Money

 

Reflections for the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, the 28th of September 2025, in the pew notes at St Peter’s Church, Eastern Hill, Melbourne.  Written by Philip Harvey.

1Timothy 6:6-19; Luke 16: 19-end

‘Follow the money’ is the prompt saying people use to explain the real, if often hidden, cause of many of the messes and mischiefs of this world. Whether it be the obscene deviances of international politics, the apparent inability of our society to house people, or the complacent amorality of redundancy culture, follow the money. Even the smallest private argument may have money as its tacit meaning.

 Sermons since childhood have spelt out that it’s not money, as such, that is the root of all evil, but the love of money. The writer to Timothy wishes to make him aware of the devices and desires of his own heart. The selfishness of simply making wealth for its own sake blinds one to the needs of others. One can begin to judge all transactions and relationships in money terms rather than shared terms. But this ‘love’ can take many forms. The usurer applies unjust and unreal debts. Gamblers waste their earnings, and others’, in a meaningless cycle. The miser refuses to share, treating money as an end rather than a means. The spendthrift throws away earnings and inheritance, wasting resources and disregarding the likely consequences. Cheats weave a tangled web when first they practise to deceive. Charity, the root word of love, is absent where others are excluded from the common wealth, or used for selfish gain

.Scripture is everywhere plainspoken about wealth. If money is a necessity but love of it the root of all evil, then how to deal with it wisely becomes paramount. Today’s Gospel is a provocative challenge, even cartoon-like in its telling, a story of social division. If the unnamed rich man is so wrapped up in his own sumptuous lifestyle that he never notices the starving man at his gate, what happens when he must see existence through the poor man’s eyes? When leftovers were enough, the homeless man received nothing, whereas now the unnamed big shot begs for just a sip of water. Noticeably, the poor man is named, Lazarus is his own person both now and in time to come. Which gives us a strong idea about Jesus’ own interests in getting us also to identify with Lazarus. Luke ends this wakeup call of a parable with mordant irony, compounding the urgency of the present moment: if people like the unnamed rich man “do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if some one should rise from the dead.”