Pastor Tom Johnson, September 25, 2022
The greatest commandment is to love God with our whole being and to love others as Christ loved us. Our Scripture today says, “The love of money is the root of all sorts of evil.” God calls us to love himself and people—not money. “The love of money is the root of all sorts of evil.” There are all kinds of bad things that come from our love-affair with money. Last week, we heard Jesus say you cannot be a slave to both God and money. You will end up hating God if you love money. You cannot serve both God and wealth. The love of money is not true love. We are infatuated. Look at all those zeros in the bank account! Look at that arrow going straight up on the stock exchange graph! What a beautiful green bill with a lovely blue ribbon woven into the legal tender! What an attractive watermark!
God takes the layer of gold off this dazzling idol. Underneath is rotten wood. The money in our accounts are just numbers floating around our bank’s servers and the cloud. Our investments can climb one day and crash the next. The coins in our pockets no longer contain all the precious metals they originally had. In fact, even if all our currency was based on the gold standard as it was a long time ago, even gold has no real value. You cannot eat it. You cannot plant it into the ground to grow food. You cannot make clothing or a home out of it. Other than making things look pretty, a brick of gold’s best use is as a door stop. Money only has value when we all believe it has the value it represents. We have to agree, believe, and trust that a meal from a fast-food restaurant is worth $15. If Americans stopped believing in the value of the dollar it would be a disaster. Our Scripture says that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil because it isn’t real. It’s a figment of our collective imagination. The desire to become rich is a trap because we are chasing after something that will never deliver. Its end is ruin and destruction because we become a slave to wanting more and more money. During the pandemic, online orders skyrocketed. Santa was coming to town not once a year but every few days. People started to feel empty if they didn’t have a package coming to their doorstep every week. And so people became addicted to tracking their orders and waiting for their delivery. Trust me. Amazon knows this.
Think of the love of money as a bad relationship. God is doing an intervention to save you and me from the heartache of a toxic relationship. Money will never be your true love. Money will make all sorts of promises. Money will future-fake. Money will never give us ultimate happiness and pleasure. Money will betray you and try to attract someone else when you don’t give money the attention and worship it demands. Putting all our hopes and dreams into money will plunge us into ruin and destruction just as our Scripture says. Money will make us burn with jealousy as we try to keep up the with proverbial Joneses. Money is the greatest stressor in relationships. The love of money will triangulate all our relationships. The love of money will cause us to neglect the people God brings across our paths—just as the rich man neglects the needs of Lazarus in our Gospel. The love of money can keep us in careers and jobs that are killing our souls, keep us from spending quality and quantity time with family and church family.
But the worst of it is when this toxic relationship with money keeps us from our first and true love—God. We love because he first loved us. God wants us to be in a healthy relationship. He calls us to pursue godliness and contentment. God doesn’t dangle godliness and contentment in front of us to taunt us or lure us into a trap. He truly delivers. When we trust God and love him above all things, we know that he will provide for all our needs—not our wants—but our needs. Faith is another gift he gives so that we can have peace that transcends our understanding. Contentment is a beautiful sign of a healthy relationship. It means that we grow in our trust of one another. We know we can count on one another when it matters most. We may not always receive what we want. But we will receive what we need.
Our Gospel reading is not about the afterlife. It’s about the rich man who fell into ruin and destruction because he loved his riches more than anything else—more than his family, more than his poor neighbor Lazarus at his doorstep. Even the dogs showed more compassion than the rich man when they licked Lazarus’ sores. The rich man loved money more than the Scriptures that came through Moses and the prophets. So he neglected the Word of God. That’s why Jesus said that even if someone rises from the dead and preaches the Gospel it still would not convince his brothers of the danger and ruin of the love of money. But even more devastating is the rich man’s love for money that is greater than love for God himself. He is trapped beyond the great chasm of the love of money. Here is where we see Jesus’ dark sense of humor. Jesus will raise his friend (also named Lazarus) from the dead and send him back to be a witness of eternal life. Even Jesus himself will rise from the dead, go back to the living, and call them to take hold of what our Scripture calls “life that really is life.”
The eternal son of God left his heavenly throne and mansion— built with the finest stone and gems—with streets paved in gold. He left an eternal feast—of food rich in marrow, of well-aged wine well-refined. He left all his riches to rescue the poor in spirit and those held captive by the love of money and the deceptive things of this world. He was born into a poor, working class family. He scraped a living as a carpenter. He lived off the generosity of others—mostly women. He had no place to lay his head. He lived a nomadic life as a teacher and healer. He embraced his poverty because he did not love money —or the riches he left behind—more than you and me. Yet he did come here to go on a shopping spree the likes of which the world has never seen before. He gave his life on the Cross for the forgiveness of the whole world. He purchased a place for us in the same heaven he came from—not with gold or silver—but with his precious blood.
Riches I heed not, nor vain, empty praise,
Thou mine inheritance, now and always:
Thou, and Thou only, first in my heart,
great God of heaven, my treasure Thou art.
(“Be Thou My Vision” WOV 776, v. 3)
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