God and Mammon
St. John’s Convent, November 8, 2014
St. John’s Convent, November 8, 2014
I sometimes feel that I should preach homilies that are more
pastoral and less political. And then the lectionary goes and throws things
like today's Gospel. Because really, one of the things we perhaps don't
acknowledge often is that the Gospels are overall more political than they are
pastoral; especially if we understand political in the larger sense, as being
about the great questions of how we organize our common life. Besides which, I've
recently been meeting with a national church task force trying to develop
resources on the theology of money, so it's not a good day to try to dodge this
challenge.
“You cannot serve God and wealth.” The old translation, “God
and Mammon,” though a bit obscure, might actually take us closer to the
meaning, because, by using the name of a minor Roman god of wealth, it makes it
clear that what Jesus is talking about here is that core sin of idolatry. We
may not consciously worship money, not quite – but we do, for the most part,
allow money, the systems of finance, to govern our lives, to make our choices
for us, to tell us the way in which we should go. I feel reasonably sure that
the average Christian, and the average congregation, think and talk about money
far, far more often than they think and talk about God. And in many – most? --
of our churches, a platter full of money sits on the altar through the
eucharistic prayer, along with the bread and wine, along with the body and
blood, and we think that this is a good thing.
But there is little point in blaming individuals. We are all
enmeshed in a gigantic, global economic system from which there is very little
possibility of escape. Every choice we make is made within the boundaries of an
unjust economic order, built on debt and interest and speculation in imaginary
wealth, built on cheap consumer goods and slave labour and hunger, built on an
endlessly turning wheel of false desire and fear. I participate in it
constantly and unconsciously by having money in banks which invest in socially
and environmentally destructive projects, by buying a harmless cookie which
contains palm oil, the production of which is devastating the rainforests.
There is no easy way out.
We need to look back at that very weird bit at the beginning
of the Gospel passage, though. I have no idea why the lectionary editors did
this, but they've attached, at the start, a throwaway and obviously sardonic
comment which Jesus uses to conclude one of his strangest parables, the story
of the unjust steward, whose cleverly devious financial manoeuvres save his job
and his life. The story, in fact, of someone trapped inside a system of
injustice, compelled to play by the rules of injustice, who, for reasons which
are not particularly good or worthy, finds himself undermining the system and
accidentally driving it towards grace. He doesn't get out of the system; but he
bends it a little, faithful – really entirely despite himself – in this little
thing.
It would be better if we were a bit more consciously
faithful. And we can be, to some degree, even while acknowledging our
inescapable complicity. This Sisterhood is actually an outstanding example of
the degrees of escape which are possible, a community which foresakes the
principles of individual ownership and endless consumer desire upon which our
system is built, a community built on a rethinking of human nature more radical
than it may, on the surface, appear. And, because you are a community, you can
do more than most individuals can to, say, generate some of your own
electricity, reorganize your investments, all those things which you are doing.
It is not very dramatic in the terms of the world, and it does not solve our
great problem of being enmeshed in Mammon's world; but it is that little escape
from idolatry which can let the rest of us know that some escape is possible.
Mammon isn't getting out of our lives, or our churches, any
time very soon. But accepting that we can only be faithful in relatively little
does not mean that we settle for being faithful in as little as possible. At
the very least, those of us who are not part of this Sisterhood should be more
mindful of the real and important challenge the Sisterhood poses to us. Pray,
and choose, and renounce, and care. And allow ourselves, little by little, to
be welcomed into that great community, before which all the values of the world
fall down.
