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Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

1 Timothy 6
6Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment; 7for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it; 8but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. 9But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. 10For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains. 11But as for you, man of God, shun all this; pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. 12Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.


I have it on good authority that there is no money in the future.

How does this happen? When do we chuck our Visa cards and try to tear up our polymer twenties? That’s not clear. And I should add a giant caveat that we’re talking about the Roddenberry future and not the Lucas future. You can be fans of both, but when it comes to money, you have to make a choice.

But before I continue to commit the grave homiletical sin of praising Star Trek while trashing Star Wars, I want to make a prediction. Soon, someone will make a movie about the life of Gene Roddenberry: Decorated WWII pilot becomes a commercial airline pilot becomes a cop with the LAPD becomes screen writer becomes television producer and the creator of a sci-fi universe. I think my favourite part of the story involves Lucille Ball: she went way out on a limb to produce the series pilot, and without her the whole thing may have never happened.

When I say it’s not clear when money becomes irrelevant on Earth, I mean the somewhat obsessive people who track and record the Star Trek ‘canon’ don’t have a definitive answer. In one episode, Kirk tells Spock that when they travel back in time to 20th century Earth they’ll need to to get some money, since it’s still in use. And in the worst film of the lot, the one where they save the whales, Kirk is on a date with the whale doctor, who famously says “Don’t tell me they don’t use money in the 23rd century?” How can you be expected to ‘pick up the check’ when you come from a time without money?

I’ll give the last work on the future to Captain Picard, who said: "A lot has changed in three hundred years. People are no longer obsessed with the accumulation of 'things'. We have eliminated hunger, want, [and] the need for possessions."

So there you have it: A shiny future without want or need, without the base desire to have more than others, where people live peaceably and without fear of the future. Is this even possible? And if it were possible, would people choose to live this way? You might argue that after 10,000 years of inventing civilization we’re hardly going to get it together in the next 300. Or for the Christian church, we’re hardly going to realize the vision of 1 Timothy anytime soon, 1,900 years after these words were put on paper:

Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment; 7for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it; 8but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these.

Individuals, of course, have demonstrated the kind of detachment described throughout the Bible. There are even a handful of examples of faith communities that have tried to live out the command found in Acts 4 that believers should hold everything in common. Generally, however, these experiments have been short lived. By in large the church has been no more successful at eschewing money than any other communistic group.

It’s not from lack of instruction, though:

Proverbs 3.9: Honor the Lord by giving God your money and the first part of all your crops.
Proverbs 11.4: When God is angry, money won’t help you. Obeying God is the only way to be saved from death.
Proverbs 18.11: The rich think their money is a wall of protection.
Ecclesiastes 5.10: If you love money and wealth, you will never be satisfied with what you have.
Ecclesiastes 6.2: God may give you everything you want—money, property, and wealth. Then God doesn’t let you enjoy it, and someone you don’t even know gets it all. That’s senseless and terribly unfair!
Matthew 6.24: You cannot serve both God and money.
Luke 12.33: Sell what you have and give the money to the poor…make sure your treasure is safe in heaven, where thieves cannot steal it and moths cannot destroy it.
Acts 8.20: Peter said to him, “You and your money will both end up in hell if you think you can buy God’s gift!
1 Timothy 6.10: For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.

Notice that it’s one of the “pastoral epistles” (1 Timothy) that lives up to it’s descriptor and offers the most pastoral advice: in the pursuit of wealth people have ‘pierced themselves with many pains.’ On the surface it may sound somewhat ‘blamey’ to say they have ‘pierced themselves,’ but the author of 1 Timothy qualifies it somewhat: [they] “fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.”

In the same way we have developed a more compassionate approach to people who struggle with addiction, 1 Timothy makes it clear that the desire for wealth is a trap that people fall into: it would seem that can’t help themselves.

And the other passages, while less pastoral in approach, provide practical advice to those who live in a world of daily struggle with money and possessions: Money can’t save you, it can’t protect in times of trouble, you will never feel you have enough, and when you die you can’t take it with you. And as for Peter yelling at Simon Magnus, I’ll simply refer you to Acts 8, a remarkable chapter of grace and wonder. There, I’ve planned your afternoon.

Back to money: What 1 Timothy is suggesting is a return to the essence of Christian living:

11But as for you, people of God, shun all this; pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. 12Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

See, however, that he’s not saying give away your money or sell all you have (But if you want to you should see Sue after the service). Recall from last week that 1 Timothy is about ‘hope delayed,’ and living in the world in that period before Christ’s promised return. 1 Timothy is about the middle-way, the compromise that each believer must make in the here-and-now. He understands that we need money to continue, and I’m certain he understands that the goal of communal living remains just a goal: therefore we ‘fight the good fight’ of seeking to live well in the world.

In many ways, the call is to change your relationship with money, something that remains a timeless challenge. We all know the people that have money but complain that they need more. Or the people who would be tempted to share what they have, but remain unconvinced that people in need deserve help. Or the people who are utterly convinced that whatever money they have came purely from their own effort, and not the support of all the people and structures that allowed for their success.

And so this becomes the task of the church: to urge others to share what they have, to caution others on the danger wealth poses to the health of the soul, and to call for changes in the structure of society that creates inequality on the first place. And that’s only half the problem. We can’t ignore that fact that two-thirds of our economy is based on consumer spending, some necessary, but much of it not. The relationship between runaway consumption and climate change is slowly becoming obvious to the population, and the planet suffers.

On March 28, 1958, the White House published a booklet simply entitled “Introduction to Outer Space.” In it, the President’s Science Advisory Committee made the case for developing the technology to explore space. These were heady times: the Soviets had already launched two versions of Sputnik, including Laika, first dog in space, and the Americans were struggling to keep up. Of course, we know that the Americans would eventually win the ‘space race,’ but the White House document predates all of this.

Someone cynical might dismiss the booklet as one more piece of Cold War propaganda, but I think there was more to it. First, it made a case for a new branch of science that would improve communication and human understanding. And secondly, it cast a vision that captured the imagination of at least one screenwriter when the authors of the booklet set a goal: “To explore and discover, the thrust of curiosity that leads [us] to try to go where no one has gone before.”

Science fiction can imagine a future without want or need, where the hunger for possession no longer defines us, and so it falls to people of faith to catch up, to reclaim and restate a vision that we cast in the first place. May we make it so, Amen.

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 6:08 AM