Brand ME

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
September 26, 2010


Brand ME
1 Timothy 6:6-19

It may be the most frequently misquoted verse in the Bible:
“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”
You might have learned it as,
“money is the root of evil”,
or “money is the root of all evil.”
But do you hear what Paul is saying to Timothy,
what Paul is saying to us:
For the love of money
is a root
of all kinds of evil”

Money is a thing.
We decide its value.
We hammer out a piece of shiny gold metal,
or take silver and pour it into a mold,
and when we have given form to our creation,
we say, “This is worth a dollar,
or twenty dollars,
or a hundred dollars.”

Back in Jesus’ day,
each Roman emperor struck his own coins,
bearing his own image.
A coin bearing the image of an emperor
lost its value the moment a new emperor ascended the throne.

Over time we learned paper is much lighter
and easier to carry than metal coins,
so we learned to take paper,
print some words and numbers on it, and call it money.
Here in this country we print on our money,
“This note is legal tender for all debts”,
the money backed by our federal government.
You put a five dollar bill in the plate,
and the men and women who count the offerings
following the service, won’t have any doubt
about the value of that piece of paper.

The piece of metal with an image of
George Washington stamped on it;
The piece of paper with a solemn
Abraham Lincoln looking at us,
by themselves, they are neither good nor bad;
neither holy nor evil.

We determine whether money is good or bad,
by how we look at it, how we think about it,
by how we use it.
If we love money,
view it as something to covet,
something to horde,
something to accumulate in great quantities,
something to idolize,
we give truth to Paul’s words.
Our focus on money,
our preoccupation, even our obsession
sows the seeds that will take root
and, as Jesus warned, tangle and strangle
God’s word to us.

View money as a resource, however,
something that not only can put food on your table
and a roof over your head,
but can also be used for the common good,
a resource to be shared with others who are less fortunate,
and we view money in a way Paul would approve of,
in a way that would make Jesus smile.

If Paul were to write to his young protégé today,
he would be astounded by the temptations
that surround us,
so many different ways for us to spend our money:
buy this, buy that,
buy, buy, buy:
It’s hard even for the clergy
not to get pulled into rampant consumerism.

The message in our consumer society is,
if you buy this product,
people will think you are more attractive,
sexier, smarter, more successful.
If you buy this, you will be happier.
And so we succumb to the temptations,
reaching for the glittering images
that we think will somehow make us feel better about ourselves.
As the ad goes, “because I’m worth it.”

We’ve become such a ferociously consumer society,
but along with consumerism comes selfishness,
self indulgence,
buy this for you, spend money on yourself
to make yourself feel good.
Build yourself as a brand,
just like Coca Cola, or Nike, or Mercedes:
Brand “me”, represented by
the house I live in,
the clothes I wear,
the car I drive
the restaurants I go to.
Brand “me”,
Brand “you”,
Brand each of us.

In the process, we become a more selfish,
self-centered society;
A society slowly losing its sense of community,
slowly losing its sense of compassion for others,
slowly losing its empathy for others;
empathy: that word we often confuse for sympathy
but means simply “identifying with another’s situation;
understanding another’s feelings.”

A recent study from the University of Michigan
came to some disturbing conclusions:
they found that the generation just starting careers,
families, those who in another 10, 15, 20 years
will be leading businesses, government, churchs,
are markedly less empathetic, less compassionate;
more selfish, more self centered than previous generations.
(The University of Michigan Institute for Social Research;
http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=7724)

Now if we accept the results of the study even in part,
we cannot even think about pointing a critical finger
at the younger generation
without first asking the questions:
Who shaped them?
Who guided them?
Who have been their teachers, coaches, clergy,
and role models?
Whatever they have learned,
they have learned from us.

The Reverend Frederick Buechner argues
that the very essence of any religion, including our own,
is compassion:
“compassion – that capacity for feeling
what it is like to live inside another’s skin,
knowing that there can never really be peace and joy for any
until there is peace and joy finally for all.”

This is what we should be teaching our young people,
that there can never really be peace and joy for ourselves,
until there is peace and joy for all.
But we cannot teach that lesson to anyone
if we haven’t learned it ourselves,
if we haven’t learned how to live it.

And we live it by living our lives as Paul urged Timothy:
pursuing “righteousness, godliness,
faith, love,
endurance, and gentleness.”
It is learning to live a life of compassion for others,
a life built on empathy,
on understanding that whatever we have,
including whatever money we might have,
God calls us to share with those who don’t have enough.

We’ve barely begun the Bible before we find
God teaching all his children,
including you and me,
that life lesson:
Once the children of Israel were established in their new land,
the land of milk and honey,
the land they journeyed for 40 years to find,
once they settled and began to grow crops,
God taught them just what to do at harvest time:
“When you reap the harvest of your land,
you shall not reap to the very edge of your field
or gather the gleanings of your harvest.
You shall not strip your vineyard bare,
or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard;
you shall leave them for the poor and the alien.”
(Leviticus 19:9)

Put another way:
you shall have compassion for the poor,
all the poor,
and always set aside something for them.
We cannot even begin to imagine following such a command now;
we want to maximize our yield,
maximize our profit:
It’s my land,
my hard work that led to such a good harvest;
I deserve all the fruits of my labors.
Isn’t that the thinking now?
We are rapidly becoming a society that seems to prefer
the oath uttered by John Galt in the novel Atlas Shrugged,
the bible of the accumulazzi:
“I swear – by my life and my love of it –
that I will never live for the sake of another man,
nor ask another man to live for mine.”

When the rich young man confronted Jesus
and asked what he needed to do to have eternal life,
you remember Jesus’ response:
“Go, sell your possessions,
and give the money to the poor,
and you will have treasure in heaven;
then come follow me.”
(Matthew 19:21)
Jesus said this to the man not because he wanted to teach us
that we are to give away everything we have.
Jesus said this because he knew the young man
was too attached to his possessions,
to his comfort, to his money
to himself, his own wants and desires
to give away anything.
To give away even one thing would have been
to have given away a part of himself.
His possessions defined him, branded him.

Jesus doesn’t expect us to give away everything we have;
but he warns us
“…the cares of the world, and the lure of wealth,
and the desire for other things come in
and choke the word, and it yields nothing.”
Mark 4:19

The love of money,
the idolization of money,
the worship of money,
the focus on money,
the emphasis on money,
even just the preoccupation with money:
they are the root of all kinds of sin,
because they distract us from God
from living as God commands us,
as Jesus teaches us.

Do you remember the story of the rich man and Lazarus:
We find it only in Luke’s gospel. (16:19)
It is a story about a different Lazarus, not Jesus’ friend,
the brother of Mary and Martha
whom Jesus raised from the dead.
This Lazarus was a starving man, a sick man
who lay in filthy, tattered clothing,
by the gate of the home of a wealthy man,
hoping for even just a few crumbs
from the rich man’s table.

We can only imagine what the wealthy man thought
when he first saw Lazarus near his home.
“Can’t the authorities do something about this?
I don’t want this filthy beggar hanging around my home.
He’s probably just lazy,
too lazy to work,
content to steal a few coins from my purse
rather than putting in an honest day’s labor.”

But as time passed, the rich man
paid less and less attention to Lazarus,
less each day,
until Lazarus all but disappeared in the eyes of the rich man.
Oh Lazarus was still there,
but the rich man simply turned a blind eye to him –
“if I don’t see you, then you are not really there.”
The rich man no longer even noticed the smell
from Lazarus’ filthy clothing, his unwashed body.
The rich man had no compassion;
no empathy.

He may have gone to the Temple
and offered sacrifices each day;
He may have tithed;
He may have been honored by the leaders of the religious community.
But he didn’t love his neighbor as himself.
He loved only himself.
He didn’t pursue righteousness;
He didn’t pursue gentleness;
He didn’t pursue godliness.

The great fourth century theologian Augustine
once wrote, “By lusting after something more,
we are made less
(Augustine: NPNF 1.III.160)
We are made less
as we try to accumulate more,
building brand “me”
rather than seeking the life Christ calls us to,
the life Paul urges Timothy to seek
the real life,
the life where we can find true contentment,
true satisfaction and true peace;
A love grounded in love,
love of God, love for ourselves,
and love for our neighbor,
including the poor, the sick, the weak,
and the stranger.

It is life in which there is nothing wrong with material success,
but it is a life in which our goal, our priority, our focus
is on pursuing righteousness,
godliness,
faith,
love,
endurance, and gentleness.

This is how we will take hold of real life,
true life,
the life that Jesus calls us to.
the life that Paul wants for Timothy.
This is eternal life,
for it is life in the presence of the eternal.

Augustine began his Confessions
with this observation,
“Our hearts will be restless,
until they come to rest in God.”
The irony is that even our money knows that,
perhaps better than we ourselves do,
for our money reminds us,
“In God we trust.”

It isn’t just the wealthy,
but all of us who are called by Jesus,
to do good,
to be rich in good works,
to be generous,
and ready to share.
For in living this kind of life,
living this way
we will have the life that really is life.

AMEN