The Way to Happiness

The message given in the United Methodist church of the Wheatland Parish on Sunday, September 20, 2020.  The Bible verses used are Matthew 6:19-24.

            I like money.  I don’t anyone who does not like money.  I’m not saying it’s the most important thing in my life, and you probably would not, either.  But it is important.  

            We use money to buy stuff, and we all have stuff.  Now, some of that stuff is necessary.  We need to eat.  We need a place to live.  We need to have heat and running water.  We need clothes to wear.  We need to have a way to get around, especially out here where it can be a long way from one place to another.

            But most of us, if we’re honest, have more stuff than just those basic things.  We don’t just eat enough to survive--we want to eat good meals.  We don’t just have the bare minimum in a place to live--we want to have a nice house, or at least a nice apartment.  We don’t just have clothes that provide the basic function of covering us--we want to look nice.  We don’t want just to have an old clunker to get us from here to there--we want to have a decent car.

            And again, I want those things, too.  I’m not pointing a finger at anybody, or if I am I have to point it at myself.  And I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong to want those things.  Yes, there are Christians who believe God has called them to take a vow of poverty, and who have the faith to follow through on that.  But I don’t see anything in the Bible that says we have to live at a bare subsistence level to be considered Christians.  And Jesus does not say that in our reading for today, either.

            But what Jesus does is warn us to make sure we have our priorities in order.  Jesus provides us with a choice.  We can store up treasures for ourselves on earth, or we can store up treasures for ourselves in heaven.

            Sometimes we think that if someone has money, then that means they must be “storing up treasures on earth.”  But that’s not necessarily true.  Storing up treasures on earth is not really about how much money we have.  It’s about our attitude.  It’s about how important that money is to us.

            If you look at what it really means to “store up” something, what it means is to save up something and keep it for yourself.  That’s what Jesus is warning against.  He’s warning us against storing up things--money, possessions, whatever--just for ourselves.  He’s warning us against being selfish with the blessings God gives us.

            And this is not just something that affects people we might consider to be wealthy.  We can have very little money and still be overly concerned with storing up treasures on earth.  And we can have a lot of money and not be much concerned at all about storing up treasures on earth.  Again, it’s not about the amount of money we have.  It’s about what we do with the money, and how important the money is to us.

            Jesus says, “You cannot serve God and money.”  Let’s look at that.  We know what it means to serve God, or at least we think we do.  But what does it mean to serve money?

            When we serve someone, we are their servant.  We do whatever they tell us to do.  What we think about it does not matter.  Whether we want to do it does not matter.  When you’re someone’s servant, your only desire is to please them, and the way you please them is to do whatever they want you to do.  

            So, when we serve money, we are doing whatever money wants us to do.  We do whatever we need to do to get money.  What we think about it does not matter.  Whether, deep down, we want to do it does not matter.  When we serve money, our only desire is to get money, and we do whatever we need to do get it.  Money is our master, and we are its servant.

            I’ve said before that the reason God gives us rules for living is not to have an excuse to send us to hell if we don’t follow them.  God gives us rules for living because God understands life better than we do.  God gives us rules for living because God knows we’ll be happier, we’ll be better, we’ll live better lives, if we follow God’s rules.

            That’s the case here.  One of the reasons Jesus warned us against storing up treasures on earth, and against serving money, is that doing that will not bring us happiness.  “Money can’t buy happiness” is a cliché, but there’s a lot of truth in it, too.  If our focus is on storing up treasures on earth, if our focus is on serving money and doing whatever we need to do to get money, we will never be happy.  When our focus is on getting money and keeping money, we never reach a time when we feel like we have enough.  No matter how much we have, we always want more.  John D. Rockefeller was once the richest man in the world.  Someone asked him, how much money is enough?  And he said, “Just a little bit more.”  We will never find happiness, we will never find peace, we will never find satisfaction in our lives if our goal is to store up treasures on earth.  We will always want “just a little bit more.”

            Again, that does not mean that having a lot of money is automatically a bad thing.  God blesses us in a variety of ways, and one of the ways God chooses to bless some people is with money.  But that blessing comes with responsibilities.  In Luke Twelve, Forty-eight, Jesus says this:  “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”

            That applies in more contexts than just money and possessions, of course.  It applies to every aspect of our lives.  Because God blesses our lives in all kinds of ways.  The Apostle Paul wrote in First Corinthians Twelve about how we are all given different gifts.  He says that’s a good thing, because all those gifts are necessary.  People have the gift of teaching.  People have the gift of helping.  People have the gift of farming or cooking or woodworking or music or all kinds of things.  And every one of those gifts comes with responsibilities.  In every aspect of our lives, if we’ve been given much, much will be demanded.  If we’ve been entrusted with much, much will be asked.  Each of us has a responsibility to take what God has given us and use it to serve God.

            And again, it’s not that God is going to send us to hell if we don’t do that.  It’s that God knows that using what God has given us to serve God is the way to happiness.  That is the way to peace.  That is the way to find satisfaction in our lives.  

When we feel like we are doing what God put us here to do, when we feel like we are serving God about as well as we can--not perfectly, because we can never do anything perfectly, but about as well as we can--well, there’s just nothing like that feeling.  That, really, is one of the ways we feel God’s Holy Spirit with us.  We’re working with God’s Holy Spirit, rather than working against the Holy Spirit.  And when we work with God’s Holy Spirit, it feels like there’s nothing we cannot do.

And here’s the other thing about that.  When we’re working with God’s Holy Spirit, we stop worrying about results.  We stop worrying about anything, really.  We don’t have to worry.  We can leave the results up to God.  We know we’re serving God.  We know we’re pleasing God.  And we can trust God to use our service in the best way possible.

I want to go through this one more time, because to me, it’s just so amazing how this works.  When we take what God has given us and use it to serve God, we find happiness.  We find peace.  We find satisfaction.  We feel God’s Holy Spirit with us.  We stop worrying.  We know God has everything handled.  God will bless what we do, and God will bless us.  I just think that’s so cool, the way this all works out when our goal is to use what God has given to serve God.

We won’t get any of that by storing up treasures on earth.  We won’t get any of that by serving money.  We will only get it by serving God.  And by serving God, we will store up treasures in heaven.

Jesus gives us a choice.  We can store up treasures for ourselves on earth, or we can store up treasures for ourselves in heaven.  But only one of those choices leads to peace and happiness.  May we all make the right choice.