2238AFC091622 – Hand over your mammon!
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1 Timothy 2:8 – 8 I desire, then, that in every place the men should pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or argument
Amos 8:4, 7 – 4 Hear this, you that trample on the needy,
and bring to ruin the poor of the land,
7 The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob:
Surely I will never forget any of their deeds.
Luke 16:9-12 – 9 And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth [A] so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes. 10 “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. 11 If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? 12 And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own?
Aloha nui loa, ʻŌmea! Grace and Peace to each of you from God our Father and our Lord, Jesus the Christ, in the Power of the Holy Spirit. Today we want to explore another of those verses with words we just slide over without much thought to their meaning. Old Testament reading for this Sunday (← Check it out!) focuses on treatment of the poor, especially the folks who cheat the poor to make themselves richer. I have given you only the first and last strophes in the link for the passage from Amos. The verses in between are descriptions of despicable acts merchants would use to take advantage of people buying their goods.
Imagine, if you will, a merchant’s scale like this one. A standardized weight would be placed in one pan and the product in the other. If a dishonest merchant used a weight that looked like a 16-ounce weight, but was actually hollowed out so that it weighed only 12 ounces, it would appear that the buyer was getting a pound of product but was only getting a fraction of that amount. That would give the merchant a 25% advantage. It would also give him dishonest wealth, and that’s going to be a problem in the long run. The Hebrew or Aramaic work mammon isn’t limited to just money. It implies all the worldly goods that we use to sustain our life.
Now, does that mean that all worldly things are bad, even the things we need to feed our families, do our work, or even support our congregation? No, not really. What’s bad is the misuse of those worldly goods to cause harm to others as well as valuing worldly cares over and above worshiping and obeying God. We are often reminded of the frequently misquoted passage in 1 Timothy 6:10 about money and evil. The Apostle Paul uses the Greek word philarguros (↔ Click Link) which means “love of silver,” a word to describe avarice, greediness, covetousness, and cupidity (← Check it out!). To coin a phrase, The Apostle Paul is talking about cupidity stupidity – giving one’s self over to exorbitant desires for anything which gives us satisfaction – money, prestige, or whatever we treasure and acquire by any means – even dishonest ones. It is not the things themselves that cause the problem; it is the excessive love of those things. Check out that verse in 1 Timothy to see what The Apostle Paul really said.
The connection between the reading in Amos and the one in 1 Timothy is hands. In the first reading, the hands of the merchant are used to cheat the poor by “rigging the scales.” In The Apostle Paul’s admonition to Timothy, he is saying that hands should be used for prayer – we lift them up to God in praise, petition, and penance. He directs Timothy to teach that holy hands raised prayer must lead to praying without anger or argument. Why does he say “holy hands?” This shows that even our prayers must not be dishonest. We recall the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector in Luke 18:9-14 (← Check it out!). The pharisee’s reputation was that he was a righteous man; but his prayer was hollow and self-promoting. The tax collector was hated and ostracized for his complicity with Rome. Recall Jesus’ words, “for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.” The lesson here is that what makes good sense in the World is not good sense in the Kingdom. We must take time to be holy (↔ Music Link) here so that our Heavenly home (↔ Music Link) will be our next stop.
Now we come to one of those “HUH?” moments in reading scripture. Jesus says, “make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.”
Do you recall Jesus’ charge to The Twelve before he sent them on their first Mission? It is in Matthew 10:16 – 16 “See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” The followers of The Way had to be smart in their dealings with the World. We could rephrase it this way: Don’t be stupid, but don’t be pushy either. If our hearts are holy, then our hands will also be holy and our hands will be used to lift up rather than beat down. When we lift holy hands to God instead of our idols, we are blessed (See Psalm 24:1-6). The Psalmist tells us that everything (and everyone) 
on the Earth is the Lord’s. (↔ Music Link) Therefore, whenever we acknowledge that we receive a blessing, The B.I.B.L.E. instructs that we acknowledge that blessing always and everywhere because (sorry, here it comes again) it is the Absolutely Perfect Plan. How do we sully those holy hearts and hands? Yes, you have guessed correctly: It is through sin, the kind of sin that comes from indifference to what is right.
Indifference is a horrid condition. It is way worse than hatred. When we hate someone or something, we at least acknowledge their existence. Then we are blinded by indifference, existence doesn’t matter because we don’t care. “It won’t make any difference if I keep a couple of these pens the boss provided. He’s got tons of them.” “That guy over there by the water-cooler is such a jerk. He’s handsome and muscular, but he’s also really stuck up. He never talks to anyone.” Alright sinner, who paid for the pens? And did you know that the handsome man is terribly shy about his speech impediment? If we don’t care about little things like that, if we won’t do something to make it better or to save expenses, how can we truly care about Ukraine, or abortion, or politics, or any other worldly thing without being as hollow as the Pharisee?
That Absolutely Perfect Plan requires that we care, and when we do not, we bring disharmony to our lives and the lives around us. Take it from a lifelong sinner, that’s not how it’s supposed to be. So, what am I, what are you, what are we supposed to do about it? Give up and go ahead and trample the poor because “the poor will always be with us?” (See Matthew 26:6-13) Shall we proclaim our own righteousness and disparage the penance of our neighbor? Shall we insist that God loves us more than that drug addict across the street? I hope not! God Loves you and me because of who God is, not because of anything we did or didn’t do. The Love is always there, even when we are indifferent to it. Ouch! That hurts! How can we be indifferent to the Lord’s Love? God has a Plan for us, and it is based on his Everlasting Love. Let’s take a quick pause to look at our hands to see if they show what is in our hearts. Do our hands show that the Lord is our God and we are his servants? If so, then what is in our hearts is his Love. If not, then whatever is in our hands that is not God’s is mammon. “Ya gonna have to serve somebody. It may be the Devil, or it may be the Lord, but ya gonna have to serve somebody.”
If we are sticking with the APP and choosing to serve the Lord, then we have to hand over to his tender care all that mammon we’ve accumulated . Does that mean we follow the example of St. Francis and walk off into God’s service naked of all worldly possessions? Not necessarily (although God did truly bless that sacrifice). “The Earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.” We can use our material goods to do what needs to be done – including charitable alms. You might remember a verse from about four weeks ago in Sirach 3:30 – 30 As water extinguishes a blazing fire,
so almsgiving atones for sin. We might say to ourselves (and even to others, truth be told), “I’m not like that. I don’t cheat anyone, I don’t lie, I don’t steal. I do my best to be kind and fair to everyone.” The next time those thoughts come up, let’s look at our hands to see if they show the markings of a holy heart. If so, we have succeeded in handing over the mammon – this time. Nonetheless, be wise about your worldly dealings, making friends by means of any unrighteous gain BUT be trustworthy in its use.
Whatever, whenever, wherever, whoever, however, if ever, forever —
at your service, Belovéd!
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Unless otherwise indicated, all scripture passages are from the New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE) New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Biblical languages inserts from Bible Hub (Bible Hub: Search, Read, Study the Bible in Many Languages) Visit at http://biblehub.com
Aloha Friday Messages by Charles O. Todd, III is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
[i] Greek ἐλεημοσύνη eleémosuné – mercy, pity, compassion; the benefaction itself; charitable giving, especially to less fortunate. See Matthew 6:2-4
[A] This is literally mamōna tēs adikias the mammon (what one most trusts in – mammon) which is the product of unrighteousness and iniquity.
