Any attempt to speak about money in the church runs the risk of provoking a defensive response from the overly cynical. Sometimes, understandable as such cynicism might seem, this response misses the point that money is a primary metaphor for values reminding us of that wonderful insight in Matt 6:21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

When we make a commitment to financially support an organization – it tells others something about our values. It further identifies our desire to contribute value to – as well as derive a sense of value from- because investment is a two-way process providing a sense of purpose and essential meaning.

One of the many paradoxes at the heart of Christian life is that spiritual renewal is so much more than money yet, financial generosity is a key outcome of coming to know our need of God.

Money can make me anxious. I can trace my anxiety back to my early experience of how conversations about money were negotiated in my family.  Hence the question I posed in this week’s E-News: What is your first memory of money – is it a positive or an anxious one?

This early experience has left me with a default expectation of scarcity that is in direct conflict with my actual experience of a life of abundance. This discrepancy between expectation and experience is a paradox- one I am sure I am not alone in having.

God’s promise of abundance is a presumption invites us to trust – despite the countervailing voices of warning sounding in our heads. Because of the evolution of the human brain, fear is a more primary impulse than trust. The architecture of the brain reflects the primal instinct to survive, and fear is more useful than trust in this regard.

Remembering and reflecting on the difference between my fearful expectations and my actual experience in life leads me to recognize that God has been indisputably generous to me. Connecting the dots reminds me that a fear of scarcity, at least in my case, is simply a default state of mind stemming from early memories – fears that persist even in the face of an opposite experience in life.

Our fear of scarcity masks and hides from us our actual experience of abundance. In the grip of presuming scarcity to be the more accurate reflection of reality we fear that being generous will lead to loss of the resources and reserves we might need.

America is the most prosperous country on the globe, maybe the most prosperous society in human history and yet it experiences the highest levels of scarcity anxiety. As the land of plenty to overflowing, we condone unforgivable levels of poverty and deprivation.

There seems to be an inverse relationship between our national prosperity and our levels of societal anxiety.  There persists a belief that there is enough economic capacity for massive tax cuts to the already obscenely wealthy but not enough economic capacity to tackle endemic poverty and inequality. The presumption of abundance, fostering a practice of generosity IS the only effective protest in the face of societal inequality and injustice.

In setting the date for the launch of this year’s fall stewardship drive I should have paid closer attention to the lectionary because it is last Sunday’s gospel reading, I really want for today.

It’s Mark who gives us the most complete sequence of events occurring as Jesus and his disciples take to the road to Jerusalem. The road of course is both an actual road – Jesus and disciples are literally travelling to Jerusalem – and a metaphor for the journey of discipleship.

At Mark 10:17 Jesus is approached by a man who kneeling before him honors him as Good Teacher – then asks what must I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus – ever attuned to the voices of false flattery reminds the man that only God is good. He then in a roundabout way asks the man about following the commandments – presumably the conventionally understood path to eternal life.

The man responds by telling Jesus he has assiduously kept the commandments since his youth. There then occurs one of those moments best described by the Sanskrit word darsana or darshan – meaning to look beyond the appearance of things into the heart of the matter.

In this moment of darsana – seeing into the heart – Jesus acutely discerns the nature of the man’s dilemma. Despite his sincere and disciplined practice of the religious life he’s been unable to really come to know his need of God – leaving him tortured by the sense of something still lacking. Mark reports that Jesus looking at the man, loved him, confirming that there is indeed onelacking.

The practice of the spiritual life is incomplete unless it propels us beyond mere duty or a desire to do the right thing into a compassionate and passionate engagement with the world around us. The man is shocked by what Jesus tells him – this certainly is not what he wanted to hear -and he goes away grieving in the knowledge that what he so desperately seeks will forever elude him.

Jesus’ prescription for eternal life is simple. Yet, it’s simplicity reveals its degree of difficulty. For the quest for eternal life is to follow Jesus. Yet to follow Jesus requires an examination of his relationship between his fear of scarcity and his desire for an experience of spiritual abundance.

That evening in the daily review with his disciples of the events of the day – to emphasize the nature of the difficulty for the rich man in connecting up his fear of scarcity with his longing for spiritual abundance  – Jesus uses a metaphor for the seeming impossibility. He says to the disciples: Children, clearly emphasizing their spiritual immaturity – how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.

Now before we misinterpret Jesus as a preaching naked socialism – a misinterpretation that nicely exempts us – well most of us – from his warning about being rich as an impediment to eternal life. We need to pause and take a second look. Jesus is really talking here not about the enjoyment or perils of financial abundance but about the way financial abundance is seen as  th source of self-sufficient security. The problem is not possessing abundance, but the way our abundance is possessed -possessed defensively as a bulwark against the fear of scarcity. It’s all a matter of attitude.

The source of all our loves in life flow from God’s love for us. In acknowledging this  we come to know our need of God. Between now and November 14^th – ingathering Sunday – I invite us all to consider the necessity of cultivating practices of generosity. I would also ask you to remember that the practice of generosity fundamentally is the strongest and most effective protest against inequality and injustice. As individuals, through our support of St Martin’s we can do so much more in furtherance of these aims than any one of us can do alone.

One of the many paradoxes at the heart of Christian life is that spiritual renewal is so much more than money yet, financial generosity is a key outcome of coming to know our need of God.

 For where your treasure is -there your heart lies also.

Matt 6:21