Wealth, Justice, and the Kingdom of God

For the second week in a row, I neglected to address in my sermon the elephant stomping around the Sunday Scripture readings. Last week I did not speak about marriage and divorce – which were central themes in both the Genesis and Mark texts. This week I was all but silent on the issue of money, wealth, and justice even as those featured prominently in our readings from Amos and Mark.

Perhaps this makes me a negligent preacher. Perhaps. But in every text a myriad of possibilities and promises lay. My job, as pastor, is not simply to pick up the biggest nugget in the text and run with it, but to pick up the nugget which – in this moment in our congregation and community – stirs my spirit with Gospel promise for you and for this world God so loves. When I read a Scripture and cannot let go of a word or phrase or image, I take that as a sign of what the Spirit is calling me to proclaim.

But when this happens – when I leave elephants unaddressed and pages of notes on the proverbial cutting room floor – I feel a similar call to say more. The elephant in Sunday’s readings was wealth and its relationship to faithfulness.

Scripture is, at best, cautious when it comes to wealth. In parts of the Bible’s story wealth is described as a sign of God’s blessing. Yet more often we read Scripture’s wariness of wealth and its repeated examples of wealth’s corrupting influence. The Bible tells stories of the misdeeds of the wealthy and powerful, of God’s condemnation of their oppression of the poor, and of Jesus’ own heart for those who suffer and have been cast out.