Dr. John Tamilio III, Pastor

 © 2022, Dr. Tamilio

There are all kinds of great quotes about money.

• “Money often costs too much.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “Too many people spend money they earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people that they don’t like.” – Will Rogers
• “Those who say ‘it’s only money’ are usually talking about your” – My Dad

And then there is that Biblical quote people always get wrong.  Popular culture says, “Money is the root of all evil.”  The Bible says, “The love of money is the root of all evil.”  There’s a big difference.

Money is nothing more than a tool.  It can get you the things you want or need.  But when we love money, especially when we love money over all else, then we succumb to greed, and that is the root of all evil.

But we really need to pull this quote apart a bit.  Jesus and Paul are saying that God should be our priority, not money.  If we love money — if we become obsessed with amassing it and living our lives based on it — then money becomes our god.  It’s no longer God in whom we trust; it’s in all those Benjamins.

I believe that if you want to find what motivates people’s actions and, even more so, our collective motivation, it is money.  War is all about money — historically and even today.  Yes, there are ideological differences that lead nations to fight one another, but ultimately it is about all that jingles, glitters, and folds.  War is about one country wanting something another country has: be it land or a wealth of resources, like oil and land.  It also motivates human action on a minor scale.  Whenever you get a spam call, it’s because someone wants your money.  Whenever you watch a TV show — all those commercials?  It’s about money.  Whenever someone tells you about “a really good deal,” it’s about money.  We spend so much of our time working — as third of our day, at least — in order to earn money to buy things that we believe fill our lives with joy, but often, like a child, we tire of the bright, colorful Christmas gift shortly after we open it and play with it for an hour.

Money makes us insatiable.

But let’s get back to today’s readings because they have a lot to teach us.  It is the love of money that is the root of all evil, not money in and of itself.  Money can actually help us achieve wonderful, benevolent goals.  Charitable organizations cannot just run on the lofty intentions of their members.  They need money to get things done.  The arts are able to flourish because of the money that enables all of society to nourish their minds and swell their hearts.  We, in Boston, would be poorer if we lost our treasured museums and symphonies, would we not?

Money also enables philanthropic organizations to make life better for us all.  Look no further than this church as an example.  Every year, when your pledge card arrives in the mail (and it will be coming soon), you have two options: you indicate how much money you want to go towards operating expenses and how much you want to go towards mission and outreach.  We need operating funds so that we have a place where we can worship and serve God, but we also need them to fund the mission work we do right here in our community and across the world.  Money can achieve great things.

But when we love money — when it literally guides all of our thoughts and actions and coaxes us to focus on it exclusively — we are in the realm of the satanic.  It doesn’t mean we worship Satan, but it does mean that we are knocking on his door, or, better yet, he is knocking on ours.  Too many of us answer only to find Satan as handsome as a prince with bags of cash just for us!

Loving money places our priorities in the wrong place.  It means we trust in wealth over God.  When the Bible tells us about Jesus instructing one person to sell all of his possessions and follow him, the man, we are told, walked away dejected because he had much wealth — when the Bible tells us this, it is telling us something as well.  If you put your money before God, if you trust your possessions and live your life gaining and guarding them, then you are putting money before Jesus.  You are worth more than that.  Your soul is worth more than that.  God created us for a personal relationship with him.  When we rejected that relationship by being lured away by the golden calves we constructed, God upped the ante (no pun intended): he came here in the flesh to teach us what our priorities should be.

Our spiritual nature comes without cost, and it is the greatest possession we have.  We are far more than the physical, and money, being material, is part of the physical.  We are connected with a God who offers us something money cannot buy.  That “something” is twofold:

First, it gives our lives direction and purpose.  We see everything from God’s perspective.  This, among other things, gives us an ethic to live by.  When Jesus said that we are to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength and our neighbor (who is everybody) as ourselves, he places that dual command in a specific order: in other words, you cannot love your neighbor as you love yourself unless you love God wholeheartedly.  This is the source of the true purpose of our lives.  God comes first.

Second, God offers us a home in the heavens — eternal salvation.  The grave is not our final address.  Death’s sting has been overcome, because of the crucifixion and the resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  (Can I get an “Amen”?)  It is somewhat ironic that John (in the Book of Revelation) describes the streets of heaven being paved with gold and God’s temple being adorned with jewels.  Even in Jesus’ day, people were obsessed with money: you were either on the inside of the sociopolitical structure and had money to burn, or you were poor and painfully knew the cost of poverty.  But the financial playing field is leveled in heaven.  There, we are all rich.  There, we are all kings.

Jesus says, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”  Have you invested in God or earthly materialism?  Don’t get me wrong: there is nothing wrong with wanting to be financially stable and secure, but if that becomes your sole focus, then you are treading on dangerous ground.  The first of the Ten Commandments tells us to place no other gods before our God.  Placing money before God is the height of idolatry.  Instead, we are to store up for ourselves treasures in heaven.  That’s true wealth.

Let me close with this.  All of our currency has the following written on it: “In God We Trust.”  Yet it seems that the more of it we have, the less we believe that.  Instead, money becomes our god.  Remember, as Jesus also teaches us, you cannot serve God and mammon (mammon being another word for wealth).  Put your heart and worship where it belongs.  Put your faith in the God made known to us in Jesus Christ.  If you do, you will be the richest person you know.  Amen.