True Wealth and Riches
Sermon by The Reverend Neil Bramble Chapman
Sermon 26/09/04
There are many ways in which one can become rich. If you are like Richard
Branson, you have a good eye for business, excellent entrepreneurial skills and
are able to put your great ideas successfully into operation. Or just think of
the wealth and fame that footballer’s enjoy these days. Some are almost as
famous and rich as many film or pop stars and in many ways they are businessmen
with their name and face being worth as much as, if not more than their football
skills. Think of David Beckham or Michael Owen. Then again, your chosen path to
riches might lie in working as hard as you can all your life and by living a
simple frugal life, you are able to leave £1m to your favourite dog charity. It
has been known that some recluses have amassed such a fortune that when their
will is made public people are surprised to learn that they were so rich.
But at the end of the day, where does true richness lie? You will not be
surprised, given that this is a Christian Sermon and not a business enterprise
lecture, that my answer will be given in terms of Christian Discipleship. The
way of the world very much speaks of being rich in terms of the acquisition of
wealth and that in doing so we will also find happiness. This was an argument
with which Paul had to contend and here in his letter to Timothy, a young Church
Leader, he suggests a different route to richness. Infact, he suggests a
different kind of richness entirely, which is based upon being generous, being
content with what we have and in being faithfully obedient to God.
In Chapter 1 of his letter to Timothy, Vs 3&4, Paul instructs Timothy to speak
out against the false-teachers of the age. Many of these people were called
Sophists, who were highly educated philosophers and would seek to entertain and
amuse their audience in debates by using long and complicated words. In the
process, these debates would spread confusion and untruth, often leading to
factions and divisions within the church. Now you might think that you may have
heard one or two sermons that fall into this unfortunate category, with
Preachers and Ministers, yes even Ministers, using long-winded, interminable,
innumerable, labyrinthine words and sentences, which seek to confound and
obfuscate the meaning of a particular construct, but nevertheless make the
aforementioned orator appear acutely perspicacious and distinctly sagacious, but
what they have neglected to do is expunge and expurgate all the obfuscatory
confabulations and simply resulted in being consummately pleonastic in an
heterogeneous phraseology, which acts as a stupefacient.
In other words, they don’t get to the point and send everyone to sleep!!
In Paul’s time these false teachers brought about quarrels, envy, strife,
maliciousness, suspicions and factions. He argues that the false-teachers have
not themselves understood the truth and so mislead and misdirect others in their
teaching. What is this truth that they have failed to understand? It is the
Truth who is Jesus Christ. They do not know Jesus as the Christ and are too
wrapped up in their own sophistry to notice Him. The words of Abraham in our
Gospel reading ring true here. The rich man pleads with Abraham to send Lazarus
back to warn his brothers to change their way of life before it is too late.
Abraham’s response speaks to many who are intent on living their lives their own
way rather than listening to God. “If they do not listen to Moses and the
Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”
Paul argues that possessions, wealth and earthly richness will not lead to the
truth and suggests another path to true riches. In vs6-7 he says, “godliness
with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world and we can
take nothing out of it.” I grew up near to Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, the burial
site of the Saxon King Redwald. In this huge grave, it was discovered that he
was buried in a ship, accompanied by a great deal of his wealth and possessions.
This shows us how wealthy he was and also reflects the Saxon theology, that a
person was aided in their journey to the afterlife by being buried with tools,
weapons and food. However, given that we have managed to dig it all up, it shows
that even the great King Redwald could not literally take any of his riches with
him after he died.
Paul continues to teach contentment, simplicity and obedience to God, by saying
in vs 11 “you, man of God, pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love,
endurance and gentleness.” Yet as we know all too well today, there is no easy
way to this contentment. Many people experience a great deal of restlessness as
opposed to contentment and discover the hard way that wealth and possessions do
not necessarily make one iota of difference to how we are as a person and how
happy or satisfied we are with life. We can be surrounded by the most beautiful
objects, the greatest art woks, the fastest cars, live in huge mansions, but
still be empty inside. The acquisition of wealth and possessions may temporarily
affect our standard of living or may make us feel better for a short period of
time, just think of how many times you have done a bit of so-called retail
therapy, the effect soon wears off! Ultimately, possessions have no lasting
effect upon our lives and makes little difference to our spiritual lives and our
relationship with God, although we can experience the “Holy” and “Transcendent”
through beauty, but that is for another sermon!
Paul urges us instead to choose a path of discipleship, of obedience and of
dedication to God. But this we know in itself to be a lifelong journey of
pilgrimage, along whose path there will be hardship and difficulties, times of
pain and struggle as well as times of joy, celebration and spiritual growth. In
my own Christian Pilgrimage, there have been times of great spiritual blessing,
richness and growth, but these have been tempered by times of turmoil and
barrenness. Often these barren times are described in terms of being a desert
experience, and for good reason too, for they feel to be times which are arid,
desolate, spartan and lonely, they are seen as times of struggle, doubt and
despair. Yet one thing we must remember about the desert is that in the midst of
all the sand, one may find an oasis of plenty and delight.
The desert experience of the Christian is not unusual, nor is it necessarily
totally barren. Indeed the Desert Fathers of the Early Church deliberately chose
to travel into the deserts of Egypt and Syria to gain Spiritual nourishment and
maturity, to deepen their faith and relationship with God. This developed out of
the Old Testament prophetic tradition where Prophets such as Elijah dwelt in the
desert, and the Israelites came to regard the desert as a place of renewal and
purification. The Desert Fathers developed this thinking into as pattern of
living where they could strip away the corruptions of daily life and devote
themselves to seeking a pure relationship with God, unfettered by normal
distractions. They learnt to face the deepest human tensions and fragilities in
solitude. Desert monasticism grew in popularity following Constantine’s
legalisation of Christianity soon after he became Roman Emperor in 324 AD. Up
until this point the supreme symbol of Christian Detachment and devotion had
been Martyrdom, but when this was no longer an option, desert monasticism took
its place.
It would have been a had life in the desert with temperatures in the day regularly reaching 40 degrees Centigrade and at night falling below zero. They would have lived in isolation, faithfully learning to endure the desert and all its trial and temptations, often in boredom, depression, starvation, frustration and hunger, trying not to take easy refuge in the delusions and hallucinations of dazzling spiritual dramas of angelic voices and visitations which such conditions would often produce. One desert hermit, Simon Stylites, who from 423 AD to 459 AD, spent 36 years on top of a pillar and he died at the age of 69. Quite an unusual life to say the least, but it showed his devotion to God and his spiritual discipline. Overall the Desert Fathers regarded the desert as a place for overcoming the illusions of this world, for purifying the desires of the heart and a place for learning contentment and true richness.
Finally then, our own desert experiences should not then be seen as something to
be struggled with and resisted, but perhaps they could be regarded as a blessing
to us. For where was it that the Hebrew people received the Ten Commandments,
but in the wilderness and where was it that Jesus resist the Devil and overcame
Temptation, but in the desert, where his calling and vocation were also
strengthened and clarified during this time. We must remember that as with any
desert there are places which are described as an oasis, and it will be the same
in our spiritual pilgrimage, we will find a place of rest and refuge, an oasis
of spiritual refreshment in the midst of the barrenness.
The dark times of the soul, the apparent barrenness of these desert experiences
which, if we are honest, we all share, should not be feared, but should be
embraced as a potential time for spiritual growth and development. With the
Desert Fathers, we should welcome these experiences, hard as they might be at
the time, as a time for purification, for learning true contentment, for
discovering true richness and real dependence upon God. We may discover that it
is only through these seemingly barren times of the desert that we begin to
fully know the Truth and move into a deeper relationship with our Lord and
Saviour Jesus Christ.