II
Kings 5:15-16, 19-27
Money itself is not bad. It is a convenient method of getting things
done, and unless you live in a society that works by bartering, money is a
necessity of life. I cannot go up to the
window at Dairy Queen and offer the girl at the counter two peppers and a
zucchini for a chocolate blizzard. Using
money, a commonly-accepted standard of exchange, makes it possible for us to
regulate the relative worth of physical commodities, people’s work, their
skills, their time, and so forth.
Whether it is hard currency or credit on the books, quarters or bitcoin,
it makes our interactions far simpler and smoother than they would be if we
were exchanging a can of sardines for five minutes of internet access.
The problems start when money
becomes a tool for manipulation instead of simplification, for controlling
relationships instead of making them easier.
Power and prestige push in. That
doesn’t happen because of money, but it shows up in the way money can be
misused.
Today’s Bible reading picks up on
last week’s. Naaman the Syrian had
traveled to Israel to find healing for the leprosy that he contracted. After some preliminary difficulties centering
on his own pride, he finally did as the prophet Elisha directed him and washed
seven times in the Jordan River and was cured.
So far so good.
He went back to thank Elisha.
“Then he returned to the man of God,
he and all his company; he came and stood before him and said, ‘Now I know that
there is no God in all the earth except in Israel; please accept a present from
your servant.’ But he said, ‘As the Lord
lives, whom I serve, I will accept nothing!’
He urged him to accept, but he refused.”
[II Kings
5:15-16]
Elisha himself had
done nothing. He had simply passed on
directions from God. He certainly had
not cured Naaman himself. That was God’s
doing, and God’s alone. To accept a
gift, which to be fair probably was meant as a gift, was coming too close to
looking like accepting payment. That
would have been tantamount to putting himself in the place of God.
Now, here I have to step onto
uncomfortable territory. We’ve got a
church to run, here. We have electric
bills and water bills to pay. I also
collect a salary and get good benefits.
I am very grateful for that, and aware of where the money in the budget
comes from. So I’m going to make a
distinction here, and I believe it’s a valid one, but something to keep a close
eye on. That is to say that there’s a
difference between supporting the human work that goes into an organization and
somehow thinking that God’s work is in any way bought or sold.
Since this comes up in connection
with a story about a healing, I’ll point out that doctors are far better at openly
addressing such matters than clergy. More
than once I have heard a doctor remark, “God does the healing and the doctor
collects the fee.” Hawkeye Pierce even
said that on MASH one time. In mental
health circles, there’s the old joke that says a neurotic builds a castle in
the air, a psychotic lives there, and a psychiatrist collects the rent.
Elisha’s servant Gehazi didn’t see
what God had done for Naaman. He saw
what Naaman could do for him.
“But when Naaman had gone from him a
short distance, Gehazi, the servant of Elisha, the man of God, thought, ‘My
master has let that Aramean Naaman off too lightly by not accepting from him
what he offered. As the Lord lives, I
will run after him and get something out of him.’” [II Kings 5:19-20]
Which he did. He made up a story about how the money was
needed for the ministry, but it was really for himself.
Gehazi has many successors, some of
whom make him look like a total bumbler.
Kenneth Copeland is a TV preacher who bought Tyler Perry’s private
jet. I guess he was being financially
prudent, even frugal, by buying a secondhand plane instead of a new one. “He made that airplane so cheap for me, I
couldn’t help but buy it.”[1] That’s a direct quote from an interview I
watched online when a reporter ran up to him to ask about it. The whole interchange is well worth
watching. Just don’t do it on a full
stomach. He goes into amazing
convolutions about why he cannot be ready to preach if he flies commercial. He also admits that he uses the plane to
visit his vacation homes. (That’s “homes”
with an ‘s’.)
Elisha called Gehazi to
account. When we do our job, the
religious community as a whole does the same.
It’s only by honest recognition of how things can and do go wrong, of
how people’s vulnerability can be and far too often is misused, that we can
maintain any kind of credibility with the world as a whole – but most
importantly before God, who looks into hearts and minds.
In our day the so-called “prosperity
gospel” preachers teach that if you give them money, that it will be a sign of
faith and God will therefore bless you with more and more wealth. That appeals to the desperation of exactly the
people who have the least, and who therefore feel that they have nothing to
lose. It’s the same dynamic that puts
the majority of lottery tickets into the hands of the poor.
Naaman could easily afford the money
that Gehazi took from him. What he could
not afford, and what Gehazi’s greed took advantage of, was his newly-developing
understanding of how God works. Elisha’s
refusal of his gift highlighted that you don’t need to buy God’s goodness, and
that it isn’t ever for sale anyway.
Gehazi’s little scam threatened to undermine that. The Bible doesn’t say what happened to the
money. I hope it was sent back. What it does say is that God had shown Elisha
what had happened and Elisha knew enough not to sweep it under the carpet.
God
bless auditors and accountants! Say what
you will about denominational structures and organizational bureaucracies. They make mistakes. They can become creaky and cumbersome. Yet they provide oversight and answerability
that does more than just keep people honest out of fear that they might get
caught. Even when they do only an
average job, they keep God’s people focused on real ministry and help hold
greed at a distance.
Money
is not a bad thing. Greed is. John Wesley put it well when he said, “Earn
all you can. Save all you can. Give all you can.” The Bible, of course, puts it best of all:
“Of course, there is great gain in
godliness combined with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world, so
that we can take nothing out of it; but if we have food and clothing, we will
be content with these.” [I Timothy 6:6-8]
No comments:
Post a Comment