Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Summary of series so far

God created us pure and holy but sin strained our relationship with him.

Through the ministry of Jesus, and now his church, we are being re-created to bear the image of God as we were originally intended through the power of the Holy Spirit.

God’s Spirit has given us different virtues, also known as gifts or graces, to help us battle against what are popularly known as “the 7 deadly sins” (7 pecados cardenales o mortales).

Today’s story is found in the gospel of Mark

Context

First gospel written in about 60 A.D. mainly to preserve the stories of Jesus after first-generation Christians, like Peter, had died.

Before Mark the early Christians had passed on the story of Jesus orally as isolated stories, short sayings collections, and some longer narrative, such as the passion.

Mark was likely the first Christian to write a “Gospel,” not a mere biography but an extended treatment of the significance of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection for believers.

Transition: Let us look together at the broad spectrum of reactions that greed can have on people.

(read dramatically)

Rabbi who performs healings and teaches about the kingdom of God.

Ran to him

“I threw myself before him for he is surely a holy man.”

v. 17b

This holy, healing rabbi told me...

What followed from his lips were words I was taught since I was boy...

Excitedly!

mk 10.20-21

But… what about the riches of my family?

What will I have to offer if I meet a woman?

If I have nothing to offer, how will i have a family?

Who, then, will care for me when I am old?

My family’s abundant inheritance has come from God himself, but this man is asking me to give it all away?

This just cannot be.

My heart was broken and my eyes filled with tears.

I looked at this man who looked on me with love.

He turned around and kept teaching his disciples as they continued the road where I met them.

The Vice of Greed

(read dramatically)

Rabbi who performs healings and teaches about the kingdom of God.

Ran to him

“I threw myself before him for he is surely a holy man.”

v. 17b

This holy, healing rabbi told me...

What followed from his lips were words I was taught since I was boy...

Excitedly!

But… what about the riches of my family?

What will I have to offer if I meet a woman?

If I have nothing to offer, how will i have a family?

Who, then, will care for me when I am old?

My family’s abundant inheritance has come from God himself, but this man is asking me to give it all away?

This just cannot be.

My heart was broken and my eyes filled with tears.

I looked at this man who looked on me with love.

He turned around and kept teaching his disciples as they continued the road where I met them.

Fast forward to the 1850s

Hetty Green.

This infamous “witch of Wall Street” was believed, at one time, to be both the richest and the meanest woman in the world.

Raised the “little blue-eyed angel” of Edward and Abby Robinson, Hetty got her greed and her money the old fashioned way—she inherited it.

In spite of their immense wealth (which they also inherited), Hetty’s parents lived as poor as church mice.

They heated their home with open grate fires and ate leftovers prepared in an antiquated kitchen.

They never bought something new unless the old had completely worn out.

Hetty learned the trade of investing and negotiating from her father, who was so tight he once refused the offer of an expensive cigar for fear he might like it and lose his taste for cheaper brands.

So, Hetty didn’t have to leave home to learn it.

There are many stories of her stinginess.

She never used hot water and went to bed before sundown so as not to waste money on candles.

She owned one black dress, which she wore every day without washing, and never changed her underwear unless it wore out.

On her twenty-first birthday, Hetty refused to light the candles on her cake, because she didn’t want to waste them.

But after her company insisted, she blew them out immediately so she could return them to the store for a refund.

She wrote checks on scraps of paper, instead of using bank notes and traveled many miles alone to fetch a few hundred dollars she had loaned at high interest.

She ate mostly fifteen-cent pies or oatmeal, which she heated on the radiator in the bank, since she never once turned the heat on at home.

Speaking of home, she never owned one, but spent most of her life in run-down apartments.

By her midlife, Hetty was worth over one hundred million dollars and still showed up every day at New York’s Chemical and National Bank to count her money, sometimes forcing employees to stay long after hours, waiting for her to come out of the vault.

Mrs. Green spent the last years of her life the victim of multiple strokes brought on, some say, by a heated argument with another woman—perhaps the first in Hetty’s life—who would not back down.

She died in 1916, at the age of eighty-one, and was buried with her family in the Immanuel Church’s cemetery in Bellow Falls, Massachusetts.

The reaction to greed people may have is as broad as personality, but the root of it is the same in all.

And we may have spoken about greed before, but what is it?

New Testament scholar Brian Rosner defines greed as

a strong desire to acquire more and more material possessions or to possess more than other people have, all irrespective of need.

This is what both the rich man who encountered Jesus and Hetty Green have in common.

They were not willing to let go even of what they did not need.

We have been speaking of the 7DS in a threefold manner with the imagery of a serpent.

Let’s continue with this motif.

The Nature of Greed - Materialism

It’s an inordinate love of things or fear of losing them.

It is never to be satisfied with our income or to be bored with what we already possess simply because we possess it.

It is the tendency to assess everything according to the cost or profit.

The book of Proverbs equates the nature of greed to hell itself.

Prov

The Bite of Greed - Love of Acquiring Excessively

1.

A Pre-Occupation with Money—letting the cost of something keep you from enjoying it; taking a job or pursuing a career mostly for the money.

2. Compulsive Spending—buying things because you’re bored or depressed or simply because it’s on sale.

3. Hoarding—buying more of something than you need, then throwing the excess away or storing it for years.

4. Conspicuous Consumption—distinguishing yourself from others by what you own or can afford or being self-conscious around rich people because you’re thinking mostly of their money.

5. Miserly Living—living without bare necessities because you won’t part with the money to buy them or being stingy when you tip or tithe.

6. Over-Spending—owing more than 10 percent of your income on credit cards; buying more than you can afford to pay off.

7. Improbable Risk—sinking money in the lottery, gambling on slim-chance investments or on get-rich-quick schemes (this includes the “seed-faith” poppycock of certain televangelists).

The book of Proverbs has a great reminder

It’s an inordinate love of things or fear of losing them.

It is never to be satisfied with our income or to be bored with what we already possess simply because we possess it.

It is the tendency to assess everything according to the cost or profit.

The Venom of Greed - Tendency to define life and/or happiness by possessions

This trap is laid bare by the author of Ecclesiastes

Ec

The Virtue of Hope

Context of Rich man story is key here.

It follows the story of Jesus teaching we must receive the kingdom of God as children.

The rich man’s problem was not wealth per se but the failure to trust that God—not wealth—was the only good and that God’s radical call to discipleship was for his own good.