Give It All Away

This week at Capitol Hill Friends, we looked at Luke 12:13-34, where Jesus lays out some of his radical teaching about money. He tells the story of the rich fool who stored up all kinds of riches for himself, not caring for the needs of others or thinking beyond his personal comfort. Jesus reveals that the God Movement has nothing to do with accumulation or self-protection. Instead, we should take our cue from the ravens and the flowers: These creatures don’t have bank accounts or pensions, but God provides for them and cares for their needs. If God takes such good care of the birds and the grass, how much more is he going to take care of us, his human children?

In case there was any confusion, Jesus concludes with this startling bit of encouragement:

Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart also be.

OK, Jesus! I could get on board with the whole no hording thing, and I could embrace the whole birds and grass thing as a nice metaphor about trusting God to provide. But what’s this about selling my possessions and giving to the poor? And what kind of crazy are you talking about heavenly bank accounts? You don’t expect me to take this literally, do you?

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Eyes To See

Human beings are amazingly imaginative, inventive creatures, and nowhere do we demonstrate more creativity than in our quest to impose a sense of meaning, order and control over our lives. We eagerly develop worldviews that help us understand our existence, seeing the world through our assumptions and systems of meaning.

Some of our ways of perceiving the world are helpful; others are harmful. But all of our worldviews have the potential to become destructive when we make the mistake of placing them at the center, in the place of God. Rather than allowing our worldviews serve as a lens that makes it easier for us to see what the Spirit is doing the world, we often begin to worship the lens itself. We begin to assign ultimate meaning to the eye rather than to the light that allows us to see.

One of the most powerful worldviews we find ourselves enmeshed in today is that of the money economy. Even 2,000 years ago, Jesus taught of the dangers of pursuing and accumulating wealth. The lure of wealth, power and security is immense, yet Jesus warns: No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

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We Can't Have It All

As anyone who has lived here for very long can tell you, DC is a very intense place. It is a city full of passionate people – big-picture idealists who are intent on making a lasting impact on our society, culture and government. Thousands of people move here every month for jobs at non-profits, think tanks, government agencies, lobbyist groups and educational institutions. The focus of the city is on high-level policy, and many of us seem to live in real-time sync with the political theater of Capitol Hill and the behind-the-scenes machinations of K Street.

In my experience, Washington is a place where the line between work and personal life is often virtually non-existent. This is a city where the office never sleeps. 60-hour work weeks seem to be the norm, and I have no doubt that much higher hour counts are common. And in the age of smart phones and wireless internet, many of us never truly unplug. It is easy for our job descriptions to creep into every area of life and every waking moment; but if we love our work, what’s the problem?

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The Love Of Money

In our modern society, it is almost impossible to survive without money. The use of money has become an inescapable aspect of our daily lives. To secure food, shelter, utilities, clothing, transport or recreation – for just about anywhere we want to go and anything we want to do – a monetary exchange is involved. Whether by cash, check, credit card or online payment, most aspects of our lives are now regulated by transactional currency exchange.

What is the problem? Well, according to many public thinkers, there isn’t one. Common wisdom is that money is merely a placeholder for economic value; it simply serves as a technical fix that allows our modern economy to function. With the help of a regulated currency, goods and services can be exchanged in an orderly, efficient manner. Money is a fantastic invention that allows individuals to store and exchange the value of their labor.

But money has become so much more than that. In the thousands of years since the invention of standardized currency, money has consistently shown its ability to twist human behavior. Instead of serving as a means of exchange, we turn it into an end goal. Instead of seeing life as it really is – a pure gift from God – our monetary systems ensnare us in a worldview that reduces the majesty of creation and the details of human life to numbers on a balance sheet.

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Get a Job, Minister!

Who at any time pays the expenses for doing military service? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat any of its fruit? Or who tends a flock and does not get any of its milk? For it is written in the law of Moses, "You shall not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain." Is it for oxen that God is concerned? Or does he not speak entirely for our own sake? 

It was indeed written for our sake, for whoever plows should plow in hope and whoever threshes should thresh in hope of a share of the crop. If we have sown spiritual good among you, is it too much if we reap your material benefits? ... Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ. - 1 Corinthians 7-11, 12b

In the Quaker community, there is a huge amount of tension around the spiritual significance of money, paid work and ministry. The Quaker movement rose up in part as a reaction against the abuses of a privileged clergy that treated the Church as a source of revenue. In George Fox's day, the clergy represented an abusive, landed elite that lived in luxury and defended a corrupt political and economic system.

To this day, we harbor a deep reticence to financially support ministry. Our healthier communities are generally open to providing some sort of financial assistance - covering some of the direct costs of ministerial travel, for example. For many Friends, however, the idea of financially releasing an individual for full-time gospel ministry is almost unthinkable. In every other area of life, we understand that depth, quality and dedication in service requires a financial basis. But when it comes to ministry, we often insist that it remain strictly volunteer. Our livelihood must come from somewhere else.

Although the majority of Quakers today hire pastors, we still retain a deep skepticism of paid ministry. Even among Friends congregations with paid staff - whether they call them "Meeting secretaries," "pastors," "youth coordinators" or "Friends in residence" - the pay is very, very low. Frequently, our pastors and other released ministers are forced to live at a subsistence level, find additional employment, or rely on a spouse or loved ones to make ends meet. The wages of sin may be death, but the wages of ministry are often not much better!

Our refusal to financially support the gifts of ministry in our midst can be devastating. God gives spiritual gifts to our communities that are meant to strengthen and transform us into people who bless the world, but if we refuse to embrace and release the gifts that we receive, we cannot grow. Our unspoken dogma of spiritual bootstrapping - expecting each individual to make their own way in the world, never asking help from others - may be one reason for the present demographic and spiritual crisis that Quakers are facing.

Though many Quaker ministers would love to get a full-time paycheck for the vital work that God has called them to, most of us do not ask for that. We generally pay our own way, grateful for God's miraculous provision by other means. Finances are important, but we know from experience that the Lord will take care of these logistical details. The deeper question is one of solidarity. Do our Meetings truly embrace the ministry that arises in our midst - regardless of whether we ultimately feel led to financially release it?

In many of our Meetings, when someone experiences a transformative call to ministry, we simply do not know how to respond. As Friends, we have certain rather rigidly defined boxes that we use to organize our religious life. You can be a clerk, or serve on a committee. Perhaps you are feeling a leading to serve as a pastor or work as an employee for a Quaker non-profit. Wonderful. We can handle that. But what happens when God calls us to something really weird?

What do we do when a sister feels God is directing her to travel to visit other churches, without a pre-set agenda? What happens when one of our brothers comes to us and explains to us that God is leading him into full-time ministry as a prophetic musician? How about when someone is feeling called into a missionary effort right here in our own city? What is our posture towards the new things that Jesus is doing in our life together?

Money is an important symbol of our commitment. Our spending represents where we as individuals and communities are willing to put our limited resources. It represents our real priorities. When we examine how we spend our money, we get a better idea of what we truly value.

Queries for congregations:

• Do we truly value gospel ministry?
• Do we believe that God's work in the world is worth the cost?
• Do we place our love for our brothers and sisters above our fear of not having enough?
• How do we live in solidarity with those who are called into a ministry that demands their primary focus and makes paid employment challenging?

Queries for ministers: 

• Do we trust that God will provide for our needs, even if this providence looks very different from what we would prefer?
• Do we keep our hearts and minds rooted in the love that God has for his people, even when they disappoint us?
• How do we avoid bitterness that can sour our ministry?
• If God requires it of us, are we willing to work twice as hard, earning our own living while preaching the gospel?
• Are we willing to "endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ?"

Millennials: Shake Off the Shame!

The US Census Bureau recently released a report reveals that, since the beginning of the financial crisis, a growing number of Americans are living with roomates or relatives. The greater part of this increase has come from adult children living with their parents. Millennials, this is about you.

The fact that so many Millennial adults are living with their parents partially hides the fact that our generation has been plunged into a level of unemployment and poverty with no parallel since the Great Depression. If poverty status were determined by personal income, 45.3 percent of adults between the ages of 18 and 34 would qualify as living in poverty. Clearly, we are living in a different economic age than the one that many of us were raised to expect.

So many of my generation know from experience how terrible it feels to be scraping by on an absurdly low income, unable to afford both student loan payments and groceries. What is even more demoralizing is that many of us have virtually no income, and millions are forced to rely on parents and relatives to provide even the most basic needs while we work unpaid internships or desperately search for work. No matter how you slice it, being broke is awful.

But lack of money is not the worst of it. The truth is, most people my age are coming to terms with our economic diminishment. We know that we will probably never be as materially prosperous as our parents were, but we know that this is not necessarily a tragedy. We are acutely aware of the environmental, social and health impacts of the consumerist binge of the late 20th century, and many of us do not feel deprived to not be able to participate. On the contrary, thrift is increasingly becoming a virtue, and care for the earth is a very real consideration in our spending choices. We are willing to pay more, and to live less luxuriously, if it means that we can inhabit a healthier, more sustainable world.

So, if many of us are content living with less, what is the problem? One word: Jobs. I am confident that my generation can thrive in a world where unrestrained luxury gives way to global responsibility and sustainability. That is the world that we want to live in. But being chronically jobless or underemployed is not sustainable. The prolonged drought of meaningful employment is tearing my generation down in slow motion. It is crippling us professionally, emotionally and spiritually. And we will bear the scars for decades to come.

In his new book, End This Depression Now!, economist Paul Krugman observes that, "People who want to work but can't find work suffer greatly, not just from the loss of income but from a diminished sense of self-worth." The youngest cohort of adults today are not simply facing a loss of income, we are facing a loss of meaning. Who are we? What is our purpose? What value do we offer a society that tells us repeatedly and simultaneously: "We don't need you," and "Why don't you grow up?"

There do not seem to be any easy answers to the challenges that we are facing on the level of economics and public policy. It may be many years before the job market returns to what was once considered "normal." In the meantime, however, we Millennials are going to have to make sense of our lives, often in the absence of meaningful employment. What might this look like? How can we shed the shame and feelings of personal failure that come with un(der)employment and begin to look for ways to empower ourselves, regardless of the economic outlook?

If anything is clear by now, it is that older generations are not going to provide us with systems of meaning. It might be tempting to go into a holding pattern, to cross our fingers and hope that our economy and sense of core values will eventually recover. But I do not think that is good strategy. Instead, how might we focus our energies to create the just, healthy, sustainable and meaningful society that we long for? The answer to this question will undoubtably involve a lot of tough, entreprenurial work - work that will go largely unsupported by the dying systems and institutions that are clawing for survival right now. Birthing a new society in the crumbling ruins of the old will not be easy.

But I believe we can do it. Time and again, older generations have asked us, "when will you grow up?" Now is the time to demonstrate that we are grown - but that our adulthood does not conform to 20th century assumptions. We can model a responsible, sustainable adulthood that produces the fruits of justice: A society in which the poor are not crushed, the earth is not ravished, and there is meaningful work for everyone who is willing to contribute. The time has come to shake off the shame that we have lived under for so long and to embrace the power that is latent in our generation, if only we will choose to exercise it.