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Proverbs 21:20, Luke 12:16-21, & Ecclesiastes 5:10 CEB Precious treasure and oil stay in the home of the wise, but fools swallow them up. Then he told them a parable: “A certain rich man’s land produced a bountiful crop. He said to himself, What will I do? I have no place to store my harvest! Then he thought, Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. That’s where I’ll store all my grain and goods. I’ll say to myself, You have stored up plenty of goods, enough for several years. Take it easy! Eat, drink, and enjoy yourself. But God said to him, ‘Fool, tonight you will die. Now who will get the things you have prepared for yourself?’ This is the way it will be for those who hoard things for themselves and aren’t rich toward God.” The money lover isn’t satisfied with money; neither is the lover of wealth satisfied with income. This too is pointless. Rather than being a nation of savers, we are a nation of debtors. By the second quarter of 2023, American households owed over $17 trillion in debt, including $1 trillion in credit card debt.[1] John Wesley’s second rule for using money stands in stark contrast to our current reality, saying, “‘Save all you can.’ [...] Do not throw it away in idle expenses, which is just the same as throwing it into the sea.”[2] Wesley warns that we can waste money pursuing our own desires, vanity, and pride. While Wesley calls us to save, we heard a parable from Jesus today where a rich man hoards his harvest, losing his life and his goods. Can we really save our money without hoarding? How do we avoid waste on one side and selfish hoarding on the other? The answer for us, as Christians, is to save for appropriate and Godly goals as part of our financial stewardship.
John Wesley had very rigid definitions of wealth, including what it meant to be rich. For Wesley, to be rich meant being able to claim that you have more “than the bare necessities of life, and a little left over.”[3] Now of course the problem with this kind of definition is that it is “not part of any reputable economic theory past or present”[4] as it defines many people as rich! Why the strictness? It all comes from a place of “irritation and pain” for John Wesley, as he saw the gap between rich and poor in his time as a betrayal of the scriptural truth that there is enough for everyone.[5] He grew concerned because he worried that Methodists would worsen rather than help this growing gap because whenever any purchased “something unnecessary or extravagant, we steal from the poor and take bread from the hands of the hungry.”[6] It all goes back to how John Wesley understood money. It is an understanding that sees money like the gift of singing or the call to preaching – all these gifts are God’s and are on loan to us to be good stewards over. Turning to Christ’s parable from Luke 12, we see this in his story about a rich man’s reaction to a good harvest. In the parable, the rich man sees this good harvest as a means of increasing his own comfort, as his chance to “‘Take it easy! Eat, drink, and enjoy yourself.’” Who is he saving up for, God or himself? All this money and all these things in this life do not go with us into the grave. What good are riches that have such a short shelf-life? Jesus is asking us where true riches can be found, and his answer through this parable seems to be: “‘This is the way it will be for those who hoard things for themselves and aren’t rich toward God.’” We must be rich toward God. Well, what does it mean to be rich toward God? John Wesley also calls it seeking “the glory of God.”[7] What glorifies God? What enriches God? What should the rich man have done with his harvest? As I shared last week, our call has never changed in all these long centuries of our Christian discipleship, we are called to “‘love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, and with all your mind’” and “‘love your neighbor as you love yourself’” (Matthew 22:37-39 CEB). Being rich toward God must be found in following this basic call of our discipleship. In John Wesley’s sermon, “On Wordly Folly,” being rich toward God entails “faith, and love, and good works.”[8] Our money, like any good gift from God, should be used to show our faith or trust in God and God’s goodness. Our money must be used to enact the love we are to practice toward God and toward our fellow human beings. All of this should be seen in the good works we do in this world, for that is how we prove the reality of our faith and the fullness of our love. As James puts it, “In the same way, faith is dead when it doesn’t result in faithful activity” (James 2:17 CEB). Our richness towards God results from putting our money to work achieving God’s good purposes for us, our neighbors, and our world. Unfortunately, it is not this truth that holds sway in our culture but the myth of consumer culture which says, “‘Eat, drink, be merry, and hey, what the heck, charge it!’”[9] Instead of saving anything, consumer culture insists, “‘If you have it, spend it; and if you don’t have it, spend it anyway.’”[10] As a result, we have become a culture and people of debt, to the tune of trillions of dollars. Debt is now big business! With payments to credit card interest alone in 2019 totaling over $121 billion.[11] No wonder why credit card companies want your business and want you to spend beyond your means! No wonder we have become a culture where we are constantly told that we do not need to wait for what we want! We are told to be selfish and we are told to be greedy! Consumer culture insists that is how our economy will keep on chugging! On the other hand, debts and hoarding up for the wrong things pull us away from God and God’s purposes for money. Think about it, if we are not able to handle our financial resources well, we are “unable to respond adequately to God’s call for generosity.”[12] When we pursue the myths of consumer culture, we find ourselves chasing after something we will never reach. As Ecclesiastes explains, “The money lover isn’t satisfied with money; neither is the lover of wealth satisfied with income. This too is pointless.” Where there is no point, there’s no end, no bottom to the chase. When we pursue money and things, we will find them to be empty, and we will only find momentary release in chasing after the next thing, the next pot of gold in hopes that it will finally satisfy. Only God will satisfy us, and so only God’s purposes will fill us up with what is truly rich, what is really good! Saving up all we can means saving up for things that will care for the needs of God’s people as part of God’s purposes. It is a good thing to build up a good retirement fund to care for people when they can no longer work. It is a good thing to build up a college fund so that our kids and even grandkids can have a good start in the world. It is good to invest in good things. Avoiding waste and avoiding bad debt helps us to realize these good investments. In fact, striving to be generous with what God has given us does not mean we don’t have any savings or that we’re foolish with our money. Quite the opposite, the more generous people are, the more they seek to be “aware of their resources and handle them carefully.”[13] They seek to “simplify their lifestyles and live modestly within, or even substantially below, their means.”[14] The byproduct of all of this is having more left over to invest in the richness of God. Funny enough, all United Methodist bishops ask the same question of every clergyperson seeking ordination in the church. It is a historical question from John Wesley: “Are you in debt so as to embarrass you in your work?” It is our acknowledgment that as Christian clergy having overriding concerns over things and wealth will hold us back from saving up for the riches of God. I believe this should be something all Christian disciples should be concerned about as well. How do you manage your finances? How does your income square with your expenses and your debts? Where have you invested your money? When God comes calling for the dollars you have been called to be stewards over, will you be ready to be generous, like the wise man in Proverbs, ready with precious treasure and oil, or will you have already swallowed them up? We are all called to be good stewards with everything God has given us, not only to meet our needs but to also invest in a good future for all of God’s children, to love God through caring for God’s people in the present and the future. Amen. [1] Federal Reserve Bank of New York, “Total Household Debt Reaches $17.06 Trillion in Q2 2023; Credit Card Debt Exceeds $1 Trillion,” Federal Reserve Bank of New York Press Release, https://www.newyorkfed.org/newsevents/news/research/2023/20230808 (accessed September 16, 2023). [2] John Wesley, Sermon 50 “Use of Money” in The Works of John Wesley, ed. Thomas Jackson, WordsOfWesley.com (Accessed May 11, 2020) [3] Kenneth J. Collins, The Theology of John Wesley: Holy Love and the Shape of Grace (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2007), 242-243. [4] Ibid. [5] Reuben P. Job, A Wesleyan Spiritual Reader (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998), 30. [6] Ibid., 31. [7] Wesley 2020 [8] John Wesley, “On Wordly Folly” in The Complete Sermons, ed. Thomas Jackson (San Bernardino: CreateSpace, 2016), 566-568. [9] Abingdon Press, Saving Grace: A Guide to Financial Well-Being (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2020), 49. [10] Ibid. [11] Ibid., 62. [12] Lovett H. Weems Jr. and Ann A. Michel, Generosity, Stewardship, and Abundance: A Transformational Guide to Church Finance (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2021), 69. [13] Christian Smith and Hilary Davidson, The Paradox of Generosity: Giving We Receive, Grasping We Lose (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 182. [14] Ibid.
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