the advice you want to build a life on?  Or would it frankly be a tremendous relief to listen to another voice?  A gospel voice, freeing you to fill someone else’s barn rather than trying to cram more into your own?

Sure, today’s Scripture texts can be hard to hear.  After all, the world we live in between Sundays has a pretty strong hold on us.

But the hard, in Christian discipleship, is what makes it great.

Can you hear the freedom Jesus is offering us?

That’s the invitation.  Amen.