CHRISTIANS AND THEIR MONEY

Tuesday after the First Sunday in Lent

If there is any money realized from the sale of my estate when I shuffle off to purgatory, I want it to go towards a stained-glass window. Not one of those drippy Victorian windows with the Lord looking heavenward in pained resignation, no. I want one in the best medieval style, showing an angry Jesus kicking over a money-laden table, brandishing a many-corded whip at a terrified money-changer. To the best of my knowledge, no such window exists in all Christendom.

At one time, not that long ago, when you went into church before Mass, it was quiet. People entered, went to their pews, knelt and prayed. We entered into the Presence with reverence and waited in holy silence for the Holy Mysteries. Now, go into almost any church before Divine Service and you’ll hear chatter, jokes and laughter. People wander around as if it were a train station. “Times are different now,” many will say. That’s true. “We’re not as formal as we used to be.” Ah—now, that’s NOT so true. You can still see people enter with reverence and wait in holy silence. Not in church, but at the bank. There people still know to whisper and observe an holy fear. We are in the Presence of Money.

We are sacramental. All of us: Catholics and Protestants, Jews and Buddhists, atheists, Druids and Zoroastrians. Some of us may not believe in sacraments, but it doesn’t matter. You might as well disbelieve in gravity. God made us such that outward signs carry inward realities. “A kiss is just a kiss,” in Hollywood, but in the real world the gentle kiss of a mother, the frenzied kisses of lovers, the final kiss of a dying spouse, the Judas kiss of a false friend all convey realities. Our world is full of sacramentals—holy water, flags, school songs, handshakes—because we are sacramental. Outward things have inward realities.

Money is one of those outward things. That’s why people behave the way they do in banks. We may not all be able to agree about the divinity of Christ, but most of us accept the divinity of Money. Money isn’t evil, it’s an outward sign. But what’s the inward reality? What is money a sacrament of?

“Where your treasure is,” the Lord instructs us, “there will your heart be also.” Is your treasure in the bank? Is it in your home, with your family? Is it in a bar or a restaurant—or library (this is getting a little too personal!). Money has become the ultimate criterion of our society; our chiefest Sacrament. It decides the fates of presidents, determines what diseases find cures, judges who will live and who will die. It’s the greatest idol the world has ever known. At times it has eclipsed Jesus in His own Church.

When He saw Mammon squatting brazenly in God’s House, Jesus made a whip of cords and drove its devotees out. The Lord Jesus never said money was bad (He never said it was good, either). He knows its power and its potential to corrode souls. To some of us, Jesus says “If you would be perfect, go and sell all you have, and give it to the poor. Then come, follow Me.” For men and women with families and responsibilities, that’s not possible. Those He warns “It’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven.” If you don’t consider yourself rich, look around you, then look at a picture of a family living in the Sudan today. He was warning you and me, not Warren Buffett. We’ve all known people who are poor who believe that if only they had enough money, THEN they’d be happy. The worship of Money is not just for the wealthy.

And so we give alms—not out of our abundance, but out of our need to give—a need to have less—to focus on the things that are eternal, where Jesus sits at the right hand of His Father. Your Lenten almsgiving—if it hurts enough—can set you free from the worship of Money—a freedom that will allow you to truly enthrone Jesus as the Lord of your life.

The next time you’re in a bank, tell the person in line next to you your best joke. Laugh. Speak loudly and be irreverent. You worship elsewhere.