Penteost 24

Pentecost 24 (Mark 12:38-44)

“For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but, she out of her poverty has put in everything she had.”

Money is the frozen energy of our time.

Money is a vital aspect of the way we live our lives in the here and now. The here and now is not the same as the world God designed. Neither does it define the life of the world to come.

God did not create money. Eventually, money will cease to exist. While it does exist God gives us one basic principle to help us understand money. The principle is love. Love is activated by choice.

The song in the musical Cabaret “Money Makes the world go round” has a certain contextual truth. The old phrase: “everything has a price”also has a half truth. Strangely enough, the value in money is a shared illusion. We choose to agree that certain pieces of metal and paper have a value. We choose to assign different values to the time and labor of different people. Those values reflect our priorities. Those values define our souls and hence our way through this life and our destination in the life of the world to come.

God asks of us to choose how we use the money we earn according to the threefold pattern of love.

The first priority is the use of money as an act of worship. The standard God gives so we can make a real choice in the matter is the tithe. The tithe is 10% of what we actually earn from any source. The tithe is an act of worship. As an act of worship, God directs us to present the tithe at the altar of sacrifice.

The second priority is our family. Of the 90% of our income God authorizes us to keep, our next priority is the support of our family.

The third priority is to help the needy. If after the tithe and the support of our family we have money available, our Heavenly Father invites us to use that money to help the less fortunate and less abled,.

The fourth priority is you personally and individually. The world, of course, encourages us to focus on “me first.” God assures us that if we meet the priorities of love He sets before us we will not be forgotten.  Our needs and even some of desires will be met.

God revealed these priorities to Moses as laws. The laws are there to remind us of the first principles of Creation. The laws are there to facilitate the activating principle of love: choice.

The prophets hold us accountable for our choice. While they sometimes use the language of rewards and punishments they are most focused on cause and effect. The prophets held people accountable in two basic areas of choice: time and money.

God’s standard for us in how we use our time in grounded in the Sabbath Day.God’s standard for us in how we use the frozen energy of our time is the tithe.

God also recommends we make offerings for special purposes from time to time. The offering is not the tithe, Offerings are always an expression of our compassion for other people. The tithe is an expression of our worship. The prophets clearly state: how you spend your money reveals who or what you actually worship.

Jesus came to help us understand that God is love. Jesus in his words and actions clarifies for us that of ourselves we are lost in separation from God. The evidences of separation are pride, self-will and fear. The behavioral outcomes of separation are the distortions of the three primary virtues God created us to enjoy. Those three primary virtues are faith, hope and charity.

Faith leads us to the altar of sacrifice on the seventh day to present our tithes in an act of worship. Jesus defines worship as the highest form of love. Worship is the way we empty ourselves in order to be filled with the divine blessing of infinite love. That is why Jesus commends the poor widow for her offering. As small as it was compared to the offerings of the rich it nevertheless represents the essence of divine love. That essence is abundance.

The rich who gave a little out of their material abundance reveal their spiritual poverty before God. They hold onto their wealth but in the process diminish their souls. As they diminish their souls they have no time or space to embrace the infilling of divine love.

The widow who gave everything from her material poverty reveals her spiritual abundance before God. She empties herself of her attachments and in the process is filled with grace. As she is filled with grace God Himself moves in the circumstance of her life to meet her material needs. This angered and bewildered the religious elites of the day. They looked for the reward and preached the punishment. Jesus proclaimed the Good News of divine love that sets us free from separation into a path of reunification.

The standard for the use of our time is the Sabbath. The standard for the use of our money is the tithe. The activating principle is choice. The reality of making that choice is the infusion of divine grace, infinite love and eternal life.

It was that grace, love and life that filled the widow and enabled her to give not just the minimum of 10%, or an impressive 25% or an amazing 50%. She gave 100% of what she had in an act of worship.

Jesus does not condemn the wealthy. He simply points out that the reality of the tithe is the choice to make love through worship our highest priority in how we use our time and money.