Greed seems to be the subject on the nation’s mind the past few weeks. Just today I was putting gas in one of our work trucks and the car next to me had a bumper sticker that said “Gas – Absolute Greed”. The message was a little confusing but it seemed ironic as the guy was putting gas in his car. Anyways, we’ve seen our economy come to the brink of collapse and people on both sides of the political spectrum rightly place the blame on unsupervised corporate greed. This past Sunday I got to preach at our service, and the passage for the week was Matthew 20, the parable of the landowner and workers. The point of the story in short is that the first will be last and the last will be first (when have we heard that before Gaines boys!) and that God lavishes grace upon all who come to him regardless of what they’ve done or deserve. While preparing I also started studying the surrounding passages where Jesus addresses wealth and greed; telling the rich man to sell all he has and give it to the poor; and that enigmatic statement that its harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God than a camel to go through the eye of a needle. I think its amazing how many times the Bible addresses the issues of wealth, greed, and how we should treat the poor (over 2000 verses!). I thought about this as I read my Wall Street Journal throughout the week (Yeah I’m a nerd!!); but all over the news you see these executives in despair over what is going on and it seemed all too timely that this was happening while the churches all over the world read this parable declaring the first shall be last! Some fast facts: 30 years ago the average CEO of a major corporation made approximately 30 times more than the average worker; today the average CEO makes over 300 times more than the average worker. The CEO for Lehman Brothers (which went bankrupt last week) made $17,000 dollars an hour last year! All this to say its become clearer now more than ever that as Christians we cannot serve both God and money and we cannot support economic systems that reward the rich at the expense of the poor. I heard Jim Wallis interviewed on a radio program today and I thought he had a brilliant idea, he said he wrote a letter to Henry Paulsen asking that if the proposed $700 billion bailout of financial institutions gets passed this week that the government tithes 10% of that ($70 billion) to help poor families stay in their homes. Incredible. Wallis also has a couple great articles on his blog concerning the moral issues at stake in the coming economic overhaul. Enjoy, and remember that God is generous; we have nothing to be worried about!! Article 1 Article 2
3 comments:
Great Article Wes- Preach it!
I thought your sermon was really great. It's scary how easy it is to feel tied to our money.
I liked Jim Wallis' suggestion that the government tithes--his point was that even in the midst of this financial chaos, these companies are still somehow getting rich, yet ordinary Americans are losing their homes, jobs, etc.
Such a good message Wes.
I appreciate you and your desire to preach and share the word of God.
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