Love People, Not Money

Scripture Lessons: Jeremiah 2: 4-13 and Hebrews 13: 1-8 Sermon Title: Love People, Not Money Preached on August 28, 2022 There’s a great movie called The Founder about Ray Crock, who discovered a multi-billion-dollar idea when he went to sell milkshake machines to a little restaurant in Southern California run by two brothers, Mac and Dick McDonald. In the movie, Ray Crock is the kind of guy who is always looking for the next big thing. When he recognizes how many milkshake machines the McDonald brothers are buying, he goes to their restaurant to try and learn their secret to success. They happily gave him a tour of the kitchen, and Ray Crock notices the employees’ strong work ethic, how efficiently burgers move from the grill to the serving tray, and how every customer leaves with a smile on her face. Amazed, Ray wants to franchise the restaurant. The brothers have tried that before but haven’t been able to find business partners who would maintain their standards of quality. If you’ve been to McDonald’s lately, that might sound ironic. I once bought a large vanilla milkshake at McDonald’s and left it in the car for a few hours. When I came back to it, it was warm, but it had congealed instead of melted. Likewise, I heard that now McDonald’s coats their fries in an edible lacquer, which explains why they look the same hot or cold, for days on end. One ingredient in the lacquer is said to cure baldness, which makes me want to eat more of them. However, if you’re wondering how a restaurant like McDonald’s went from the ideal set by those two brothers to what we have today, then you must understand how making more money sometimes tempts us to sacrifice quality. Therefore, Keep your lives free from the love of money, the author of Hebrews tells us. Why? What’s wrong with money? On the one hand, anyone here who has opened a stack of bills without the money to pay them knows that when you don’t have enough, it’s hard to think of anything else; yet on the other hand, there is a difference between needing money and loving money. In the movie, slowly but surely, Ray Crock amasses wealth and still chooses money over quality. When he realizes that he can make more if he disregards his agreement with the McDonald brothers, he chooses money over integrity. Divorcing his wife, you might say he even chooses money over fidelity. That’s how we ended up with milkshakes that don’t melt and French fries coated in lacquer. It’s because while McDonald’s restaurants feed 1% of the world’s population every day, making money is the main thing. What’s the main thing for Christians? It ought to be love: loving God and loving people. What becomes the main thing for so many Christians? It could be money, popularity, or fitting in. It happens to all of us. We all get distracted from the main thing, so the author of the book of Hebrews tries to point us back towards what we ought to be about. If you look at the study notes in your Bible, you might read that no one is sure who wrote the book of Hebrews, though it’s likely a sermon preached and recorded. To me, it reads like a sermon: Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers. Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them. Let marriage be held in honor by all. Keep your lives free from the love of money. Be content with what you have. These verses flow and build. Like all good sermons, the preacher makes the point clear. That’s not easy to do, though our daughter Lily, when she was younger, was once telling her babysitter how easy preaching a sermon is. “All you have to do is tell a joke, mention Jesus about three times, and move your arms like this,” she said. There aren’t many jokes in the book of Hebrews, though it still sounds like a sermon to me because the author of the book makes the Gospel easy to apply to our lives. This book tells us just how to live our faith. How do you do that? Start with, Let mutual love continue. That’s what we’re here to do. It sounds easy enough. Think with me, though, about how we become distracted from love. Sometimes, I forget the words of the Apostles’ Creed. It’s true, so I look at the bulletin when we recite it together, even though it makes me feel like an inadequate pastor. A better pastor would get such things exactly right every time. That’s how I often feel, while my wife, Sara, once said to me years ago when I was in my first or second year as a pastor, “They don’t love you because you get everything right. They love you because they know you love them.” Love is the main thing. It’s not how perfectly the elders pass the communion plates or how smoothly the deacons take up the offering. It’s not how few typos are in the bulletin or how perfectly each note is sung by the choir. It’s, Did you pay attention to the one sitting next to you? Was everyone who walked in this church greeted with genuine hospitality? The preacher of Hebrews says, “Some have entertained angels without knowing it,” but did those angels make it to their seats, through the service, and out the door at the end without a soul speaking to them? That’s the main thing. We all get distracted from the main thing, but the main thing is love. How many Christians have become distracted from the main thing? Plenty of them. How many churches fail to pay attention to people locked up in prison? For this reason, the author of Hebrews says, “Remember those who are in prison, as though you yourselves were being tortured.” Why would the author of Hebrews say that? It’s because throughout history, the heroes of our faith have been put behind bars: Joseph, John the Baptist, Peter and Paul, Jesus Himself. You can’t lock the door and throw away the key because the main thing in Christianity isn’t punishment; it’s love. Do you love the people in prison? Do you pray for them? Do you think about them? Jesus was locked up once, and if you read the newspaper and watch the news then you know that He wasn’t the last innocent man to be put behind bars, so don’t forget about them. Remember them as though you were in there with them. And honor marriage. Why? Because every husband in here has been distracted from his marriage by something, be it work, worry, the woman next door, or the Braves on TV. None of those are the main thing. The main thing is your spouse. The main thing is love, but it’s so easy to become distracted from the main thing. Think about it this way: The love of money leads to emptiness. Now, I like to spend money. I’ve spent seven dollars on a cup of coffee before, and I’m going to do it again. I’m not trying to say that the things money can buy aren’t nice. I’m just trying to say that we must remember that a cup of coffee isn’t the same as Living Water. There’s only one source of Living Water. Do you know Who it is? Do you know how to get it? In our first Scripture lesson, the Lord spoke through the prophet Jeremiah saying: My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, And dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water. That’s a harsh critique of humanity: We abandon God and turn to cracked, empty cisterns. Unfortunately, I think God’s right. We work so hard to buy all this stuff that we’re sure is going to make us happy, but does it? The old joke goes, “The two best days for a boat owner are the day he bought it and the day he sold it,” and when Tim Hammond died last Sunday, I knew this much is true, he never would have traded a day on a lake for a day building houses in Mexico. He never would have traded a day making money for a day with his family. My friends, the One who created us understands how we operate. Therefore, the prophet Jeremiah and the preacher who wrote Hebrews both say the same thing: We aren’t happy when we live our lives focused on ourselves and amassing riches. We’re most happy when we live our lives for the people we love. Therefore, let mutual love continue. That’s what this life is about. It’s about love, and not money, not judgement, not perfection, not punishment, and not work. It’s about love. Love people, not money, and Heaven will be yours, not just in the life to come, but today. Amen.