Remembering The Truth About Our Wealth

“When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in them… and when your silver and gold is multiplied, and all you have is multiplied, then do not exalt yourself, forgetting the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who led you through the great and terrible wilderness, an arid wasteland with poisonous snakes and scorpions. He made water flow for you from flint rock, and fed you in the wilderness with manna that your ancestors did not know, to humble you and to test you, and in the end to do you good. Do not say to yourself, ‘My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.’ But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth…” (Deuteronomy 8:12-18)

For the Jews of Old Testament times, that time of slavery in Egypt (and even the forty years in the wilderness after the Exodus) was a time when they could look back on and say, without hesitation, “That was an awful time. That was rough, terrible, dark – a wilderness time.” And as they prepared to enter into the Promised Land, after that extended time of heartache and struggle, God is ready to bless them with abundance, with a land flowing with “milk and honey”, and all its other resources. But God gives them one reminder, and it is basically this: “Don’t forget Me! I’m the One who made this all possible. Don’t start acting like you earned this wealth all on your own. Don’t act as if it all originated in you – because it didn’t.”

We have our own places of struggle, our own wilderness experiences. For some of our members it was going through the extreme challenge of the Great Depression. For others it was fighting in a major war. For others it was suffering through the unexpected, tragic loss of a loved one. Others have weathered the storm of being laid off from a job, or gone through all the emotional, financial, and relational pain that comes with a divorce. Others have overcome times when our own destructive or addictive behaviors led us into a certain kind of hell. For some of us, our wilderness time has centered around a major health crisis, or caring for a loved one whose health has been severely compromised. And some of you have gone through a number of these “wilderness experiences”.

Our wilderness experiences can and do vary. What we hold in common is the very real sense of God’s love and presence with us, bringing us through, and bringing us to that new place – that Promised Land – the place we longed for with all our hearts, and the place we knew, on some level, that only God could provide for us.

For us, like the Israelites, there is that temptation that can arise, almost from the moment that we make the transition from the wilderness to the land of blessing. This is the temptation: to think that I got to that place of blessing through my own hard work, that I did it all by myself somehow, that “my power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth”. I deserve this blessing – BY GOD! – and I made it happen.

That is the temptation - and that is also the delusion - when we find ourselves thinking: I made all this happen. This is my wealth, my money. Look what I did!

This way of thinking is the opposite of living in gratitude, the opposite of acknowledging God’s grace.

One of the sentences that can be said at that moment in the liturgy, right before we collect the offering, is this: “Yours, O Lord, is the greatness, the power, the glory, the victory, and the majesty. For everything in heaven and on earth is yours. Yours, O Lord, is the kingdom, and you are exalted as head over all.” (1 Chronicles 29:11; and The Book of Common Prayer, p. 377)

You and I have power. It is ultimately derived from God. You and I have wealth. That wealth has its source in God, too. You and I have been abundantly blessed, even as it is true that we have gone through our wilderness experiences. Those blessings all originate in God.

And God says to each one of us: “Remember me? Please… remember me!” When we do remember the Lord our God, all the other things – our relationships with others, the way we view ourselves, our wealth, our work, everything – start to fall into their proper places.