Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

On Brothers and Inheritances, and When Jesus is Exasperating

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So this is C. S Lewis’s famous trilemma: when Jesus is outrageous, as he often is, you have to decide. Do you laugh him off as a lunatic, blow him off as a liar, or bow the knee as to your Lord?

The aggrieved brother in Luke 12 was faced with Lewis’s trilemma. “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me,” he asks, perfectly reasonably.

Jesus is having none of it. “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?”

In other words: “You are on your own, buddy. You make your own inheritance-pursuing-or-relinquishing choices. Don’t involve me.”

But he advises him, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.”

Beware of greed: wanting more than you need. Because life is not about amassing money or stuff.

And then he bursts into story. A rich man got richer. Instead of enjoying his wealth right now, living in the present, and sharing some of it, he decides to tear down his barns and build bigger ones to store his surplus, “enough for many years”. And THEN he will “Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.” ’

But God calls him a fool, because he was living in future tense. He would die that very day without enjoying his wealth at all, and without getting to share it in the way he might have wished.

It is foolish to store up wealth, instead of being generous towards the priorities of God, Jesus concludes. (Which I interpret literally, that Jesus calls those foolish who waste their precious lives storing up wealth.)

* * *

Brothers and inheritances have suddenly become an issue for us. Roy’s grandmother left substantial money in Roy’s name, and we’ve been pressured by his “baby’ brother to sign it over to their mum, to be left to her heir. And given that he has power of attorney, we are suspicious as who that might be.  She has bought this brother rental properties and retirement homes, so that he, a medical doctor, Cambridge-educated like Roy, has spent his life adventuring in mountains, rarely doing paid work, whereas we, we’ve worked hard, and, and…

Can you hear me hyperventilating?…And can you sense the terrible tedium of family financial politics, and the resentment, and emails are flying, and all of us are committed Christians, and it is getting ugly. And an uncle, a judge, as it happens, audacious, outrageous, takes the brothers side. He wants to control the money, putting in trust, supposedly for the mum, but we’re suspicious, and blackmails us with far-fetched threats. Time-zone differences mean we go to sleep and wake up with harassing emails about money!!

And my peace, which I believe is the normal state for a Christian, is being shaken. Blogger Emily Wierenga says a kiss is never just a kiss. It involves “hips, lips, heart, mind and neglected childhoods.” So too a family financial dispute is never only about money. It’s about who was cleverer, and who was the favourite, and who has been more successful and what is owned to the ugly duckling. It’s about greed and resentment and fear and lack of trust in God. It’s about living as if God cannot even now give us twelve legions of inheritances.

I had told Roy: I am the writer, let me handle this, but this all got too filthy-ugly for me and affected my peace and my sleep and my weight and my blogging. I was being dragged down by other people’s greed, and our own intransigence.

* * *

So yesterday, I walk alone to the Sgwd yr Eira waterfall in the Brecon Beacons before going to the Cwmbran revival meetings (on which more soon).

And as I walk, I hear the voice of Jesus say tenderly, “Anita, do you remember my fable about brothers and inheritances and bewaring of greed?”

Me, warily, “Yeees.”

He, “So?”

I am sullen and silent. Feeling very rebellious.

And he’s silent too. He’s a gentleman that way.

* * *

And me, crossly, “Roy’s worked hard for our house, and that baby brother, aged 48, gets houses just for the asking, and he’s rarely done any paid work, and now he’s trying to get this inheritance too, and it’s just not fair.”

But now it’s down to this: Liar, lunatic or Lord. Do I believe Jesus when he says “Beware of greed?” Or not?

When bossy little me helps my peaceful husband contend for his inheritance, we are stressed. I don’t feel I am living in the waterfall of God’s love. Take my little paws off contending, which is greed, and I am at peace again. We can live without the inheritance (as can all the other people contending for it, incidentally).

So after six weeks of emails escalating in bitterness and incivility and the general imploding craziness of family financial feuds, I write saying: No more contending on our parts; no more quarrelling; this is the last email from us on the subject.

Don’t quarrel and fight, James says. If you want something, ask God.

* * *

Following Jesus is a matter of these little hair-pin decisions. You either do what he says, and continue ascending with him on the narrow paths that lead to life, or laugh at him as the man must have done who wanted an inheritance and got a story, and then go on into a world of stress and contention, wealth perhaps, but a whole lot less peace, because you will no longer be walking according to the eccentric, infuriating, outrageous, apparently nutty dictates of Him who is wisdom incarnate.

* * *

The Christian life is like that, a tricky business.

Every now and then, Jesus asks you in the silence of your heart. “So, honey, are we going to do this my way? Or your way?”

The choice is yours. If you say, “Jesus, to be frank, your way is nuts. Not contend for our inheritance, indeed!” he will look at you sadly, but not push the point.

And your paths will diverge, and one day you will look at him sadly, remember the romance you once had, the love you once shared, the time he lived within you like a stream of living waters, and you will be sad.

So I make my choice. No more contending. Yeah, I will hold on to Jesus with both hands, will dance with him, and I will let Him take care of inheritances. Or even, God forbid, the lack of them!

Thoughts on the Puzzling Parable of the Ten Minas

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The slothful servant burying his money, from the Parable of the Talents, Flemish, 17th (stained glass) 

 Luke 19 11-271 God gives us almost infinite freedom.

The master says, “Put this money to work until I come back.” How should the servants do that? They are not told.

God leaves us free to choose how we use our gifts, like loving parents leave their children free to follow their own bliss and passions.

It’s the same when it comes to our spiritual questions: How much should I pray? How long should I study Scripture? How much money should I give? In the New Testament, there are no answers. It’s left up to us.

2 We live in an abundant universe in which turning one minas into ten–a staggering rate of return– is quite possible. The master is pleased but not overwhelmed by the servant’s rate of return.

Abundance is encoded in the universe, in the seeds of tomatoes and apples; in the minds of people who can dream up an infinity of good ideas; and buried under the soul which is forever turning dropped leaves and the bones of dead creatures into diamonds, precious stones and fossil fuel.

3 The rewards God offers us are exceedingly abundant, out of all proportion to the good deeds of the servants. A minas was three months salary. He turns, let’s say, 10K into 100K which is stunning. But he is rewarded with ten cities—and the minas of the unfaithful servant.

Because God is good, the benefits of serving him always outweigh the cost. The sense of peace and shalom and provision God offers us is out of all proportion to the little things we might do for the love of him.

Ten cities for ten minas! “If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desire not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, we are like ignorant children who want to continue making mud pies in a slum because we cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a vacation at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” (C. S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory”).

Serving God is win-win. The master gets the ten minas; the servant gets the ten cities, and a minas.

4 We are judged fairly, on our effort, not on the outcome.

The ten servants were all given a minas each.

Some things are allocated almost equally. We each have 168 hours a week, a body, a mind, are born into families. But there are, of course, huge variables of talent, opportunity, and nurture, just as the servant who turned a minas into ten may have had more energy, intelligence, business talent and connections than the one who turned it into five.

We are not judged comparatively, but according to what we have done with what we have received. The ones who turned their minas into ten and five are each rewarded, though their rewards differ in accordance with their abilities.

5 The wicked servant is judged harshly for misjudging his master’s character. He wasn’t a hard man, in fact, but an exceedingly generous one.

The servant’s ungenerous stingy calculating spirit was just the opposite of the master’s generous spirit.

A. W. Tozer writes in The Root of the Righteous,

It is most important to our spiritual welfare that we hold in our minds always a right conception of God. If we think of Him as cold and exacting, we shall find it impossible to love Him, and our lives will be ridden with servile fear. If, again, we hold Him to be kind and understanding, our whole inner life will mirror that idea.

The truth is that God is the most winsome of all beings and His service is one of unspeakable pleasure. He is all love, and those who trust Him need never know anything but that love.

Fellowship with God is delightful beyond all telling. He communes with His redeemed ones in an easy, uninhibited fellowship that is restful and healing to the soul.  

6 A principle that’s true in the natural and spiritual worlds: “To everyone who has, more will be given, but as for the one who has nothing, even what he has will be taken away.

That’s just the way the world works: the rich get richer, we live in an increasingly winner-take-all society.

In the spiritual realm, God constantly tests us, and as we pass each test, we are given new opportunities, and new challenges.

“If you do one good deed your reward usually is to be set to do another and harder and better one.” C. S. Lewis in The Horse and His Boy

7 The spiritual life often has tests which we are unaware of.

The servants thought it was just a job: Put the minas to work. In fact, it was their destiny which was being decided. They thought they would have to turn over their profits to the master, and that was that. But those who were conscientious and dutiful were rewarded massively. Those who played safe and shirked ironically lost everything.

Similarly, the trials which come our way are often tests of character–to strengthen it or reveal it. Who hasn’t had the experience of disproportionate suffering or blessing following upon apparently trivial actions?

8 The parable is really about spiritual truth.

Spiritual truth is living and active, sharper than a double-edged sword, alive like a seed, like yeast.

As we obey and share what we have understood, we are given more insight. If we do nothing with our insights, we tend to forget what we have learned, and our insights vanish into the mists.

10 Life is Not Fair but God is Good

“To everyone who has, more will be given, but as for the one who has nothing, even what he has will be taken away,” might not seem entirely fair. The one who turned one minas into ten rather than five may have been cleverer, better connected, more energetic—and then in addition to all these gifts, he get the leadership of ten cities, and the minas of the lazy servant

Ultimately, we have to bow to the sovereignty of God. Life is not fair, but that’s okay for God is good, as Mark Buchanan says in this fabulous essay.

The Parable of the Dishonest Steward. Frank Talk on Money.

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Blue and Yellow Macaw Bird Flying-953871We grappled with The Parable of the Dishonest Steward (Luke 16 1-15) in my small group.

The Steward soon to be dismissed, too old to dig, and too proud to beg, leverages the last thing he has–his connections– to make friends knit to him by gratitude once his job is over.

He is commended for this intentionality and foresight, just as the man with five talents is commended for using them well. [Read more…]