God and Money and the UMC Clergy

This is a bit of what you might hear from me in a sermon on this Sunday morning:

It is pretty easy to see how we cannot serve God and money, manna, wealth at the same time. Our worship and focus on money often drives us to worry about things beyond our control and listen for things that are not of God. We suddenly worry about things like the stock market, our pension plan, our home equity. But God is not worried about the stock market. As one person said to me recently, “God did not lose a dime in this recession. God didn’t loss a dollar in the Madoff debacle.” God still has every resource in heaven and on earth. The problem is not God’s bank account; it is much more our unwillingness to trust God in all times and in all things.

Take for example, the reality of the United Methodist Clergy. We often speak about things like good news for the poor, there are a group who are going to the city council to speak against cutting the budget to aid the homeless here in Fort Worth. At the same time, we voted to maintain our healthcare coverage at an annual cost of about 4.2 million dollars in 2009 and the cost is going up in 2010. This is not paid for by the clergy. This is the cost handed on to the local churches of the Central Texas Conference in mandated health insurance payments and apportionments. What would happen instead if we pulled that mantel off of your backs and said, “We the clergy of the Central Texas Conference of the United Methodist Church will not take as a benefit any health insurance until all Texans have adequate health care.”