Your Money or your life

Read Luke 12:13-21

A man is walking down a street in Woodstock when he is confronted by a mugger, “Your money or your life!” There is a long pause, nothing is said. Eventually the mugger says impatiently, “Well?” The man replies: “Don’t rush me, I’m thinking it over.”

Normally when Jesus addresses issues of economics (about every 7th verse on average in the Gospels) he highlights the social consequences of wealth. Greed is bad because it deprives most people in society of living an economically viable life. On this occasion Jesus speaks to the personal consequences of wealth. Consequently, we have the opportunity to examine the wealth trap at its source – deep within our hearts. Not only does wealth deprive the have-nots of meaningful life, it also deprives the haves – but for different reasons.

If you want to find water in some of the wilder spaces of southern Africa, the best method is to trick a baboon into betraying its secret water supply. First you arrange a container with a small hole in it attached in some way so that the container cannot be removed. In the container place some baboon-enticing delicacy. The hole must be big enough for the baboon to get its hand inside, but small enough so that once the baboon has gripped the delicacy in its fist, its fist will be too big to be extracted. Thus the baboon will be trapped as long as it holds on to the delicacy. One can then approach the baboon and feed it salt. As long as the baboon is not sufficiently frightened to let go of the delicacy in the trap, it will consume the salt and continue to clutch its prize. Eventually the baboon will be desperate with thirst and once freed will make straight for its water supply. Run fast, and you will have water…

Humans are closer to baboons than we like to think. While we would not be so easily trapped by the monkey trick, we none-the-less trap ourselves in innumerable ways by the things we refuse to let go of.

The accumulation of wealth is an addiction like any other. When someone asked of John D. Rockefeller, how much wealth does it take to satisfy a person, he replied, "Just a little bit more."

The usual Christian response is to encourage people to serve others, but this can be another form of addiction. As Bill Loader puts it:

“There is a deep human anxiety about being worthwhile which reaches to the heart of the self. Many products are designed to sedate that fear. It is nevertheless real. The Christian claim that true contentment comes only in service is probably spurious. It is simply not the case that people without Christ are all very unhappy and vice versa. It is also not the case that we are to make ourselves happy through service. That is secular justification by works and becomes a tyrant for us and those around us - and those whom we ‘serve’.”

To overcome the wealth trap, Loader suggests that, “Sometimes it has to be a kind of Christian defiance which says: only in life towards God, a life participating in God’s life is peace. That will be a peace that weeps, knows anguish, sometimes does not know and does not have answers, but keeps believing in the worth God wants us to have and wants us to give and live towards others.”

I was running recently with a young man considering his future. He was asking tough questions about his life and what he would do with his skills and resources. We were running on Devil’s peak, just below the blockhouse. We came to a point at which we could either go up to the blockhouse and enjoy the view across the Peninsula, or go down to the reserve and run with the zebra and wildebeest in the reserve. I turned to him and said, “So what will it be: significance (pointing to the blockhouse) or life (pointing to the zebra)?” On that day we chose significance, but we also chose life. It was an exhausting run!

Sometimes the choices we have are not so clear and often significance and life seem mutually exclusive.

We are often tempted to choose significance: what people (and we ourselves) expect of us, the dream we have of our own greatness or the hope that we can change the world. Seldom does significance bring life. Life on the other hand can seem mundane, boring or downright terrifying. To engage with our own fears, other people’s traumas, the ups and downs of life exacts a high cost. But life always brings significance – though seldom packaged the way we would have hoped for.

When the person in the crowd asked Jesus to settle the inheritance dispute with his brother, we should fully expect Jesus to do so. Firstly, as a Rabbi, this is what everyone reasonably expected him to do – to use the common law of his time and his own wisdom to settle what probably was not a terribly difficult case. Secondly, Luke portrays Jesus as a judge in other places in the story, so why not here?

Yet Jesus himself says, “Who made me a judge or arbiter of over you?”

Jesus refuses to judge even when a judgement is clear. Yet we judge one another and ourselves to the point of driving our souls to desperation. Would that we would learn to value ourselves as God values us, that we may let go of the falsehoods we have become addicted to and that drive our desperate accumulation of false security.

I want to stop being a monkey.

Thanks to Sarah, Bill and eSermons.