God and Money

My sermon for tomorrow, 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C:

One of the ideas which Pope Benedict has been very keen to counter during his visit to Britain is the idea that religious faith should be excluded from the public sphere. To put it another way, he's been defending the principle that Christians have an obligation, as part of their faith commitment, to contribute to the public discussion of moral issues, to try to shape people's moral outlook and persuade them to accept the gospel, and to bring a Christian influence to bear on the moral tone of society at large.

I mention that because in their own way the readings we have this Sunday make clear that faith in God can't be confined to the realm of private, personal opinion. The message that the Church exists to proclaim has social and even political implications, and it's part of our missionary, evangelising role to try to influence society in a way that makes it easier for everyone to embrace the vocation we all have to live in communion with God and with each other.

In the first reading the prophet Amos expresses the anger God feels about swindling and cheating and his opposition to those who "trample on the needy" and treat the poor as objects to be bought and sold. Jesus' emphasis in the Gospel is different: he identifies the inner motives and appetites that arise from our damaged human nature and cause us to idolise material things instead of worshipping God. "You cannot be a slave both of God and of money" - another of Jesus' arresting, memorable phrases, highlighting the ease with which we channel energies meant for the service of God into acquisitiveness and a preoccupation with the material side of life.

And I think there are two main lessons which we can take from these passages of Scripture. The first lesson is the need for the Christian community to exercise a prophetic function, like Amos and all the other great figures of the Old Testament, when circumstances call for it.

Ever since the global banking crisis in 2008 we've heard a lot about the need for "austerity" and the need for radical measures to repair the world economy. The danger, or the suspicion, is that the economic crisis will be used as a pretext for an attack against the poor by the rich, against the economically weak by the economically strong, in exactly the manner denounced by Amos.

There have been rumblings from economic analysts and "think-tanks" that the burden of the government's austerity measures is liable to borne by the sections of society whose material circumstances are already the most precarious; and if that turns out to be true then it's a summons to the Church to become the defender of the poor and the voice of the poor, as the Old Testament prophets were in their day. I'm sure other people and groups will come forward to carry out that role, but what's important for us as Christians is that, if our society is going to plunge into a period of more intense "trampling on the needy" then it'll be more necessary than ever to commit ourselves to God's option for the poor, as we call it, as an integral part of our proclamation of the Gospel.

The second lesson in today's readings relates more to Jesus' teaching in the gospel: his rejection of the idolatry of wealth.

It's important to recognise that Christ never actually spoke in modern language about material resources being distributed more equally, and he never claimed that God would somehow be satisfied if everyone could live in the kind of luxury that the super-wealthy enjoy. What Christ taught was that it's much more important for us to detach ourselves from money and things in order to be attached more closely to God.

One of the features of our consumer culture is that the rich and poor are equally enslaved by the false gods of wealth and material success, equally obsessed by the trappings of a rich lifestyle. The values of consumerism are taken for granted and promoted by the big institutions of society: government, business, the media. They're presented as the road to happiness, and a lot of people are persuaded to take that road.

And again, in these circumstances, Christ's message is a simple but prophetic one: idolising money has a harmful, dehumanising effect. It's as harmful to the rich as it is to the poor, and it's harmful because it diverts the appetite we have for God into the wrong channels and it stunts our spiritual growth. It encourages some of our worst, unredeemed, tendencies - greed, rivalry against each other, competition for status - and it suppresses the better instincts we have - the instincts which actually bring us closer to God: generosity, fraternity and solidarity with each other, service to each other and love for each other.

So those are the two main lessons that today's readings have for us: to rid ourselves of any tendency towards worshipping money instead of God, and to advance a prophetic defence of the victims of money-worship whenever their dignity is threatened or denied.