For the Love of Money, a sermon based on1 Timothy 6: 6-19, preached on September 28, 2025

A great preacher named Fred Craddock loved to eat at Waffle House. “It’s a great place to get a BLT,” he said. “You have to take a shower after, but it’s a great place to get a BLT.” One afternoon, after he finished his BLT, he asked his waitress for a cup of coffee, which she brought over with a smile. “Two creams, please,” he requested. She patted around, looking for the right pocket. “I can never find anything in this capricious apron,” she said. “Capricious?” Dr. Craddock asked. Finally finding the creamer in her capricious apron, this waitress laid six, not two, creamers on the table, which was more than Dr. Craddock asked for or needed, and so Dr. Craddock took the two he wanted, handed back the remaining four, but the waitress protested, saying, “Better to have and not need, than to need and not have.” “First capricious and now this,” Dr. Craddock responded, “Are you a waitress or a philosopher?” Then realizing he was in an important conversation with a woman capable of debating the metaphysical issues of human existence, he insisted that she take the four creamers he was not going to use, saying, “Better yet is to take what you need, and then give the rest away.” I don’t know how many times I’ve thought about that exchange. I know I’ve told you about it before. I bring it up today not to get you thinking about going to Waffle House after this worship service. Remember, today is the church picnic. Don’t go out for lunch today. I tell you this story to get you thinking about what you have, what you want, what you need, and that great quest we are all on, even and especially Mick Jagger, that is the quest for human satisfaction. I can’t get no, satisfaction. Gonna try. And I try. And I try. And I try. I love that it was Mick Jagger singing that song because he’s rich. Still, he sang the words: I can’t get no satisfaction, offering us the great irony of having enough money to buy whatever you could ever want, while satisfaction still lies out of reach. A rich man lamenting his fruitless quest for satisfaction is the perfect image to complement our second Scripture lesson from the book of 1st Timothy for, as this letter claims, those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. You can’t buy contentment. To find contentment, you must be in touch with what you need and give the rest away. From the book of 1st Timothy, we hear the warning: the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. Yet, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment. Godliness combined with contentment. We know that the perpetual pursuit of more, the inability to be happy with what we have, is a reality in our world of excess, materialism, debt, and superficiality. These issues are not new, although envy and covetousness assault us from every side, perhaps more than ever, in this 21st Century. Today, we cannot escape the billboards trying to sell us something. We are constantly exposed to pictures of people who appear to be having more fun than we are, going on luxurious vacations and sitting in fancy cars. Watching TV with my wife, Sara, every evening I see the same commercials again and again produced by drug companies that have a way of convincing me that I suffer from symptoms that I don’t actually have. Do I have restless leg syndrome? I don’t know. Maybe I do? Am I tired of living with dry and itchy skin? Maybe I am? Certainly, I suffer the plight of all of us who live in this consumer culture that wants us spending more money rather than being satisfied. Remember that the rich man sings, “I can’t get no satisfaction,” because satisfaction cannot be bought. Instead, we read in our second Scripture lesson that there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment. How can we learn to be content? We can’t while we suffer from persistent want, while we want what we can’t have, while we don’t know when to stop our quest for satisfaction, while we want what isn’t even good for us, and within those desires is the root of all kinds of evil. Of course, it’s not wrong to want. The deadly sin is not hunger, but gluttony. The sin is not intimacy, but adultery. Our God knows that we have needs and desires, yet there is a limit set, and the ability to live within that limit is the path of contentment. When was the last time you felt it? I mean really felt contentment. The week before last, I was in Scotland with several members of the choir, and near the end of the trip, someone asked me what my favorite meal had been. Now, this is Scotland. A beautiful place, known for quaint villages untouched by the march of time. A region known for majestic highlands, warm and caring people. A region known for rich Presbyterian history but not known for the food. I had some great meals there, but the meal that stuck out in my mind was not the best meal I had but the worst. One evening, we ate in a hotel. The waitstaff was small, so there were 30 of us and three of them. Everything was coming out in a rush. First, there was shrimp topped with a puddle of mayonnaise. It was so much mayonnaise that it was like mayonnaise pudding. Then came a hamburger that tasted like it had just come out of the microwave. I don’t want to complain, but that burger is seared into my memory. This one bad meal overshadows the rest of my culinary journey. I had haggis, black pudding, and a soup called Cullen Skink that might be the best soup I’ve ever had, while I could even now taste a microwaved hamburger that deserves to be forgotten. Why can I not forget about the burger? Why is it easier for me to remember the worst meal rather than the best? Along these same lines, Sara and I were at dinner with friends last summer. We talked about the opposite of pet-peeves. “We all know what little things drive us crazy. What about those little things that bring us joy? That’s the opposite of a pet-peeve.” Can you think of one? Or is it easier to think of what puts you on edge? What drives you nuts? What gets on your nerves? How far out of reach is satisfaction? Where is contentment? What can you do to find it? Is it easy for you to enjoy the trip, or are you quick to fixate on the food that was all wrong? Do you know that you love the feeling of leaves crunching under your feet? My wife, Sara, loves to crunch acorns while she walks. Once, a little girl told her that she was ruining those acorns for the squirrels who needed their shells intact, so they’d stay fresh through the winter. Sara doesn’t care. She loves the feeling of crunching them and says that this way, the squirrel can have an easy snack while he’s working on his winter stores. My point is simply this: There is great gain in godliness combined with contentment, and there is so much danger in fixating on what you don’t have, for the grass is not always greener on the other side, and those who can’t learn to find contentment will be on an eternal quest for more that never reaches satisfaction. Let our song be, “You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you need.” A story I love to tell is one about a woman who lost her husband. Her pastor came to visit a month or two after the funeral. From the look of the home, she had hardly left. The pall of grief hung over the place. Upon his arrival, this woman offered her pastor a glass of water. That was all she had because she hadn’t been out to buy groceries. What was the point? She led him out to the sunroom on the back of the house, which was different from every other room. While dust covered the living room and while dishes piled up in the kitchen, the sunroom was covered in sunlight, and blooming African violets covered every surface. She told him that she began growing them years before. Her husband’s mother taught her how. After the visit, she offered him one, which he accepted, but asked if he might deliver the violet to a man in the church newly widowed, whom he was on his way to visit. A week later, this newly widowed man wrote the woman a letter, thanking her for the violet, telling her that it was a bright spot during a dark time, which lifted this woman’s spirits so much that she took out her newspaper, read the obituaries, and sent an African violet to every person in the community who was mourning a loss. Step by step, violet by violet, her own broken heart was healed. She washed the dishes in the sink. She dusted the living room. She came back to life, for the way to satisfaction is taking what you need and giving the rest away. My friends, we live in a culture obsessed with more, and I’ve been the victim, thinking to myself that I’ll finally be happy when we can buy a bigger house, and a new car, and then maybe an investment property, yet if that were so then why would the rich man sing, “I can’t get no satisfaction?” I tell you, our culture has no idea where to find satisfaction. If you want happiness, true and abiding contentment, learn the discipline of keeping what you need while giving the rest away. Amen.