Greed: All We Need is…MORE!
September 13, 2026
16th Sunday after Pentecost
MINISTER
Rev. David J. Wood
SCRIPTURE
I Timothy 6: 6-10, 17-19; Luke 12: 13-21
“Greed: All We Need is…MORE!”
by Rev. David J. Wood
16th Sunday After Pentecost, September 13, 2026
First Congregational Church of Camden
Scripture Readings: I Timothy 6: 6-10, 17-19 & Luke 12: 13-21
As most of you know, we are in the midst of our series on the 7 Deadly Sins. You can go on the web site and catch up on the sins we have already covered…pride, envy, anger, and sloth. Gluttony and Lust are yet to come. Today we take up the sin of GREED.
As I was preparing for this sermon this week, I came across a term I had not seen before: MONEYTHEISM.
One writer describes MONEYTHEISM this way:
Moneytheism is a thriving religion whose practitioners raise hosannas to holy mammon and make sacrifices at the altar of materialism. The worshipping of wealth has a long tradition that hasn’t changed despite the scold Jesus delivered to the money changers in the temple.
MONEYTHEISM. I like the term. It speaks to the power money has in our culture. It is has the force of a religion. Some would say, as the fervor or traditional religion has declined, the worship of money has rushed in to fill the void.
Well, if the practice of greed is any indication of the way money operates in our culture, I think moneytheism is one of the isms that should be added to our cultural lexicon.
It’s another way of naming “the love of money” that Paul warns us about and the “greed” that Jesus warns we should guard against.
Greed, rather simply, is when desire outstrips need. When I am driven to accumulate for myself beyond what I need, I fall victim to greed. It’s not good for our souls or for our world.
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Recently, I read How Much is Enough? Money and the Good Life
By Robert Skidelsky (an economist) & Edward Skidelsky (a philosopher).
“Capitalism is a two edged sword. On the one hand, it has made possible vast improvements in the material conditions of our lives…On the other hand, it has exalted some of the the most reviled human characteristics such as greed, envy, and avarice.”
They write about the famous economist, John Maynard Keynes who published an essay in 1930 titled, “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren.”
As technological progress made possible an increase in the output of goods per hour worked, people would have to work less and less to satisfy their needs, until in the end, they would have to work hardly at all. Then, wrote Keynes, “for the first time since his creation, man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem—how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, live wisely and agreeable well.”
In Keynes’ imagination, this marvelous condition would be reached in 100 years—which would be 2030. I guess even economists can get it wrong.
More from the Skidelskys:
Capitalism rests precisely on this endless expansion of wants…it has given us wealth beyond measure, but has taken away the chief benefit of wealth: the consciousness of having enough…Capitalism, it is now clear, has no spontaneous tendency to evolve into something nobler. Left to itself, the machinery of want-generation will carry on churning, endlessly and pointlessly.
We are all in principle capable of limiting our wants to our needs; the problem is that a competitive, monetized economy puts us under continual pressure to want more and more.
Keynes tolerated unbridled indulgence because he believed that they would one day be fully satisfied, leaving us free for higher things. We now know better.
The economist Robert Reich, in his book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, gives a far more accurate description of the future Keynes did not envision:
Between 1980 and 2019, the share of the nation’s total household income going to the richest 1% more than doubled, while the earnings of the bottom 90% barely rose. CEO pay increased 940%, but the typical worker’s pay increased 12%. In the 1960’s the typical CEO of a large American company earned about 20 times as much as the typical worker; By 2019, the CEO earned 300 times as much as the typical worker.
Back to the Skildeskys for a moment. Towards the end of their book, they raise the question: “Given that there is No longer any moral, political, or cultural restraint on the individual pursuit of wealth…Could a society entirely devoid of the religious impulse stir itself to pursuit of the common good?” Their answer: “We doubt it.”
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Money looms large in our lives and our culture.
Have you ever heard about the people of Yap? They are a Micronesian ethnic group indigenous to the main island of Yap…discovered by Europeans in the late 1800’s.
One of the really interesting thing about Yapese culture was their money. It was heavy. I mean really heavy. Their currency consisted of Rai stones…some of which were small, weighing a few ounces…but much of it consisted of large stones…some are 12 feet in diameter and weighing as much as 4 tons.
Because their currency was so large and heavy, it was highly visible and hard to hide, difficult to hoard and to arduous to move. And theft was unknown.
The currency of the Yapese could not be more of a contrast to currency of our economic life.
There was a time when it was more common for our money to have real weight…sometimes in the form of heavy metals like gold and silver—which often took the form of coins…in time the preferred form of exchange took the form of paper bills.
I’m guessing that some of you may have some coins on you today, a few more of you may have some paper bills—but what it more than likely is that many of you have neither. Instead, you have these plastic things we call credit cards…some you have moved beyond credit cards to digital wallets. You are able to move your money with the wave of your phone! Money has taken on the form of a spirit…
What is the relationship between the weight of money and the weight it has in our lives?
The lighter our money becomes, the more invisible it becomes so that it now circulates at the speed of light. Easily transferred. It’s accumulation is hidden, concealed, efficient, and exceedingly private.
Does money gain power (over us and in our culture) the more invisible it becomes? Does its power in our culture increase in direct proportion to its invisibility?
I remember several years ago reading the political scientist Daniel Bell talking about how introduction of the Credit Card into everyday life and how it transformed our spending habits. Before the arrival of the credit card, one had to have hard cold cash on hand…or write a check that had to be backed up by real money.
Bell pointed out, with the introduction of the credit card, the price of everything was reduced to zero. Another way to put it is that money became lighter than ever…more conducive than ever to meeting the demand of our inflated wants…
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Let me go back to our reading from Luke…typically titled, THE RICH FOOL. But it must be said, that by today’s common sense, this man was no fool: he is prudent, strategic, successful, with goals & objectives, and he gets measurable results! In our day, he’s likely to get elected to high office…even the highest office in the land!
How does his outlook differ from the American Dream:
“I have many good things—namely financial assets—stored up (invested) that I can draw upon for many years…”?
Not hard to imagine the character in our parable arguing that he didn’t LOVE MONEY. He was simply seeking to be free from anxiety, from scarcity, from vulnerability, from contingency. All he was seeking was security, to be self sufficient.
Jesus calls us to another way to seeing ourselves and our lives. A way of life that not consumed with gaining more; a way of life not consumed with securing our lives against the uncertainties and precariousness of this life. A way of life that does not confuse wants with needs. A way of life that is attentive to the needs of my neighbor. The apostle Paul translates the call of the Christian life this way:
As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches but rather on God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.
The Theologian Jacques Ellul…wrote a book titled, Money and Power. He talks about how the power of money is connected to the sacred character it takes on in our culture. Living well with money means that we much desacralize money. He said, we must MAKE MONEY PROFANE so that it loses its seductiveness and we recover the truth that it is simply a material instrument vs. bearer of meaning and identity.
“There is one act par excellence which profanes money…one act that goes directly against the law of money: an act for which it is not made. The act is giving.
Ellul says, “In a world of buying and selling and competitiveness…giving is the penetration of grace into that world.”
Cycle of buying and selling and accumulation and competition. Giving creates a New chain of cause and effect.
Giving becomes an act of freedom and liberation from the enslaving love of money and the sin of greed. Giving becomes an act of the consecration of our lives and our loves to God.
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In the wake of the 25th anniversary of 9/11 this past Friday, I was reminded of the city of Gander.
It was the airport in Gander, Newfoundland in Canada… where 38 planes were forced to land in the minutes that followed the shutdown of America’s airspace.
All of a sudden, a city of some 9,000 people had to deal with 7,000 passengers who had nowhere to go. The locals called them “the plane people.”
Immediately, and for the next 5 days, they opened their homes, their schools, their churches, their Legion Halls, their hotels and whatever facility they had where people could be situated. Provide meals, transportation, whatever the “plane people” needed.
A stranded passenger recalls:
“I didn’t have a pillow let alone a bed to lay my head. I have never been so dependent on the kindness of strangers. We had no food, no clothes, not shelter, no information and they took us in.”
Another, “They were a safe harbor in the storm.”
As one Gander resident said to the “plane people,” “Since you can’t get home, we’ll make you feel at home.” They refused to accept money when offered.
Years later, Beulah Cooper who was among the many who stepped up that day, received a note from one of the ‘plane people’: “You are a constant reminder of the humanity, grace and kindness that exists in the world.”
One of the flight crew from a Continental flight wrote the following note of gratitude to the people of Gander when she finally made it home to Houston:
Gander,
You fed the hungry
You sheltered the displaced
You guided the lost
You cured our souls….
And we are ever grateful to you.
On a day when the world seemed so wrong…the people of Gander showed us a world come round right. They showed us a world that money can’t buy.
If the world ever needed a people who know how to live lives money can’t buy, it is now. Who are striving together to lives lives of godliness with contentment…
I sat with the Shields Committee this past week and we talked of the $17,000 this community under the guidance of Jeanne Denny has given away over just the past 2 months. All that money went to help pay utility bills, housing, care repairs, car insurance, medical bills, security deposits, among other things…one small way this congregation seeks to profane money…
Every Tuesday, Jessica and Gayle and their helpers in SOS put out racks of clothing and other items for anyone to come and take whatever they need at no charge…and then there is Heavenly Threads where, James Cook leads a team of volunteers in sorting and selling all kinds of used items to make more funds available to Shields to give away.
This is what we do collectively to remind us what we must all be doing individually if we are to be be those who guard against greed…to be extravagantly generous with the resources we have been given.
And by God’s grace, we will “take hold of the life that really is life.”
Amen.