“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.