Almost every week I write about the questions I’m asking as I read the lectionary texts for the week. This is not an academic enterprise, but my reaction to the text as I read them. I ask the questions in advance because it helps me preach without a text.
Jeremiah 8:18-9:1
What does it mean to be healed? Can having money be healing? Is it possible to have a sense of being complete, of joy through spending? Certainly when we have none it’s possible to question our own worthless. Is healing a feeling of peace? When do we feel whole? Why is it fleeting? What is it like to move from satisfaction to dissatisfaction?
In Psalm 79:1-9 the author says:
79:5 How long, O LORD? Will you be angry forever? Will your jealous wrath burn like fire?
79:6 Pour out your anger on the nations that do not know you, and on the kingdoms that do not call on your name.
79:7 For they have devoured Jacob and laid waste his habitation.
79:8 Do not remember against us the iniquities of our ancestors; let your compassion come speedily to meet us, for we are brought very low.
Here it’s almost as if, after asking for God to punish other nations, he is saying “Oops, I guess I wasn’t that great a guy also.” This is how we feel about other nations – and religions. But then he reframes his prayer:
79:9 Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of your name; deliver us, and forgive our sins, for your name’s sake.
Often our prayer is like a movement. It goes from one stage to the next. Our spiritual and emotional lives are always dynamic. We initially seek revenge; but that is not where God is. Instead of destroying others, we need to be saved from ourselves.
In the first letter to Timothy (2:1-2) the author seems to say, don’t look in my direction, King. I don’t need your approval, I just want the best for you. So just assume I’ve got your best interest at heart. Don’t kill me. I don’t think this is obsequiousness, but conveys the sense that the work of the church is not the same as the secular work of kings.
The gospel of Luke this week (Luke 16:1-13) is the Parable of the Dishonest Manager.
I think of the manager as being average: not frugal; just a cog in the machine. The rich man gets wealthy through exploiting the work of others; and his manager is no different.
The manager thinks differently. The prosperous are those who count every penny; they measure relationships through a careful inventorying of what allows them to accumulate. The middle manager knows he will not have that kind of luxury to make those calculations.
Debt and the accumulation of wealth are deeply linked. Some argue that the origin of money itself is upon the backs of owing lives: of the debt implicit in slavery. Money is the accounting of a life. The middle manager is divesting himself of that sort of debt.
When Jesus says “dishonest wealth,” I wonder if he is implying that all wealth arrives through some sort of dishonesty. It is not that people make money just through lying, but that we accumulate through denying the truth that a life cannot be counted.
I might explore what is wealth for? I’ve suggested before that it is to be spent and circulated, not hoarded. But I also think that there are components of wealth the gospel critiques. In our own culture, I believe the gospel would critique our culture of convenience, our implicit frugality in trying to get the cheapest deal, and the hastening of time and space which our economy has created. It is not merely money that Jesus critiques, but money as a certain sort of technology that alters the way we manage our social life.
It is also possible that this is a problem of administration. The reason why capitalism became successful was because of the interplay between prudence and discipline with accumulation. Virtues associated with the church became a part of making money. All economic institutions from the corporation to the state require administrative virtue if they are to be effective.
What does it mean to serve wealth? Money is an effective incentive, and counting matters. But why does it matter? For what do we strive? It is not the buying things that is the problem; it is how that convenience, that quick gratification distracts us from God.
The Divine Latitude 
Published by