12- Riches and The Kingdom of God

XII. RICHES AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD.

Mark 10:23. “How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!

WHENEVER the New Testament is looked into with any fresh spirit of inquiry, a contrast is revealed which can hardly fail to produce some strong effect on the mind of a modern reader. The contrast I mean is between the doctrine of the New Testament about poverty and riches, on the one hand, and the circumstances and habits of a wealthy industrial community, on the other. This contrast may be misunderstood and misrepresented; various inferences, more or less erroneous, may be drawn from it: but that the contrast does exist in a startling degree ought not to be denied. It is real, and demands our constant and most serious attention.

Let me revive your recollection of what the New Testament teaches about poverty and riches by two or three illustrations which happen to be brought before us to-day.

It is St Matthew’s day; and we read of a man named Matthew, or Levi, whose business it was to receive the customs or dues which the Romans exacted from the subject Jewish population. It was a gainful occupation; partly, because it was so odious a one that no one would undertake it without the chance of being able to make a good deal of money by it. But there was nothing necessarily immoral in it Matthew was sitting at his official place on the beach of the Lake of Galilee, when Jesus of Nazareth passed by, and said to him, Follow me. And Matthew arose and followed him. That is to say, he abandoned his occupation of publican or collector. We are not to suppose that the incidents recorded in the New Testament took place generally in the abrupt way in which the narrative relates them. The process reported in two brief phrases may have been a gradual and deliberate one. Matthew no doubt resigned his post in an orderly manner. But he did resign it at the call of Jesus, and became one of his followers.

He thus became associated with a remarkable band. Jesus had come forth from the family of a carpenter, probably a well-to-do family, and had begun the life and work of a prophet He proclaimed the nearness of the kingdom of God, and taught, and did works of healing. He drew followers after him, from whom he chose twelve, naming them his envoys or apostles. These were mostly fishermen, not particularly poor men, for they owned fishing boats, but they all left their trades to go with Jesus and to do his bidding. We do not exactly know how they all lived; they may have received money from their respective families in consideration of what they had given up. But it is certain that they lived very hardly, having a common purse, and giving out of that to the relief of the poor.

Matthew, who was one of the Apostles, became also in after years the compiler of one of the Lives of Jesus. In his Gospel we find the longest and most characteristic example of the moral teaching of his Master, commonly called the Sermon on the Mount. From this discourse is taken the Gospel for this Sunday after Trinity; and we learn from it that Jesus spoke to his disciples as to poor men, that he did not urge upon them the duties of industry and providence, but bade them rely upon the bounty of the heavenly Father who fed the birds and adorned the flowers. He warned them, poor as they were, against care, and against the desire of riches.

Matthew was also, as an Apostle, one of those who had the charge of organizing the Church of Christ in its first days. It was done, as they believed, under a special impulse of the Divine Spirit. The most characteristic feature of the social life of the Church was that its members had all things common. They were mostly from the poor class, and when any one who had possessions was converted, he threw what he had into the common stock. This actual community of possessions did not last long; but its principle survived as of absolute authority in the Church. It was a part of the Gospel carried with them into the world by the Apostles, that in the Kingdom of God as they founded it upon the earth no one was to count what he had as his own, that private riches were dangerous to the soul, that the brother of low degree was to rejoice in that he was exalted, but the rich in that he was made low. As was natural, those who came into the Kingdom of God were not in general the rich; God called the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the promised kingdom. And the great enemy of the Gospel of Christ was worldliness. The Cross and the World were in opposition the one to the other. When men could not recognize the glory of the Cross, which was the glory of sympathy, the glory of the high making common cause with the low, it was because the god of this world blinded their eyes.

Such is the doctrine of the New Testament.

Critics need not pervert it very much, though they must pervert it somewhat, to make out that it is utterly opposed to the maxims upon which the life of a modern industrial community is built up.

Certainly, the New Testament ideal looks strangely by the side of the Christian England of to-day.

Here, it might seem, the one universal aim is to become rich. The modes of acquiring riches have been digested into a science. Community of goods is so far from being an accepted institution, that it is regarded by Christians with something like horror. Wealth has increased, and is increasing, in an unprecedented degree; and the rich rejoice more in being exalted than in being made low. It is not indeed true to allege, as some do, that whilst the rich are becoming richer, the poor are becoming poorer. On the contrary it is evident enough that the poor of this country, and of the rest of the world, are becoming less poor. Still, the social differences between the rich and the poor are very great; and whilst there are some persons enormously rich, there are many miserably poor. And there are two circumstances especially remarkable. One is that those who study the interests of the poor most earnestly and sympathetically do not urge them to live like the birds, but to look forward to the morrow, and to lay up treasure on the earth.

They would have them, it might be said, practise providence rather than trust to Providence. The other is that, according to appearances, it is now easier for the rich to enter into the Kingdom of God than for the poor. The upper classes are, superficially at least, more religious than the lower. The Churches in which the New Testament doctrine as I have just illustrated it is read and proclaimed with authority are better attended by those who have possessions than by those who are without them. Will you not allow, my Christian brethren, that the contrast of which I have spoken is a real one, and one which should naturally cause us some perplexity and uneasiness? For my part, I cannot imagine a Christian of these days reading the New Testament in any other than a dead mechanical way, without having this problem presented over and over again to his mind, How is the teaching of Christ and of his Apostles to be reconciled with the modern industrial and accumulating spirit? In what way ought an honest Christian in these times to act with reference to the questions of riches and poverty?

Suppose that we desired to be quite uncompromising and to follow the right without reckoning what it might cost us.

We take the side of the New Testament. We call Christ our Master; we confess him to be the Son of God who died for us. We are sure that it is not only right, but also safe in the long run, to follow him. What alternative indeed have we, so long as we profess to be Christians and disciples of Jesus Christ, but to follow him? Shall we then set ourselves against the whole modern constitution of society? Shall we denounce property, however it may plead that it is an essential condition of social well-being, as the unrighteous mammon? Shall we maintain that it is the duty of every one who awakes to the obligations of his Christian calling, to give all that he has to the poor? Shall we teach that all true Christians, instead of providing for the morrow, ought to cast the care of their support upon their heavenly Father? Shall we protest against all distinctions of society, and proclaim that in Christ there is no master and no servant, no employer and no workpeople, no buyer and no seller, but that all are equal and everything is common?

These views, it will be said, are unpractical, revolutionary, Utopian. But the uncompromising New Testament Christian might reply that he quite expected to hear them so described by the world. It is nothing to him what the wise of this world may think of his views; he is the disciple of a faith which began by being esteemed as foolishness. He is quite willing to bear the reproach of being unpractical and Utopian, so long as he bears it with Christ and the Apostles.

Let us avoid then offering anything that might seem like a worldly objection to the course of conduct I have supposed to be suggested. Let us refuse, if we will, to let political economy over-ride our Christianity.. But our Christianity itself will interpose with a decided veto to check any such application of the doctrine of the Gospel. Suppose it were announced that a score of our richest men, penetrated by a desire to be thorough and not merely nominal Christians, had resolved to give all their goods to the poor. How would you receive such an announcement? With admiration and delight? The feeling which could prompt such a resolution would be indeed admirable; but the act would be one which, as Christians, we should reasonably contemplate with grave alarm. I do not see how it could fail to do moral evil. As Christians, we long that our brethren should grow into the true Christian character; i.e, that they should become, amongst other things, temperate, self-denying, contented, peaceable, helpful. But what would be the effect of an announcement that fifty millions were to be distributed with the purpose of realizing equality amongst men, upon the moral character of those whom it affected? It could not fail to be disastrous. You know that it would generate idleness, covetousness, discord, disappointment. It would feed the fleshly tempers, instead of fostering the spiritual, in hundreds of thousands of our brethren.

Ought a Christian to do an act which is sure to make his neighbours worse Christians rather than better?

If any one therefore were to ask me, Why don’t you, as a believer in Jesus Christ and in the Sermon on the Mount, make common cause in the things of this world with the most destitute around you, and trust for the needful food and raiment to him who feeds the fowls and clothes the lilies? I should not answer that such an act would be fanatical or enthusiastic, or that political economy forbids it, but that, whatever else I ought or ought not to do, I believe in my conscience that to give away all I have to the poor would not be the best way to serve them as a brother in Christ. I know with undoubting conviction that we all need, for our spiritual benefit as children of God, the discipline of forethought and voluntary self-denial, of family responsibilities, of measured and considerate helpfulness. And therefore to turn the orderly arrangements of industrial life into a medley of equal enjoyments would seem to me to be committing an outrage upon New Testament Christianity at least as much as upon worldly wisdom.

There is another alternative. Does uncompromising honesty require us then to adopt the lamentable course of rejecting the earliest Christian teaching on this great question of riches and poverty as mistaken and visionary? Must we say, we hold by the order of modern industrial life, and therefore we put aside the Sermon on the Mount and the example of the Day of Pentecost as having no authority over us?

Let us pause before we do this. Let us consider whether we do not need that that very teaching should become instinct with living power over us.

We have been justifying industry and accumulation as instruments for making us truer children of God. St Paul does virtually the same thing, when he exhorts, “Inasmuch as you have put on the new man in Christ, let every one labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.” But do we mean therefore to approve all that devotion to the pursuit of wealth by which this age is characterized? Very far from it. There is, in fact, no thoughtful person amongst us who is not sometimes filled with shame and disgust and dismay at the predominance which wealth has gained over the motives of modern Englishmen. We are, beyond denial, idolaters in the serving of Mammon. Riches, to us, cover the multitude of sins. People are ashamed of being poor. We make a necessity of the most superfluous luxuries. All this is complained of by the poets, by satirists, by moralists, by political economists themselves. Those who profess no allegiance to Christ denounce the sway of the moneymaking spirit as dwarfing and vulgarising to the character, as lowering the dignity of human nature, as spoiling the quality of genuine enjoyment, as tempting men to dishonesty, as occasioning widespread disasters. The evil is a real one, the disease dangerous.

Now what cure, I ask, for the serving of Mammon is to be compared with the simple uncompromising service of God? This is the real point of all the teaching of Christ. “ Break absolutely and finally,” he insists, “the dominion of Mammon, of riches and the pleasures which riches can buy, over your hearts. Do this at any cost, by whatever means is the most likely to be effectual. Give yourselves wholly, with no reserve, to God. Give yourselves and whatever you have to God. And, inasmuch as God is the Father of your brethren, and desires more than anything else that is known to you the high well-being of you all, to give yourselves and all that you have to him will become, in its practical application, nearly the same thing as to give yourselves and all that you have to your brethren.” By what particular acts we may do the most good is to be learnt, according to the plainest teaching of Scripture, by experience and honest study.. I do not doubt that it was right for Matthew the publican to leave his gainful seat. I do not doubt that it would have been better for the rich young man if he had consented to sell all that he had and to give to the poor and to go and follow Jesus. But it is not to be inferred that every collector of tolls or taxes ought to give up his occupation, or that every rich man ought to divest himself of his possessions. The teaching of the New Testament, carried out to its ideal length, lays upon us the responsibility of using our means for the good of others as completely, as unselfishly, as if we parted with them and left ourselves with nothing. Is this easy, in a world like this? Nay, my brethren, it is difficult, most difficult. It seems to me, and I dare say you would think so too, that it might be easier to make a great sacrifice once for all, than habitually through a lifetime to hold all that one has as a trust for the service of God and for the benefit of others. It would be churlish to refuse to join in the chorus of admiration awakened by the liberality of that good man, Mr Peabody; but it may be permitted to say that, for an old man without wife or children to give away to the poor a great slice out of enormous wealth makes less demand upon Christian charity than for the parents of a family to manage unselfishly and liberally an income of a few hundreds a year or less. To be completely unselfish in the laying out of money is supremely difficult; and it is another difficulty, to lay out wisely. Where is the book, who is the sage, that will inform us how we ought to spend, how much we ought to give, by what giving we may do most good? If it is so difficult to use money according to Christian perfection in the present social order, let me at least be acquitted of recommending any low compromise between the spirit of this world and the spirit of Christianity. I recommend no compromise; I do not suggest the easiest course. I point out how, amidst many difficulties, it is conceivable that the highest Christian ideal might be realized without subverting the industrial order of society. And I say, if you would do your part faithfully in the place in which you find yourselves, if you would seek protection from snares which are constantly threatening to beguile and to master you, then keep your minds on the New Testament teaching about the things of this world. Study it reverently, teachably. See without misgivings in the joy and selfsacrifice and concord of the Pentecostal community the workings of the Spirit of God. Look with admiration on the company of those who left all and followed the Master who knew not where to lay his head. The more we are entangled in a rich society, the more we need the warning and bracing influence of these examples. No less than the Apostles, than the first Christians, ought we to be superior to the things of this world, free masters of our money, be it much or little, and not its servants. There are better things, let us be sure, than those which money can purchase. There is treasure in heaven.

There are virtues, graces, joys, denied to those who care much about money, the heritage of the true children of God. If others are not prizing the real jewels, let that be no excuse to us for childishly preferring the showy counterfeit to the genuine treasure. Let us bear in mind the men in all ages who have shewn a lofty spirit about money, refusing to be bribed by it, not sacrificing the true interests of life to the pursuit of it, bearing with equanimity the loss of it.

Above all, let us consider Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who though he was rich, for our sakes became poor, that we by his poverty might be enriched.

He is not the kind of master to be rejected by such a generation as this. He is the Saviour we need the more, precisely because the hold of the world is so strong upon us. God intends us, let us believe, to be members of a prosperous community, with distributed functions, with increasing command over the products of the earth. But he intends us to rule these earthly things as instruments of the spirit, and as a means for knitting mankind happily in one. And that we may be able to do this, he gives us not only this earthly prosperity, but also fellowship with Christ. He makes us citizens of the Kingdom of heaven. He pours into our hearts his own Spirit, to raise us up, and exalt us to the place whither our Saviour Christ is gone before.

Brethren, let not these best gifts of our Father be thrown away upon us. If we value these according to their worth, he will provide that we shall have such enjoyment as is good for us of his lower gifts also.