Dylan, Jafar, Gollum, and Jesus--September 26, 2025

Dylan, Jafar, Gollum, and Jesus--September 26, 2025

[Jesus said:] "And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone they may welcome you into the eternal homes. Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much, and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If, then, you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? No slave can serve two masters, for a slave will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” (Luke 16:9-13)

It's interesting: Jesus doesn't offer any options where we get to be masters, only servants.  The question Jessu puts to us is whether we will serve God or wealth (the original Greek uses the word "Mammon" for "wealth," which gives the feel of an idol or false god in clear competition with the true and living God).  But there is no third option where we get to be masters of wealth.  Apparently, Jesus would have us believe that the moment we turn our focus toward wealth, thinking we will stay in control and can always "make our money work for us," it turns the tables on us and holds us in captivity and servitude.  

Bob Dylan was right, then (again): "You gotta serve somebody--it may be the devil, or it may be the Lord, but you gotta serve somebody."  There is no live option of being the boss in this world, not really. Jesus warns us that anybody who tries to persuade us otherwise is just trying to get close enough to fit us for chains to be enslaved to money's power.  It's rather like the climactic scene from the Disney animated Aladdin, where the villainous sorcerer Jafar uses his third and final wish from the genie's lamp to make HIMSELF into an all-powerful genie, only to realize too late that such power comes with the constraints of a lamp and the cuffs that limit his power in granting the wish of his own master.  "Infinite power, itty-bitty living space," it turns out.  Well, that's not a bad theological perspective on money, at least if you ask Jesus.  It promises to give us power, and the moment we take the bait, it gets its hooks into us and we end up serving Mammon like a false god or an idol rather than being the bosses we aspired to be.

This is a whole other dimension of the Bible's teaching on wealth that we don't often think of: sharing our resources and using our money for the sake of others isn't only about helping the recipient--it is also a way of preventing our money from becoming our master. Now, don't get me wrong, it is certainly good to give generously to others for their own sake--there are people who are hungry while we throw away leftovers we "got tired of eating" from our own fridges, as well as people without homes while we sit in spacious houses and complain that we have "more room than we know what to do with" sometimes.  There are folks halfway around the world whose children would grow up healthy and survive to adulthood if their town had a well with safe drinking water, while we complain that our local restaurant doesn't have our particular favorite flavor of soda as an option, so we'll be forced to choose from one of the eight other lesser options.  Yes, at one level, it is good to give our resources to others because we can make a real difference in improving someone else's life in a life-or-death kind of way, and others really do need the kinds of assistance that our abundance could make possible.

But there is the other half of the equation that Jesus calls attention to in these verses, from the tail end of the Gospel reading that many of us heard this past Sunday in worship: namely, that the more centered I am on my wealth, the more it gets power over me and the more I become ensnared in its grip.  It's almost like gravity, really--the larger a planet, a star, or a black hole is, the greater its gravitational force, and the closer you get to it, the stronger that force pulls you in until you can't escape its hold on you.  The same is true about the power of wealth in our lives: a little might not exert very much force on me, but a jackpot of millions exerts a huge force that can threaten to rip apart my values and suck me into only want to protect, preserve, and grow the bottom line.  Being friends with others who have a lot of money might not distort my values, but when that money gets into my account, it has a way of changing my attitudes and making me focus on getting more rather than giving it away.  We don't realize it, but money really does have a way of trapping us like Jafar in the Aladdin movie, to the point that once we get our hands on a sizable amount, we are more and more inclined to focus just on getting even more, even though you might think that's when can afford to be the most generous.  But Jesus knows the power of money over us--even when we should know better and should be able to wriggle out from the leash it puts on us, we end up staying tethered to it, thinking we can still be the boss somehow.

Part of the unique power of money to hold us captive is that it promises to last--even if that is ultimately an unreliable promise.  In the earliest forms of human society, before we invented coins and currency as placeholders for value, we were really just trading things that were immediately useful, but also had a limited shelf life.  If I bartered some wheat for some milk, we each got something of value, but its value had to be consumed as food pretty soon, or else it went bad.  It would be hard to hoard perishable products like that (although I'm sure we could do it if we tried).  Money, on the other hand, had a technological advantage in that I can save it up and use it later, and it still holds value.  And certainly, that is a lot more convenient than having to drag a wagon full of wheat with me wherever I go to do my shopping in the hopes of bartering everywhere.  

But something else happened when our ancient human ancestors started minting coins and stamping shekels: we shifted the aim of our value from the immediately useful thing (wheat to feed my family, milk to drink or make into cheese, lumber for building a house, wool for making fabric, or the skill of an artisan to do a task I could not do for myself) to the shiny pieces of metal as things that were "worth" something in and of themselves.  We stopped thinking of them as placeholders for the real-world objects I needed--the groceries or raw materials for life--and started seeking the money itself as though just having more was a worthwhile goal, regardless of whether I already had my needs covered.  That brought a HUGE change into human society.  I can only hold onto to so many eggs or skeins of yarn or boards of lumber before I reach a point where getting more becomes as much of a hindrance as a help.  But money gave us the illusion that there was never a maximum, and that there is never such a thing as "too much."  I could get more and more and it would always be there for me... as long as I kept protecting it and didn't start giving it away or using it.  Quickly money gained a power over our species like the One Ring wielded over Gollum in Tolkein's The Lord of the Rings--it promised to give us what we wanted as long as we regarded it as "precious," and all the while we didn't realize how it was distorting and disfiguring us into grotesque caricatures of our former selves.  Even today in the age of cashless transactions, discontinued pennies, and precarious inventions like Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, money still makes the same empty promise to us... and we still keep falling for it.

I am reminded of Alice Walker's powerful poem, "We Alone," which feels like it is on the same track.  Walker writes:

"We alone can devalue gold 

by not caring 

if it falls or rises 

in the marketplace. 

Wherever there is gold 

there is a chain, you know, 

and if your chain 

is gold 

so much the worse 

for you. 

Feathers, shells 

and sea-shaped stones 

are all as rare. 

This could be our revolution: 

to love what is plentiful 

as much as 

what is scarce."

This, I believe, is Jesus' point in this passage.  We don't realize it as it is happening (and our pride keeps us from ever admitting it), but wealth has a way of both making us into its servants and distorting us from our truest selves, the more and more we chase after it.  So when we hear Jesus talk about our call to share our wealth, or when he dares a would-be disciple to sell all their possessions and give the proceeds to the poor, it is not because HE is hoping to get rich from our money, and it is not because he is just trying to make it hard for us to follow him.  Rather, it's because he knows that money holds a power over us that is already slowly killing us--it is one of those rare addictions we do not see as a danger but instead put up on the cover of magazines.  Jesus often calls people to practice intentional forms of giving away resources precisely because he knows that otherwise, it gets a stranglehold on us that we do not realize we are caught in until it is too late.

So when we give money to help someone else--say, to an inner-city meal program, or to help kids in your local school district have enough to eat over the weekends if there is no reliable food source at home, or to help dig a well in a village somewhere without potable water, or to support the whole variety of ministries happening in your home congregation--part of the act of giving is about helping whoever is on the other side of that transaction, yes, of course.  But part of it is also the deliberate practice of dethroning money from becoming the master over our lives.  And every time we make the choice to value people over our money, we shape our character in a certain direction.  Every time I make the choice to use my resources for the sake of others rather than just piling it up to keep (like Gollum, staring in hypnosis at the Ring while he calls it "Precious"), we take another step to break the power wealth has over us, and to slip out of the fetters we didn't even realize it had put us in.  And in the act of giving it away, money itself can be transformed: from being an idolatrous power that makes us its servants, to becoming a blessing for someone else, precisely when it is used (rather than hoarded as "potential") in a way that brings others more fully to life.  But as long as we are clutching onto it (and telling ourselves that Mammon is under OUR control), the danger is there that we will actually be held captive in its grip.  Jesus intends to free us--and at the same time, to bless the lives of those who could truly use what hoard in overabundance beyond our possible need.

Today, then, what could be the places where we can take small acts of resistance in defiance of the tyranny of Mammon in our lives?  What would be some small acts of rebellion to dethrone Money as a power in our lives, some act of pulling down the altars we have set up in our hearts dedicated to Wealth?  And how might we find ourselves actually more free and more alive in the act of giving?  That's the challenge of this day... and every day.

Lord Jesus, turn our hearts to serve you, rather than our piles of money. Allow us to use our resources for the good of all.