How Much is Enough?
Amos 5:6-7, 10-15
Psalm 90:1-8, 12
Hebrews 3:1-6
Mark 10:17-31
Tim
Christoffersen
St. Anselm’s
October 15,
2000
Good
morning.
"When he heard
this, he was shocked and went away grieving."
\Raise your hand
if you do not find the gospel story this morning about the wealthy young man
to be a ‘hard saying’ of Jesus or to be challenging to you personally?
Do the rest of you
find this story to be personally challenging? Good. Then I don’t feel
alone up here.
Let me recount
two writings on this very gospel passage written by two early church fathers
and saints of the church, Athanasius and Clement of Alexandria.
Athanasius lived
in the fourth century and wrote a book on the Life of St. Antony. Antony was
an Egyptian who is widely recognized as the father of Christian monasticism
and ascetic practices. Antony came from a well to do Egyptian family. When
Antony was about 20 both his parents died and he was left as guardian to care
for his younger sister. About six months later he was in church and he heard
the gospel story that we also heard this morning. He was deeply struck by
the reading and he went home and distributed the land, about 200 acres, to
the townspeople. He sold his possessions and gave the money to the poor, keeping
only a modest portion to have enough to take care of his sister until she
was of age. Several weeks later in church he heard the passage from Matthew
6:34 "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry
about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." He returned
home and sold the remaining portion and arranged for a ‘group of maidens’
to care for and raise his sister. Antony spent much of his life in monastic
settings and he went away alone for long periods of time. He did manual labor
because he was familiar with the passage from 2Th 3:10 "If a man will
not work, he shall not eat." Emperors of his day and church fathers
like Athanasius sought his counsel. Athanasius’ book was widely translated
and circulated. Within 20 years it was read as far away as Gaul, which we
know today as France.
Clement of Alexandria lived in the third century and was also Egyptian. Alexandria
was a wealthy and learned community and housed the major library of the ancient
world. Clement himself was from a wealthy family. We have many writings of
Clement but only one sermon entitled "What Rich Young Man?" Clement
took a different tack than Athanasius. He was cautious about the dangers of
wealth. He wrote, "Wealth seems to me to be like a serpent, which
will twist round the hand and bite, unless one knows how to lay hold of it
without danger…and riches, wriggling either in an experienced or inexperienced
grasp are dexterous at adhering and biting: unless one, despising them, use
them skillfully, so as to crush the creature by the charm of the Word and
himself escape unscathed."
Clement believed the real issue was the inner person; the anxiety, the attachment
to wealth and the love of money. He pointed out that Jesus was a guest of
Zacchaeus, Levi and Matthew, all of whom were wealthy and he did not tell
them to sell all. Clement believed wealth was a tool but it required skill
to use it properly. For him possessions were a means of service.
Athanasius and Clement took different approaches. Athanasius took the passage
literally. Clement took the passage in a more liberal or interpretative manner.
Personally, I believe each of us has to wrestle with these ‘hard sayings’
of Jesus in our own daily lives and in our own walk with the Lord. Maybe there
are only a relatively small number of us who are wealthy in the material sense
of the Rich Young Man in the gospel passage. But issues around money and sharing
our resources certainly confront each of us in our daily lives.
One of those issues around money is balancing between giving of our resources
to help meet the needs of others and providing for our family. The challenge
to the Rich Young Man clearly frames our challenge from one perspective. We
also have the counsel from I Timothy 5:8 "If anyone does not provide
for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied
the faith and is worse than an unbeliever."
Let me share one way in which I have wrestled with this issue. I have felt
called by God to give back and share with others some of the blessings He
has provided in my life. The practical question was did we have enough savings
to retire. For me the tough question was "how much is enough?" We
realized that for a financial advisor to tell us whether or not we had enough
savings, we had to be able to say how much income we needed to live on each
year. Deciding on a budget when, for the most part, you no longer will be
earning a regular income, is a little scary. There is a kind of finality about
it. You can reduce it in the future but there is not much chance of increasing
it.
It turns out that a major piece of the answer to "how much is enough"
is how vulnerable and trusting am I able to be. In our secular culture today,
materialism reigns supreme. We are surrounded constantly with messages telling
us about all the ‘things’ that we need and how we deserve them.
When we focus on separating what we want from what we need, the answer comes
a little closer.
We finally decided on a budget and the answer we got was we had enough savings
but we did not have a lot of room for error. Translated, it the stock and
bond market went down a lot, we would have to make some adjustments.
In his "Confessions of a Stewardship Chairman," Doug Merrill quoted
the following in his section "Strengthening our Religious Faith":
"Giving…opens us up to the unknown. It makes us vulnerable…I
am closest to God (and also most scared) when I hand over part of my personal
security blanket to a cause greater than my own. And it is at these moments
that I am most alive." I could not agree more.
When we go back to the gospel passage again, one interchange between Jesus
and the disciples stands out starkly. Jesus has just said, "It is
easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who
is rich to enter the kingdom of God." The disciples were shocked
and dismayed because the equivalent of the Protestant ethic was alive and
well in first century Palestine and they had bought into it. Wealth was a
sign of God’s favor. So they looked at each other and said, "Then
who can be saved?" Jesus looked at them and said, "For mortals,
it is impossible, but not for God: for God all things are possible."
So the question ‘how much is enough’ becomes a spiritual question
for each of us about our daily walk with the Lord. As we journey with Him,
we will feel more exposed to the unknown, more vulnerable and a little scared.
But in our hearts we will know, without a doubt, that it is absolutely the
right thing to do.
For where your heart is, there will be your treasure also.
AMEN.
