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Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Jesus starts out talking about treasures, takes a brief detour into lamps and eyes and light and dark, and immediately returns to the question of money. And the key here is actually understanding that he's never left the topic at all. All of this is about wealth and desire. Today, we are actually wrapping up the first series of this new fall season. We've been talking about how we hold on to faith together, and we have talked about our questions and our doubts, our friendships and relationships.
Jeremy Duncan:We've talked about our felt experience of faith. And then last week it was questions of participation and belonging in community together. Today, we're actually going to talk about our relationship to money and wealth and faith, and some of the baggage that we have probably all felt around how religion has sometimes inappropriately wedged itself into that conversation. However, before all of that, as we normally do, I want to take a chance to look back at our conversation from last Sunday. Because Bobby walked us through a really beautiful, although let's be honest, also kind of difficult passage from first Peter.
Jeremy Duncan:And there we came up against what is known as the household code in the Roman Empire. And this was essentially the culturally prescribed hierarchy within the home. Father, then mother, then children, then slaves, each in turn subject to the former. And so what we find in the New Testament are writers wrestling with that cultural starting point that they've been handed, expectations that were imposed on the communities that they were writing to, But then also this gospel imagination, and this wide open invitation to reimagine the status quo that's come to them through the story of Jesus. And so as modern readers, we come across these passages that can feel, honestly, a little uncomfortable on their own when they're pulled out of their context.
Jeremy Duncan:Slaves in reverent fear of God, submit yourself to your masters. Wives, in the same way, submit yourselves to your husband. Is that really what we want for each other? And in a word, the answer is no. Because these verses are not praising the cultural starting point.
Jeremy Duncan:They're naming the reality of it. And when read in the proper context of the full letter, the call is actually to begin the work of undermining some of those deeply ingrained assumptions. So I love the way that Bobbi said this. She said, Here's the thing about being people of faith. We're always going to be people with one foot planted in one world, and one in another.
Jeremy Duncan:And the writer is saying, Yeah. Yeah. Look, you're subjects, wives, slaves even, but here's what's more true about you. You are people of honor, and you're free, and you love beyond what the household code tells you. Your dignity is intact, and you can resist the violence of the world.
Jeremy Duncan:Because you know that your soul is safe with God. And so in this same way, I think these ancient letters that are bound to very ancient contexts actually can still speak to us today. Question is, where do we see in our world expectations that are broken, and that could be made better? Is that a relationship with indigenous nations, or calls for peace around the world where war seems inevitable and intractable? Is it in economics that feel inescapable, and yet perhaps there are ways for us to use our resources more equitably?
Jeremy Duncan:In all of these, there is a status quo that wants you to believe it is impenetrable. But just like 2000 years ago, the gospel is out there looking for the cracks that can be slowly, steadily chipped away to let a little bit more light in. And so, yes, sometimes it's hard to hold onto faith when change seems impossibly slow in the world. But sometimes what that means is that the work begins here in the communities that we are forming together, a more just expression of the kind of culture we want to see in the world. All right.
Jeremy Duncan:We have one more conversation about holding on to our faith. But first, let's pray. Gracious God has every good and generous gift. Help us begin to do the hard work of separating our imagination of what is from what is offered to us. We are not our status, nor our bank accounts.
Jeremy Duncan:Our value is not defined by what we offer. Our failings are not defined by what we can't. And yet, we want to learn what it means to live consistently, imaginatively, and generously, To give freely and openly of ourselves and our resources, to carry our stories with a sense of community and with care, and to hold what we have been given with an open hand. We trust that you are the source of all that is good in our world. And we believe that you are not finished with us or our stories yet.
Jeremy Duncan:Teach us what it means to play a part in your imagination for this world, and to do it with a profound sense of both purpose and joy. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray. Amen. Today, we are talking about faith and wealth. And to get there, we need to talk about all those tithes, imagination, obsolescence, and good eyes.
Jeremy Duncan:But first, we need to name some misconceptions today, because I think all of us recognize that one of the challenges in holding on to faith is the way that wealth has able to consistently corrupt religion. The plain truth is that rather than religion being a positive force that helps us to contain our financial ambitions, it has been just as true to see wealth overcome and even monopolize faith. Now, of course, there are those high profile, downright embarrassing examples. Right? Pastors with private jets and manipulative promises, theologies, finely crafted to enhance bottom lines rather than our spiritual fit.
Jeremy Duncan:That, I don't even really think I need to spend any time with today. When you feel that ick, trust that and walk away from it. It's fine. But, even within what we might call a more mainstream Christianity, there are some misconceptions that we need to name even before we get to our real conversation for today. For example, you may have heard this.
Jeremy Duncan:You're supposed to give 10% of your money to me, or to the church, I guess. That's fine. We'd appreciate it and honor that gift, and that kind of generosity can be great. But that very specifically nice round number is actually a cultural more than a particularly biblical figure. Now, if you grew up in church, you're probably saying, well, it's a tithe.
Jeremy Duncan:It's 10%. Easy peasy. Next question. Thing is, Biblically, it's a little more complicated than that. You see the idea of a tithe comes from the Hebrew scriptures, but in fact, it's a number of Hebrew Scriptures that have been conflated together over the years to get that number.
Jeremy Duncan:See, for example, in Numbers 18/21, the Israelites are commanded to give a tithe or a tenth to the Levites in return for their work serving the community religiously. And essentially what's going on here is that one of the 12 tribes of Israel has been tasked with caring for the religious duties of the nation. But in that role, they did not receive an inheritance of land like the other tribes. Instead, they were dependent on the generosity of others to care for them with a tithe. And that did 2 things.
Jeremy Duncan:It kept the religious cast perpetually dependent on the people that they served, and it kept the need to share equitably within the community in front of everyone in the nation all the time. Okay. So alright. Give 10% to your church. That's the modern equivalent.
Jeremy Duncan:Where's the problem? Well, the problem is, we're just getting started. Because a little while later, in Deuteronomy 14 verses 22 and 23, the people are then told to set aside another tenth of all their fields produced each year and to eat that tithe in the presence of the Lord, so that they might learn to revere God always. Now this time, that tithe went to a big community meal, a party. And over time as the nation grew, this became known as the festival tithe, and it created a large community fund that covered all the expenses of all the religious festivals throughout all of the Jewish calendar.
Jeremy Duncan:So we're up to 20% now, but we're still not none because just 5 verses later in Deuteronomy 1428 we read that at the end of every 3 years, you are to bring another tithe of that year's produce and store it in your town, so that foreigners and the fatherless and widows may come and eat. So there was a third tithe meant to care for the marginalized. And by the way, if you have ever heard any pastor ever quote the book of Malachi, where God says, You are robbing me by withholding your tithes from the storehouse and then equating that to your generosity to the church. That is a blatant and hopefully unintentional misrepresentation of what is going on in Malachi. The storehouse tithe, whenever you read about it, is specifically and only to care for the needy within the community.
Jeremy Duncan:It has nothing to do with giving your money to the church. Sorry. Still, all of this means that on an annualized basis the Israelites were tithing 23.3 percent of their income, Not to mention the fact that they were also told to leave the edges of their fields unharvested, so that anyone who happened to be walking by and found themselves hungry could take what they need. So, these resources were used to care for the religious cast, to fund the religious practices of the community, and to provide a social safety net for anyone that needed it within the community. Now, all of those remain good things to point your generosity at today.
Jeremy Duncan:In fact, all of them have an equivalent in the New Testament. For example, Paul talks in 1st Corinthians 9 about pastors deserving their pay. And in Mark 12, Jesus praises a poor widow for putting 2 simple coins into the religious treasury. In Acts 2, we hear about the early Christian community coming together, sharing everything that they have to care for those in need among them. But nowhere in the teachings of Jesus, nor in the writings of Paul, in fact, nowhere in the New Testament at all do we ever find a tithe or a figure like 10% attached to any of these ongoing needs or your generosity.
Jeremy Duncan:Truthfully, the only time that Jesus talks about tithes is decidedly negative. His preference, which we see very clearly in Mark 12, is for uncoerced generosity. Now look, everyone on staff here, including me, benefits from your generosity. And we are able to worship together and keep these lights on. Because of your generosity, we have incredible programs like the commons cupboard that provides food for anyone in the neighborhood whenever they need it.
Jeremy Duncan:And all of that happens because of your generosity. And you might decide that a nice round number like 10% is a good number for you to shoot toward in terms of your generosity. But if we are making an honest like comparison here, your generosity today exists alongside all the taxes that we also vote for and pay, and that provide a social safety net in our communities as well. Now, obviously, that's not where all of your taxes go. And so my point is not that you should not be generous in addition to your taxes.
Jeremy Duncan:In fact, I will argue exactly the opposite today. It's good for your soul to be generous. But what I want to take off the table before we even begin our conversation today is an inappropriate religious obligation that does not exist in Christianity. Not only is that kind of religious coercion antithetical to the way of Jesus, in my experience, it will inevitably make it incredibly difficult to hold on to your faith for the long haul. When you are measuring your generosity against some external metric you are trying to meet, it's not good for you.
Jeremy Duncan:However, there's another conversation in our way first, And this is one about our relationship between desire and wealth. Because as soon as we talk about faith and wealth, we need to find intrinsic motivation for our generosity, all of these good things. We come up against some very powerful and often misunderstood forces in our lives. And for that, I want to turn to one of my distant mentors, the French sociologist, Rene Girard. I've talked about him before, and Girard went on to develop ideas about scapegoating and the nature of Christ that have had a deep impact on my theology, all the ways that I think about our at onement with the divine.
Jeremy Duncan:But one of his earliest theories had to do with human desire, and a force that he calls mimesis. Now, essentially, what he means with that word is imitation. Just a note for yourself. Write this down. If you ever want to sound really smart in an academic setting, just look for a Latin or a Greek word that says the exact same thing you want to say in English and use that instead.
Jeremy Duncan:Score you a lot of points. Keep it. But what Girard developed was a theory that what humans are actually really good at above everything else, in fact, is imitating each other. In fact, all of human innovation, in society, in storytelling, in science, it's built on language, and language itself is really just imitation. Like I grunt and I point at a stone.
Jeremy Duncan:You make the same grunt and point at the same stone. All of a sudden, we have a language now and grunt is the word for stone. You do that enough over enough time and you get complex language. Now in our daily experience, speaking, language, communicating feels like a core part of being human, but really it is just very complex imitation. Our kids even pick up language by imitating parents.
Jeremy Duncan:It doesn't come naturally to them. In fact, they learn to be human by imitating parents. And so Gerard starts to wonder, well, maybe everything, including our desires, what drives us is just imitation. So you see me having a coffee, for example, and you see me enjoying it, and all of a sudden you find yourself wanting to imitate that kind of enjoyment. However, because you're a human being and not particularly good at doing anything but imitating, often what happens is it's easier for you to just triangulate that enjoyment on the object you see me holding.
Jeremy Duncan:Ergo, now you want a coffee. That's why we all drink it. Let's be honest. You see this with kids. Right?
Jeremy Duncan:Stick 10 of them in a room with 50,000 toys, and which one do they want? It's the obviously the one toy that the first kid was playing with when they walked in. And whether we've named this with some obscure Greek word or not, this is something we've actually known about ourselves for a very long time. Just look at how anything is sold to us. Right?
Jeremy Duncan:Singer X or basket player Y uses product Z, you probably should too. Why would I care what toothpaste LeBron James uses? And yet, I do. And it's not just toothpaste. It's not even just the toy.
Jeremy Duncan:It's about wanting to imitate desires that I see in a person that I ultimately want to be like. And these ideas have radically reshaped our relationship to wealth in specifically the last 100 years. You see, back in the 19 fifties, America was just emerging from the 2nd World War. But now, with the war over, the west was left with massive debts, and damaged cities, and returning veterans all needing jobs. And the economy was on the verge of slipping all the way back into a second Great Depression.
Jeremy Duncan:And so in the 19 fifties, a new concept was created out of necessity. It was the concept of planned obsolescence, where for the first time things were being designed with a particular lifespan in mind. So if you buy a phone and it works for 10 or maybe 20 years, that's not good anymore, because we need you buying more phones so that more people can have more jobs. The problem is, how do you get consumers to be okay with these new, less durable products? And this is where perceived obsolescence was created.
Jeremy Duncan:Because alongside the redesign of physical objects to reduce their longevity, marketing came along that turned that into a feature. And it was built on mimesis. For example, there was an ad a few years ago for a Dodge truck. You might remember this one. There was a pickup truck, and it drove through an exploding barn, and then it pulled a Hercules transport aircraft across the tarmac.
Jeremy Duncan:It was a truck that was designed for MacGyver and Jack Bauer. No. The ad wasn't about that, because it wasn't meant to demonstrate anything useful about that truck at all. It was simply meant to make you feel like your current truck, or your 2006 Hyundai Accent, if that's what you happen to still drive, was somehow desperately out of shape, in immediate need of replacement, regardless of whether you were actually ever going to do any of those things with your vehicle. The point being, most of our marketing, all the images that we are shown all the time, isn't designed to point to needs in our lives.
Jeremy Duncan:It's meant to evoke mimetic responses in us. Desire for the stories behind the things, a perception of the kind of person we can be if we just imitate that. And that is what makes it okay when your purchases don't last as long because a broken phone just means there's a new opportunity to chase all the desires that you've been taught to imitate all your life. And so, when we talk about our relationship to stuff, wealth, things, we have these 2 pushing and pulling realities. The desire to use wealth to imitate what we think happiness looks like and the religious push to use wealth in a way that will check the box to justify our accumulated continuation and prove to those around us that we've done the right things.
Jeremy Duncan:What's fascinating to me is the way that Jesus speaks to these 2 intertwined concepts of both generosity and desire that drive us. And the passage that I want to go to to see all that is perhaps a familiar one, but I think often a misunderstood one. It comes in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, and he's speaking directly to issues around money and wealth. He says this, Do not store up for yourselves treasures in Heaven where moss and vermin destroy, where thieves break in and steal. Instead, store up treasures in Heaven where moss and vermin do not destroy, where thieves do not break in and steal.
Jeremy Duncan:For where your treasure is, there your heart will also be. And this part is, I think, reasonably straightforward. Right? If you invest yourself in material things, they will eventually let you down. Instead, build your identity in devotion toward what has some lasting value.
Jeremy Duncan:And here, Jesus names treasures in heaven. But I think in the larger context of His teaching, we could probably frame this as anything that contributes to the ongoing realization of God's kingdom in the world. So that absolutely could be the material use of your resources in ways that promote the common good. Literally, investing in a world that looks more like heaven. It could also, I think, include the ways that we shape and conform our hearts.
Jeremy Duncan:Right? The the hopes and desires that would be slowly aligned with God's kingdom, investing ourselves in that. That makes sense to me as well. But here's the interesting part. Next, Jesus adds this, For the eye is the lamp of the body, and if your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light.
Jeremy Duncan:But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is dark, how great is that darkness? And this right here, this is fascinating stuff. Because at one level, the eye is the lamp of the body, has a certain logic to it. Where you look will guide your steps.
Jeremy Duncan:So keep your eyes focused on what is good. Your steps in the world will follow and you will stay on the path of God. On the other hand, if your eyes divert from what's good and they become dark in a sense, no longer guiding you in the path, in the world. You'll find yourself lost in the bushes somewhere. That works.
Jeremy Duncan:It makes sense. And honestly, I probably believe that to be true in our lives. It is not, however, what Jesus is saying here. And we have a clue from what follows, because right after this, his next line is, No one can serve 2 masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or find yourself devoted to the one and despise the other.
Jeremy Duncan:You cannot serve both God and money. So Jesus starts out talking about treasures, takes a brief detour into lamps and eyes and light and dark, and then immediately returns to the question of money. And the key here is actually understanding that he's never left the topic at all. All of this is about wealth and desire. And the crux is a very difficult idiom to translate from Hebrew to Greek to English.
Jeremy Duncan:See, in the NIV that I read, what we have here is Jesus talking about healthy and unhealthy eyes. And those are perfectly serviceable translations of the Greek words that underlie them. They are not, however, particularly good translations of the Hebrew idioms that underlie the Greek. See, in Hebrew, a good eye, or aintov, and an evil eye, or aintrah, actually have nothing to do with your visual acuity at all. Those are idioms that speak to your relationship with wealth.
Jeremy Duncan:For example, Proverbs 229 says, The generous will themselves be blessed for they share their food with the poor. But in Hebrew, what that says is, A good eye is blessed because it gives food to the poor. On the other hand, Proverbs 20 3 6 says, Do not eat the food of a begrudging host, for He's the kind of person who's always thinking about the cost. But in Hebrew, what that says is, do not eat food that comes from an evil eye. For Well, we actually don't know what the second half of that verse means at all.
Jeremy Duncan:It's probably something like for he's always calculating, or he's always thinking about himself, or maybe even he's like something that gets stuck in your throat and makes you want to vomit. Now, if you're thinking to yourself, how did that third one get in there at all? Welcome to the weirdness translating Hebrew. Just for fun here, the problem is a word nefesh. It's a very important word in Hebrew.
Jeremy Duncan:And it can mean your neck or your throat, but it can also be your breath or your soul, and it can even be your inward sense of self in the world. And so, we know something is going on with the nafesh of this person, but honestly, we're just not quite sure what it means here exactly. But, we do know that a good eye is a generous person, and an evil eye is a greedy person. That's what those terms mean. And what Jesus is referencing in Matthew chapter 6 as He talks about wealth, and that means that what Jesus is actually saying here is something more like either generosity or greed will direct your steps in the world.
Jeremy Duncan:And in fact, if you're not careful, one of them will attempt to master you. See, this is why this passage is so important to me, because I think it's an indictment of both, a generosity that is guided by measures and metrics, motivated by a desire to do what needs to be done in order to receive the praise of those around you. It's still an external motivation. And it's an indictment of the kind of desire that has us endlessly chasing the next new car or iPhone or whatever status symbol we're attempting to use to imitate the person that we think we want to be. It's another external motivation.
Jeremy Duncan:Both of those are an evil eye, and they will lead you somewhere ultimately that you don't want to be, chasing the approval of someone else. A good eye is the kind of eye that's not reacting to expectations or imitations. It's an eye that's actually guiding you through the world, lighting the path in front of you, helping you to see and engage with opportunities to be generous as an expression of the essential gratitude that grounds your identity in God's goodness. Jesus isn't asking us to give more to feel less guilt. That's a bad eye focused on external expectations.
Jeremy Duncan:And ultimately, it will be just as flimsy as anything that moss and vermin can destroy, anything that thieves could break in and steal, because it is still subject to what someone else thinks about you. Jesus is inviting us to to a life of generosity that actually frees us from the control that wealth can have over us, because it's about letting generosity become who we are, not just what we do to make someone else happy. Now, look. In practice, sometimes we have to start down a path toward the person we want to be. We have to be more generous than we feel like being.
Jeremy Duncan:Right? Often, our experience of the world follows the actions that we take in the world. But the goal of your generosity is not that anyone would ever be able to look over your shoulder and decide for themselves which path you are on. The goal is that slowly, steadily, generosity might become an intrinsic part of the person that we are cultivating for ourselves. Until eventually, maybe, it's a good eye that's leading us through the world.
Jeremy Duncan:See, my argument is that when our relationship to wealth can actually become utilitarian, not driven by religiosity that we feel obligated to, nor pushed by desires that we struggle to even understand in ourself, but actually welcomed as resource given to us to push the world toward a tomorrow that's just a little bit better than today. And by the way, that little bit better can be for yourself and your own life. It can be for your family, for your neighbor, for the world. In fact, I would probably argue the goal is for it to become a little bit of all of that for each of us. But if our relationship to wealth could actually move us through the world in a way where we see the small but tangible difference we can make with what we have, I think wealth can actually become a real tangible source of faith in our lives.
Jeremy Duncan:Because we see how God is changing things, moving things forward, even sometimes incredibly through us. A good eye illuminates the path ahead of you. And it will help you see how even your stumbling steps are part of a larger story in which the world is slowly made right. And particularly, when that path ahead of you seems infinitely long, there is nothing like knowing that you are heading even slowly in the right direction. Not because someone's looking over your shoulder, but because you actually want to be part of the story you imagine for this world.
Jeremy Duncan:Let's pray. God, for all the ways that our wealth has stolen from us the ability to participate in Your story. And sometimes it's been religious wealth that has bound us down with all these metrics of things we're supposed to do to earn, I don't know, our place in your love. And sometimes it's been these desires that capture us, and we don't even know why, but we want to imitate things that aren't going to move us toward the enjoyment of your world we long for. In all these ways, we pray that you would help us set it aside and to slowly begin to cultivate within us a real care and a real kindness expressed in generosity to our families, to our friends, to our neighbors, to our strangers, to the communities that we participate in, not because of obligation, but because of goodness that is being birthed in us.
Jeremy Duncan:And God, we trust that as that slowly takes root, we can actually become the kind of people we long to be, good and generous and committed to the long story of this world looking a little bit more like heaven today and tomorrow and the next. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen. Hey, Jeremy here. And thanks for listening to our podcast.
Jeremy Duncan:If you're intrigued by the work that we're doing here at commons, you can head to our website commons.church for more information. You can find us on all of the socials at commonschurch. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel where we are posting content regularly for the community. You can also join our Discord server. Head to commons.church/discord for the invite, and there you will find the community having all kinds of conversations about how we can encourage each other to follow the way of Jesus.
Jeremy Duncan:We would love to hear from you. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. Have a great week. We'll talk to you soon.