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Matthew 20:1-16

Frozen Desire

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Matthew 20:1-16

Frozen Desire

By Dr. Mickey Anders

At the March and Rally for a Drug-Free Pike County last Sunday afternoon, the featured speaker was Bobby Petrocelli whose wife was killed when a drunk driver crashed into their home. The speaker was very effective and the rally a great success. At one point in his speech, Bobby took a ten dollar bill, dropped it on the floor, and stomped on it. After making a mess of the bill, he asked how many people still wanted it. Of course, everyone raised their hands. His point was that the bill still had value even if it was wrinkled and dirty. In the same way, God still values us even when we have made a mess of our lives. I certainly agree with Bobby Petrocelli that God values each one of us, but his acted out parable made me think again about the value and meaning of money.

Our text for today demonstrates God’s unusual attitude toward money. Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who hires day laborers to work in his vineyard. Some start at dawn. As the day goes on the landowner hires additional workers and they also are put to work. The last of these doesn’t begin work until about 5:00 PM. At the end of the day every worker receives a full day’s wages. Those who worked all day long get a full day’s pay, but so do those who started at 5:00 in the afternoon.

The people who worked all day, quite naturally, are angry that the ones who only worked an hour had been paid the same thing as they were. It isn’t that the ones who worked all day were treated unfairly. They were given the day’s pay they had earned. They were angry because others who had not worked all day got the very same pay.

The story Jesus told, of course, is not meant to be a lesson in proper labor relations. It was told centuries before governments established wage and hour laws and before there could be lawsuits over equal pay for equal work. Jesus told this story to make a point about God’s grace, God’s generosity.

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I preached on the details of this passage three years ago, so today I want to use this text as a launching pad to discuss the subject for Stewardship Sunday — money. I want us to look at this parable to get a glimpse of God’s attitude toward money. What is the meaning of money to God? In this parable, we find God’s overwhelming generosity. God gives to everyone the same amount of money. It seems that God does not accept our contemporary attitude that certain people deserve more than others. He does not even accept our attitude that the poor deserve no more than they are getting because, after all, they only worked one hour in the day. We assume that those of us who work long, hard hours deserve our money. Those of us who invest wisely deserve our rewards. But this parable shows that God is not a very good capitalist.

In the early days of my ministry, I served a church in an oil town in South Arkansas. We had members of the church who had made a fortune in the oil business. In fact, as I think about it, there were many similarities between an oil boom town and a coal boom town like ours.

I vividly remember one episode when I was leading a marriage enrichment class of young couples in the church. On this night, we were discussing the problems that come in marriage from differing understandings of money. That is often a source of real conflict in marriage.

I asked the question suggested by the study material, “What is the meaning of money?” And I thought I knew the answer to that question. All I had ever known was that money was the way we survived. Money meant food on the table. Money meant paying the monthly bills. Money meant living from paycheck to paycheck and hoping there was still some money left when the month ran out. Money meant paying for the necessities of life.

But one of the participants in the class was the son of the wealthiest oil man in the church, and his understanding of money was totally different from mine. He casually answered my question by saying, “Money is just a way of keeping score.”

He may as well have been talking some foreign language! I could hardly grasp what he meant. Much later I realized that for him the question of having enough money for basic necessities of life had long been settled. In fact, he would probably never have to work a day in his life if all he wanted was the necessities of life.

For him, money was simply a way of measuring success, and particularly of measuring the success of his competition with his father. His father had made millions. Money was the way he could keep score to see if he could earn more than his father had. “Money is just a way of keeping score.”

Sometimes money is the way we assign value to our lives. I think our scripture passage for today tells something about our relentless drive to assign value to our lives. In the world of business, we find people who are consumed with their titles as president, vice president, manager, doctor, dean, senior associate, or partner. In the church, the same sense of inadequacy can drive people to desire the title of deacon, elder, or reverend. We want to be recognized for our degrees, our seniority, and our years of service. We know there is a pecking order, and we determine our value and our joy in life by knowing our place in it.

We have an innate need to measure our place. We want to progressively be moving up from the cubicle, to a real office, to the office with a window, to the office on the corner, to the office nearest to the president’s. Leave people alone and they will come up with their own pecking order.

We hook our identities to the bonuses, the rating sheets, the report cards, the society columns, the proper clubs, the heavy committees, and even the key pulpits. We want the low-numbered license plate, the fancy letterhead, or the clergy sticker.

If we spend our lives constantly comparing our lives to those of our neighbors and friends, we will never find peace. We will always be burning with jealousy and envy that someone has it better than we do.

But in the Kingdom of God such ranking and hierarchy of people becomes irrelevant. Jesus said the last shall be first and the first shall be last. In Christ’s vineyard the pecking order is surrendered to the task of healing a torn and suffering humanity. In Christ’s Kingdom, every person really is of equal value to God. Jesus died on the cross for every person. He paid the same price for all. God loves every one the same.

Today I want to ask you the question I posed in that marriage enrichment seminar: What is the meaning of money? What does money mean to you?

If we were to look at an economics textbook, we might find statements like these:

The nature of money is very often overlooked and even taken for granted when, in fact, it is one of the most important concepts to be understood in the running of the world’s financial system. It is its very linchpin. In order to gain a greater understanding of the concept of money, we must examine its three principal purposes and functions. They are in order of familiarity a) medium of exchange and b) store of value c) unit of account.

In 1997, James Buchan wrote a book on the meaning of money, and he entitled the book Frozen Desire. He writes,

“Money has always and will always
symbolize different things to different people:
a banknote may describe to one person a drink in a pub,
a fairground ride to another,
to a third a diamond ring,
an act of charity to a fourth,
relief from prosecution to a fifth
and, to a sixth, simply the sensations of comfort or security.
For money is incarnate desire.”

We have the choice of looking at money from the economist’s point of view saying it is a medium of exchange. Or we can look at it from the writer’s perspective saying money is frozen desire, incarnate desire. Or we can look at money from God’s point of view.

What is God’s point of view about the meaning of money? I am not so bold as to tell you exactly what God thinks, but I am convinced that God’s attitude toward money is quite different than the attitude that most of us have.

Perhaps God sees money as ministry. I certainly think that is the meaning of money for the church. In the church, money is ministry. The church has cash assets because individuals give their tithes and offerings to the church. Then the church uses those funds to pay for ministry.

In the church, we do not measure our success by how much money we have, but rather by how much ministry we do. The church must see money as the resource which can be turned into ministry. Money is used to pay the salaries of those who work at the church. It is used to support missionaries around our world, provide benevolence, train leaders, pay for a place of worship, to buy literature to help people understand the Bible and their faith.

I think the church’s attitude should be like those of people who administer grants, whether private or public. They have a pool of money and request proposals from groups that describe how they would spend the money. Then the administrators examine the proposals and decide which ones would put the money to the best use. That is the purpose of a church’s budget. How can we put this money to the best use? How best can we turn this money into ministry?

In one church I served, we adopted a zero-based budget. Everyone started each year with nothing in their budget. Then they explained the ministries they wanted to perform in the coming year and how much those ministries cost. We funded ministries, not line items in the budget.

A church can make mistakes in the use of money just like individuals can. Some individuals measure their success by how much money they can amass and hoard; some churches do the same. Some individuals spend all their resources only on themselves; some churches do the same. Some individuals utilize their money to provide luxuries which they can enjoy; some churches do the same. Some individuals blow their money on worthless pursuits; some churches do the same.

I think a church can sin by its misuse of money. For the church, money is ministry.

For the Christian, I think money is often a reflection of character. Our money tells who we are and what we value.

I know a Christian man who has made enough money in his life that he doesn’t have to worry about having enough. His family is secure and his retirement is secure. So now he works so that he can give away his salary every year. He looks for projects big and small, and gives generously, usually anonymously. His money says something about his character.

I have known several people who remind of the woman in Jesus’ story of the widow’s mite. They are people who are living on fixed income. They barely have enough for the necessities of life. But when some disaster comes like Hurricane Katrina, they are the first to give. And often these poor people give more than those who have far more to give. Money says something about their character.

A church succeeds or fails based on the character of its people. If its members are mean-spirited and little, then the church will reflect that character. If the church members only give what is absolutely necessary to keep the church afloat, then the church will barely get by.

If a church consists of people who have generous hearts and give a tithe or more, then a church will not have trouble meeting its budget. If a church consists of people give as the Bible says “with a cheerful heart,” then the church will have many ministries locally and globally.

Some churches have members who ask, “How little can we get by with?” Other churches have members who ask, “How big does God want us to dream?”

So what is the meaning of money? Is it a way of keeping score? Is it frozen desire? Is it a way of demonstrating that we are better than others? Is it the means to luxury and a life of pleasure?

Or is it a measure of a generous character? Is money a measure of ministry?

Scripture quotations from the World English Bible.

Copyright 2005, Dr. Mickey Anders.  Used by permission.