Devotion for the Week

… week of August 3, 2025

The Challenge of Money

Jesus’ parables about money continue to trouble his listeners to this day. In fact, they may seem even more challenging to today’s Christians in North America, a culture so saturated with wealth and consumerism, than they were to our first-century counterparts. It can be easy to approach these parables by attempting to justify our behavior, to try to determine the exact point where desire becomes greed or where consumption becomes gluttony, often in an effort to retain what we already have. But this attitude transforms generosity and simplicity into a law rather than an act of true freedom initiated in the love of Jesus.

The parable of the rich fool reveals the absurdity of greed and its justification. Tomorrow is not promised, and the pathological accumulation of wealth and material goods seems silly, even cruel, in a world as unpredictable and challenging as ours.

Freedom in Jesus releases us from the belief that we can secure our own future with wealth and possessions. It opens us to the radical generosity of God’s neighborhood, where the security of our future lies in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and in the practice of self-emptying love for our neighbor.

It’s fair to say that Jesus would make for a very challenging church treasurer. The fundamental economic posture of the gospel is one of redistribution and radical trust that, in community, God will provide everything we need. Parables like this one about the rich fool are meant to stretch and challenge our assumptions and actions.

If the choices we make about money seem to come easily, that just may be an invitation to reflect on the grounds of our own economic practices. The self-emptying generosity Jesus invites us into will always feel risky, but we can take comfort in the assurance that God, who makes all things new, will care and provide for the common good and the flourishing of true community. Thanks be to God.