Money (3rd in Lent, 2015-03-08)

 3rd Sunday in Lent: Money
(March 8, 2015)© Wolf Kirchmeir
 
[Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 1:18-22; John 2:13-22]

May the words of my lips and the meditations of all our hearts be ever acceptable in your sight, O Lord.

Dear Friends in Christ,

Today’s Gospel is St John’s version of the Cleansing of the Temple. St John tells us that Jesus made a whip, and drove the money changers and the sellers of sacrificial animals from the temple. It’s told in a few verses in each of the four Gospels.

It’s an exciting story. Many artists have painted the scene. Imagine, Jesus wielding a whip, overturning tables, shouting at people, using harsh language: Take these things away. Do not make my Father’s house a place of merchandise. In another Gospel, Jesus is quoted as saying My Father’s house is a house of prayer, you have made it a den of thieves.

Considering how few words are used to tell the story, it has attracted a lot of attention. Why is this? I think that it’s not just the drama of the event. I think it’s that this event touches on many questions which all relate to the single most basic one: What is life for? It does so in two ways. It shows us that money and wealth can be serious problems. And it symbolises the radical reorganisation of life, the universe, and everything, which Jesus offered in his ministry, and which culminates in his death on the cross.

Let’s have a closer look at the core of this event. Why did Jesus cleanse the Temple?  The simple answer is that he was deeply offended by the focus on doing business in the Temple. Sure, people needed to buy sacrificial animals, but trading in them was not what the Temple was for. Doing business was not the business of the Temple.

Does Jesus say anything about money and wealth anywhere else? He sure does. He points out how the widow who donates one dollar gives a much larger proportion of her wealth than does the Pharisee who gives a hundred. He tells the young lawyer that he should sell everything he has, give the proceeds to the poor, and become a disciple. He tells a parable about a man who has filled his storehouses with wealth, and plans to lead a leisurely life of retirement, except that he will die that night. He says that we cannot serve both God and Mammon. He holds up a coin and says, Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s. And so on.

Jesus has a lot to say about money and wealth. So do the writers of the Epistles. So does the Old Testament.

And that leads to the obvious question: What does the Bible teach us about how to think about money and wealth?

Some people will no doubt say that the Bible is not an economics textbook. That’s true, if you think of economics as being all about the numbers. But the economy isn’t just about the numbers. In fact, the numbers are the least of it. The economy is the way we’ve organised our community life so as to produce and share the goods and services that we need. That’s all.

So what’s the role of money? Money is a method for making the exchange of goods and services easier. Sure, we can use it for many other purposes. We can use it track the costs of production and distribution. We can use it to account for debt. We can use it to calculate how much each partner contributes to a common enterprise. We can even use it to save for the future. Instead of storing actual wheat in actual storehouses for future use, we can create a money debt so that we have a claim on wheat that’s grown years later, when we need it.

Money is one of the great inventions of humankind. I put it right up there with the wheel. By the time the books of the Bible were written down, money was already important. It was so important that the Old Testament has many rules about fair wages and fair prices and fair measures, and how to handle debt, and how to deal with people who don’t follow these rules. And every seven years you were supposed to cancel all debts.

By the time Jesus came up to the Temple and attacked the money changers, money was already taken for granted as the main medium of exchange among strangers. The Temple was important because it was the only place at which the Jews could perform the sacrifices according to the law. The temple forecourt was where money and religious observance came together.

To perform a sacrifice you had to give an unblemished dove or lamb or other animal to the priests, who performed the actual sacrifice. Most people bought the sacrificial animal in the Temple forecourt. For this, you needed coinage without stamped portraits of emperors and such. Those are graven images. Using them to buy a sacrifice would be blasphemy. Hence the need for money changers.

There was a lot of money changing hands, and the Temple authorities got a cut of the proceeds. When Jesus tossed out the money changers, the Temple authorities were of course annoyed. How dare this upstart wandering preacher interfere with their business?

Let’s take a little side trip and think about money. Money makes the world go around, so they say. That’s an odd idea, when you think about it for a while. You can’t eat money, you can’t breathe it, you can’t drink it. You can’t drive it from here to there, you can’t plow it and grow wheat in it, you can’t do much of anything that you need to live, or that you like to do to make life more pleasant.
      In fact, it’s pretty useless in itself. It’s only useful when you spend it. Then you can eat or drink something, or you can put some gas in the car and get from here to there. Or you can get a tractor and a plow and a seed drill and plow your patch of ground and plant wheat in it.

So why do we think money is so important? Because we’ve created an economic system in which we need money to buy and sell. Money makes trading very convenient, which is certainly a good thing. It makes trading so convenient that we’ve built the most complicated economic system the world has ever seen. Most of the things we buy are made and brought to us by people we will never meet face to face. Amazing, when you realise that. Imagine: dozens, possibly hundreds of people do their jobs day in and day out, and the result is that you can buy a pen for 98 cents. Plus tax.

So money is very, very convenient. But that convenience comes at a price. The price is our ideas about and attitudes towards wealth. Money shapes our notions of what’s important. Money is a number, so we confuse price and value. We need money to buy what we need and want, so money distracts us from what makes life worth living. And money buys power, so it distorts our politics.

We take money for granted. About the only time most of us think about money is when something goes wrong with the economy. And then we have at best confused ideas about what money is, and too often we have wrong ones. Worse, many, perhaps most people, become frightened when the money economy begins to fail. The worst effect of this fear is hyperinflation. That’s when people no longer trust what money means, so they want more and more money, and eventually a wheelbarrow full of banknotes will just barely buy a loaf of bread.

Yes, no doubt about it. Money is important in our lives. But everything the Bible says about money and wealth elaborates on three themes. First, that we should share the wealth. Second, that trading requires justice. And third, that our relationship with money is problematic, to put it politely. Paul’s words are harsher: in his first letter to Timothy we read that The love of money is the root of all evil.
      In short, the Biblical record, in both Testaments, reminds us that ethics are at the heart of economics. An economic system that doesn’t promote ethical dealing and fair sharing of wealth is a bad one. If there are few or no incentives to deal ethically and fairly with each other, then something is seriously wrong.

There was something seriously wrong with the system for providing sacrifices for the worshippers who came to the Temple. Doves were the cheapest sacrifices, sold for dollar or two in our money, and supplied because poor people couldn’t afford lambs and goats and young bullocks. No problem with that. But as I said before, the Temple authorities got a cut of every sale. I think that’s the main reason Jesus was annoyed. The Temple authorities no longer saw the trade in doves and other animals as a necessary and useful service for the worshippers, they saw it as a way of making money. It had become a lucrative business. It was now a profit centre.

Trade is good. It makes life better for everybody. That is its purpose. But the traders and money changers and Temple authorities used trade as a way to enrich themselves. In economic language, they used trade to transfer wealth from other people to themselves. They did not simply exchange wealth for wealth.  Jesus called what they did robbery.

Jesus makes it quite clear that he disapproves of enriching oneself at the expense of others. Transfer of wealth isn’t what the economy is about. Sharing the wealth is what it’s about. Money is just a method for making that easier, and if used rightly, it makes sharing the wealth fairer.

So what’s the lesson for us?

Should we stop using money? Of course not. It makes trade easier.

Should we stop doing business? Of course not. Our way of doing business ensures that we have enough of what we need and what we like.

Should we stop making a profit? Of course not. Profit is on the one hand the seller’s income, his wage. And on the other hand, profit is an efficient incentive for pooling resources so that we can do things together that no one of us could do on their own.

Then what should we do?

And here’s where the symbolism of cleansing of the Temple comes in. What does Jesus’s cleansing of the Temple mean? It means that the Kingdom of God is not about doing business. That life is not about making money. That making a living is not the purpose of living. That these things are methods, not purposes. We need to do them so that we are have the time and the energy to do what really matters.

How do we apply this lesson to economics? The answer is simple. We should do business the same way we should do everything else: as a way of relating to each other in mutual service and love. Prices should reflect actual value. Contracts should be equitable, and not give one side an advantage. Profit should be enough for you to stay in business, and if possible improve the quality of what you offer. Wages should be sufficient for a decent life. Promises to pay should be kept. And so on. Any code of ethics will fill in the details.

Most of all, we should keep in mind that there are vastly more important things in life than making money.

There’s time spent with family and friends. Playing games, enjoying meals together, celebrating birthdays, hanging out at Timmy’s chatting about whatever comes to mind. There’s doing things that give you deep satisfaction, whether it’s reading a book, going fishing, playing a fiddle, building a table, growing vegetables, even organising and neatening up your house. Or just going for a walk and breathing fresh air and seeing how the sun makes the landscape glow. There are so many good things that we can do, so many things that bring us joy.

And there are needs to be met wherever we look, for the world doesn’t run on Jesus’s economics. People are cheated out of wages. They aren’t paid enough to enjoy a decent standard of living. Fraudsters trick people out of their life savings. Random accidents and illness make it impossible for people to work for a living.

Most of all, fear for our own future makes us selfish and unwilling to share what we have. No one will help us when we need help, we must look out for number one. But when everyone looks out for number one, none of us looks out for each other.

We are fortunate in this town. Most of us have enough income to live a good life. Jesus calls us to share what we have. His economic theory is simple: Share the wealth, and everyone will have enough. That’s the Economics 101 version of his command to Love one another as I have loved you.

Let us pray.
Lord God, give us grace so to trust in your promise of more abundant life that we may in this life share the abundance that you have provided of your bountiful goodness; and that in the life to come, we may share in the joys of your Kingdom. We pray in the name of him who gave his life that we might have life, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen

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