Sermon 99
Sermon by James Cooke at Wonersh on 16th Sept 2007.
Materialism and Contentment
Angela
Kelly is a 40 yr old single Mum from the
But the Daily Telegraph decided to give her some more ideas
of what she might spend her money on.
Here are 3 of them:
1. There’s an exclusive 2,000
acre island for sale in
2. Or she could buy 2,464 bottles of 1945 Mouton Rothschild. They cost just £14,377 each.
3. Or perhaps she could create her own football team, but as Manchester United’s striker Wayne Rooney costs £29 million, the other players would have to come cheap.
Angela Kelly was lucky to have won a fortune. And the rest of the world looks on enviously because wealth is the great goal. “Whatever else you do, strive to become rich” – is the unspoken motto. We may be Christians but there is still huge pressure on us to conform. I’m being told by my children that everybody has these trainers or that laptop, or whatever it may be, and I have to get it for them. And adults are no better, I’m afraid. We have to have a bigger house or a faster car, because these things describe our social status. Somebody once said, “We buy things we don’t need, with money we don’t have, to please people we don’t like”. You’ve probably guessed by now but my subject tonight in our series on ‘Distinctive Christian Living’ is materialism - and its opposite, contentment. And it would help a great deal if you were able to follow what I’m saying from that Matthew reading, ch 6 on p. It’s taken from the Sermon on the Mount, which has been described as the epitome of Christian counter-culture, and that’s what our Evening Service Series is all about - the challenge to live in a way that’s different from the culture around us – Distinctive Christian Living – and tonight we’re going to consider money. If you look at v. 24, you’ll see what I mean: You cannot serve both God and Money.
So Materialism
– the idea that our worldly wealth and possessions are the most important
things in our life. And contentment
– the state of being happy with your situation in life, and not always longing
for something better. Let’s begin with 2
things about materialism. 1. Materialism doesn’t pay. Look at v. 19 Do not store up for
yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves
break in and steal. I think when we
read a passage like this it’s important to get one thing straight. Jesus isn’t condemning people who save for a
rainy day, for their retirement, or for a car or a house. This church has a Fabric fund where money is
placed so that we can keep the building in good shape, though sadly the bill
for redecoration far outstrips what’s in the Fabric Fund. It’s not prudence
that Jesus is worried about, but selfish accumulation of possessions. Is anyone here a shopaholic? Does anyone have a shoe collection that’s
beginning to rival the notorious Imelda Marcos?
Did you know that when she fled the presidential palace in
The other thing about materialism may seem obvious but it still needs saying: materialism does not satisfy. Look at verse 20: Where your treasure is there will your heart be also. I expect you’ve heard about the frantic Northern Rock investors who’ve been desperately trying to withdraw their money before – as they see it - the bank collapses. Their treasure would seem to be their savings. Of course, ‘treasure’ in this verse stands for those things that are most important to us, whether it’s possessions, career, relationships or whatever. I wonder where we are investing our lives? Jesus goes on with another metaphor in v 22. The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body is full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. He may seem to be talking about eyes now, but he’s still really talking about what our hearts are focused on. If our hearts are in the right place and we are investing in heaven, then our eye is good and our whole lives are flooded with light. But if, on the other hand, we are materialistic and have our hearts fixed on this world then our eye is bad and we are ‘full of darkness’. Life, for the materialist, is little more than a quest for more money - and what we can buy with it - and it brings with it a blindness to the needs of those less fortunate. ‘Blind’ is the right word, isn’t it? Materialism makes us unable to see beyond the next pay cheque or the next instalment our monthly allowance. JD Rockefeller at one time the richest man in the world was once asked how much money it took for a man to be satisfied. “Just a little bit more” was his telling reply. The goal of materialism is a comfortable and contented life but it’s never achieved.
<Fenn Chapman>
So, we’ve seen that materialism
doesn’t pay and it doesn’t satisfy. But
is there any alternative? Of course, if
this world is all there is then there’s no real choice but to invest in
treasure on earth. And yet, Paul –
writing from prison - claimed that he had found the secret of being content in
any and every situation, and Jesus insisted – here in our passage - that there
is another and much better way to live, and he points to two hidden realities
which lead the way to contentment, a guaranteed future and a generous
Father.
Look at v. 20 Store up for
yourselves treasure in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy and where
thieves do not break in and steal.
The money in Northern Rock may or may not be secure, but ‘treasures in
heaven’ are secure for ever – no mothballs needed, no rust-proof paint and no
burglar alarms to keep the thieves away.
Because Jesus died and rose again, everyone who trusts in him has a
guaranteed future, what the apostle Peter described as “an inheritance that can
never perish, spoil or fade.” Our task
now is to live in the light of that future, and the wonderful thing is that we
become much more contented as we do that, than if we’re always worrying about
our material possessions. Of course we
have to spend time on the essential business of the world, earning a living,
providing a roof over our heads, and so on, but our hearts need to be focused
elsewhere. When John Wesley was a young
man, he earned £20 a year. (yes £20 a year!) He needed £19 to live on, and the other £1
he gave away. By the time he was older
he earned £80 a year. He still managed
to live on £19 a year (no inflation in those days) and he gave away the
rest. I find that very challenging as I
think about the cars, the holidays and all the other things I’ve taken for
granted ever since I started earning. I
heard a while ago about a Christian professor of economics in
We also have a generous Father. Look at v 26. Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? There are some who might say, “Oh – it’s all very well telling us all about the great future we’re going to have in heaven, but what about now? I struggle to keep up my mortgage payments, the car urgently needs servicing and the train fares seem to eat into what’s left.” The answer is that God doesn’t just take care of the future – he also provides for the present – he is a generous Father. If he looks after the birds, we can surely trust him to look after our material needs. Now, Reg only read the first few verses of this last section of ch 6 but if we’d read all of it, we would have seen that six times Jesus tells us not to worry about food, clothing or whatever – our material needs. The comment in v 32 sums it up – your heavenly Father knows that you need them. At first sight it seem that what Jesus is saying permits us to be lazy, but in fact God’s provision for our needs goes hand in hand with the efforts we make. As we trust him we will still need to put time and effort into getting the necessities of life, but as we do so he will free us from the sense of anxiety about these things, because we know that ultimately these things do not depend on us but on our loving generous heavenly Father. Nor does God’s generosity remove from us the responsibility of helping others when they do not have enough. God has provided more than enough to feed the world, so we are to blame if we are too selfish to distribute it fairly.
In our homegroup this week we were looking at the commandment not to covet the things that other people have. Last night, you may be surprised to discover, I watched the X-factor on television. What dismayed me most about the hour or so it lasted was not the dreadful standard of singing, nor even the hopelessly unrealistic ambitions of the vast majority of the contestants, but the proportion of the air time given to advertisements, mostly for things like shampoo, perfume or clothes. All of it was designed to push the audience into an overdrive of coveting. And of course, coveting – especially coveting material things is the opposite of contentment. What a contrast with Jesus: Do not worry, saying what shall we wear – if God clothes the grass of the field, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith. So, what are you? What am I? A contented Christian – or one consumed by materialism? I’d like to finish with a quote from a book called, ‘Christians in a Consumer Culture’.
“In an age in which the whole direction of people’s lives is dominated by climbing the career ladder and acquiring material goods, for a Christian to be able to say, ‘I’m fine as I am, I don’t need anything’ is a tremendous and glorious shock to the non-Christian’s system. To be known as an able colleague and yet have no greater ambition than to be content in God, is so astonishing, it makes people sit up.”
(With
acknowledgements to Vaughan
Roberts’ book “Distinctives”)