Some of you may have read a remarkable short story sometime during your school years by D. H. Lawrence titled, “The Rocking‑Horse Winner.” I wonder if you remember how the story begins?
It is a haunting tale about a family living above its means. The mother is considered by friends and neighbors to be the perfect mother, in spite of the fact that deep down she knows she has difficulty loving her three children. It’s important to the husband to keep up the pretense of success--the large house, staffed with servants--but they are living on the edge, just like many families today. Listen as D. H. Lawrence describes this family’s life situation:
“And so the house came to be haunted by the unspoken phrase: ‘There must be more money! There must be more money!’ The children could hear it all the time though nobody said it aloud. They heard it at Christmas, when the expensive and splendid toys filled the nursery. Behind the shining modern rocking-horse, behind the smart doll’s house, a voice would start whispering: ‘There must be more money! There must be more money!’ And the children would stop playing, to listen for a moment. They would look into each other’s eyes, to see if they had all heard. And each one saw in the eyes of the other two that they too had heard. ‘There must be more money! There must be more money!’
“It came whispering from the springs of the still-swaying rocking-horse, and even the horse, bending his wooden, champing head, heard it. The big doll, sitting so pink and smirking in her new pram, could hear it quite plainly, and seemed to be smirking all the more self-consciously because of it. The foolish puppy, too, that took the place of the teddy-bear, he was looking so extraordinarily foolish for no other reason but that he heard the secret whisper all over the house: ‘There must be more money!’”
That’s the family backdrop to the story of “The Rocking‑Horse Winner.” Quite an extraordinary picture: “There must be more money! There must be more money!”
I wonder if there are any homes in our community today that are haunted in that same way: “There must be more money!”
Let’s talk about financial freedom. Jesus said on one occasion: “No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.”
Here is the challenge for today: We want to break the grip money has on our lives. We want to affirm that Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is our god, and our only god. We want to affirm that the God who manifested Himself in Jesus of Nazareth is our god. This is who we are. That is why we are here in this room at this time. “Thou shalt have no other gods before me . . .” We want God to be our god, not material possessions.
Still, we live in a materialistic society. Fairly or unfairly, people judge us by our possessions. And it costs SO MUCH to live nowadays. But we know we don’t need everything we have, much less everything we want. It troubles us. Like the rich man God called a fool, we keep needing bigger and bigger garages to hold all our stuff! How do we extricate ourselves from this vicious cycle?
Let’s begin by noting that Jesus was not anti-money. He understood the place of money in our lives.
Jesus told a strange little parable about a manager who was accused by his boss of wasting the boss’ possessions. “What is this I hear about you?” asked his boss. “Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer.”
So there this manager was. Given his notice. What in the world was this poor man going to do? If any of you find yourself in his situation, I hope you do not do what he did. The manager said to himself, “What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I’m not strong enough to dig, and I’m ashamed to beg--I know what I’ll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.”
So he called in each one of his master’s debtors. He asked the first, “How much do you owe my master?”
“Eight hundred gallons of olive oil,” the first debtor replied.
The manager told him, “Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred.”
Then he asked the second, “And how much do you owe?”
“A thousand bushels of wheat,” he replied.
He told him, “Take your bill and make it eight hundred.” He spent the last few days of his employment defrauding his employer of thousands of dollars. How do you imagine his employer responded?
Here’s the shocking conclusion to Jesus’ parable: His employer commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.
I have to wonder if some of these debtors were not deadbeats. Maybe they were usually very slow paying their bills, if they paid them at all. Maybe what the business owner was praising was his manager being able to collect as much as he did before he left.
Jesus doesn’t explain. And he doesn’t need to. A parable only has one point and he explains the point like this: “I tell you,” said Jesus, “use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.” “Use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves . . .”
He seems to be saying there is a place for money in our lives. It would be foolish to imagine that we could get by without money in a society like ours. As we have noted before, there are some things only money can do.
Pay for health care, for example. Many people in our society are facing a crisis because they either can’t get or can’t afford decent health insurance. Fifty years old? Diabetic? Laid off from your job? Just try to find a health insurer who will cover you . . . at any price! I guarantee you that even if you can find it, you can’t afford it. There are some things only money can do.
Put a roof on our heads, put food in our tummies, fill up our car with gas. Try to do it without money. Impossible. There is a place for money in our lives. Jesus knew that. He was a most practical man. He knew that there are some things only money can do.
Jesus is saying, however, that we are in deep trouble if money has first place in our lives. Money is a nice servant but a terrible master.
When the body of an 18‑year‑old young man was found in New York City’s Central Park, police at first thought it was a murder. But an investigation revealed that the young man committed suicide.
The young man was from a wealthy family in Connecticut. He had received every advantage and every material possession one could imagine, from the silver spoon he was born with to the silver tray he was served on, to the silver sports coupe he left in the parking lot at Central Park.
What the rich young man never had, evidently, was the joy and meaning in life for which he yearned. One of the investigators concluded that the young man’s suicide was the result of a very modern disease of the soul, something he called “affluenza.” (1)
Affluenza. Think about that term. Affluence turned into a disease. “There must be more money. There must be more money.”
It’s easy to see the worship of money in misers. An elderly couple dies of malnutrition. Authorities investigating the deaths discover $40,000 in cash tucked away in a closet. Somehow their sense of values had gotten turned on its head.
A woman dies leaving an estate of $100 million. Yet, her son had one leg amputated, because she delayed treatment for a serious injury while she searched for a free clinic.
At this stage, the need for money is a sickness. We can see it in misers. Their values are terribly skewed. And we can see it in thieves.
Claude Lochet, of Orleans, Massachusetts, showed such charm and inspired such trust as a stockbroker and financial planner that dozens of retired persons and elderly widows invested their life savings with him. The thirty-four-year-old seemed to be the model of professionalism.
Suddenly, in December, 1991, Lochet disappeared. At first, foul play was suspected, but then it was learned that $1.7 million was missing from client accounts. Then Lochet’s van, with stubs for plane tickets to Paris, was discovered in the parking area of Kennedy Airport in New York. Embezzlement and larceny charges were brought against Lochet, but he could not be found.
Meanwhile, Lochet’s elderly clients were left with big losses. Most were living on fixed incomes or modest pensions who had invested through Lochet. On February 21, 1992, “Prime Suspect,” a nationally syndicated television show that airs fugitive cases, described Lochet’s case. Two callers from Los Angeles telephoned to report that a man fitting Lochet’s description was living in their area. Lochet was arrested. None of the money was found. When Los Angeles Detective Carl Holmstrom asked Lochet why he stole $1.7 million from clients, the fugitive broker showed no remorse. His only comment? “Everybody does it.” (2)
That’s the value system of a person who worships money. It’s easy to spot in misers and thieves. But what about us? Could we be worshiping this god as well?
A church member came to his pastor’s study one day. The pastor could see that the man looked deeply troubled. The man said, “Pastor, I need to talk. I feel so empty, so dried up inside, I’m scared.” His voice began to quiver just a bit. He said “Pastor, I have just come from the doctor’s office, and he told me that I have only six months at best to live. After I left the office, I realized that I have no spiritual resources, no inner strength to cope with this. There is nothing to fall back on, to lean against. Many people would be surprised to hear me say that, for I have made lots of money, and people think I am a success not only at making money, but at being a strong, powerful person.”
He then fell quiet, and the pastor waited in silence for him to go on. Finally the man said, “You know I’m poor in the things that count the most. I see it now. I’ve put my faith in the wrong things, and the truth is I am destitute, spiritually destitute. I could pick up the phone and call any bank in Houston and borrow any amount of money to do whatever I wanted to. Just on my name, Reverend, just on my name! Do you understand? I could borrow it on my name only.”
The man then leaned forward and put his head in his hands, and said softly through tears, “I guess there are some things you can’t buy or borrow.” (3)
This man’s material bank was full to overflowing, but his spiritual bank was empty. Is that your situation? Then you are serving mammon and not God.
The dishonest steward at least understood that money is a means, not an end. He didn’t take his boss’ money for himself. He didn’t hoard it up. He used it to buy favor with his friends. He didn’t want to be all alone and unemployed in that harsh world when people were fortunate if they could eke out even a subsistence living. The really big question that our text for the day raises is, do you own your money, or does it own you?
Eighteenth century evangelist John Wesley understood the spiritual struggle many people have with the place of money in their lives. Here was the irony of his ministry. The Wesleyan revivals were turning people, many of whom had serious drinking problems, into sober-minded, hardworking, responsible individuals. In fact, some of Wesley’s converts became so successful that they began letting their commitment to Christ slide. They had allowed their success, their affluence, to become their god, and in reality, they were as lost as they were when Christ first touched their lives.
Wesley’s solution? He saw only one: That they should EARN all they could, SAVE all they could and then GIVE all they could. (4) Let me put his formula in the present tense, for it is a good one: Earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can. Many people today can do the first two, but they have difficulty with the third. Why? Because money has taken over first place in their lives.
Someone else has given us another formula, one that has blessed millions of people through the centuries. If you want true financial freedom, learn to live on eighty percent of your present income. Take ten percent of your income and invest it. And take the other ten percent and give it to God. 80-10-10. Present needs, investment for the future and being rich toward God. This formula insures that money has its proper place in our lives. Follow it and you will have enough to live on, you will look forward to a secure retirement, and you will signal that God is in control in your life. And no more will you hear the chant in your house, “There must be more money. There must be more money.” You will own your money, but your money won’t own you. Even more important, you will have treasure laid up in heaven.
1. Pastor Dan Mangler’s Sunday Sermon, http://www.smlc‑elca.org/Sunday_sermons/october_12_2003_sermon.html.
2. Dr. William P. Barker, Tarbell’s (Elgin, Illinois: David C. Cook Church Ministries, 1994).
3. Reverend Eric S. Ritz, http://www.eumcnewholland.com/sermon020804.htm
4.Rupert F. Davies, The Works of John Wesley (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1989), vol. 9, p. 530.