Do you remember that speech? It was part of the script of the old movie Wall Street.

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1 Message February 25, 2018 Given by: Geoff Kohler Series: Navigang Chaos Scripture: Mark 10:17-27; Hebrews 4:12-16 Title: A Way Out of Want Well, ladies and gentlemen, we're not here to indulge in fantasy, but in polical and economic reality. America, America has become a second-rate power. Its trade deficit and its fiscal deficit are at nightmare proporons. [Things must change ] The point is, ladies and gentleman, greed -- for lack of a be%er word -- is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evoluonary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms -- greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge -- has marked the upward surge of mankind. Do you remember that speech? It was part of the script of the old movie Wall Street. There is at least a queson around today over whether or not this is true about greed. As a society, we may feel uncomfortable admi8ng to greed, but we may sll waffle a bit when we think over whether or not it is a movang factor, even a helpful movang factor for economic stability. Isn t a li;le greed, okay? A li;le bit of want isn t that the thing that drives people to achieve? Shouldn t we be figuring out how to do well to get the best deal, how to organize ourselves, how to find the best version of a product to beat out the compeon? Isn t that kind of movaon helpful in making us work hard, seek innovaon, or even, simply, do well. Isn t that what greed is about? No. It s not. We re told in any study of deadly sins that greed doesn t have anything to do with doing well. Doing well has a parcular community connecon. Greed doesn t connect with community at all. Greed is a direct a;ack on our neighbor. There is an ancient proverb that finds its first declaraon in our Bibles as a law. Think about that for a moment. There was a law given back in Deuteronomy that hundreds of years later in the book of Proverbs became a statement of wisdom. That s intriguing, don t you think? First, 1

2 the Law said, You must not treat each other this way. And then, a king who was gathering wisdom wrote out, Yeah that s really wise. Don t do that. The statement was Don t move the boundary markers that were set up in the land by your ancestors. Whether law or proverb this was understood as the right way to act toward each other. Why? Moving a boundary marker was an a;empt to expand your property. To put it bluntly, moving the boundary marker robbed your neighbor of land, rights, and heritage. That makes sense but the ancient boundary markers of Israel were an even deeper part of life. They were understood to be the borders set up by God. When the people Moses led arrived in the promised land, boundary markers seconed off enormous plots that were understood to be the gid of God to the families of the people of Israel. This didn t mean you couldn t purchase property that was across your border, but it marked out where the borders were and the people were told to leave those markers alone. The greater reason for this is that they were ed into ge8ng second chances at life, securing the future of generaons later on, and assisng people to remain humble before God. All of that is revealed as you e together the laws of community that are found in the Old Testament. There are laws of community and laws of faith in the Old Testament. The earliest form of these is found in the 10 Commandments. The laws of community are the ones Jesus lids up to the Rich Young Ruler in our Scripture don t murder, don t commit adultery, don t steal, don t give false tesmony, don t defraud, honor your father and mother the ones that teach our souls the worth of others. Jesus doesn t lid up to the man the laws of faith, those that teach our souls the worth of God. When Jesus speaks to this man, he speaks about the man s connecon to community. In a sense, he is challenging the man to assess whether he can see how important community is for him. The man claims that he has always done that, and so Jesus leads him into having no god but God to give up the power of money. And he can t. Greed is deadly because it subtly takes over God s place in our souls. The power of money is the closest thing we have to the power of God. Money can make stuff happen. It can be used to create, to change life, to bring help when it is needed. It feels like it will answer our 2

3 problems. We begin to depend on it to create the future, to guarantee the future. Allegiance to the power of money seems to answer all problems, but it doesn t. It separates us from reality with a promise of control. Allegiance to the power of money can make us believe that we are independent, without the need of others. What Jesus pointed out was that money replaces our connecon with God and also with other people. Greed separates us from the worth of other people. It causes us to a;ack our neighbor and their well-being. It deadens our souls to the connectedness of life, how much we rely on our neighbors work and their life and health and future. It encourages us to pretend that we can handle all problems, that our future is secure, that we are in control. It teases us into thinking that our increasing of our wealth won t affect others, but that s because it is separang us from how interconnected life really is. Let s make this plain with an example. Let s look at how Greed a;acks our neighbors. We have an opioid crisis in our country today, and to fight it people began tracking back the lineage of the drugs. They discovered doctors who overprescribed the drugs. Doctors reported that they were told that these new painkillers were either less addicve or non-addicve by the companies reps. So, the invesgators moved on and they began to find drug wholesalers and drug manufacturers who were flooding regions of the country with massive amounts of painkillers. Over 41 States have moved to invesgate or ligate against drug companies and distributers. And where were these massive amounts being sent to rural counes. We should understand a couple of things from that. First, these were being sent to people who lived in a more isolated life-style. Second, they were being sent to us. Lancaster is a rural county. There was a movement to gain profit by harming the people of our county, and it was intenonal. How intenonal? In our local paper this week, it was reported that in one rural county of Eastern Kentucky over 245 doses were delivered for every man, woman or child. In another there was over 300. And this isn t just in our country. A few years back I was in Ireland studying and I picked up the London Times and discovered their magazine secon had an arcle on the opioid crisis in England. It was like reading the local paper of Lancaster. It was same story, reporng the same informaon about how the rural counes of England, like Lancaster, were inundated with opioids. 3

4 This means that there was an intenonal, internaonal movement to create billions of dollars by crushing people we don t need to care about, because they re not us. They re just our neighbors. What s the impact of that choice? Let s e this together. Lancaster County takes righmul pride in being part if not the breadbasket of America. We produce a lot of food for the rest of the country and it takes an enormous amount of work. Suppose we broke the backbone of that labor force by ge8ng the people who make it up addicted to drugs? What would that do to the well-being of our county or even our country? Greed is a direct a;ack against our neighbor. Greed isn t the beneficial movaon to do well. Greed is an aching, addicve want for power. Jesus talked about money just a ny bit less than he talked about the kingdom of God. That s significant. One of the things that tells us is that money has spiritual power. Jesus made that explicit when he said, You can t serve God and money. This is because they both demand allegiance to their power. The difference is that allegiance to God s power delivers connecons to life. Allegiance to the power of money separates us from God and others. It destroys life because the only words it knows are mine and more. We can either use money to free ourselves and other people to live in the abundance of the world by making jobs, resources and opportunies available or we can horde whatever we can get for ourselves. We can deepen our connectedness with life and others and God or we can silently creep in and move the boundary markers so that we can have more and that gently kills our own souls. This is why it s easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to get into heaven. The love of money, the ache, the want, the need it produces deadens us from the abundance of life, instead of providing it. And so, we need to consider how we handle this kind of power and how we keep it from handling us. When we begin to recognize the power we handle in money, we need to focus, to get clear on our choices. The first way we can overcome the power of money is to humble ourselves before God for anything we receive because it is a gid that helps sustain us and connects us into community. We work with others to get money and we help supply others needs as we provide goods or services. This leads us into gratude, thanks for work, for fellow workers and for rewards. 4

5 Humility before God is all about handling money wisely. Learning how to handle money wisely, how to make interest work for us and not against us and how to be sensible with invesng is all Godly work. It connects us with God as it is done in conversaon with God. The second way we can overcome the power of money is to let it go. By that I mean we must give it away with no strings a;ached. Jesus said, Give to anyone who asks of you. Without ge8ng into the specifics of whether it is right to help panhandlers or what about people who will misuse funds they receive the point of giving is to break the power of money from our souls. Being able to give money away, relying on God to provide, teaches our souls to rest in gratude. When we give money away with no strings a;ached in any way, to anyone we are in charge of our money. Money isn t in charge of us. When we can t give away money, we make money stronger than God to our souls. We deaden part of our souls. Remember that sin deadens parts of our souls that are supposed to work. The sin of Greed deadens our reliance on God. When our souls work well, we aren t living in scarcity. We are working with God and expecng God will provide the resources we need as we need them. We rely on the presence and power of God, even as we do our work. This teaches our souls to use money, instead of trying to get it. In a couple of months, we re going to host a class on handling money well. Our Trustees are encouraging people to take this course and it will be led by one of our Trustees, George Zook, who put it together. You may have heard of other programs for Chrisan money management. This expands on those courses and it comes from within our church. As we get to Easter, you ll begin see adversements for the course. The third way we can overcome the power of money is through simplicity. Read over the Focus piece Pastor Dan has wri;en up for our bullens. Chaos is revealed when we start to make choices that just help us survive, that just take care of ourselves. We can try to forge our own security or we can take our hands off the controls and allow God to navigate our pathway through the storms of life. 5