Difficult Scriptures About Money

Today the church celebrates "Catechetical Sunday," a day when the church gives thanks for everyone who teaches the faith, especially our PREP and RCIA catechists, and our school’s faculty and staff.

Maybe it’s odd, then, that the most prominent theme in today’s scripture is money. If we were deliberately choosing scripture to honor the vocation to education, there are countless other themes we might have chosen. We could have had the “let the children come unto me” Gospel, or a great parable about Jesus as master teacher. We could have had an Old Testament reading about the riches and depths of wisdom, something from Sirach or Proverbs perhaps.

But the lectionary often creates interesting juxtapositions, and instead today we’ve got Amos: woe to you who trample upon the needy and destroy the poor. Woe to you who tilt the scales for cheating, or who pay unfair wages to the lowly. The Lord has sworn, it says, never to forget what you have done.

Meanwhile our Gospel, a complicated parable about wealth, honesty, fear, and greed, ends with an unambiguous punch line: you cannot serve both God and money.

Happy catechetical Sunday!

But, in all seriousness, here’s one thing I’ve learned as a teacher for many years – and I offer it as an observation to colleagues in the classroom and to any of us wondering what the Bible means:

Whenever we stumble into a hard teaching from Jesus or the Church, remember that God love us. Today’s difficult teaching is about money. Tomorrow it might be about sex, the family, or a dozen other things. But whenever we are confronted with a teaching that challenges us, we should not dodge, deflect, or haggle. Instead, that’s the moment to pause and be patient. God loves us and so, somewhere in this teaching, there must be good news. We always want to ask, in faith and trust – how do even difficult teachings help deepen my relationship with God? How does this difficult teaching help me become holy and fulfill my destiny?

So let’s apply this method to today’s passages about money. Money is always spiritually difficult. Jesus speaks about poverty and wealth so often; it's clearly a topic a critical spiritual importance. But in a congregation like ours, there is genuine economic diversity - some of us are in crisis, others live with affluence. There will be no "one size fits all" spirituality of money. But if we are patient and open, if we let Jesus's teaching pierce our hearts, I am confident that there is good news and an answer for each one of us.

One way we might be tempted to dodge or deflect – and so one temptation we want to avoid - is to get too absorbed in politics. Scriptures about money usually want us to think about politics at some stage, and whether our political and economic system really helps the poor. Today’s Amos speaks about the poor of the land, and it uses the plural “you” when speaking of people who endanger their salvation by exploiting the poor. And the church, from apostolic times to the present, has a long and glorious record of calling for social justice. All the modern popes have written encyclicals about just wages, the purpose of private property, living simply, labor and industry, etc. No doubt – for centuries - our Catholic magisterium has amplified the Bible’s concern for the poor and society. Catechists and teachers – we should know this history and teach it.

But the hidden danger for you and me, right here, right now, getting our hearts ready to receive the Eucharist in a few minutes, trying to grow spiritually in our everyday lives, there’s a danger in reading every Biblical passage about money as if it’s only political. When Jesus says you can’t serve God and mammon, he’s asking each of us personally to reflect on whom we serve, what we value, and where our hearts are invested. We miss this crucial moment of self-examination if we focus only on what other people (the politicians) should do. If we rub our hands with glee that Jesus is socking it to the rich, then we’re no better than Pharisees. If we think only in angry abstractions about society and “the system,” then we’re forgetting that the Gospel should always cause us to look first at the log in our own eye.

Another temptation – another potential dodge – is to get defensive and over-spiritualize the Bible’s verses about money. We might be tempted to rationalize: surely it’s all about our interior attitude. If we’re allegorically poor in an interior way, if we're basically kind people who mind our own middle class business, then maybe trying to climb the ladder to accumulate actual wealth is ok.

Perhaps...but we need to be very careful here. Jesus is talking about interior spiritual dangers and hazards...but he’s also talking about concrete material wealth. Our school is located in a comfortable suburb in one of the wealthiest countries in history. We should not rationalize away Jesus’ warnings about affluence. No matter where we are on the economic ladder, just by living here, we are daily bombarded with media imagery that glamorizes wealth. We are all drubbed by Mammon's constant counter-catechism to the truth. No matter what our personal economic situation, if we are honest, envy, luxury, entitlement, complacency, and keeping up with the neighbors are daily spiritual hazards. If we want to grow spiritually, we need to heed Jesus about the dangers of affluence, and not get defensive.

So, if we can avoid these two temptations – if we can avoid the temptation of being exclusively political, if we are open to being concrete and personal - how do we apply all this into the practical realities of everyday life?

God knows we have to earn a living, pay our bills, be intelligent about insurance and mortgages, save for college and retirement, possibly pay tuition at Catholic schools, and that’s before we even talk about inflation, health care, or job insecurity. So how do we do all this, and still put into practice what Jesus is saying about money?

My first suggestion is – catechists, teachers, and parents especially - is that we should talk more openly and frequently with our children about the freedom of monasticism and religious life. If we’re feeling trapped by society's system, then we might have some sympathy for why the Church, over the centuries, has consistently commended celibacy and monasticism as the better way. Monks and nuns are free for adventures and intimacy with the poor in ways that the rest of us are not. Somebody recently sent me a flier about a “come and see” retreat for women ages 15-25 with the Capuchin Sisters of Nazareth in upstate Pennsylvania. It’s beautiful, and, honestly, as I look around today at the state of the world, at the challenges we face and where we need helpers, as well as the freedom for service and prayer that comes with a religious vocation, if I was 15-25, I’d be taking seriously the adventure of being a monk or a nun. Parents, teachers – this is part of our faith, and we should talk about it.

But what about those of us who aren’t 15-25, and who have responsibilities: what should we do? Again, I doubt there’s a one-size fits all answer, but I’m sure there is a personal, individualized answer. God has a plan for our lives. Discerning this answer begins with prayer. We need to pray honestly, without self-deception, about our hopes, our anxieties, our ideals, how we earn a living, the way we spend and budget.

One thing to pray about is tithing. Here's a simple example but the math is easy to follow. When I was 14 years old, I worked ten hours a week at a neighborhood grocery store. Minimum wage was $3.35 an hour, and so every Saturday, I would get a check for $33.50. Every Sunday, the next day, my parents taught me to put $3 in the collection plate at church. Ever since, every job I get, every budget I sketch out, my first question is how close can I come to actually tithing. One thing I’ve learned is that I tithe not because some parish or charity needs the money, although it might, but because I need to be a giver. The first person who benefits from the discipline of tithing is me. Giving until it hurts loosens my sense of entitlement. God can do a lot when our hearts are soft and open. When we approach money with a sense that it all belongs to God and is given to us to serve his purposes, the graces usually overflow into other areas of life as well.

Tithing will mean different things to different people. For a catechist or a Catholic schoolteacher – people who are typically underpaid - a full tithe may be very difficult. But it is important to being with something. And there are also people who earn well over six figures, and yet somehow never have enough. The truth is, more than a few of us can do more than we do. God loves us, and God can do amazing things in our lives if we are brave enough to offer our whole lives back to him.

Here’s a question for self-diagnosis: if a stranger audited our finances – the way we earn our income, the patterns revealed in our family checkbook, the way we invest our savings, how much and how often we donate - would the auditor find evidence that we are Christians? Or would our financial lives look like any ordinary secular person's? Would an audit of our personal finances reveal enough brave, generous, and sacrificial choices to single us out as someone who tries to follow Jesus? It takes time and patience to figure these things out, but it begins with prayer and a willingness to face the questions.

And yes, it’s still catechetical Sunday. Catechists, remember that the world out there doesn’t talk like this. The marketplace thinks it’s rational to be selfish and afraid. The world out there is catechizing our kids in the consumer mentality, as if there is never such thing as enough, as if all of our desires for luxury and convenience are self-evidently valid.

But the world in here – the most really real world, the world around this altar, the world of the Eucharist, the world where we try and listen to even the difficult parts of scripture – this world is different. As catechists and teachers, we have the inestimable privilege and honor of sharing God’s story with our children. Let’s make sure we tell the whole story – even the hard parts – with hope and love.