“And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.” Luke 16: 9

There is a reasonable comment floating around about money. It claims that money is really neutral. Good people who have it do much good with it. On the other hand, evil people do wicked things with it. Sounds like a pleasant approach towards understanding money. No one feels uncomfortable with this idea. It sits well with most of us. Unfortunately, it is not the way Jesus would define money. He had many things to say about money but He never said that it was neutral. Christians don’t have the option of thinking that money is neutral entity. It represents something dangerous and we need to carefully heed the words of Jesus.

All in all, Jesus had an uncomfortable relationship with money. He needed money to function in the world. There were some wealthy women who supported his ministry. He healed and brought comfort to many people and some of them were wealthy. He always had access to great wealth. However, He chose a path that refused to give money any dominance in his life. He even demanded the same of those wanted to follow Him. The early Christian community sold all their belongings and lived together. Money was always regarded with disdain even though they had to use to survive in the early Christian communities. In the above gospel text, He relates a bizarre parable to drive His point to us. It is almost an uncomfortable read. Jesus appears to praise the actions of a corrupt man. It is completely inappropriate to our modern sentiments. Unfortunately, this is not the most difficult part of the parable for most people. He tells us that wealth is dishonest or unrighteous depending on the translation of the original Greek word. No matter how we look at it, He did not consider it to be something positive. Many tend to get stuck here. We like to believe that wealth can be acquired through hard and honest work. Jesus doesn’t draw an argument to explain why He termed money the way He did. He had a higher goal. He had something more important to say than to talk about the role of money in society. However, if we cannot move beyond this controversial terminology, then perhaps we need to worry about our souls. It would appear as if mammon has taken control of our senses already.

Maybe I should say something about mammon or money since it shows its ugly head around for most part of our lives. I am not sure what I think about it exactly. I need money to survive in this world. I have bills to pay, I need to buy food, I need to pay my rent. I am just like everyone else. The more money I have the easier it would be for me pay for my basic needs and some luxuries too. I am just like anyone who is reading this text. However, Jesus warns us that mammon is not happy just being our servant. He wants to be our god. This is the problem. He is not our friend and we should never forget that in reality he is our enemy. He should not have the seat of honor in our hearts and minds. He is our enemy! If we are not careful and turn our backs on him, he will strike us. Jesus tells us that he will wound our souls. This parable is about how to deal with our enemy.

We witnessed something outlandish in the streets recently. We were in our regular place waiting for the children and as usual, we were in the company of homeless adults. A woman sat down on the steps close to us and started making loud and rude comments about society in general. No one paid any attention to her. Everyone assumed that she was one of the many mentally-ill people on the steps. However, everything changed when she opened her wallet and took out a hundred dollar bill. Everyone’s attention was on her including us. This is not a safe place to wave money around. It made us feel a little uncomfortable but the homeless had a hopeful gleam in their eyes. They knew that one of them could be the possible recipient of the luxurious hundred dollar bill. The fortunate person was the one sitting closest to her. Then the atmosphere changed. Her action brought the worst in people. They gathered around her like vultures and asked for more donations. She took out a wad of 100 dollar bills and asked everyone to queue up in front of her. The situation grew progressively inhumane. Some were fighting to get ahead of each other. We were a little worried. The whole scene seem to be prelude to a riot or something worse. Then she saw a passerby who wasn’t homeless join the queue. This annoyed her and she then got up walked away leaving the long line of homeless adults empty-handed and disappointed. Then a homeless man burst out laughing and everyone eventually decided to see the humor in it too. The woman was obviously rich. She gave her money away but she did not make any friends. In reality, her actions did not bring out the humanity in the homeless. She dehumanized them further. She gave her money away but she was still a servant of Mammon.

Felipe got another job recently. He couldn’t survive with one job so he had to find a second one to supplement his income. His new job required him to work 60 hours a week and his salary was not sufficient to pay for his groceries. On top of this, the only place where he could eat his meals was at a lunch place owned by his boss. The food was overpriced and Felipe had no choice to ask the boss to deduct from his salary. In the end, he worked longer hours than his first job and earned much less. He had no choice. There were four mouths to feed. Finally, he got sick from the long hours and the boss docked his salary for being sick. This was the last straw. He had to quit. His situation was quite desperate working for a servant of mammon who did not give him much hope. We shared with our friends about Felipe’s situation and how unjust things were for the poorest of the poor. Fortunately, our friends knew of an owner of a restaurant who gives jobs to people regardless of their experience or educational level. The salary is enough for Felipe to survive on it. My friends never met Felipe but they desired to know him. They pulled all their resources together to help Felipe. There was no vacancy yet in the restaurant but Felipe is first in line. He has to wait patiently and he still has four hungry mouths to feed. He can’t think about anything until he has food for them.
It is impossible for us to have a deeper relationship with Felipe without participating with him in anguish and frustration. Thankfully, we have an enemy in our household that needs to leave and needs to know that he is the first to go when a friend is in need. Our friends also feel the same way about mammon. Now, Felipe’s circle of friendship is growing because mammon was not allowed to take the role of being a god.

I don’t really have much to say about money. I need it but I know that it is also an enemy. Jesus taught us how to deal with it. Mammon wants to be our god but we have to remind him that he is merely a means to an end. For Christians, Jesus established that the end is building relationships that would last for eternity. Mammon is an enemy that wants to be our god but there is only room for one God in our lives. He is the only One that helps us to keep mammon in His rightful place. We are powerless to fight against him because we are too weak. We can fall prey to his seductive words. We have a High Priest who rejected mammon successfully in this existence. When we pray and ask Him to help us deal with mammon, He will send people like Felipe and many others to teach us that life is much better when we keep our enemy at bay.

Now large crowds were traveling with Jesus; and he turned and said to them, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” Luke 14:25-27

“So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.” Luke 14:33

There was a question that always bothered me when I was in seminary. It was quite a simple and almost basic question; “What is theology exactly?” I can’t think theologically if I don’t know what it means. I read theological works that were almost meaningless to me. I memorized them and accepted them as my own. I even understood them superficially. However, they never became my words because I did not really know what I was supposed to do with them. Eventually, I discovered the answer to my question. I did not find it among Christians nor the professors of my seminary. It was hiding among agnostics, former believers, and non-religious people. The discovery is still an ongoing process. It is becoming even more clear as we minister among the homeless children and teens. Now, I can’t imagine being a Christian without being a theologian.

Every time we read something from the gospel, it seems like Jesus is saying something uncomfortable and extremely difficult. Whenever He mentions about being His disciples, He throws some outrageous demands at us. It almost seems like He is making it impossible to be his followers. There are few options open to us whenever we hear His tough sayings. We can ignore these verses and go on with our lives. In this case, we will join the ranks of those who travel with Jesus in the gospel text above without any real commitment to Him. They just stood close to Jesus to reap some benefits from Him without making any firm commitment. We can just sweep everything under the rug and pretend that it is not there. In this case, we need to question ourselves whether we are really interested in Jesus at all. We can confront this text like his disciples and be completely disturbed and confused about it. When we do this, then we would truly become theologians. Theologians are not people with all the answers. In fact, the ones who claim to have all the answers are not usually theologians. They are something else. Theologians are common people who have their feet grounded in reality and cannot deny the paradoxes of life that confront them. They know that the Truth is in the words of Jesus and yet they find it hard to live according to His words. I believe that Jesus wants us all to become theologians, or in simple terms, He wants us to think about our faith, or rather, count the cost of becoming His disciples.

Jesus demands that we give up everything that we possess including our families. It sounds like Jesus is going against everything that the modern church has termed as “family values”. Jesus tells us that they are a hindrance to our salvation. No one in their right mind would think that these so-called “family values” are wrong, even the Pagans would agree with us. They are the fabric of every society. Nevertheless, Jesus always swam against the current of cultural norms. He challenged whatever our culture told us was right and good. Almost every saint in our church calendar took these words of Jesus literally and seriously. We can try to make it more amenable in order to deal with it. This attempt would only serve to dilute the intensity of the gospel. These words are what they are. Therefore, we have to do something about it. Most of us are just common people. We are not saints like those in the past. We sense a responsibility to our family. We need to have possessions in order to survive in this world. Yet, we want to follow Jesus and take His words seriously. There are no easy answers. This is why we need to be theologians. We need to think and struggle with these difficult issues. There are no easy answers. Perhaps, there are no answers at all.

I realized all homeless teens and children have done this. They have abandoned their families to be in the streets. Their families were stifling their lives, tormenting and smothering their spirit day by day. They had to abandon them to be free. There were countless times we heard from social workers who visited the homes of some of our children and reported that the streets with all its violence and dangers was better than the homes of these children. We don’t need to see it for ourselves to believe it. It is quite obvious. No child or teen from a moderately adequate home would prefer to stay in the streets. There is nothing attractive about sleeping in the streets. It has been extremely cold in the streets for the past few weeks. The children refused to go to a temporary shelter to keep warm at night. These shelters remind them too much of their homes. It is too traumatic for them to spend the night in a place looks like a home.

For these children, it was necessary for them to abandon their families to discover life. It is just lamentable that in this day and age that the streets are the only possible place of refuge for them. Our children and teens would appreciate Jesus’ words better than us. For them, his words here are the gospel. They are guaranteed that there is life and acceptance outside their oppressive family ties. However, Jesus, in the gospel, was not strictly talking to children, teens or women who come from abusive and dysfunctional homes. He was talking to regular people like us. We need to give up everything in order to be His disciples.

I think the children helped me understand what Jesus was trying to teach us here. The children had to abandon their families to discover something new. As long as they remained in their familiar environment, they would never discover any new possibility. It is necessary to leave the old and familiar to discover something greater and better. Our children had to leave their families. It wasn’t an easy decision for them. It took a lot of courage for them to abandon what they knew to be normal. As human beings, we always choose the familiar over the new. For our children, the living streets was a huge change. It is better than the old one they had. However, it is still not good enough. One day they will to abandon their life in the streets in order to embrace something better. Perhaps, it is going to be ongoing process for them and maybe even for us. This is perhaps the greatest challenge for them. They are comfortable where they are. They don’t want to move forward. They like to remain where everything is familiar. They are just like us.

Life is a question of abandoning the old to embrace the new. This pattern starts with our birth up to the time of our death. Those who hold on to to their past look quite sad and pathetic when it is no longer appropriate for their age. We don’t have to forget what we leave behind but we cannot hold onto it and expect to appreciate the new. Jesus’s words are tough because they are brutally honest and realistic. Jesus, through his wisdom, reveals to us the true nature of the family. It exists to prepare us to become His disciples in the world. It doesn’t exist to shelter us from the world. Unfortunately, families are made up of people of this world. They manipulate and control and exploit feelings and sentiments like any citizen of this age. Sometimes, we need to cast them away in order to discover the abundant life that the gospel ushers into our lives. Nevertheless, we have to count the cost. We have to ponder upon it carefully before we act.

These verses taught us a valuable lesson this week. Our task in the streets is to be theologians. We take the words of the gospel to the streets and struggle with the reality that confronts us there. We know that there is truth in the words of Jesus and we need to discover the Truth in the context of our reality. On the other hand, we are also confronted with the task to teach our homeless youth to become theologians, in other words, they need to learn how to count the cost. After all, it is impossible for us to be Christians without being theologians.