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Wealth - Matthew 6
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
If you're generous, everything in you will be full of light. If you're stingy and greedy, then everything goes dark. Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week.
Speaker 1:Head to commons.church for more information. Welcome to commons. My name is Jeremy. I get to help around here. It's great to be here this weekend.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining with us. We never take it for granted that you spend part of your weekend here. But let me say a few things before we jump in. I was away this weekend in the mountains with our board, and I really wanna say thank you to this amazing group of people who give their time and their energy and passion to serve this community this way. You can always head to our website, commons.church/team, to read the bios of all of those members who serve the community this way.
Speaker 1:But it really is a joy to get to work with them, and I'm deeply grateful for that. Let me say this. We are also well into our plans for the coming year together, and we're really excited about that. The new journals are underway. We do still have existing journals for the current year.
Speaker 1:That will take us through the summer. And so if you're newer to the community and you don't have one, stop by the connection center at the back there. Grab one. They're free, and they'll give you lots of information about Commons as well. However, that said, we are in our last conversation now about wealth.
Speaker 1:And a big part of what I wanted to do in this series was to begin to stretch that conversation out from our wallets and our bank accounts to begin to include this vast, uncelebrated wealth that all of us have at our disposal. So money, yes, but also resources and creativity and passion and ideas and warmth and concern for each other. All of the many ways that we have to affect the world and to help create a more just expression of God's kingdom in our midst. All of that is really part of wealth. Because as we said at the start of this conversation a couple weeks ago, wealth is not just the freedom to get whatever you want.
Speaker 1:It's really about the freedom from being driven by manufactured want to begin with. If you imagine a person with limitless resources matched by limitless consumptive desire, a person is really no farther ahead than any of the rest of us. They just have a bigger house to be frustrated the same way in. And this is why that biblical imagination of wealth and wisdom are so deeply intertwined. Not because the wise are automatically wealthy, but because without wisdom, wealth is pretty meaningless actually.
Speaker 1:And so two weeks ago, we talked about the promise of the 10 commandments. That perhaps what God is offering to us is a life that leads to freedom from wanting, not really about God scolding us for our wanting. And then last week, we talked about the relationship between generosity and justice. That wise wealth calls us to notice the story behind the story and to recognize that fair, whatever we mean by that, is often shaped by our perception far more than we realize. We looked at this parable of Jesus that I think really challenged a lot of our assumptions.
Speaker 1:It tells a story about a wealthy landowner who goes out and hires people early in the morning to work in his vineyard. Then he goes out again at nine and noon and three and even 5PM near the end of the day. But at the end, in the end, everyone gets paid a full day's wage. And what's fascinating about the story is that it works at a number of different levels. I think our English translations often lead us to assume that the story is about progressively lazy workers.
Speaker 1:English, we'll often call them idle, which subtly gives the connotation that they are the problem in the story. That's a good story too. God is gracious and giving and generous and caring even despite our flaws and faults. I love that story. I need that story.
Speaker 1:God's graciousness to me is not dependent on my industriousness. I need to hear that. But at the same time, as we talked about last week, the Greek language of that story doesn't necessarily have the same connotation. In fact, instead of the focus being on the laziness of the workers, I would argue, perhaps the focus of the story is really on their lack of opportunity. And that despite the lack of opportunity and the decreasing chance of finding work, they actually stand put at attention, waiting for the chance to be hired even as the day slowly ticks away, and their prospect of finding work fades.
Speaker 1:And if that's the case, then maybe the story isn't just about unwarranted generosity. Maybe it's about generosity that rebalances the playing field for everyone. Wealth that provides opportunity where there hasn't been, and generosity that invades the injustice of our world to ensure that everyone has the chances some of us take for granted. See, I think this parable is about the kingdom of God, but I also think it's about the dignity of work and the need for opportunity. It's about an imagination of wealth that extends our story to include the stories that surround us.
Speaker 1:And sometimes that's a story that I need to hear just as much as the one about grace. And the truth is, this is really the brilliance of Jesus' mode of teaching that he teaches in ways that allows us to hear what it is the spirit would say to us, particularly in the moments where spirit speaks. Now, today, we wanna take those conversations and talk about our experience of happiness. But first, let's pray. Gracious God, we thank you for bringing us safely to this day and this moment.
Speaker 1:We stand here some two thousand years removed from the days in which your son walked this earth, but we come to learn from the wisdom and the insight you taught. To wrestle with the ideas and the concepts that you shared, but more than that, Lord, we come to learn what it means to walk alongside you in your way. Not simply to glean tips from your teaching and life hacks from your lips, but instead to know what it could mean to be caught up in the profound experience of a good life. Search for happiness today, not in techniques and shortcuts, but in relationship with you. And we acknowledge our desire to be happy, but more than that, we express that we want to want to know you.
Speaker 1:So help us to think clearly and critically about our wealth and our resources and our happiness. Help us to separate the ideals and the agendas that culture props up in front of us. Help us to set aside the pursuit of ecstatic moments in exchange for this long sustained journey of contentment. We ask that you might grant us deep joy as we succeed and we fail and we fall and we get back up and try again because we trust that you are with us as we do it all, and this is what makes us happy. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray.
Speaker 1:Amen. Okay. Today, we're gonna stick with Jesus, but we're gonna move our focus to the sermon on the mount, which is sort of his first major public address. And we're gonna look at some of the advice that he gives us for where to ground our experience of happiness. But the plan today is to cover, playing the game, defining our happiness, good eyes, and the good life.
Speaker 1:But first, a quick story. I'm sure most of you have used Kijiji at some point in your life. Well, I had a few things to sell a few weeks ago, and I was reminded about just how incredible slash infuriating Kijiji is because as I learned, Kijiji people are vicious. Posted a few items late at night one night before going to bed, and I woke up to a mountain of messages in the morning to respond to. Now, maybe you have gone pro, and you are gonna tell me that my Kijiji strategy needs work, and that's the problem.
Speaker 1:Obviously, that is true. But here's my thought. I went online and looked at what similar items were selling for, and I priced my items slightly less than that in hopes that someone would give me an offer. I would agree. We would exchange goods and money, and we would all move on with our days and get on with things.
Speaker 1:Right? That did not happen because Kijiji people are vicious. So here's the three of my favorite interactions from that morning. All of these 100% true. One, is the item available?
Speaker 1:Yes. It is. Good. I'll give you half of what you're asking for. I need you to deliver it to me tonight.
Speaker 1:Also, I live in McKenzie Town. No. I mean, that's not happening. No. No.
Speaker 1:Two, is the item available? I'm sorry. The item has been spoken for. Fine. I'll give you $20 more, and I'll be there in five minutes.
Speaker 1:Actually, I'm outside your house right now. No. That's that's weird. Three, is actually my favorite one. Is the item available?
Speaker 1:I'm sorry. The item has been sold. It's already picked up. Well, what about the other thing that I can see in the blurry background of your photo? I'll take that.
Speaker 1:Also, I need you to deliver it to me in McKenzie Town. No. I mean, that's not that's not how this any of this works. And I tell that story because I posted this online on my Facebook, and about half of the responses were people empathizing with my frustration. The other half of you were people telling me that I'm not playing the game right, and that's the best part of Kijiji is going back and forth with people.
Speaker 1:Because as I say, Kijiji people are vicious. And here's the problem when we speak of the pursuit of happiness. Everyone has a different measure of what will make them happy. Some people wanna spend a day going back and forth over a Kijiji item. Some of us just want our money, and we wanna move on.
Speaker 1:But that's why a real conversation about wealth and satisfaction and happiness has to do more. It has to reach behind the figures in our bank accounts and into our perceptions of the world. In fact, there's actually really good research that shows that wealth does make you happy up to a certain point. Unfortunately, that point is really about the equivalent of about $50,000 a year in household income in Calgary. That's about what it takes to reliably access housing and food and health care and mobility and recreation in the city.
Speaker 1:Now I fully recognize not everyone here has that, which is why we talked last week about access to opportunity. But the point is money doesn't actually do what we think it does. It can provide access to the basics in a little bit more, and that really does make you happy up to a certain point. But beyond that, there doesn't seem to be much up to our experience of happiness except our perception of the world. In fact, happiness researchers, which are real people, at the Happiness Institute, which is a real place in Palo Alto, California, course it's in California, they released a study a few years ago that suggested that the single most significant barrier to happiness for most people in North America is the preponderance of choice.
Speaker 1:We all know this. Right? We call it FOMO, the fear of missing out. But there's a point where wealth gives you access to what you want, and that's good and healthy, and it makes you happy. But then wealth can hit a tipping point where it gives you access to more than you can handle, and it actually starts to work against you.
Speaker 1:When I can have a good thing, that's great. When I can have 10 good things, but I only have the time and the energy to choose one of them, that's stressful. And what happens, according to happiness researchers, is that a lot of the energy we would normally invest in enjoying that good thing gets expended on deciding on which good thing to enjoy, which diminishes our enjoyment of it, which makes us think we chose poorly, which makes us anxious about all the other options that we didn't choose that now we're missing out on. And look, I'm not telling you to feel bad for wealthy wealthy people. When I win the lottery, you can pray for me then.
Speaker 1:Also, don't play the lottery. But what I'm saying is that the relationship between wealth and happiness is not the straight line we think it is. And this is why the ancients talked not about the pursuit of happiness, but instead about the good life. Now the good life came from a Greek word, eudaimonia, which often gets translated happiness, but is probably something more like blessing or flourishing or good life. There were all kinds of attempts to explain this throughout philosophical history.
Speaker 1:Aristotle and Plato thought it was tied up in virtue. The Epicureans thought it was connected to hedonism, that kind of eat, drink, be merry for tomorrow we die kind of approach. The Stoics thought it was about ethics and knowing what to do in any given situation. But all of these philosophical schools seemed to understand that happiness, eudaimonia, and flourishing was a lot more than just our external circumstances. Those matter, of course they do.
Speaker 1:But real flourishing is rooted somewhere deeper in us. And that is, unsurprisingly, exactly what our friends at the Happiness Research Institute in Palo Alto, California are also trying to tell us. And I think it's what Jesus is getting at in the passage I wanna look at today. Now, we're gonna head to Matthew six to end this series, but this is part of a larger section known as the sermon on the mount. And heads up here, we are coming back to the sermon on the mount in the fall.
Speaker 1:We're gonna work our way through the whole thing, so you can keep your heads up for that. But today, we're gonna start in six verse 19, where Jesus says, do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourself treasures in heaven where moths and vermin do not destroy, where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will also be. The eye is the lamp of the body.
Speaker 1:If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. 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? No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.
Speaker 1:You cannot serve both God and money. That's Matthew six nineteen to 24. Now what I wanna focus on today eventually is that middle section about eyes and light. I think there's some really interesting things that Jesus is saying here, but we need to take this whole section because I'll spill it a bit here. I think he's actually saying the same thing three different ways.
Speaker 1:Store up your treasure in heaven. The eye is the lamp of the body. You cannot serve two masters. All of these are about wealth. And they're about how wealth can distract us from what a really good life is meant to be and how we flourish.
Speaker 1:So let's go back and begin at the beginning. Jesus says, do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moths and vermin and thieves can get it. And as I'm want to do, I'm gonna pick on the NIV a little bit here. As much as I do appreciate this translation, I still think it's the best overall English version, but they've made an interesting choice here with this word vermin. What they're talking about here are rats, and that is certainly almost positively part of what Jesus had in mind.
Speaker 1:But he doesn't say rats. What he says is brosis. Now, brosis is the Greek word for the act of consumption. And given that he's talking about consumption and moths, it's pretty reasonable to assume that he has in mind something like vermin and rats, and he sort of does. Rats would be one of the most common in a series of threats that would fall under that category of consumption.
Speaker 1:But just as equally, this could be decay or rot or rust. That's actually what the English standard version has gone with, rust. And I think that's a bit better because it seems to me that Jesus is speaking more comprehensively here. The threat isn't rats. It's not even rust.
Speaker 1:It's the fact of consumption. That things get consumed, that wealth gets used up. It's the fact that things decay, that things break down, that things fall apart, it's that things disappear. It's the idea that anytime you put too much trust into something vulnerable to being consumed, that's a precarious position. I think he's building a bit of an argument here.
Speaker 1:Talks about things in jeopardy of decay. Talks about wealth vulnerable to moths and mother nature. He talks about wealth at risk to thieves in bad intent. This actually goes back to Martin Luther, who noticed this and wrote that the great idol Mammon has appointed three trustees to remind us of the temporality of our possessions. Now, that word mammon, that is the Greek word from the end of the passage here.
Speaker 1:Jesus says, you cannot serve both God and money. Mammon is the word. And mammon means money, but it's really wealth and privilege and status and everything that goes along with it. Luther reads this and he realizes that the idea that wealth can be consumed and used up, the fact that treasure can be eaten away, the idea that it could be stolen from us should be enough to remind us not to worship it. In fact, the very vulnerability of wealth is what ensures that once you start worshiping it, you have to keep worshiping it because it keeps getting used.
Speaker 1:That's incompatible with statements like Jesus is Lord. And all that kinda makes sense. Right? Wealth is great. It can do a lot of good.
Speaker 1:It creates access and opportunity just like the parable we looked at last week as long as we remember what wealth is for and we don't worship it. Except, what about this middle section? Because Jesus starts by talking about wealth that can be used up. He ends by talking about wealth that can be worshiped. But in the middle, he takes this weird detour into eyes and bodies and lamps and health.
Speaker 1:And that all seems a little off topic, doesn't it? Well, I already gave this away. Told you I think it's all related, but let's go back and take another look here. This is verses twenty two and twenty three. The eye is the lamp of the body.
Speaker 1:If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If the light within you is dark, how great is that darkness. Now, if you were to pull those verses out of their context, it might sound like Jesus is talking about what you look at, what you watch. I've actually heard these verses used to suggest that good Christians don't watch bad movies or listen to rock and roll, and that might be true.
Speaker 1:We all know that rock and roll is dead, at least until Pearl Jam releases a new album. I know we're all desperately waiting for it. It's on its way. But that would be a very weird topic to address in the middle of two sections that are very clearly about wealth. What we're missing here is that we don't speak the language, or more accurately, the languages.
Speaker 1:See, biblical translation is a tricky game. Not only are you translating one language with a different structure and grammar and syntax into another, but in the case of Jesus, you are very likely taking a Greek translation of an Aramaic sermon dependent on Hebrew thinking I'm trying to make that into English. And here in the Greek, what we read literally is a sincere eye and the wicked eye. And if you were a Greek thinker, you would probably take from that something like a healthy eye and a diseased eye, and that's what the NIV has gone with. But the problem is Jesus was almost certainly not speaking Greek.
Speaker 1:He was likely speaking Aramaic when he gave the sermon, but the complicated thing is just a little bit more here. What he's using is a Hebraism. And a Hebraism is what we call a Hebrew idiom. And the difficulty with an idiom is they are very hard to translate because they don't mean what they say. So if I was to say something is a dime a dozen, you would know what I mean.
Speaker 1:But I don't mean anything to do with either dimes or dozens, do I? And side note here, when you hear someone say that they want a translation of the bible, it's word for word and literally, this is the problem. Word for word will have you talking about dimes and dozens instead of what Jesus is trying to get at. And what he's getting at here is wealth. See, in Hebrew, an iron tov or a good eye, and an iron raw or an evil eye, these were idioms for generous or stingy people.
Speaker 1:Here's some examples. Proverbs twenty two nine. The generous will themselves be blessed for they share their food with the poor. What this says literally in Hebrew is a good eye is blessed because he gives his food to the poor. Now flip a page to Proverbs 23 and you read, do not eat the food of a begrudging host.
Speaker 1:Do not crave his delicacies. But again, literally in Hebrew, what it says here is do not eat food from an evil eye, iron raw. Do not desire his savory foods. Notice here in both of these examples, good eye and evil eye, they're not even adjectives. They totally replace the noun in the sentence in Hebrew.
Speaker 1:Because just like our ignorance example, dime a dozen, everyone in Hebrew knows exactly what these idioms mean. So in Hebrew, a good eye is a generous person, an evil eye is a stingy person, But in Greek, good eye becomes sincere eye. Evil eye becomes diseased eye, and in English, that becomes healthy eye, unhealthy eye. That's fine. Translation is tricky, but it also kinda dramatically reshapes the passage for us.
Speaker 1:And I would argue understanding the background makes it much more coherent. So here's my translation. Jesus says, do not invest yourself in what can rust or rot or be stolen from you. Invest instead in something more true. Because your eyes are really the key here, and your outlook on the world is what's most important.
Speaker 1:If you're generous, everything in you will be full of light. If you're stingy and greedy, then everything goes dark. So here's the hard truth. You will serve something, but you can't serve two somethings. So choose wisely, child.
Speaker 1:And all of a sudden, sort of a strange passage where Jesus seems to be kind of bouncing around without much discipline really starts to come into focus here. And for me, it's actually that middle section that's the most fascinating, at least for a discussion of happiness. Because Jesus takes a Hebrew idiom that most of his audience would have been entirely familiar with, and now he plays with it in some really surprising ways. He says, the eye is the lamp of the body. And if you're a Hebrew person, this immediately evokes the memory of Psalm one nineteen.
Speaker 1:Your word is a lamp unto my feet, a light unto my path. Then he brings in, idioms from Proverbs, and he says that generosity is what fills you with light. It's your lamp, and greed is what leaves you stranded in the dark, not knowing where to go. And that choice, whether you know it or not, this is what will actually end up lighting your path and guiding you through life. In other words, Jesus seems to be saying something like, in the same way that the law once led us, may generosity light our path now.
Speaker 1:And that is a very big deal. Now don't misunderstand me. I'm not suggesting that generosity can replace God's word. The very next line, Jesus says that we have choose who we will serve, so choose well and serve God. What Jesus seems to be saying here is that the law, God's word, finds its climax in generosity inside of us.
Speaker 1:Or in another passage, Jesus says, I have come not to abolish the law, but to complete the law, to fill it up and fulfill it. As if the word of God meant to light and guide our path in the world finds its fulfillment when we actually become generous and graceful like Jesus. And if we go back two weeks ago to the 10 commandments where we started, the encapsulation of law we started this series with, and the promise that's extended to us that if we can just follow the way of God that's been offered to us, we might actually find ourselves free from the coveting that damages us. If that was always the promise, and as Jesus was always the fulfillment, then perhaps what he's saying is that generosity is the lamp that was intended to light our way and guide us through the world. What if the antidote for greed and coveting and unhappiness and wanting more was always meant to be a good eye, a generous life.
Speaker 1:Look, I'm not talking about salvation here. I'm not talking about heaven here. I'm not talking about the way that all of us are welcomed into the heart of God. I'm talking about your way in the world. The life that you were meant for, the one that you think you are chasing, the one that we think more wealth gathered to us will give us.
Speaker 1:I'm talking about the good life that Jesus says exists only on the other side of a good eye. Because here's the thing, when you are generous, when you share what you have, when you open your story to include those around you, when you extend yourself beyond yourself, and yes, even when you give to your church and your community and charities that need your support, none of this was ever meant to be an obligation or a duty to live up to. It was always meant to be an investment in the life you were intended for. And it's not because of these weird broken theologies that tell us that if we give, we will get it all back and more, you won't. It's because all of your wealth and your resources and your talents, your passion and compassion, all of this was always meant to be shared.
Speaker 1:And that is where your happiness is buried. May you begin to store up all you've been given by investing it wherever it is needed the most. May generosity become the lamp inside of you that lights your path, And may your life be filled with light because of it. May you pursue the good life with everything that has been gifted to you. And may you find happiness as you do it.
Speaker 1:This is what Jesus is inviting us into. The way that the word of God and the story of Jesus becomes embedded somewhere deep inside us, and lights our path, one generous choice at a time. Let's pray. God, as we close this conversation of our wealth, may you be present by your spirit to expand our imagination of all that we have been given. And might we begin to see that not as what needs to be gathered to ourselves and hoarded and kept, but instead what we have been gifted to share.
Speaker 1:That our story might be pushed back, our walls pushed farther out to include more and more people, and that we might see our resources being used in the best possible way to invest in the stories that are near us. Might we be generous? Might we be kind? Might we be graceful? And may that become the light inside of us, your son living in and through us, lighting our path one small step at a time towards grace, towards generosity, towards the kingdom you imagine for your world.
Speaker 1:Thank you for all the ways that we get to participate in that story and all that you have gifted to us to do it. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray. Amen.