The Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee



Wednesday in Easter Week, April 27, 2011, St. James Church Sewanee

“But Peter said, ‘I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give you; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk’” (Acts 3:6).

Money is a unit of measure and a medium of exchange: it allows value to be counted and quantified and also goods to be exchanged easily and conveniently. Historian Niall Ferguson points out that money fundamentally relies on trust or belief (Colbert Report, 1/13/09); in fact, the word “credit” derives from the same Latin root as the word “creed”, the “I believe in God” that we will use in the course of our liturgy this evening. Our money is no longer backed up by gold or silver, and in fact (as Ferguson points out) much of our money is simply invisible, electronic markers in a digital account book; this makes money quite a bit like the unseen God who is the subject of Christian belief. (Mind you, from our point of view as Christians, being unseen isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though it raises most modern people’s suspicions.) Ferguson also points out that money is a means of relationship between people, typically creditors and debtors. Belief, trust, and relationship are all a part of the world of money. Civilizations are built upon it and apparently (if recent events are any guide) can be subverted by the lack of it.

A subject so concerned with trust, belief, and relationship is in close proximity to the life of faith. So it’s not too surprising that the early Christians had an interesting take on money. The Church in Jerusalem in the early days after Jesus’ Resurrection is reported to “have had all things in common”, to have pooled the resources of the disciples for the common good of the community. “Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts” (Acts 2:46). Now there’s a positive story about money. Notice the emphasis on the generous heart.

Then again, there’s the account of Simon the Magician who became a believer and then tried to purchase the ability to give the Holy Spirit through his own hands. “May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain God’s gift with money! You have no part or share in this, for your heart is not right before God” (Acts 8:20-21), as Peter told Simon. Again, the heart. Whatever the Gospel is, it cannot be purchased with this unit of measure and this medium of exchange. Remember Jesus’ own probing question, “For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in exchange for their life?” (Matt. 16:26). What indeed can we give?

So we keep these things about money in mind when Peter and John tell the man who has been lame from birth that they have no silver or gold to give him. They are not in the business of creating creditors or debtors, of quantifying or commodifying what they have to offer even though it is “a pearl of great price” (Matt. 13:45-46). Instead they are trying to get to the heart of the matter, who is Jesus Christ himself. So the fact that they aren’t going to give money to the lame beggar isn’t an argument against charity, or even a reflection that the disciples have got nothing in their pockets at the moment (oops, left my wallet at home!), but a more foundational affirmation that human life and human well-being (even salvation itself) cannot be reduced to dollars and cents.

What Jesus’ followers offer is what they have, or rather who they have, the Savior of the world. This is a costly item, worth far more than any amount in gold or silver or even in digital dollars. In cannot be reduced to this purely human medium, cannot be a function of human civilization no matter how necessary for the well-being of society. So we get an idea of the high value that God places on our lame beggar and each one of us, that he would give his only Son for our salvation.

God is inviting us into a whole new way of seeing things, in the light of the new life that Jesus gives us through his death and Resurrection. God is inviting us into a whole new economy, one that’s quite distinct from that of the world. God has created a new community, the Church, that is called to share God’s gifts, the greatest of which is (of course) Jesus Christ, the outward and visible sign himself of God’s generosity and abundance. Even when we opt for scarcity, itself a form of sin, God keeps offering us a medium of exchange by which he takes human life and joins it to the divine life of Jesus Christ. This is the “divine exchange” or divina commercia as St Augustine once called it (Enarr. In Ps. 30 [2]), where God takes human flesh and we receive divine life. Those being confirmed this evening are being invited into this new way of looking at life and a new way of being in the world. This medium of exchange is a precious thing. We have no silver or gold to give them but we give them what we have, which is Jesus Christ himself.

- The Rt. Rev’d John Bauerschmidt, Bishop of Tennessee

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