Matthew 6:1-3, 17-21

We all live by hope. Hope is bedrock of the gospel. And for all of us, money and hope are entwined. We just saw a song from Finian’s Rainbow. It’s a musical that looks at the Irish potato famine in 1850 which killed ten per cent of the population and another 10% emigrated to the United States. So the musical combines hope that life in the USA will be better, a yearning to see again the River Shannon and Glocca Mora, and faith that there will be a pot of gold somewhere.

 In the current election, I am amazed that jobs, deficit, and price of drugs have not become the centerpiece issues. The New York Times reported today that the new Medicare card will lower the price of drugs 15%. But since the law was signed last year, the average price of drugs has increased 23%. So if a pill cost a dollar last summer, it now costs $1.23. and after the new discount, it will cost $1.05. The nation’s wealth is not evenly distributed and this affects hope.

 Im aware, as we look at the Bible today, that some of us are comfortably situated, some of us are deep in debt, and some of us rely on cash jobs that only keep us day to day. But there are some Biblical principles on wealth and hope that are universal. As we look at this Easter series ‘Fit for Life’, I want you to work hard on today’s message, because your happiness depends mostly on your hope. Let me repeat that – your happiness depends largely on your hope. So if you can get a Biblical hope with regard to money, then you will have done a lot to be fit for life. 

The Bible has a great deal to say about the importance of wealth and how it should be handled. This is a Methodist issue as well, because John Wesley wrote a lot about money and lived out his principles. He lived at the time of the British Industrial Revolution and he saw the great expansion in personal wealth being generated by the invention of factories and the transformation of production techniques. Wealth was not evenly distributed so that some threw away what others needed to live.

He gave three pieces of advice: Gain all you can, save all you can, give all you can. Gaining all you can is a story about being industrious. This is first a comment for youth. How are you going to use your life to gain all you can? Someone has said that it’s a shame that people have to go to college when they’re so young. I can understand that. I was a mess when I went to college. I thought that life was a little homework and a lot of time in the student union with friends. Gaining all you can was the last thing I had on my mind. And since I was a Christian, some of the busyness of prayer meetings and Bible studies was my excuse from serious preparation to use my life skills, gifts, and time to be the person that God created.

It is not easy to be the person that God created you to be. Its more than you are. For most of us, the first time we feel that pressure is when we stop being children and get into the teen years. At first, we feel that someone expects something big from us and we guess that its our parents. And we hope they’re joking. And then Christian kids will start to realize that its even worse than that. Its God who wants you to live your life to the max, and God isn’t joking.

 But it is also true that we have to be learning at every age. Now some of you will be fascinated at this next piece because you know where I want you to go with it. The fastest growing group of internet users has suddenly become people over 65, reports the New York Times. They interviewed a woman of 99 years of age, who writes to her kids by email and reads a Finnish language newspaper from her nursing home laptop every day.

At every age, God has a job for us. My father is struggling with Alzheimer’s as he cares for my mother. He wants so much to be here in New York right now, but he really needs to be there until I get out again and help them make a plan. So I am encouraging him not to lose hope, but to keep doing what he can. He went through World War 2 even though he was scared and I reminded him of that. ‘Dad, you can do this one more time. You went through World War 2 even though you were scared. General, you have another mission and you can do it. And this time, keep your eyes open!’

Save all you can. This is not as easy as it seems. Forbes Magazine reports that most large fortunes diminish and sometimes disappear in only 2 or 3 generations. Albert Lowry was all the rage 20 years ago with his books on how to get rich through real estate. And Money Magazine interviewed him and reported that his net worth was about 30 million dollars. Lowry gained all he could. But the last news that Lowry and fellow adviser Bob Allen are both bankrupt.

Not all saving is unpleasant. I saw a chart where very small additional mortgage payments can have a huge effect on a 30 year mortgage. $25 extra per month saved one family $15,000 in total. That’s less than a dollar a day to save. You could redeem soda cans for that amount.

My nephew called this morning from Virginia. When he moved here from Cambodia, he got an entry level job. So I was surprised when he started to press me and his brother to go back to Cambodia and take money to his mother. The trip was expensive and I knew that his job was minimum wage. He kept talking about ‘my money’ and I wanted to say that after a year in the USA, ‘you have no money.’ So I asked him about the money. And he said, ‘I have $10,000.’ And I was stunned. Finally I asked him where he got it. And he told me, ‘I lived with my brother. I made $13,000 and I saved.’ A young person not used to American life was able to look at all of our imagined needs and simply say, I don’t need to live like that because I’m thinking of my mother.

An old formula was to save ten percent of your income each year. That may be outside your power, but it is also true that each of us can save something. The best quick way to get advice is with Quicken or Microsoft Money which help you set goals even as you enter your information about your money and how you’re spending it. And they have graphs which show you quickly how things are going. It doesn’t take much time and it’s a friendly reminder to keep working on savings.

The last part of Wesley’s advice is the most powerful. Gain all you can, save all you can, give all you can. We see this advice in today’s passage in Matthew as Jesus warns people to store up treasures in heaven.

Again, I want to appeal to young people to learn to live differently from the people around you. The USA is getting worse, not better. In 1950, only 10% of the national income was spent on luxuries. Currently, that number is 30%. Young people, there are not many role models out there to show you the importance of God’s words. But that does not make God’s words less important or powerful.

And half of all giving is done by people who make less than $30,000. Sometimes people tell me that their church can’t afford whatever is being proposed, because there are not enough rich people in that church. That’s wonderful, because giving from modest incomes is much more likely to fund anything.

 If you want to be fit, you have to tithe. Of course, people focus on what the tithe can do. It is the hands and feet of the gospel. If you consider this to be your church, you should be giving at least half your tithe here. You cannot have a good church if you don’t participate. This church is not wealthy even though it has a big budget. We ended last year with a surplus of $583 on a million dollars in spending. That’s such a small amount of money that even if your tithe is $100 a month, it would make a great difference.

 But the tithe is not primarily about others. Giving the tithe forces you to change around your life and your savings to make sure that your hope is in God. Chances are that you can’t save the way you want to and spend the way you want to and tithe. You have to make adjustments.

 That adjustment process is when you start to pray and ask God for help. And God sends back a message to trust more and find your hope in the treasures you invest in heaven. And then you get to choose where your hope is. And that choice can make you fit for life.