Mammon with a voice!! A loud voice at that. Gayle and I had to make some choices this past week, the exact nature of which is inappropriate to put here, but having heard the voice of Mammon shouting loudly, ‘Not enough!!’, we then had a choice to make which if we followed it would involve making us less capable of confronting Mammon on its terms. Choices though, when possible, need to follow convictions. So we went ahead and made the choice.
Having acted on it as we drove back home, we reflected on Jesus and his radicality.
1) Take the money and knowingly give it to a thief to look after.
2) Send out the disciples instructing them to take nothing. You won’t eat unless they feed you. And to compound things, because there are wolves out there I will send you as their food (lambs).
You just got to laugh!! Not a strategy to win the popular vote. Maybe we could write him off – after all what does a 30 year old know about such issues? The idealist will grow out of it.
In that context though… heal the sick, cast out demons, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead. Proclaim the kingdom of God has come near.
You just have to laugh. The whole situation is crazy. Yet maybe we got to laugh at ourselves when we realise how little of the Jesus message we have understood.
Although I will post this a day after the post on Mammon’s loud voice, I wrote them at the same time. If a part of the puzzle is relational, another part has to be laughter. A good healthy dose of laughing at ourselves, of the madness of taking ourselves too seriously, as if we could change the world! A healthy dose of laughter at the teachings of Jesus, so that we are a little more vulnerable to them gaining an entrance to our hearts.
‘He who sits in the heavens laughs.’