In his book Giving to God: The Bible's Good News about Living a Generous Life Mark Allan Powell shares the story of the Gauls. The Gauls were a warlike people, Druidic by religion, who in ancient times inhabited the area of what is now France and Belgium. By the Christian era they had been conquered by the Roman Empire though they continued to rebel and rise up against their Roman occupiers.

Christian missionaries eventually made their way into Gallic territory and were able to convert many Gauls to Christianity. However, the story goes that when a converted Gallic warrior was baptized in a river or stream he would hold one arm high in the air as the missionary dunked him under the water. At first the missionaries thought this odd and couldn't figure out why the Gauls did it. It all became clear however as when the next battle broke out the baptized Gallic warrior would exclaim, "This arm is not baptized!", grab his weapon, and head off to destroy his enemy.

Powell points out that the story, while most likely not historically accurate, offers a vivid image of what someone would do in order "to keep one part of their body, one aspect of their identity, free from the influence of baptism." (pg. xii) He goes on to comment that he thinks for us today the one area of our lives that most of us would like to keep dry and clear of influence of the baptismal waters is our money. He envisions that we might like to claim, "My wallet is not baptized!" and so spend our money in ways where God isn't involved in our financial decision-making processes.

I would argue that for many of us he is right. I don't necessarily think that we make a conscious decision to do that, but I think whether we realize it or not, money has power over us. Just watch television, pick up a magazine, or drive by a billboard today and you can see all the competing influences for how we spend our money. We are told what car, house, clothes, phone, and coffee we need in order to happy. We are constantly receiving messages about how we need to spend our money in order to find fulfillment and more often than not we allow those influences to take priority in how we use our money, leaving God to an afterthought.

My own experience with the power of money happened when I graduated from college and got my first job. I sat down at the kitchen table to work out a budget to figure out where my money would be going. At one point my father stopped by the table and when he reviewed my budget he asked, "Where is your giving to the church in here? I don't see that you have included that in your budget and it needs to be in here." I pushed back at my father and told him that I would be giving to church, but I just wasn't including it in my budget plan. I would see what I could give later, after I'd figured out all the other places where my money would be going.

Looking back on it now I can see that I was doing what Mark Allan Powell talks about in that story about the Gauls. I was trying to hold my wallet above the baptismal waters and exclude God from my financial life. But my father wouldn't let me. He was there to challenge me to include God as a priority in my financial life because he knew that God's involvement there was just as important as God's involvement in all the other aspects of my life. It took a while for me to get there, but eventually I made God and the mission of the church one of the first things I committed to in my financial budget instead of giving to God from what was left-over after I spent on everything else.

Throughout the gospels Jesus calls us all to learn this same lesson through his teaching and preaching on money. In fact, he focused on money so much that the only other thing he talked about more than money was the Kingdom of God. Why? Because he knew the power that money and possessions have over us. And he knew that by inviting God into our financial lives we would be set free from the power that money has over us. He knew that by making God a priority in our spending, instead of money having power over us we would be set free to use money in a way that reflects the power of God's love and grace in our lives.

This November as we make a financial commitment to the mission and ministry of St. Francis Church for the coming year, this is what we are being asked to do. We are being asked to reveal how we are set free in Christ so that every aspect of our lives, even our finances, reflects the power of God's love and grace at work in us as individuals and a community gathered around the cross. And it's a way that we reveal that we are a people who live completely wet from the baptismal waters, a people whose entire lives, including our wallets, speak to God's redeeming and transforming power in Jesus Christ.

In Christ,

Karen

Our society sends us constant messages that we just don't have enough. We are told repeatedly that we need to possess more and more in order to be happy. Unfortunately, for too many of us, what we end up finding is that no matter how much we obtain it never seems to be enough and we always end up feeling like something is still missing. If this sounds familiar, you are invited to join the associate rector for a discussion of Adam Hamilton's Enough: Discovering Joy Through Simplicity and Generosity on Wednesday, November 7th at 7:30 p.m. in the library. The book is a quick read at around 100 pages and our discussion will focus on the struggle to live a life of faith which embraces contentment and generosity in a consumer culture. Click here to order it online.  Sign up on the table in the Narthex or contact Karen (karen.safstrom@gmail.com) by October 24.