Mentioning Money in Church (part 3)
Written by: Dr. Paul Galbreath
I have heard countless sermons on money and possessions. Many of them end up turning texts about money into psychological claims about our attitude towards money. I am sure that you have heard these sermons too. Generally, they go something like this: It is not whether or not you have money that is the problem, it is about your attitude about money. Or: It is not what you do with your money, it is how you feel about it. What’s interesting about this approach in which we give ourselves a free pass about what we actually do with our possession is that it seems to have very little in common with the descriptions of communal life in the early church.
In three successive scenes in the book of Acts, Luke describes the challenges of living in light of the claims of the Gospel on our lives. These are physical, tangible depictions of the struggle and growth in the earliest communities of the followers of Jesus. Each of these scenes deals with ways that Jesus’ message of good news to the poor (Luke 4:18) challenges the norms and expectations of the ways that we construct our lives (largely for our own benefit).
We have much to learn by returning to these texts and allowing them to critique the ways that we usually avoid the difficult claims and challenges that the Gospel places on our own lives especially when it has to do with money and our possessions.
Read the following passages (one option is to divide into small groups):
- Acts 4:32-37 Barnabas
- Acts 5:1-11 Annanias and Saphhira
- Acts 6:1-7 Development of Deacons
Questions for Reflection
- What are the issues related to power and money in these passages?
- What are the expectations for hospitality among Christians described in these stories?
