God Redefines Our Money Story

My Money Story

Last week and next week our church has been and will be thinking about our money story. And in preparation it has gotten me thinking about my money story. For me I sort of felt like my money story involved a couple of key plot point, turns if you with.

My money story has come out of a number of aha moments with money. A number of moments where God and the communities that I found myself in helped me to re-imagine my use of Money.

I remember the first time that I had really put together that my money story was the same as my God story.

That my money story is my discipleship story

Story in New Testaments Class

Blank Performing Arts Center

talking about the book of Mark and particularly the many teachings that Jesus has about money

my professor said “there is no greater metric of my spiritual life than my checkbook and my calendar”

At the time I was obsessed with my calendar

I was trying to fit as much as I possibly could in my schedule

I was also obsessed with my checkbook

I remember I was in a work study position making close to minimum wage at a part time position so I was wealthy by any stretch the the imagination

Moment of pause

realized that part of discipleship was giving

I realized all of the lies that I believed about generosity were not true

That giving didn’t somehow buy my way closer to God

That I wasn’t just giving so that the church could keep it’s doors open

I wasn’t just giving so I could feel warm and fuzzy feelings about it

In that moment I realized that the more I trust in my calendar and my checkbook (or let’s be real my debit card)

The more those things became my higher power

The less I was able to think about God when my fists were tightly clenched around my money and my calendar the more restricted I was in

I remember another turn in money story where I realized

Stewardship is about our faithfulness to God not our faithfulness to an institution

Serving as a pastor in light of a capital campaign

I was pray-fully discerning my own giving to the capital campaign, and thinking about how peculiar it is that I am a pastor giving to the church.

After all my paycheck comes from the church, so giving some of that back feels odd, and also in a strange way it is just diverting funds from the personnel line item to the capital line item. In a sense it is unclear if a pastor giving is a reduction in expense or an increase in income for the church.

In the midst of that I was realizing something which is that I don’t give because the institution has needs I give because I have a need for generosity. That when I am holding on to my own resources with closed fists and white knuckles I know that not all is well with my spirit. \

There are a lot of institution and things that vie for my attention and my resource, but few of them gave me a liberation message around money.

- I have a spiritual need to give that is a part from the needs of any intuition.

- I don’t give to the church because I have some sort of responsibility to church, I give to the church because it is what is best for my own spiritual life

- Because there is a certain holiness in the action of giving, and by giving I re-orient my whole money story.

Behind that church there was a 4 acre garden that was a ministry of the church and gave thousands of pounds of produce mostly to Des Moines Area Religious Council Food Bank very year

I still remember talking with one of the leaders of that garden as they said something about the garden but being a pastor I read way more into it.

When someone was talking about how the church “owned a garden” this leader was quick to jump in and say “we don’t own a garden, we are gardeners.”

That my money story is not about ownership it is about stewardship

- Agape Garden

similarly I remember a phrase that the President of My Seminary said to me once which was that

- Tom Wolfe - “We own nothing but are responsible for everything”

We all carry money stories, our own, our family’s, our church’s, and our nation’s.

Our Money Story

We live in a world where money is almost in the air that we breath

Our Money determines the schools we attend, the careers we pursue, the decisions about our families that we make, the places we live, and the ways that we navigate around those places, and so much more. Yet it is still something that we don’t spend much time talking about.

God’s Money Story

Beyond my money story, and our money story, if I may be so bold to suggest it, there might just be such thing as God’s money story. If God had a money story, I think these two passages today one about Gleanings and one about Jubilee might be in one of the Chapters of God’s money story.

Disclaimers

Before we dive into these specific practices though we have to get some disclaimers out of the way.

The system of economics in Israel is significantly different than our system of economics.

The land belongs to God, and this particular land was gifted to the Israelites.

The economic system was a hierarchical system that began with a family, then a clan, and the largest of which was a Tribe.

It can be easy for us to read a passage like this and to say see, we are supposed to do that, so let’s all go forgive debts, and blast the trumpet, and we’re close enough to the beginning of the new year let’s just make 2025 the year of jubilee.

The take away from our passage is perhaps not just to re-organize our economic system based off of this one practice. To transplant the practice of the year of Jubilee without transplanting the remaining systems seems rather foolish.

I want to suggest that it might not be wise to take a first century Hebrew economic practice and assume that it what we are called to spiritually engage in the same way.

A much more challenging question for us to wrestle with here is to ask what God is doing in this passage and to imagine, or re-imagine together what God might be doing in our midst.

When we think about God’s money story

God re-imagines money as being about relationship

Relationships with those on the margins

Realities of the Poor

Widows - couldn’t own property. The most basic unit of Israelite society was the family, but the family was defined by patriarchy. So if you were a widow you were quite literally not a part of a family unit.

Foreigners - Could not farm because land was tended to generation after generation, and there was no system in which land could be bought or traded.

Orphans - again no resource and also no way to acquire resource.

Some of the first recorded instances of economic practices that center the needs of the marginalized

A system that is designed to reach the corners

Nadia Boltz Weber in her book Shameless recounts the experience of taking off from a plane in Denver International airport, a trip I have made several times, and looking out the windows to see the fields of agriculture. The plots of land are in squares, but the irrigation systems are circular. Hence there are the corners that left to be malnourished. She dreams of a system of faith that is designed to reach the people that are relegated to the corners.

That imagery sits with me quite differently as I think about this passage.

Gleaning was about setting aside the excess, and about the corners both literally and figuratively.

It is a type of re-imaging that prioritizes those on the margins without disregarding those in the mainstream, and collectively dreams up a world where there would be no margin to be on.

Relationships with our own families

Relationship not just with those that are on the margins but also prioritizing relationships within a family.

The practice of Jubilee restored property to the family rather than the clan or the tribe which were larger subsets of the world as it were.

It was not just redistribution it was also reunion of all that had gone astray

God re-imagines ownership

We translate the word to property, but the Israelites would have understood the land as God's property and themselves as tennets of the land.

It was always God’s land that the people were being led to.

The land is simultaneously divine ownership and divine gift. Our resources are simultaneously divinely owned and divine gifts. They are divinely owned in that we own nothing and are responsible for everything. They are divinely gifted in that it is a true jubilee celebration simply to be.

Through these practices God leads people to Holiness

It is just so clear in reading the texts around this and in reading the book of Leviticus itself, that a very central theme here is holiness.

Because God is set apart the Israelites must be in a state of holiness. An Israelite could become unclean by being contaminated by touching death. Simply being impure was not wrong, it was temporary you would be. The problem was when you bring the impure things into the pressence of God. These things act as cultural symbols.

They don’t glean because they have an obligation to the poor, they glean because they never owned the field to begin with. They glean because They have a responsibility to God. But even more than that They glean out of gratitude for the land and for the God that brought them to the land. And for the joy of dwelling in that land for the past 49 years.

Our Second passage about Jubilee in verse 12 reads

Leviticus 25:12 NRSV

12 For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you: you shall eat only what the field itself produces.

When people are asked about their experience of Money, I wonder how often they describe it as Holy. They might say fearful, angry, personal, they generally don't pair the word holy with it. What would it take for when someone asks you about money you share about holiness?

What would it take for us to describe our relationship with our resources as Holy

Again I want to caution us against implying that one isolated example of an economic practice from a first century Hebrew community is for us. Instead I wonder what a God who re-imagine

What you should do in light of God’s Money Story

When we look at the chapter of God’s money story that involved the Israelites in Leviticus we don’t only see

Re-imagining in this way I believe always start on the level of the individual.

What ways might you sense that God is calling you to re-imagine your money story?

Again I want to caution us against implying that one isolated example of an economic practice from a first century Hebrew community is for us. Instead I wonder what a God who re-imagine

What we all should do in response to God’s Money Story

Perhaps we are called to re-imagine our nation’s money story with a narrative that is different that that of predatory lending, and debt for education and medicine to live.

Maybe God is calling us to re-imagine a church money story that nourishes all people so that there would be no margins.

Maybe God is calling you to re-imagine a relationship with Money that is based on holiness rather that security.

God is calling us to a holy reimagining of our money story

Prayer Time

Friends, I invite you into a time of embodied prayer, holding the dried beans you were given as you entered worship.

In scripture, we learn of the Year of Jubilee—a time every fifty years when the edges of the crops are left for the poor

and the hungry to glean, when families return home for rest and Sabbath, when debts are canceled and the harvest

is shared. In our time of prayer, let us imagine what Jubilee could look like in our world.

I invite you to take your red bean

and clench it tightly in your left hand. As you do so, silently give thanks to God

for all that you have—for the resources that nourish you and the love that sustains you. Let us pray.

(Time for silence.)

And now, I invite you to take your white bean and clench it tightly in your right hand. As you do so, silently pray

for those who do not have enough, for those who hunger—for food, for rest, for justice. Let us pray.

(Time for silence.)

And now, I invite you to clench the beans in both of your fists and imagine the world God hopes for us—a world of

enough for everyone.

Imagine unfettered love—

free and bold, wild and true, the kind of love that changes you.

Imagine a home—

safe and bright,

with impromptu dancing, meals around table, and laughter late into the night.

Imagine faith like a compass—

that guides the way you shop and vote, the way you love and hope;

that asks questions and yet still believes, even despite uncertainty.

And imagine a world where trees, bees, and all living things grow wild and free,

where peace is the narrative and hope the currency;

a world where news stories are testimonies and funerals are far between.

Can you imagine?

Let us dare to dream. Let us clench our fists and imagine what could be.

Let us dare to make this dream reality.

With God’s help, may it be so. Amen.

In your invitation to the offering, encourage worshipers to place their white beans in the offering plate (alongside their

financial gifts) to represent our prayers for those who do not have enough. Invite them to take home their red bean as a

reminder to give thanks for all that we have and to remember our calling to make God’s dream a reality.

After the service, collect the white beans from the offering plates to add to your mosaic. Make sure you have some extra

red beans to also add to the art.