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In Jerry McGuire, Cuba Gooding plays a professional football player who is negotiating with his agent and makes him shout "SHOW ME THE MONEY!" repeatedly over the phone. Referring to money, he kept telling his agent throughout the movie, "I'm not getting any love here, Jerry." The movie was making a profound statement about the importance of money in our society. And every professional and amateur sleuth knows the adage, "Follow the money." It means that if you trace the money it will lead you to the culprit. When our daughter was two, we had a rule in our house that we could only eat in the kitchen. But she would get her crackers and when we were not paying attention she would wander all over the house. To find her we simply followed the trail of crumbs. What would happen if we followed the trail of money in your life? What would it tell us about you?
I have rarely run into a person who will talk freely about how important money is to them. Most people would like to have more money but rarely will they profess the accumulation of wealth as a core value. But as someone has said, "Show me a man's checkbook (how he spends his money) and I will show you what his priorities are." This is virtually a restatement in modern terms of Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also" (Matthew 6:21; (Luke 12:34). Would it surprise you to discover that Jesus spoke more about money than he did about faith? Why? Because how we spend our money is perhaps the leading indicator of what is important to us, of where our heart is, of the real identity of our affections and our priorities, and of what we really believe in. The good news is that "total giving to charitable organizations of all kinds, both in absolute figures and as a proportion of income, is higher in the United States than in virtually any other advanced industrial society"(Princeton professor Robert Wuthnow in God and Mammon in America). How generous are we? Not very! According to IRS reports, Gallup polls, and Giving US published by the American Association of Fundraising Council, charitable donations over the last 25 years have run from 1.5% to 2.15% of personal income. This is not exactly heroic generosity. Evidently our generosity rarely interferes with the "good life" that we consider an entitlement. In addition, the weakest givers in our society (giving the lowest proportion of their income) are those making from $40,000 to $100,000 per year. Among the group that gives the highest percentage of their income away is those earning less than $20,000 per year. Follow the money in your own life. What does it tell you? Jesus told us what it would tell us. There are many charities right here in the Upper Valley that are worthy of your financial contributions. Let's do more than give lip service to their importance. Let's "SHOW THEM THE MONEY!" "Where your heart is, there will your treasure be also. . . You cannot serve God and mammon." (Matthew 6:21,24). |
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by Rev. J. Patrick Curtis, Senior Pastor |
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