Our love. our love, our
love is all we have.
Our love, Our love is all
of God’s money.
Everyone is a burning sun.
-from the song Jesus, etc.
by Wilco
Our team has been reading,
thinking, and talking a lot about money lately.
God has been teaching me about money since the moment I got here, so it’s
been great to bring some of those internal conversations out into the light and
to hash them out as a group and as a community.
I’ve spent a lot of time
reading through the New Testament, watching the way that Jesus treated money,
and trying to hear out the things he had to say about it.
It doesn’t take long for it to feel like Jesus is turning over tables
and going to war with the ideas that I’ve always swept under the umbrella of “good
stewardship.” Every other chapter Jesus
is telling people to give things away (sometimes everything). In between he’s telling stories about
forgiving massive debts or paying workers the same wage, regardless of who has
worked more hours. And on top of that he’s
pulling coins out of fish’s mouths, turning water into really good wine, making
one kid’s lunch enough to feed thousands of people, and all kinds of other
miracles of some kind of provision.
I’m starting to see how much
faith I’ve put in money over the years.
It makes sense in a way – money has done a lot for me, and my family has
never been too short on cash. Money has
clothed me since the day I was born, fed me more Chipotle burritos than there
are hairs on my head, and healed me through doctor bills and bottle after
bottle of NyQuil. Not too mention the
fun stuff – the dinners and movies with pretty girls, the guitars, the
cocktails and pipe smoke, and the gasoline to get my thirsty car to all points
in between. Money has met my needs in
spectacular ways and made me a pretty comfortable dude.
Sure, God provided the money,
but over time it seems like our faith can get invested in the cash and
currency. I know this because most
Christians I know are keen on burning non-Christian CDs and dumping heathen
girlfriends, giving away canned foods and donating old shoes and shoulder-pad
dresses (even new clothes), but I think if we were in the shoes of the rich,
young ruler – met with that strange sentence, “One thing you still lack; sell
all that you possess and distribute it to the poor, and you shall have treasure
in heaven; and come, follow me.” We
would stumble over our words a little (Good grief Jesus, how can I fix my lack
by giving things away?), and we might end up walking away ‘grieved,’ just
like he did.
Somehow I’ve devised
beautiful ways to serve both God and Mammon, and quite honestly, I’m not sure
where Jesus gets off telling me I can’t serve both. But he says it anyway, “No one can serve two
masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will hold to
one and despise the other. You cannot
serve God and mammon.” Keep it coming,
Jesus. “For this reason I say to you, do not be anxious for your life, as to
what you shall eat, or what you shall drink; nor for your body, as to what you
shall put on. I not life more than food,
and the body more than clothing?”
On and on he goes, talking
about how God takes care of the birds, and how its not because they’ve been
stocking food up in a barn somewhere.
Then he tells us how God clothes the flowers, and how it isn’t because
they’ve been sitting around the loom weaving petals and leaves. It’s because God loves them and provides for
them.
And somehow this is
linear: You cannot serve both God and
mammon, so stop worrying about all of these needs of yours. Don’t even think about tomorrow. Seek the Kingdom today. Then God, who knows your needs, will take
care of the rest. Leave mammon
alone. Put your money down.
That’s wild.
Beyond all of this, God has
been teaching me that my life and my love are his money, the money of a God who
intends to buy back (redeem) the world little by little. So lately I’ve been walking around asking God
to spend me like money and to let my love be his currency. He seems to be doing it. At the end of most days I feel pretty spent,
and there seems to be a slow process of redemption happening in my own life and
in the lives of these people around me.
It makes the whole money thing easier – if my life is God’s money, it starts to get difficult to spend very much money on my own life, and my heart starts longing
to pour money out in ways that might work towards redemption as well.
