Let me start by being a bit defensive, and ask the question you might be asking yourself:  Should “money” even be included in this series?  After all, can we really say that we have a “relationship” with money?  Isn’t money more or less a tool that we use to accomplish things?  A friend of mine used to say that his theory of American commerce boiled down to “I give you my green piece of paper and you hand me your shiny thing.”  Is that all money is:  the green (and increasingly multi-colored) instrument that we merely use to get what we want, whether it’s literally a shiny thing or something much more nebulous, like ‘security’?

            Ah, but you do have a relationship with money, don’t you?  A relationship consists of two parties that come into connection with each other, and have an effect on each other.  That said, we all have a relationship with money.  Jesus said “you can’t serve God and money,” and it’s hard to see how you could serve something that you don’t have a relationship with.  Besides, when Jesus puts God and money next to each other like that, and he assumes that we definitely have a relationship with God, doesn’t it just make sense to say that we have a relationship with money?  Then there’s that bit of Biblical wisdom that often gets misquoted:  “The love of money is the root of all evil.”  The love of money.  How can you love something that it’s impossible that you don’t have a relationship with?  We’re all in relationship with money.

            In fact, I’d be happy to wager that your relationship with money is one of the strongest relationships you have in your whole life.  Not necessarily one of the best, but one of the strongest.  If I were to ask you “how are you and your wife, or your husband, or your best friend, or your significant other, how are you getting along?”, you’d likely hem and haw a bit, and perhaps give me a quick answer, but it’s likely you’d go back to the question later and think it over.  Same goes for you and your children.  If I were to ask you how your health, you might say, “overall, pretty good,” or “I go to the doctor too much”, but we all know these days that there might be little beasties coagulating somewhere in your arteries that you have no idea about; you might be totally in the dark about the actual state of your health.  And how about if I asked you how you and God were getting along?  Maybe you’d say “you have to ask God about that.”  Pretty key players in your life, wouldn’t you say: your partner, your health, God?  Asked about them, we might fumble our words.  But if I asked you how you’re doing with money, you’d be able to tell me how much you have in your wallet, about how much your house would be on the market, how much you pay each month for rent, what your paycheck is, what’s going on with Social Security, how much insurance you have, and on and on.  Now try to tell me you don’t have a relationship with money.

            Jesus knew that our relationship with money makes us more anxious than just about any other relationship.  That passage on anxiety that we love to read, the whole birds of the air and lilies of the field business, it’s all an extended meditation on “you cannot serve God and money.”  Jesus merely pointed out some of the things we already know about money, to point us in the direction of a life that has better things to do than worry about dollars and cents.

            Isn’t it deliciously ironic that we, who are relatively well off in the world, read the Sermon on the Mount as if it were addressed to us?  The people Jesus was talking to were dirt poor. They knew what it meant to be anxious about food and clothing.  And yet, though our closets may be full and our pantries brimming, we have found other things to be anxious about.  There’s no such thing as enough money, is there?  The “enough” line keeps moving.  Sociologists have studied this time and again:  most people say that if they had just a little bit more money, they’d be happy.  But what happens when you get just a little bit more?  You want just a little bit more.  It’s a never ending cycle of get more, want more, get more want more.  Which means that no matter how much you get, you’ll always want more.  And that leaves us in a constant state of anxiety.  In the eyes of a sinful world, there is no such thing as enough.  There’s always “not enough.”

             When we remember that Jesus’ audience lived a hand-to-mouth existence, the irony moves from delicious to dangerous.  Dangerous, because Jesus said "Woe to you that are rich, for you have received your consolation.  Woe to you that are full now, for you shall hunger. Woe to you that laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.”  Relative to most of the world, we’re the folks who are rich, full, and laughing.  We’re the folks who would find it harder to get into the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle.  Jesus’ words are unsettling to us; oh, we know about anxiety, all right, but our anxiety tends to move in the direction of “when is the church going to have its next rummage sale; I need to get rid of more stuff.” 

            So how do we, who are relatively well off in world terms, how do we negotiate our relationship with money in such a way that it becomes a good-news relationship?  How do we handle our dollars in a way that gives evidence that we are people who serve the kingdom of God?

            Three items come to mind.

            First, we need to break the bond we so often assume between the amount of money a person has and how good a person he or she is.  Why are the poor poor?  Because they’re lazy, or foolish, or short-sighted, or they have their values all wrong?  All of those are moral – even moralistic – judgments, aren’t they?  The Bible is clear on who a person is, who every person is: a child of God, made in God’s image.  It’s also clear that every person has sinned.  It’s also clear that as followers of Jesus we “regard no one from a human point of view.”  The human point of view says, “the richer you are, the better you are.”  That, I would submit to you, is one of those temptations that we pray not to be led into when we pray the Lord’s prayer.  “Lead me not into the temptation of thinking that people should be judged according to how much money they have.”

            Second, we need to break the cycle between getting more and wanting more, getting more and wanting more.  Back in my day at high school football games, one of the cheers was “hold that line.”  A gospel-formed relationship with money will hold that line, hold the “enough” line closer to what we really need to get by.  I’m not saying we should all be simple-dressing, pleasure-fearing puritans.  But it does seem eminently clear that the question “isn’t this enough?” has a rightful place in our minds.  Is the shiatsu-massaging chair really necessary?  Is the HD plasma TV really going to improve your life?  Are your old shoes really worn out?  What will another cruise add to your life?  (All of which is just a matter of holding on to our money:  it’s just a matter of exchanging our green things for shiny things that we can see right in front of us.)  And on and on it goes.  All I’m advocating for is that it is right for us, as people of faith, to hold the “enough” line down to some place where it’s, frankly, sane!

            Finally, how might our relationship with money show that we serve the kingdom of God?  When we see all people as children of God, and when we ‘hold that line,’ we have plenty of money to use for godly ends.  “Seek God’s kingdom first,” Jesus said. How do you seek God’s kingdom as you handle your relationship with money?  John Wesley, the founding father of the Methodist churches, is said to have gotten rid of every bit of money he got that surpassed his need for clothing and shelter and food.  He put money to godly ends, put it into causes that served people who were still worrying about the basic essentials of life.  We could learn from him about having an arm’s length relationship with money, rather than a hold-on relationship with it.  Hold-on is about anxiety.  Arm’s length is gospel.

            Enough is never enough, unless it is.  People of God, you have enough.  You don’t need even a penny to look at a bird, or to consider a lily.  You don’t need a penny to open up your heart in love.  You have enough.  Let enough be enough.  Wanting more is the sure path to anxiety, and every anxiety is just another smudge on the mirror that is your soul, and smudges make it hard for light to cast a reflection.  “Enough” keeps the mirror clean, and lets the light of God’s love reflect off of you.  You have enough.  It’s time to shine.

Amen.