Skip to main content

Money - 'thought for the day' BBC Coventry and Warwickshire



It’s been a week for me of thinking about money. It has of course for the nation as well as we listened to the detail of the Chancellor’s budget.

How much money we have got, how we get it and how we spend it are questions that every household has to ask; every business and charity too. The questions are the same for the nation, if on a much larger scale.

This week in my church we have been looking closely at our finances and the resources available to us. It has been challenging, making all of us vulnerable. For questions of finance and money get right to the heart of things. They ask us to seriously reflect upon what is important and who is important. In so doing they reveal our deepest values. Jesus taught unequivocally that we cannot serve two masters – we can serve either God or wealth. Yet I suppose the temptation is to think that we can divide our loyalties. We can blur the line and keep our feet in both camps.

I was inspired to read this week about the Sikh tradition of langar. Langar is a free community kitchen, instituted by Guru Nanak, which today forms part of every Sikh gurdwara or temple. What is so fundamental to this tradition however is Guru Nanak’s teaching of upholding the equality of all people. The way that the food is donated, cooked and served reflects this. Anyone may come to the community kitchen regardless of wealth, background or creed and anyone can volunteer in the kitchen to prepare food or wash up. Everyone sits on the floor and eats together. Volunteering and eating in the kitchen is a spiritual discipline in which meditation is encouraged. The dignity and equality of the human person is upheld by the religious values which underpin the service.

This seems to me to be a prophetic teaching for today, reminding us that we are all equal before God and that life is blessed when we share what we have. It is not that those who have should give to those who have not, but something much more profound - that each of us needs the other in order to learn about who God is. And so whether we are thinking about personal or public finance, it seems vital to remember the equality of every human being and the equal dignity they have before God. If we keep this in mind our attitude to how we acquire money and how we spend it should better reflect the love and compassion of God. 

You can listen to the 'thought for the day' here: 7.50am 22nd March 2015
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02lb3l8

Comments

Post a Comment

Please be respectful when posting comments

Popular posts from this blog

Rugby

It has been just over three weeks now since we have arrived in Rugby and it feels like a world away from South London. If I was used to being in what is generally thought of and written about as a post-Christian secular world then Rugby looks and feels very different. There are a proliferation of churches across Rugby which are very active in working together for the good of the town. There seems to be a genuine Spirit of God's love working across Rugby in impressive ways that I'm not sure what century I am in! It is surprising to find a town that works so hard in regenerating and reinvigorating all that it is and it feels like an enormous privilege to be here.  Not that South London was any kind of spiritual desert! It was also a great privilege to work there and see how God can still be so central to people's lives in the 21st century. If the image we get from the newspapers and national media is that God is redundant in the modern age it seems that the reality is very ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Identity, belonging and holiness

Sermon for 2nd July Doubting Thomas - Ephesians 2:19-end, John 20:24-29 In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians we see classic Pauline theology in action – Paul is explaining to the Ephesians (Gentiles) that they are fully accepted into the household of God and full members of it. The implication is that they are unsure about their place. Paul is clear that their tradition and history is rooted now not only in the Patriarchs, but also in the Apostles and with Jesus Christ as the corner stone. It is the Apostles in Jesus who invite them to full membership. No longer is holiness and worship centred on the Temple in Jerusalem but, rather, the individual believers are spiritual temples and the group of believers an ‘habitation of God’. Paul, as we know, had been fully committed to his identity as a God-fearing Jew; his life and ritual practice confirmed his sense of superior identity before God. He was saved because of his birth right and due to his strict adherence to the Law. Th...
Post a Comment
Read more

'I know why the caged bird sings'

When I was studying festivals and rituals in Renaissance Venice as a post-graduate, evocative paintings full of religious processions and miracles, one thing that struck me was how the public space was highly ritualised and controlled. Most of the time women were prevented from taking part in the public rituals and had to watch from their windows (see above). When they were out in public space, their appearance was strictly controlled.  'Being part of the governing structure of Venetian life, civic ritual was a male domain. A woman’s world was a distinctly smaller one than a man’s, while men made forays into the political and economic centres of the Piazza San Marco, the Rialto and further a field to the East in merchant galleys and the terraferma , women remained in small communities at home. Dennis Romano argues that a woman’s neighbourhood was the parish of her residence and perhaps one or two adjoining parishes, adding further that ‘generally speaking, men did not want t...
Post a Comment
Read more