THEOLOGY OF GIVING
APRIL 16, 2002
BALTIMORE PRESBYTERY
John M. Buchanan
Fourth Presbyterian Church
Luke 12: 22-34

"Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Luke 12:34

Jimmy Dean used to tell the wonderful story of the Tennessee mountain church whose most vocal member was an elderly woman who was in every way a saint -- except for the fact that she enjoyed using a little snuff, a tobacco product, on occasion. On a Sunday morning a visiting preacher was railing against the sins of the flesh, and the woman was responding with her normal vigor. He turned to the evil of drink, and she became even more spirited in her "Amens" and "preach-it-brother's". And then he took up the topic of tobacco and the nasty habit some have of using snuff. The old woman said, loud enough for all to hear, "He just stopped preachin' and went to meddlin."
There is a wonderful television commercial that makes me laugh every time I see it. The late Jack Benny is being mugged. Benny, a great comedian of a generation ago, was known for his legendary tight-fistedness. Some of us can remember sitting by the radio on Sunday evening and laughing as Benny used, over and over, the running gag of his unwillingness to part with a penny ... the creaking doors on his money vault, his embarrassing, reluctant fumbling with his change purse to dig out a nickel. In the current television version, it's a rainy night, a mugger accosts Benny and says, "Your money or your life." There is an unexpected, pregnant pause. "I said, your money or your life," the impatient mugger barks. Benny replies: "I'm thinking it over".
 There is truth as well as humor in that. This is a conference about money and I'm going to talk about it – ___________. In a fine essay on the attitudes about money fostered by the church, Loren Mead, a thoughtful commentator on the contemporary religious scene, says that lay people are universally frustrated trying to "cut through the semantic fog about stewardship" they hear from the pulpit and read in their mail every autumn. So I promise not to use euphemisms and clichés.

One of the best lines in an American motion picture was in “Jerry McGuire,” when an aspiring professional athlete bellows to his hassled agent, “Show me the money!” I was on an airplane, having exhausted all the reading material in my briefcase and the seat back compartment, including evacuation instructions in case of an unscheduled water landing, so I turned to the movie. “Show me the money!” I loved it. I took out my notebook and wrote. “October 19. Stewardship Sunday. Show me the money!”
The fact is, we don’t say it that directly here, in church. The fact is, we will go to great lengths not to say it that directly. The fact is, we have a whole ecclesiastical vocabulary of euphemisms to avoid saying it directly.
Princeton University sociologist Robert Wuthnow observed recently that while modern Americans are quite willing apparently to talk openly about the details of their sex lives, their bodily ailments, even their own deaths, when it comes to their money, a protective “cloud of secrecy” descends on the conversation.
Ministers generally don’t like to preach about money, will do anything to avoid asking for it, will sometimes act as if we don’t understand it or care about it.
There is, however, a growing literature which is taking us to task for our shyness about money. Presbyterian theologian Robert Wood Lynn went from teaching at Union Theological Seminary in New York City to the Lilly Endowment as director of the division which deals with and makes grants to religious institutions and causes. Lynn discovered that in that world, religion was ill-informed, unsophisticated and falling far behind everybody else in our culture. And so, after retiring from Lilly, he is now focusing his considerable abilities on helping churches and church people think and talk creatively and intelligently and intelligibly about money. Lynn and Wuthnow plead with us to stop using euphemisms and simply say it.
When the old European churches re-invented themselves in this new world with its commitment to non-established religion, which meant the state would not fund religion from tax revenues, they had a problem: how to pay the bills. Lynn suggests that one of the most efficient ideas the church came up with was pew rentals. In a market economy, why not sell seats in church? The best seats go for the highest price, cheap seats in the back, one of the results of which was that the paying customers, the wealthier members of the parish, were front and center. It helped the church avoid talking about money, he concludes.
In our recent sanctuary renovation project, someone came up with a variation on the old theme which had us in stitches. Mr. McCaskey was in the newspapers, arguing that sky boxes are the key to a successful football franchise. So while we’re renovating, someone suggested, why not build sky boxes all around our balconies? They could have comfortable, swivel seats, discreet access for late arrivals or early departures, piped-in sound and TV for close-ups, and best of all, juice, coffee, bagels and cream cheese.
Now the problem with all of this is that our money, how we earn it and how we use it, is very close to the heart of each one of us and reflects our own sense of ourselves, our expression of the purpose and meaning of our lives. The market knows that about us. We buy our clothes, automobiles, wrist watches and scotch to make a statement about who we are. And, how we use our money finally reflects our own singular truth, our own singular love.
Robert Wuthnow scolds ministers, not so much because in our avoidance of the topic we aren’t efficient money-raisers, but because we are not speaking to challenging and helping our people with one of the most important areas of their lives.
I grew up in a household where there was no public talk about two subjects: sex and how much money people made, although the topic was an ever-present reality, lurking always just under the surface. The generation of people who grew up in the Depression never stopped worrying about having enough money, but what we had and what they had was nobody's business but ours and theirs. Social commentators note that money is the last bastion of privacy in America: that Americans will reveal everything about themselves, including their sexual behavior, before they will talk about how much money they have. Philosophy professor Jacob Needleman writes,
"Time was in our society, when it was the clergyman, the physician, the psychiatrist who was most privy to people secret lives, their fears, desires, anxieties, their shames and misdeeds. But now this role is occupied more by the accountant and tax preparer." [Money and the Meaning of Life, p.104]

Money talk is personal. It is also about more than money. It is about heart and soul. It is about how we see ourselves and the purpose of our lives. It is about, above all else, values and priorities. Money, in fact, how we think about it, acquire, and use it, is very close to the essence of who we are. One could argue that to avoid the topic for whatever reason is not theologically and spiritually responsible.
One time Jesus is speaking about living life in harmony with God's grace and he says some very interesting things --
 "Don't worry -- life is more than food, clothing"... he tells his friends. "God will provide what you need to live fully. Maybe not what you want, or think you want, but what you need. Stop striving so intensely for security -- strive, instead, for God's kingdom. Open your hands; give." And then, the summation: "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."
Did you notice that famous verse Luke 12:24 is actually inverted; the opposite from the way we ordinarily hear it and repeat it? It is not -- "where your heart is, there your treasure will be:" which is to say -- your heart is in charge of strategic decisions, your behavior will fall in line.
Jesus said the reality is exactly the opposite. "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also," which is to suggest, at least, that our commitments of the heart follow our behavior, or, the truest and deepest affection of our hearts are revealed, not by our words and affirmations and intentions, but by what we do with our money.
Our personal creed, someone observed, is not so much the words we recite in church, as it is the stubs in our checkbook. That is exactly what Jesus said. Your money, how you get it, how you use it, what it does for you, is, in a very real sense, the real you.
 Just a few years later, the Apostle Paul is writing to a young colleague by the name of Timothy and he's giving Timothy some down-to-earth advice, about real life and real people mixed in with some glorious theology. (1 Timothy 6)
"We brought nothing into this world -- we will take nothing out with us" Paul tells his young apprentice. Nobody argues with that, although the notion has not altogether disappeared. In Paul's day many people and many religions assumed that your earthly acquisition would be useful after death. Ancient tombs hold treasures, jewels, money, clothing, weapons, food for the journey. I know people who act like they still believe it. I know people who refuse to live in the present, out of an obsession to make the future secure. I know people who deny themselves health care, and basic life needs rather than tap their savings.
Two elderly men in business suits are standing, looking at a tombstone bearing the name of their business partner. "How much did he leave?" one asks. "All of it", the other responds.
Those who want to be rich fall into temptation. Paul goes on ... "The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil."
Note -- there is a disciplined sense of balance. In Paul's time, and in ours, there are many who conclude that wealth, money itself, is evil: that poverty is ethically and morally better. Paul didn't say that. Paul does not condemn money, wealth, per se. Neither did Jesus, for that matter. It is the love of money, the value, the intent, the affection of the heart which is the source of trouble.
And then, after an inspiring challenge to Timothy to fight the good fight, and a glorious doxology to Jesus Christ, Paul comes back again to some practical advice to whose who have money.

"As for those who are rich -- do good, be rich in good works, be generous, ready to share ... so that they may take hold of the life that is really life."
Jacob Needleman teaches philosophy at San Francisco State University and has written a book, Money and the Meaning of Life. Needleman makes the point that money is so important in our culture that we really should be thinking and talking more about it, not less.

"In no other culture or civilization that we know of has money been such a pervasive and decisive influence. In the world we now live in, money enters into everything human beings do, into every aspect and pocket of life. This is something new." [p.2]
 The political philosopher Max Weber said it was John Calvin, the father of Presbyterianism, who forever changed the way western civilization thinks about wealth. At the end of the Middle Ages, a time when the Christian life was seen in terms of withdrawing from the world to a monastery and God's kingdom was a spiritual state utterly different from life in this world, it was John Calvin who re-focused the energy of Christian faith on this world; the city, human politics, industry and commerce. "Protestantism sanctified life in the world of the city, the world of business" Needleman says. [See Needleman on Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. p.77,78]
Waves of immigrants attacked the new world with an energy and commitment and ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit unheard of before. The American Dream, someone said, can be summarized in four words, "Work hard, get rich."
But money became more than that, almost immediately. Robert Wood Lynn, a fine theologian who used to work for the Lilly Endowment, has collaborated in a paper on the giving habits of American church people and observes:

"Money has a particular power in American life. Lacking a landed gentry or titled aristocracy, the primary indicator of status in American life is the amount of money a person controls. Consequently, money has a symbolic place in our common life, that enables it to fulfill a significant number of non-economic functions."

Lynn points out,
"Money is the way many middle-class Americans keep score in the various competitions such as career, that inform their daily life. For many contemporary Americans, money represents the self and its value." [Unexplored Territory in Congregational Studies, Cultures of Giving, Glenn T. Miller and Robert Wood Lynn]

Money is about value, the value we attribute to our own lives. The way to acquire money is to work hard and succeed. It has been a formula that has created the most phenomenal economy and nation in the history of the world, with enormous potential for doing good.
The shadow side is that because money is at the heart of our humanness, and because success produces money, success sometimes, oftentimes, in fact, takes on the characteristic of a spiritual quest. In fact, Esquire said just that in a cover article ten years ago:

"Success -- the religion of the 80's. Everyone pursues it. Only the most driven and talented achieves it. Few know how to live with it or without it." [February 1985]
But then in the 90's, the elevation of the traditional American work ethic into a holy crusade to succeed and acquire wealth began to show cracks in its shining veneer.
 People not only got rich. They also got burned out. All at once everybody started discovering something Jesus and St. Paul understood 2,000 years ago, and that is that your heart goes where your treasure is. And it kept feeling, not like security, happiness, contentment, but ironically, a new kind of bondage, a new poverty, even. Jacob Needleman observed that people who had lot, more than they ever imagined owning weren't particularly happy. "We seem quite poor," he observed.
Russell Baker, New York Times columnist, in his memoir Good Times, describes reaching the top of his career as a journalist and still feeling, vaguely dissatisfied:
"I felt that success ought to bring peace of mind, maturity, serenity ... The hunger for success was bred so deeply in (us) that we were powerless to stop chasing it long after we had achieved it." [Good Times, p.231]
And so a reaction has set in. Exactly ten years after the "Success is Religion" article, the May edition of Esquire featured an article "What Makes Sammy Run" that describes a significant turnaround in the culture's thinking about success and wealth. It begins with an account of a support group in Seattle to help people deal with addiction, not to alcohol, drugs, or sex, but to their jobs and their pursuit of success.
The article said that we are increasingly an exhausted and tired population. We have essentially destroyed any notion of leisure time. We work all the time and when we're not working, we're thinking about work. "The material progress that was supposed to free us has left us more enslaved ... For all the hype about going for the gold ... we're so weary at the end of the day that going for the sofa is as good as it gets."
 That sounds like a lot of people I know. It sounds embarrassingly like the life we all live. Money talk is about heart and soul and values and priorities. "Your money or your life" ... "I'm thinking it over."
But when the topic comes up in a religious context we head for the nearest euphemism. Bob Lynn says churches develop a culture of giving which operates often by myths.
Myth number one -- money is about materialism. Religion is about spirituality. Wrong. Money is about heart and spirit.
 Myth number two -- the church doesn't need money, in fact, would do better without it. Wrong. The church is always one budget year away from extinction. The church needs money -- not only to pay bills it incurs doing its job; salaries, insurance, cribs for day care, books, music, piano tuning, meal vouchers for hungry people ... but precisely because we are in the spirit and soul business, and where your treasure is, there your heart will be.
 Myth number three -- the church doesn't need my money, because a few wealthy people pay the bill. Wrong. People think its true here because we have a building that looks like it ought to have 2 or 3 patrons. It doesn't. In most churches 20% of the people give 80% of the money. We are, in fact, a relatively egalitarian congregation in terms of giving. We need everybody. That's no secret.
Myth number four -- the endowment is so large, they don't need my pledge. Wrong. The endowment is strong. It allows us to be in mission. We cannot live out of it. We have to take care of it and grow it so another generation of Presbyterians will have a church home. But we need the support of everyone.
Money is personal. What we do with it is where our heart is. In his memoir, Days of Grace, the late Arthur Ashe wrote candidly about money and value.
"Money makes me happy ... I long ago decided on the whole. I much prefer having money to not having it. In that sense it makes me happy. On the other hand, I also learned a long time ago what money can and cannot do for me. From what we get, we can make a living; what we give, however, makes a life." [p.176]
It is personal, for you and for me. In Stephen Covey's best-seller, The Seven Habits of Highly-Effective People, he urges his readers to do a personal accounting, of how we are spending our resources. He suggests that we write a personal mission statement and identify what is at the center of our lives -- our career, professional success, family, influence, money.
"If my sense of personal worth comes from my net worth," he confesses, "I am vulnerable to anything that will affect that net worth."
And, we will begin to make bad, perhaps tragic decisions, about how to spend our resources: our time, our energy, our money, our love.
We'll miss the child's birthday party because of a golf game with clients, or the concert because of a meeting at the office. We'll substitute work for a vacation with family and friends. We'll not go see sick and aging parents because of responsibilities which we think are more important than anything else. We'll sleep and eat less, and not wisely, stay at work too much and too late.
 That's the temptation St. Paul was talking about, the busy, stressed out, exhausted, driven professional (and who among us doesn't recognize themselves personally) experiencing the truth of scripture on the subject of money.
You and I have one life to live. It is a finite resource. It is made up of our time -- minutes and hours and weeks and months and years. It is made up of our energy, our intelligence and our love. And our money.
God's intent is for that life to be lived fully. God wants us, in St. Paul's memorable language, to "take hold of the life that is really life," by responsibly using, spending, putting to work everything we have, everything we are.
Money. It is very personal -- for where your treasure, is, there your heart, your soul, your life itself, will be also.
"Your money or your life." Think it over. Amen.

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