What we Do with Money – Tobin Reimer – Sept. 6/09

What we Do with Money

September 6, 2009

Tobin Reimer

 

Luke 12:13-21 (NIV)

 

 

Good morning.

 

The summer has come to an end and today is the last week in our summer series on All of God’s Creation.

And this morning I’m going to speak about money.

So how is does money tie into the summer theme?

 

Well, there is a very easy answer for that: God created all things, so God created money too. Everything we have is a gift from God and everything we do with everything we have should honour God. So our money and how we use it are part of God’s creation.

 

That’s a great starting point, but today money is also a modern yard stick. Since many things in our life are monetized, our system of money can tell you how much you save at the grocery store, or how much you earn or how much you owe in taxes, or how large is your net worth.

 

Money with it’s dollars and cents has firmly rooted itself into our society and all across our world. In a very practical, and perhaps a very non-spiritual way, money can connect and define us. This morning I’m going to talk about some practical aspects of money, but more importantly I would like to talk about how money can serve us a way of interconnecting people to others around us – how money has its place in all of God’s creation.

 

But money can be an awkward subject. So I’ll start with a joke:

 

There is a faithful man who lives in a house.

 

One day he gets a phone call from the local emergency preparedness center. They say “Sir, we have reason to believe that a flood is imminent in your area, please evacuate immediately”

The man says “No, I’m happy where I am. The Lord will provide for me”

 

The next day the waters start to rise and the man has to live in the top floor of his house. A neighbour comes by on a boat and says “quick get in”

But the man says “no, no, the Lord will provide for me”

 

The next day the man is standing on the roof of his house with nothing but water all around him. A helicopter flies overhead and throws down a rope ladder

But the man is convinced that the Lord will provide for him, so he does not get in the helicopter.

 

The next day the flood continues to rise, swallows the entire house and the man is swept away in the water, and the man drowns. When the man dies and goes to heaven he says to God “Lord I had faith that you would provide for me, and you left me there to die”

God replies “No, first I warned you to evacuate, then I sent you a boat, then I sent you helicopter”

 

The faithful man in the house didn’t see God working through the phone call, the boat or the helicopter.

 

Earlier this summer Ryan spoke about faith and science. He reminded us that even though we have faith that God will keep these walls from crashing down on us, we should probably still have this building inspected and approved by engineering professionals.

 

Even though God can cure us of any disease, we still go the doctor to look at our lumps.

 

Money is like medicine, it’s like science, it’s like a rescue boat.

I’m going to suggest that this morning we think about money like a tool.

In this way we can strip money of it’s evil connotations, at the same time avoiding seeing money as a blessing from God. It’s just a tool. It can be powerful and important, but just a tool. A medium.

 

Void of a “good” or “evil” status.

 

I think it’s very hard not to think of money as kind of dirty and perilous – even for just one morning.

I find that both my years in Sunday school and to a lesser extent pop culture has also taught me that money is kind of dirty and perilous.

 

To quote Pink Floyd’s timeless song Money:

 

Money, its a gas. Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash!

And I know I’m not the first person to “sing” that song from this pulpit.

 

 

Money get’s a pretty bad rap throughout much of the gospels, too.

Matthew 19:24

²⁴Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

Oh no! Are you any of us rich? Are we this kind of rich? Can’t anyone be rich and be good in the eyes of God?

 

Today’s text is a parable about a man who gains wealth and then keeps it all for himself. Certainly this text keeps with the theme of the perils of wealth and the love of money. I am going to suggest that this text relates also to how we use money. And the purpose of money in our lives today.

 

This parable begins with the earth producing a good crop. And this earth was owned by one person (not communally). So this created wealth for one person. It must have been a lot of wealth because the now rich man didn’t even know what to do about it.

So the best idea he could come up with was to tear down his old barns and build new ones. Bigger ones.

 

Right here we’ve learned something about this man. When he receives wealth his first thought is to keep it. Never mind give it away, he’s not even going to spend it right away. This man is certainly a hoarder.

 

He must have been committed to his new wealth. He tore down his old barns. Never again would we need such small barns. Now he is wealthy. So now he can keep his wealth and enjoy his life.

 

Once this last week Meghan and I were trying to cram some bulky camping equipment into our apartment closet and I literally said: “I wish we had a house so
we could put more stuff in it”

Ooops! And I was just working on this sermon an hour before!

 

But what’s the plan after he’s amassed all of his wealth in his barns? Eat, drink, consume! Spend the wealth.

 

Essentially this is the basic plan for retirement for a lot of us. Save money while you work so that you have enough for you and your family once you no longer can work.

 

But the man in the parable was a fool because what God demanded of him was his life not his money. God had other plans for him. God said to him “I have other plans for you”.

 

Perhaps at the end of the parable the man dies and needs to be accountable to God and answer for his greed. The first become the last. Since camels can’t fit through the eyes of needles this man cannot enter the kingdom of God. So this man’s life is over.

 

Or perhaps, God has other plans for the man. God says to him “This very night your life will be demanded of you”.

God want’s your life, your ability to do God’s work. Your livelyhood. God doesn’t want you to be sedentary and consume your wealth.

 

Perhaps he should volunteer, perhaps he should pray or worship, perhaps he should have a family, or tend to his family…

 

Or perhaps he should create more wealth and use it, work with it, donate it. He has the fields to make more grain.

 

Perhaps you wear a tie and you are a slave to the man. Working all of the time and all you get is a paycheck. But money can’t make you happiness.

But that job is a rich blessing. Statistics tell us that just because we live in Canada we are able to make way more money than the poorest people in the world. Way more. Ten, a hundred or even a thousand times more than other people.

 

And that needs to be carefully considered. Wow. That’s a lot of tools God is giving us.

 

And this gift of money is not to be taken lightly.

 

This brings me to money and happiness.

 

There is a strong understanding, or at least a tacit belief that money can’t bring happiness. Money is somewhat detached from real values in life. Money is different than family or friends. These things are incomparable.

 

Well they are incomparable in some ways. For instance, it seems obvious that no amount of money is more important than a person. Winning the lottery can’t make you a better person, make you less lonely or more loving right?

 

Certainly God couldn’t love us any more or less if we had more or less money.

 

But money not being able to buy happiness is kind of a bad thing.

This could make us selfish.

Oh well, I know I won’t be any happier if I buy this new couch… so can I buy it now? I know it won’t make me happy!

 

It’s easy to say that money can’t buy happiness. But people usually say that thinking about themselves. We have to recognize that money sure can make some other people very happy. Other people that we exchange gifts with at Christmas and other people we have never met. People who have more than us – but especially those who have less than us.

 

We must always acknowledge that our money can make a tremendous difference in another person’s life. Just as money can buy us so many things it can buy other people many things as well.

 

Well spent money can build hospitals and heal, build schools and educate, build libraries, reduce corruption. Money can motivate and encourage.

 

Truly, money can be used to change the world. Wait, maybe I overstated that. Let me go back to well spent money.

 

Well spent money. But how do we spend money well? So should we donate money? Well, yes, certainly we should donate some money. Or can we use money? Are there other good ways to use money?

 

This question is extremely interesting to me.

And before I get too carried away I want to share a little bit of my personal recent history that is very relevant to where I’m going with this Sermon.

You might call it a paradigm shift in my life.

 

I had the great privilege of going to University. By the way I spent a lot of money to go to University – and this church also spent a lot of money for me to go to University. Thanks again.

 

I went to Conrad Grebel at the University of Waterloo. At first I didn’t know what I wanted to study or “do with my life”. I was thinking maybe religious studies.

Soon I became very interested in international development and social justice issues in  Africa and south Asia.

I realized what complex work non-governmental organizations were doing with AIDS, health, labour, migration, the environment and women’s rights in underdevelopped nations. So I decided to take Political Science and Peace and Conflict Studies.

 

But as I began to understand more of the issues, it seemed like hard working charities always ran up against big business interests and corrupt governments bought by the rich.

 

Here is the the other Golden Rule:

Who ever has the gold makes the rules!

 

So I wondered why exactly does gold always rule – or does it?

From this I became increasingly interested in business, and economics and the way corporations affect our lives. From there I started looking more closely at the topic of ethical investments. Aside from donating money, how can we use our position as rich North Americans to benefit the world around us. Two extremely important ways are what we spend our money on and how we invest our money. In some way we are all consumers and investors.

 

So with this in mind I graduated from University and then went to college to study personal financial planning. And what I would like to do is help people invest in ethical investments.

 

So that’s my academic and career story in a nutshell.

 

But it does relate to my message this morning.

 

Because money can do more than buy us things. It can be a way that we use our voice. We can choose not to shop at certain stores, we can choose to invest in solar panels and local agriculture instead of weapons and tobacco.

 

In our economy we have these options.

 

Because although money can’t buy true happiness, it can have a tremendous impact on people around us.

 

We are extremely powerful economic beings.

 

Here is my favourite very specific very practical example
of our ability to influence:

 

I was significantly influenced when I read the book One World by Peter Singer. He tried to calculate how much money it costs to save a life through donating money. He determined that by donating $200 to a reputable humanitarian aid organization you could save the life of one infant or young child in a developing nation. $200.

Yes, there are a lot of caveats: this is USD, and a few years ago, and there is certainly a significant margin for error. But the calculation does consider inefficiencies including the cost of administrating aid organizations, transportation, taxes, even corruption and theft. How exactly he got to the number is actually really interesting, but let’s not get caught up in details.

 

The point is that aid works, it can save lives, and it’s not very expensive to save someone’s life. Let’s say its about $200.

 

So although our money can do all sorts of good things, this $200 number really boils it all down to saving babies. That’s almost unfair to say. It’s almost unfair to ask someone to think about that.

It’s tempting to think that putting a price tag on the life of an infant is not fair. It’s not right.

 

But it can’t be ignored!

 

For me, this number, $200 is extremely significant for my faith.

 

Because this $200 is not separate from happiness. It’s not different from family or friends or God.

 

When someone spends $200 it’s not just an interaction between a person and a store. It’s also an interaction with a child that you could save. Other people are always in need. We know that. And we know what it costs to help.

 

And it’s related to happiness

And it’s fair game to talk about it.

 

Should we donate all of our money to save babies?

If we do that our retirement plan may be to just pray. We can do that. That would be ok.

 

Or you could go more extreme and take out a huge loan and max out all of your credit cards to donate money to save babies. Then you could declare bankruptcy and pray for god to take care of us. Take that Visa!

 

Just like we could just pray for these walls to stay standing. God can do amazing things! He can keep buildings standing and he can care for us whether we have money or not.

 

But what do we do with Money?

 

Let me take you back to the man and his house in the flood. The more I thought about this little joke opener for my sermon, the more I realized it could be used as a modern parable:

 

Perhaps the man thought that God was protecting his house, when actually God was only protecting the man.

 

You could extrapolate this and say that God sent that rescue boat to separate the man from his house. But the man loved his house and the things in it and he had faith that God would protect everything the man had. But maybe God only protected the man. And he didn’t let go of his things he perished. Perhaps God wanted the man’s life (not to kill him, but to use him and guide him on earth).

 

We also must know that all things are connected. This is one of the advantages of having an advanced economy. We know what $200 is. We know how many lattes, loaves of bread, Christmas presents and litres of gas we can buy with that.

 

We know what it is to us, what it can do for others, we know that it is not worthless. It is not detached from our faith. It’s not unrelated from family, love or happiness. It’s very much related.

 

And all things that God blesses us with we must be careful, we must praise God, pray, listen and serve God.

 

These things are extremely connected.

Amen