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Dear friends:
There is a wonderful New Yorker cartoon from years ago that shows a cocktail lounge with several businessmen sitting at the bar with their end-of-the-day drinks. The men are intently watching the evening news on the television set over the bar and hear the newscaster say, "Jitters on Wall Street today over rumors that Alan Greenspan said, 'A rich man can as soon enter heaven as a camel fit through the eye of a needle.'"
Jesus' teachings on wealth used to make me nervous and a little resistant. In fact, one time I think I decided not to go to church because the minister was speaking on the subject of wealth. My resistance grew mostly from the fact that some ministers used Jesus' teaching to condemn my station in life, which, largely, was not of my own doing, and it didn't seem consistent with the way Jesus treated people and taught them to live.
Now I read these passages entirely differently. I see them as encounters in which Jesus cuts through all the obfuscation, all the fogging and dodging, and gets to the heart of people's desire to live fully alive. The man who came to Jesus with his profound question was not free -- not free to give, not free to love (Read the passage here).
Jesus, I think, wanted him to loosen up, to release his tight grip on his possessions, loosen up on the security he assumed his wealth was buying him, loosen up his constricted life so focused on maintaining and growing his portfolio. Jesus wanted him to learn to be human and vulnerable again. Jesus wanted him to think hard about his happiness, his life's meaning and purpose, and invest his attention and resources and energy and hope and love there. And that, I believe, is what Jesus wants for you and me.
I invite you to be more mature than I have been at times and actually come to church when we talk about wealth. Who knows, you might change your opinion too!
See you on Sunday,
Bob Henderson, senior minister
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