Then Jesus said to the disciples, "There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property.  So he summoned him and said to him, "What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.'
Then the manager said to himself, "What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg.  I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.' So, summoning his master's debtors one by one, he asked the first, "How much do you owe my master?' He answered, "A hundred jugs of olive oil.' He said to him, "Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.' Then he asked another, "And how much do you owe?' He replied, "A hundred containers of wheat.' He said to him, "Take your bill and make it eighty.'  And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.
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.
"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.  If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?  And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own?  No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth."

I hate this passage.  No, no,… hate’s too strong a word.  I strongly dislike this passage.  It’s not that I hate its message.  What I dislike about the passage is that unlike most of the stories of the gospels, it doesn’t really make sense, at least not on the first few hundred readings. 

The problem of the passage is that it jams together several thoughts all at once, including some thoughts that seem to go against what Jesus teaches elsewhere.  For instance, part of the passage almost makes it seem as though God is calling us to make money illicitly in order to get more money for God.  That’s not the message, but it seems like it’s saying that. 

But I have a different problem with this passage this morning, a problem different from trying to figure out what it says.  The problem is that I’m a lectionary preacher, which means I’m supposed to preach on this passage.  You may not know what it means to be a lectionary preacher.  The lectionary is a device created by all the Protestant and the Roman Catholic denominations that divides the Bible into three-year cycle of selected passages.  Each Sunday we preachers are given the choice of four passages:  one each from the Old Testament, the psalms, the gospels, and the letters of the New Testament.  Each Sunday’s passage is different, and if we follow the lectionary, we never end up repeating a passage over the course of three years.  Then we start all over again.  Following the lectionary has the added effect of forcing us preachers to preach about things we don’t want to preach about.  It also stretches us to consider perspectives and beliefs that cause us to struggle, and so we share those struggles with you in our sermons.

Let me tell you a little secret.  Do you know what generally is the difference between a good sermon and a bad one (or at least one that you think is bad)?  Often it has to do with the passage we preach on.  When we get a hard passage, it can make it difficult to turn it into a compelling sermon.  That’s the reason why some pastors, especially ones in non-denominational churches, don’t use the lectionary.  Instead, the pick a topic and find a passage that fits the toipic.  That way they can just preach on their seven or eight favorite topics.  Unfortunately, I’m a lectionary preacher, which means that I have to preach on the given passages, even if they seem impossible to preach on. 

Well, I’m feeling rebellious this morning.  I’ve decided that I don’t wanna preach on this passage.  So, I’m not gonna preach on it.  Instead, I’ve decided that I want to talk about things I never get to talk about because they don’t really come up in the lectionary.  This morning I get to pick my topics.  And I’m going to talk about three myths about the spiritual life that are prevalent in our culture, and that lead people in a wrong direction.  These are three myths that kind of bug me because so many people believe them, and believing them leads us astray.

Myth #1:  I can be a Christian, or spiritual, without the church
You’ve heard this myth and its several incarnations.  For instance, other versions of it are:

• I’m spiritual but not religious
• I’m Christian but not an attender
• I grow more spiritually from nature than I do from church

This myth is not only common in our culture, but it’s one I believed for a number of years.  For a long time, through my late teens and early twenties, I was a lone ranger spiritually.  I felt that the church was filled with hypocrites.  It was filled with people who said they believed one thing, but then acted as though they really didn’t care about God, love, or peace.  I saw the church as actually inhibiting spiritual growth. 

It wasn’t until I went through a period of profound struggling about my career, my life, and my future that I realized that I couldn’t seek God on my own any longer.  Like so many others of my age who had walked away from the church, I had been creating God in my own image by seeking only my own path and my own beliefs.  I realized that I needed to share my faith and my journey with others.  It wasn’t until I joined the church at age 24 that I started really growing spiritually.  I realized that to grow spiritually, we need to the help of others along the way. 

The truth is that you cannot grow spiritually by yourself.  This isn’t just my belief.  Every major religious tradition recognizes the connection between spiritual growth and being part of a spiritual community.  Whether we are talking about Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, or Native American faith, all teach that to grow spiritually means to be part of a community of faith.  Communities look different depending on what religion we are talking about.  For instance, in Native American faith, there is no distinction between the community of faith and the tribe.  In some countries where Buddhism is the dominant religion, members are expected to spend at least two years as a monk.  In Judaism, to be faithful means to be part of the synagogue.  In Islam it means being part of the temple.  In Christianity it means being part of a church.

Why do they connect faith with community?  Because they all understand that religious institutions, like churches, connect people with more ancient wisdom and mystical knowledge by teaching the traditions of the faith.  These traditions overcome the biases of the age, which teach that only new insights and new beliefs lead us to grow spiritually.  Religious traditions connect us with ancient teachings that go beyond the faddish wisdom of the day.  Also, if you are spiritual by yourself, you have no teachers.  You end up picking and choosing among the different religions, but how do you know what is healthy and what isn’t?  We become our self-teachers.  But to say that we are spiritual but not religious is sort of like saying that we have a Ph.D., but have not been to school. 

Finally, the community of faith becomes a place where people share love.  It becomes a place where people build relationships, but also reach out beyond our walls in love. That’s why mission is so important to churches.  To be spiritual by yourself means to be self-focused, or at least to not be part of a community that offers opportunities to reach out to the world in love. 

Myth #2:  I’m a good person, and that’s all that matters. 
You’ve heard this myth before.  It also goes by other versions: 

• I live life by the Golden rule, I know right from wrong
• I haven’t stolen, I haven’t cheated, I’ve been faithful to my wife, I pay my taxes
• I give to charity, go to church, do good deeds

All these statements may be true to some extent, but they also miss the point.  Certainly goodness is good, but it’s only a start.  Christianity is about more than goodness.  It’s about relatedness: spiritual, emotional, and physical relatedness.  It’s about relatedness with each other, with nature, with the world, with the universe, and with God.  Despite what people may think, God doesn’t care as much about how good we are.  God cares much more about how much we love.  And God doesn’t just want us to love each other or ourselves.  God wants us to love God.  That’s the pursuit of the spiritual life:  to let God love us, and for us to fall ever increasingly in love with God.  God wants a relationship with us that is real, tangible, and filled with love.  God doesn’t just want us to live by the Golden Rule.   God wants us to live by love, which allows us to naturally want to live by the Golden Rule. 

People constantly reduce religion, especially Christian religion, down to some sort of ethical basis.  But it does no good to be good if, when we die, we haven’t developed love—especially love for God.  God loves us, and God wants us to, as scripture says, love God with our hearts, minds, and souls, and only after that to love others as ourselves.  If building relationship with God, and with all God created, is not the center of our spiritual lives, we have no spiritual lives. 

Myth #3: If you are spiritual, you shouldn’t be concerned with money; if you care about money, you can’t be spiritual
You know this myth.  It also goes by other incarnations: 

• The spiritual realm and the material realm have little to do with each other
• Money is about practical life, real life, while spirituality is about the world we have to deal with when we die

To say that there is no connection between spirituality and money is to say there is no connection between spirituality and life.  Christian faith is an “incarnational” faith, which means that it is a faith that incarnates Christ into every part of real life.  To somehow disconnect money and finances from that cuts a huge part of life out.   Jesus never disconnected money from spirituality.  In fact, Jesus spoke about money all the time.

I have a quick quiz for you.  In the gospels, did Jesus talk about money 5%, 10% or 25% of the time?  If you said 25% of the time, you would be exactly right.  Often the only message we remember is Jesus telling the rich young lawyer that if he wanted to achieve eternal life, he had to sell all he had and follow Jesus.  Many people read that and think, “Then I can’t follow.  I don’t want to be poor.”  What we don’t realize is that Jesus was telling the lawyer that because the lawyer was seeking to go ever deeper, and giving up was his next step.  Giving up like that is not the call for all of us. 

In fact, Jesus was surrounded by wealthy men like Joseph of Arimithea  and Nicodemus, and he never asked them to give up their money.  What was different was that these two were already following Jesus, and they were using their wealth to support him and his ministry.  The message Jesus and the Bible give about money is that it is okay to have wealth, as long as we are also generous with it.  The moment we put wealth at the

center of life is the moment we begin to serve wealth, not God.  As Jesus says, “You cannot serve God and wealth.”

How we live on a practical level reveals our spirit, and what we do with our money is a test of our spirit.  Jesus, the Bible, and Christianity constantly teach about what to do with wealth once we make it.  It doesn’t discourage wealth.  It encourages giving.  For instance, how much money are we taught to give back to God?  We are taught to tithe, which means giving 10% back to God for God to use to care for others.  We keep 90%, and God uses 10%.  Tithing is based on the simple idea that all we have is given to us by God, even if we think we’ve earned it, and so we should give 10% back as a way of thanking God. 

The connection between money and spirituality brings us back to our passage.  For the essential message of our passage is that to serve God means becoming generous.  It means giving to the church, to charity, to anyone in need.  It means giving to God so that God can use our money to care for others. 

Ultimately there are three lessons for today: 

• To be spiritual means to be part of a community.
• To be spiritual means to make love of God and others, to make relationships, central to our faith.
• To be spiritual means to be generous so that we can serve God with our wealth, rather than serving wealth. 

Amen.