The Foolishness of Riches

Young at Heart Message

If I happened to have $100 to give away, how many of you would want it?

Well, you’re in luck, because I DO have $100 that I’d like to give away.
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Who would like it?
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You know what? On second thought, I don’t think I will give it away. None of you plan to use the money the way I think you should use it.
 
I’ve worked hard for this money. I don’t want to just give it away to people who aren’t going to use it the way I think it should be used.
 
So instead of giving it away, I think I’ll just keep it for myself. Even though some of you said you would use it in ways that might not be bad, it still wasn’t the way I thought you should be using it.
 
What do you all think about my thought process on this?
 
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The Message
 
Is my mentality about giving away my money completely unfounded? Or does this kind of thinking happen more than we realize?
 
How many of us have decided not to give money to a homeless person because we assumed that person would use the money to do something that we wouldn’t approve of?
 
What about giving a gift of money to our kids or grandkids for a specific purpose, only to find out later that they used the money for something it wasn’t intended for?
 
In the Ecclesiastes passage we heard today, the speaker is lamenting about the fact that he has worked hard for what he has, but eventually, someone else is going to get the things he worked so hard for, and he isn’t sure if the people inheriting his wealth would use it the way he would.
 
This is similar to our discussion about the $100 I had to give away.
 
At the end of the day, it was hard for me to part with that money I worked so hard for because I didn’t trust how you all would use that money.
 
At any rate, you might not use it the same way I would, so giving it to any of you made me uneasy.
 
I think many of us can relate to the person in Ecclesiastes.
 
We work hard for our money, we make choices about where, how, and when to spend our money (or not), and, frankly, it’s very easy for us to judge how other people choose to spend their money.
 
So much so that, like the person in Ecclesiastes, when we come to a point where we must think about who will get the money and assets we worked so hard for, we sometimes want to stipulate how others spend that money.
 
We see this happen often in charitable giving, too.
 
In churches, for example, people might give money for a very specific purpose. In some churches, even the individual pews have a little plaque on them saying who donated to pay for that pew.
 
But, what happens when the time comes to replace that pew? Or, when the needs of the church change and the pews need to be replaced with chairs?
 
You guessed it. People can’t get rid of the pews because someone gave money to pay for it.
 
On the other hand, if you give your money to a general fund for a church, you expect that your board and/or church council, either now or in the future, will make the best choices for the current environment.
 
If you were to worry so much about how money would be spent in the future, and you wondered if people would choose exactly the way you would choose, you will either not give any money, or you might potentially cause the church issues down the road when there is a need to spend the money, but it’s not in the way you intended.
 
This is actually an incredibly common challenge in church environments.
 
And it’s not just individual churches. Many overarching church organizations have funds that were donated for very specific purposes that can no longer be used because the original intended purpose is now moot.
 
For example, let’s say 20 years ago, someone donated $50,000 to Good Shepherd for the express purpose of offering scholarships for seminary students.
 
20 years ago, maybe there were 10 people who were interested in attending seminary from Good Shepherd.
 
So, at that time, the person who donated the money very generously decided to restrict those funds for only that purpose.
 
And, each of those 10 people got $200 from that fund, because the church didn’t want to go through all of the money right away so that future students could use the fund.
 
So, the first year, $2000 was used from that fund.
 
But, the next year, there were only 8 students who wanted to use that fund. Each of them also received $200.
 
And the year after, there were only 3 students who each received $200.
 
Since then, over the last 20 years, there has only been 1 other student who needed access to those funds. That person received $1000 because it’s becoming apparent there weren’t as many students interested in seminary.
 
If you’ve been doing the math, the fund has been depleted now to $44,800.
 
And, now there hasn’t been a student interested in seminary for 10 years, there are no young people in the congregation, and it’s unlikely there will ever be another seminary student again.
 
If there is, it will be few and far between. So now the church has $44,800 that can’t be used for anything, because the intended purpose is no longer relevant to the current church environment.
 
The donation was very well-intentioned at the time it was given, and the church was wise about their use of the money because they were trying to predict the future, so they didn’t want to deplete the fund.
 
That’s not a bad thing. But it is an example of the type of thinking we see from our person in Ecclesiastes. We want to maintain control of the things we’ve worked hard for, even when it’s not always in the best interest of the other.
 
Let’s think about the homeless person that we are hesitant to give money to for a moment.
 
Our inclination is to never give cash to a person like that. And, in all fairness, there is an assumption that the person will go and spend the money on drugs, alcohol, gambling, etc.
 
Our assumption may be completely wrong, but we make it anyway. Essentially, we don’t trust that person to spend our hard-earned money wisely.
 
So instead, we think maybe we will offer to buy them food. This can be a very generous offer, certainly.
 
But, what if that person has easy enough access to food, either through food pantries or other resources? What that person really needs is warm socks.
 
But no one ever asks them what they need, they just assume they need food. So the person isn’t actually going hungry, but they are struggling to sleep at night because their feet are cold.
 
Though well-intentioned, our assumption that the person will not be able to choose for themselves how to best use our hard-earned money means that we end up not giving them our money at all.
 
So, you can see how this challenge can become a slippery slope.
 
And then, in steps Jesus. Of course.
 
Jesus tells us in Luke 12 a story intended to remind us that our mentality about money and wealth is misguided.
 
The story Jesus shares is about a rich farmer who ended up with more than he needed from a harvest.
 
Rather than sharing that with others, he decided to build larger barns and store more for himself.
 
Now, I think most of us can understand this. What happens if, the next year, the harvest isn’t as abundant and he needs the extra??
 
But God said “You fool! Tonight you will die. Then who will get what you have stored up?”
 
Jesus then says, “This is what happens to people who store up everything for themselves, but are poor in the sight of God.”
 
In today’s world, though, it’s hard not to want to save more and more, in case life gets tough. It’s also hard not to want to keep up with everyone around us – bigger cars, bigger houses, more food, more “stuff.”
 
But, at what point is enough enough?
 
When we do choose to give our money away, do we really need to control how others spend it?
 
Is a gift truly a gift if we want to control how it’s used?
 
These are the questions that this scripture passage begs.
 
And, I think this passage is a great opportunity to ask ourselves to be self-reflective as a church.
 
We are an extremely lucky church to have the resources that we have.
 
And of course, we need to make wise choices with those resources.
 
But, I do think we need to ask ourselves if Jesus is quite literally speaking to us directly here.
 
Do we have more than we truly need? How much is enough? Have we been building bigger barns to store more and more resources?
 
The Good News of this passage is that we can see ourselves reflected in it, and we can wonder with God whether there is a lesson to be learned here.
 
The lessons are not always easy to swallow. But, that is the beauty of the Gospel.
 
Jesus tells hard truths on a regular basis. Often, those hard truths don’t initially seem to apply to us. But sometimes, we need to look within ourselves to see if those hard truths do apply to us.
 
And, if they do, it doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with us. It means we are human, and Jesus fully understands the human experience.
 
So, may we reflect on our own humanity and the ways in which we might be trying to control things we should not be worrying about controlling.
 
May we ask ourselves the hard questions and wonder if Jesus might be trying to deliver a hard truth through his Gospel message.
 
May we look inward, both at ourselves personally and at our church and our resources, and may we honestly and humbly reflect on what Jesus has told us about money, riches, power, greed, and control.
 
Amen.
 
Let us pray:
 
Gracious and loving God, sometimes Jesus offers us hard truths, and we find it hard to look inward and reflect on how similar we are to the people Jesus is talking to. It can be easy for us to see how his words are hard truths for others, but it can be harder to see this in ourselves. Help us to open our hearts and minds to the lessons Jesus has to teach us. In your Holy name, we pray. Amen.

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