Money Makes the World Go Round

Some thoughts about God and Money…

Finance is a great concern in any religious establishment – every mosque, temple, church and cathedral, synagogue and chapel – has bills to pay, wages to cover, buildings in need of mending, never mind the needy to care for. So it’s not surprising that money is high on the agenda whenever religious leaders get together. And so it was that a rabbi, a priest and a Unitarian minister were talking together one day about this thorny issue of money and the divine. Not surprisingly they all took a collection in their worship time each week and the discussion centred on how to decide what portion of this money belonged to God and what portion to the leader themselves – wages in the religious world being somewhat slim. The rabbi explained that after the collection each Shabbat he would draw a circle on the ground, throw the money from the collection high up in the air – what lands in the circle belongs to him and what lands outside is for the most Holy One.

“What a coincidence” said the priest – “I do the same, or similar. I throw the money in the air and whatever lands in the circle belongs to God. That which falls outside the circle that is for me.”

“Well, fancy that” said the Unitarian minister. “We’re similar too. Each Sunday after we’ve taken the collection, we take the money from the collection bags, I make the circle on the floor and throw the collection up in the air – then whatever God wants God takes and whatever falls back down to the ground – well that is clearly for me.”

When I used to teach religion to teenagers there would come a point with most classes where the young people, and especially the thoughtful ones, would turn against religion. They’d see it as the cause of all the world’s problems, the cause of wars, and many other forms of conflict. If we didn’t have religion, they’d say, the world would be alright. And gently I’d have to guide them to the realisation that religion isn’t the problem with the world – its people. The world would be a far more peaceful place without us humans.

At some point I think that many of us reach a similar realisation about money – money isn’t the root of all evil – humanity is. Money and religion are merely vehicles for human expression and interaction – which is not to say that they are not worthy topics for consideration – but we do not need to blame them for our own struggles. We invented them I think to carry our needs and our yearnings. The question then is how does a global community use money for good and not as a means of exploitation.

It’s always interested me that Jesus, as recorded in the Gospels, spoke more of money than he did of heaven and hell. And we find the same in most of the world’s religions – they are seeking to guide us humans through the challenge of living in a material world with a spiritual orientation. They tackle the essential ethical questions of existence. It is inevitable that life is unfair, that the resources we need to exist are distributed inequitably. How then must we live? Many such teachings centre on our anxiety, on our o so human trait of clinging on – for safety, for power perhaps, for control. But the voice of the spirit beckons us onwards to a place of potential where we realise the true values of life. There’s nothing wrong with money until we cling in fear to it. Both the rich and the poor and all those placed somewhere in between can be liberated or enslaved by finance. Jesus’ marvellous image, of the rich man hoping to enter heaven being as easy a task as a camel making its way through the eye of a needle, is pointing out that the more we have the more we tend to cling to it. It all depends what we truly value, what we hold to be of worth.

I was sharing a meal with some friends the other night and asking their views about this topic for today’s service of money. The conversation quickly degenerated into a telling of jokes and a singing of songs – all of which you are mercifully to be spared. But what became clear was our interest in the topic and perhaps our equal measure of discomfort about it – money is not a comfortable subject to discuss and most of us have our secret prides and shames around this subject.  No wonder really – for unless we live in a completely sheltered community, withdrawn from the world, money is the currency of life, it does indeed make the world go round – and go round in ways that many of us who care about  justice find difficult to accept. Henri Nouwen, the Dutch born Catholic priest writes movingly of money when he describes it thus: “Money has something to do with that intimate little place in your heart where you need security and don’t want to give that away”.

However well off we are and however much personal exploration we have engaged in, that insecurity is there – perhaps it is symbolic of the very insecurity of life itself.

The history of the development of money is a fascinating one. Our need for a system of exchange – the use of symbols like shells or iron rods to represent that exchange, the use of clay tablets in early civilisations to mark what has been earned through labour. Coins were developed quite late in human history – by the Lydians it seems in what is now modern Turkey – perhaps around 500 BC. And there on one side of many coins and notes is a picture of someone powerful – for finance and power are close companions in our world.

If any of you picked up the £5 note (at the start of the service people were invited to pick a note or a coin from a plate) – it has written on ‘I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of five pounds’.  Notes and coins, and indeed the whole of our financial system, all are based on interesting concepts like trust. When you hear a Chancellor of the Exchequer speaking of ‘confidence in the market’ you may remember that the whole of our financial system is based on such a nebulous idea – confidence: that a house is worth so much, that someone’s labour is worth this amount whilst someone’s else’s is worth hundreds of times more. The more we look at money the more we may marvel or shudder at its power and at its fragility.

So many words are connected with money – wealth, poverty, ownership, charity, competition, loans, trade – both fair and otherwise, generosity, tips, gifts, presents, exchange, transactions, independence and inter-dependence, hoarding and circulation. But in the end money really is a vehicle for human living and it can help us make a link between the spiritual and material realms. When Jesus picked up that coin and said “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s” he cleverly avoided a trap set for him by his questioners. He was not going to lead a rebellion against the Roman powers. But he was going to remind people again and again and again that they themselves had the power, however rich or poor they might be, to do something to redress the injustices of this world.

When I heard Justin Welby, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, speaking out against so called pay day loan companies, that charge poor people interest rates in their thousands of percent, the other week I was impressed. I was even more impressed a few days later when he responded to news reports that the Church of England’s own pension fund had some investments in just such a company. He didn’t wriggle or deny it, he simply expressed once more his commitment to seek an alternative – to help set up credit unions which could lend money at a reasonable rate of interest not an extortionate one. And he usefully pointed out that the complexity of our financial institutions means that most of us do not know what uses our money is being put to nor the true sources of our wealth, in the past or to this day. There is no doubt that money makes the world go round but I wonder – is it too late for us re-assert that we are in charge of our finances and not anonymous investment banks – then we might truly start to use money for the good of all, and to establish ways of living that promote justice and love. I hope I live to see that day. Amen.

Rev. Sarah Tinker

Sermon – 11th August 2013