Luke 16:13 "You cannot serve both God and money."
Luke 16 opens with an intriguing parable about a financial manager who gets fired for mishandling his master's money. Too proud to get a blue collar job or beg, he resorts to shrewd business deals: he reduces the debts on every account, winning the favor of the people who just caught a break. And he plans to collect once he's out on the street.
Jesus's lesson? Use your wealth to win friends. Curious, isn't it? I think what Jesus is getting at is that we tend to hold tightly or spend foolishly, but what we ought to do is use our wealth to benefit others (which even this worldly manager knew would boomerang back and help him). Then when we have nothing left, we will still have the relationships we cultivated with our wealth, both here on earth and in heaven.
Too often, God's people in the middle class strata get trapped in the allure of wealth, believing that because they are good and faithful and have access to God's riches, they are free to do what they like and enjoy all the pleasures of life (like the manager when he was employed with his master's money at his disposal). We are grateful that we aren't poor like "those people" and give out of our surplus towards "worthy causes" to satisfy the biblical call to generosity. And when our friends and admirers see our "sacrifices" we feel like we have accomplished a job well done. But Jesus issues sharp rebuke: "You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others, but God knows your hearts. What people value highly is detestable in God's sight."
So what is in your heart? The deception of wealth is that we aren't actually chasing a dollar bill -- we are chasing what wealth can provide. At least, what we think wealth can provide. We want the life experiences, the satisfaction of our desires, the promise of safety, the status of comparable or competitive achievements. And who benefits from all of this? Who is at the center? Self. Me, myself, and I. Certainly not God, and only inadvertently do other people benefit.
But what if we believed God when He said all our needs are met in Him? Not that He would fulfill our worldly aims, but that in Him those things no longer matter. Instead we receive something far better, something hardly expressible in words: belonging, love, knownness, withness, the most faithful and longsuffering love-relationship we will ever find. And then everything snaps into focus, and all the resources at our disposal get plugged into the mission of introducing as many people as possible to this Love.
