Somebody came out of church Sunday and said “Gee Teri, I wish you’d tell us what you really think.”  They thought I was blunt in the sermon.  Maybe I was, but only because the scripture was blunt.  That was not an easy sermon for me to preach.  My guess is that it was not easy for some to hear either.

Scripture is that way.  It says it like it is.  We can choose to ignore the parts we don’t like or the sections we don’t agree with.  But then we get only part of the gospel.  As a pastor I would love to preach only the warm-fuzzy passages that make us feel good about God and good about ourselves.  But is that fair?

Why is it that people get so upset about money?  My guess is that we value it more than we value God.  In this culture it is very difficult not to.  But it must have been the same in Jesus’ day.  Except for the Kingdom of God there is nothing he talked about more than money- not prayer, not love, not faith, not sex.  He talked about money.

When we talk about money in church it makes people feel guilty and that makes them angry.  They don’t like feeling guilty. We want good music.  We want good preaching.  We want a nice nursery for our babies and up-to-date church school for our children.  We want our children to have the best and we want a place to park.  We want it cool in the summer and warm in the winter but don’t talk about money.

Money is a practical issue in the life of the church.  We have to pay for what we want, it is just that simple.

At the same time, money is a spiritual issue.  We have to learn to give, to share, to sacrifice.  How we use our money and our possessions is an important part of discipleship.  Jesus is clear on that.  And when I feel guilty about something in scripture it is usually because I know I am not doing what God is asking me to do.