This week’s readings are Ecclesiastes 1.2,12–14; 2.18–23 and Luke 12.13–21. And they’re not easy reading.

As a parish, we’re currently working on a £250,000 grant bid from one source and asking another for £52,000. We’ve just had to spend £3,500 to make safe the large beech tree that unexpectedly shed a limb at All Saints’. We’re also submitting an insurance claim for the c. £20,000-worth of damage caused (at least, if it's approved, that's value out of the £15,000 annual insurance bill!).  Meanwhile up the road at St. Andrew’s it’s just cost around another £3,000 to repair plaster damage — including sections that dropped from the ceiling. And, of course, St. Michael’s faces possible closure for public worship because of the £300,000+ of repairs needed just to make the building safe.  I've also got £8,800 pounds of invoices for various professional fees just arrived in my inbox associated with all of the above.

Meanwhile, with our current levels of giving and running costs, we’re still operating at an annual deficit of around £40,000 — which is possible only because we underpay our parish share, in turn contributing to a annual Diocesan deficit of roughly £2 million.

That’s just some of the figures that have passed across my desk this week. It feels like an odd place to start a reflection on the Scriptures — we might like to think the church should be above all that, that it shouldn’t concern itself with money, let alone talk about it. The reality is, though, that the society we’ve created for ourselves makes it an inevitability — the things that we need to do if we want to maintain historic buildings, and worship in the ways to which we’re accustomed — can only be done by doing so.  That 'if' is carrying an awful lot of weight.

Our forebears would be appalled — not only at how we’re behaving but at how we’ve allowed the world to become: obsessed with wealth, worshippers of Mammon.

That’s a bold claim, but I stand by it, because the early church, Jesus, and the whole sweep of Scripture didn’t share our squeamishness about talking money. In fact, if you read through the Gospels you’ll find that Jesus teaches more about money than anything else. The ethical questions we so often tie ourselves in knots over are rarely the ones on his lips. Cash is. And in this week’s Gospel reading, rooted in the tradition of Ecclesiastes’ assertion that the accumulation of wealth is just ‘vanity’ (or ‘sheer nonsense’ in one delightful translation!), he says:

“Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” 

And, 

“You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?”

It’s not an isolated incident. He also said:

“No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” (Matthew 6:24) 

And also this:

“Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” (Mark 10:24–25)

 That one he said after the disciples were stunned at his direct answer to the question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”:

“‘If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.” (Matthew 19:21) 

I could go on. Jesus did.

Amazingly, it looks as though the early church actually took him seriously. Acts tells us about their shared life together, where many chose to sell their possessions and pool their resources. In his letters, Paul commends moments of generosity when one church with a surplus helps another with a deficit:

“I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you, but it is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may be for your need, in order that there may be a fair balance. As it is written, ‘The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little.’” (2 Corinthians 8:13–15) 

Of course, the reality of our current situation, and the systems we’ve got ourselves tangled in, do limit our capacity to live these things out exactly as they did — there’s a huge difference between being a church like that of Acts, expecting Jesus to return any minute now, and being a church still waiting 2,000 years later, with a slightly higher expectation that we may still need some stuff the day after tomorrow…

Nonetheless, I do find myself wondering what the world might look like today if the church — all of us who claim to follow Jesus as our teacher — had spent more of its time over the centuries, condemning wealth, as Jesus did, rather than accruing it; and less time condemning people, as Jesus didn’t.

It’s an almost impossible challenge — and when I face it, I find I’m like the ‘rich young man’ of the Gospels: I go away grieving, because I too have many possessions.

But maybe there is still space for me to look at my many possessions, and to ask, seriously and deeply, how many are truly necessary — for body, mind, or soul — and how many might be a present abundance that could better be offered elsewhere.

I suspect I’m not brave enough, but I’m certainly uncomfortable enough to wonder.

Perhaps a good place to start is instead to simply ask: what is one thing this week I could share, give, or do differently, so that my abundance meets someone else’s need?