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Don't worry about money
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| 10/5/2008 |
At the house, I came across an old card table the other day. The top covering is split and the legs are bent; it wobbles. Lynn has a bunch of her work piled up on it. I was surprised that I had never thrown it out.
I remember it from my childhood. On Sunday nights, my Mom and Dad would set it up in the den and spread out all the bills on it, as if spreading them out made it possible to pay them.
It’s probably all of the tumult in the financial world that brought back the memory.
My parents would wait until late Sunday nights to play the game of pretending they had enough money. I’d be sent to bed, but wouldn’t fall asleep, for fear of their yelling at each other about how they each spent too much money would wake me up. I’d cry, and I would swear to myself and pray to God that when I was grown up, I would always have enough money and would always pay my bills. If only it were that simple.
Somewhere along that journey called growing up, I learned a skill from my parents that they excelled at: If you pretended that you had enough money, no one would know that you really didn’t. If you lived in a big house, neighbors wouldn’t know that you couldn’t afford it. If you belonged to a fancy, expensive, exclusive club, others with a lot of money wouldn’t know you didn’t have the money to belong there. There was no cost too high to pay for this illusion.
I thank God that I have unlearned this lesson.
I guess the card table got me remembering this way, but so does the Apostle Paul, there in Philippians. “If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more.” He’s saying that if he was to brag about how much he had—wealth, status, education, community standing, reputation and influence—he could out brag anyone.
It’s fashionable today to speak of our humble origins, of our hardships growing up, of how we rose from simple status. Far better to be from Main Street and not Wall Street, to be Joe Six Pack, not Jane Merlot, and to spend a lot of time in Home Depot, not Restoration Hardware. Paul is saying the opposite. He came from the best family, belonged to the best temple, had the best diploma on the wall, and had a pure heritage that wasn’t diluted by other peoples from who knows where. He had never been touched by any kind of scandal, nor were there skeletons in his closet. He loved the right people, and hated the ones he was supposed to hate. He was tough on criminals, a giver to good causes, and I bet he even flossed. “As to righteousness,” he says at the end of his little brag, “I am blameless.”
Paul is remembering back to when he had so much. He has lost it all. Because of mortgages, or the stock market? Because of Christ. “Whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things, and regard them as rubbish. . . .” Paul is writing from a prison cell. While he was once blameless under the law, the law now condemns him. He has no money, no status. All he has is his fellowship with the humanity of Christ, and for Paul this is a far greater gain. He knows he is loved, reconciled with God, forgiven, and saved. What else is there? With that as his prize possession, all other possessions are meaningless.
Yesterday, in the DOCC program, we were giving our spiritual autobiographies, sharing the events of our lives that have special spiritual significance. I decided to start with sharing something from when I was 8 and 9 years old that I rarely reveal, even to myself, but that card table brought the memory back.
When in third grade, I made several trips to the hospital; I was suffering from chronic nausea and stomach pain. The pediatrician couldn’t find anything, nor could the child psychiatrist. So assuming the worst, I was admitted to the hospital for every test imaginable. After endless electro-encephalograms and x-rays, the doctors ordered the last test they could think of, out of desperation. I drank radioactive barium and had my stomach scanned. To their amazement, I had a stomach ulcer. A nine year old with a stomach ulcer! Who could believe it?
But why? doctors asked me in grand rounds, because I was quite the medical sensation. I didn’t know what caused ulcers, so I asked. The doctors told me, worrying about something and not telling anyone, so much that it actually burned a hole in my stomach. What was I worried about? they wanted to know. I didn’t want to tell them everything, so I gave what seemed the most obvious answer: I told them I was worried about money. They sat in stunned silence. Not only was I a nine year-old with an ulcer, I was worried about money.
The true answer was more painful. I can barely say it now. I was worried I cost too much, that my parents couldn’t afford me, and that was what caused the Sunday night fights at the card table I’ve hauled around with me for the last 40 years.
The Apostle Paul never worried that he cost too much. He took great comfort that God, through the sufferings of Christ, had paid an inestimable price for Paul’s certainty that he was unconditionally loved by God, and that this reality was his greatest possession, a gift of infinite value worth more than anything he had ever had. “I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”
Even though he is suffering in prison, and his death sentence may be carried out shortly, he wants to assure the Christians back in Philippi that he is full of joy and rejoices in the knowledge of God’s love of him. The hardship helps him be sure: “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”
I am not sure Paul’s enthusiasm at the prospect of suffering so as to be closer to Christ is much comfort to those of us who are suffering right now, especially because of financial problems. I know that there are many of you struggling, or who are deep in financial trouble.
The reason I told that sad story from my childhood is to remind us how toxic and deadly our beliefs about money can be. I really thought that I had a monetary worth. I thought that because there wasn’t a lot of money, I wasn’t worth much.
I know you can believe this because so many of you suffer from similar heresies. I know we all need to grapple with money on a practical, real-world basis, but what happens to us financially has nothing to do with our inestimable worth with God.
The card table, and Paul’s letter, reminded me how screwed up I was about money. Now, I truly believe money has little power or influence (I won’t say “no power”) over me.
I live by some wisdom that is hidden in the closing portion of Paul’s letter to the Philippians; you’ll have to read it in your Bibles, because it rarely comes up in a church service. You find it in chapter 4, verse 4: “Rejoice in the Lord, always; again, I will say, Rejoice.” There is no problem, no suffering, no difficulty, that can rob any of us the sheer joy of life itself, and knowledge that our life is a gift from God.
“The Lord is near,” Paul writes. “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your request be made know to God.” Now, I know that its simplistic and unrealistic to say that prayer will solve your money struggles. No, that’s not what I am saying. Rather, prayer and supplication, full of thanksgiving for the blessings you do have, will present opportunity for new vision and peace about reality. As Paul writes, “The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
A few verses later, an interesting detail pops up, when Paul writes, “I rejoice in the Lord greatly that now at last you have revived your concern for me; indeed, you were concerned for me, but had no opportunity to show it.” Paul is referring to the fact that the church of these Philippians have sent money to sustain Paul during his imprisonment. In fact, the money they have sent may keep his death sentence from being carried out. In a way, the entire letter is a thank you note for the money sent. But Paul is driving home throughout that if they hadn’t sent the money, and if he went to the gallows, he would still be full of grace, peace and joy.
And here is the wisdom he shares that can be so helpful to us right now: “I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need.”
And what is that secret that could so help us right now, that could have helped me in the hospital as a child, that could have put my parents at ease when they sat down at the old card table?
“I can do all things through God who strengthens me,” Paul writes.
May God, and our faith, strengthen us all in the complicated financial times.
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