WHEN THE BANKS FAIL - WHAT
THEN?
Martin
Camroux
What an amazing period we’re been going through
economically. When the Royal Bank of Scotland took over Nat
West its directors got bonuses totalling £2.5 Million.
There was a row but as Sir George Mathewson put it “That wouldn’t
give you bragging power in a Soho wine bar”.
From then on it went up. In the nine years he
was Merrill Lynch Stan O’Neil took home £196million
in pay, bonuses stocks and options, - for which since August
2007 he delivered a loss of £60billion. Sandy Weill
took home £121 Million for his time at Citigroup, delivering
bailouts and losses loses of £140 billion. Well easy
come – easy go I suppose. Rowan Williams has described it
like this:
"unimaginable wealth
has been generated
By equally unimaginable levels of fiction,
paper transactions with no concrete outcome
beyond the profits for traders."
For most of us this is a bit out of our league,
but the fact is that most people in this country have shared
in affluence undreamed of in human history. My grandmother
used to run a little guest house in Lowestoft on the Suffolk
coast. People came there every year for their holidays. When
we first took her on holiday to Cornwall – she simply loved
places like Clovelly. “Never thought I’d come here”. Now how
many of us have foreign holidays twice a year, and spend money
like we never dreamt we would?
Now the economy has collapsed in front of our
eyes. The other day I was hearing about two children in a
Junior Church talking. “My dad says this economy is bad” said
the 7 year old. “Yes,” said the five year old. “And my dad
says going to be real bad for a long time.” “How long?” “Two
days”. Well, it is bad, and it will be for more than two days.
Hard-earned savings, investments in the future, retirement
and education funds, jobs, pensions, benefits are gone. And
it’s clearly going to get worse.
The situation has given rise to an outbreak
of gallows humour here in the City of London. ‘What is the
definition of an optimist – a banker who irons five shirts
at the weekend”. Or this from a European capital markets banker:
“It’s a bit like Friday night at Heathrow. Everyone is up
there circling in a holding pattern. The first one to land
will be the first one to run out of fuel”.
But let me try and strike a little note of optimism
this morning. Firstly it will pass. Some of remember three
day weeks, 15% inflation, lights going out. Does anyone remember
the government minister who advised us to clean our teeth
in the dark? All that passed and this will too.
And now the really important thing – what matters most has
nothing to do with money. And this might be a good time to
realize it. We have mostly got immeasurably richer. But what
evidence is there this has led to an increase in well-being.
Capitalism has an ability to turn luxuries into necessities—bring
to the masses what was once only for the elite. But the flip-side
of this is that people come to take for granted things they
once coveted from afar. People get stuck on treadmills: as
they work day and night to achieve a better standard of living
they become inured to its pleasures. What is more we pay a
high price in stress, anxiety, family and marital dysfunction,
for our affluence.
The encounter of that rich young man with Jesus was a pivotal
moment, a time for him to be challenged to re-evaluate his
priorities and his attitude towards God and his fellow human
beings. The young man was a respectable, law abiding, devout
Jew. He kept the commandments and did not do anything to harm
those around him. In everyone’s eyes including his own he
was wealthy. Yet this man was ill-at-ease. He senses something
is missing in his life. Something his money can’t buy. So
he comes to Jesus with a niggling question, ‘what must I do
to inherit eternal life?’
Just imagine the scene, a well dressed, clearly wealthy, young
man comes running up to Jesus and falls at his feet puffing
and panting. He asks Jesus, a penniless, wandering prophet
what he must do. And what does Jesus do? He calms the young
man down, and deflects his question by asking the man why
he had addressed him as ‘good.’ Then Jesus takes him through
the usual Jewish ways of acting righteously – the keeping
of the commandments. And the young, sincere, idealistic man
returns Jesus’ gaze and says, ‘I have kept all these commandments
since my young days.’
And, we are told; Jesus looked at him and loved him. He desperately
wanted to lead him to the answer to his question. Jesus discerned
the heart of this young man and what it was that was holding
him back from the full life willed by God – his wealth had
become a stumbling block to real life. This young man had
never done harm to others, had not murdered, stolen, lied,
cheated or committed adultery but what had he done for his
fellow human beings?
How had he used his wealth and good fortune for the benefit
of others? Somehow his money has snuffed out his life. Jesus
puts it bluntly” It is easier for a camel to go through the
eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the
kingdom of God”.
Jesus is saying to this man, ‘you need to have a radical rethink
about how your values square with the values of the kingdom.’
‘You need to think deeply about what putting God first in
your life might mean? ‘Spend yourself and your possessions
on others, sell what you own and give all those things whose
value is measured in coinage away and then you will have treasure
in heaven.’
Treasure in heaven – now that’s a thought. Some things that
even if the banks all fail will turn out to be the vital choices
we made in our lives. Things that are worth more than money
– what are they? John Buchanan of 4th Presbyterian Chicago
writes “who can’t remember a time of relatively modest financial
resources, making a fraction of what you currently earn, living
in a tiny apartment, with a hot plate and running water only
in the bathroom so you either carried water or did dishes
in the bathtub, looking for bargains in the food section,
getting by finding amusement and entertainment without cost,
walking a lot, taking the bus instead of a cab, and experiencing
that memory today as pleasant, full, happy?”
Can I suggest three things more important
than money?
The first is our relationships
– what people mean to us. What we share with our children
or our wives or husbands or parents or friends. Ask yourself
when was the happiest day in your life and there is reasonably
chance it will have something to do with someone you love.
The day your first child was born, the day you married, very
likely something involving people. Leslie Butler doesn’t get
out much. Visiting him last week he said to me” What this
has really shown me is how much friends matter”. People are
more important than money.
Secondly self-respect matters more than
money. Do you know the opening lines of Charles Dickens’
David Copperfield? “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero
of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody
else, these pages must show.” To be the hero of ones life
–it’s a very grandiose phrase. But it means to live as fully
as I can. To be a player, a participant, to use everything
I have, to be all that I can be, to be the hero of my own
life. To look in the mirror and not be ashamed of what we
are and what we’ve done and what we’ve stood for.
It is possible to lose this inner integrity
– and Jesus says money is the one of the most powerful ways
we can lose it. He says “What shall it profit someone if they
gain the whole world and lose their own soul”. One's -own
self-respect – that is infinitely more important than money.
And then thirdly, and above all, treasure
in heaven our relationship with God. This rich young
ruler – he had so much – and yet so little. Which is why he
is such an appropriate figure for our life today. Our society’s
secular wisdom does not affirm the reality of the Spirit.
Above all it is concerned with the material. It dormant values
are the 3 A - achievement, affluence and appearance. Yet all
this is unrewarding. It can’t provide life with real meaning.
We end satiated but hungry still. Or as Harry Emerson Fosdick
put it “Rich in things but poor in soul”.
Jesus points us deeper. To hear a still small
voice. To find an inner reality of grace and a transforming
power. And something in us cries out for that. Inwardly many
of us are searching for a life lived in relationship with
God. A way that can leads from anxiety to peace, from self-preoccupation
to self-forgetfulness.
The poet Rudyard Kipling was once seriously
ill. As he stirred restlessly a nurse came to him and asked
“Do you want anything”. He murmured “I want God”. Exactly
that was in the rich young rulers mind as he desperately sought
something he called eternal life. Isn’t it actually what we
all search for—a sense that we matter, that there is meaning
to our lives?
There is, of course, someone who loves and wants
us; whose love can restore us and give us confidence and meet
our deepest needs and lift us up from where we are lying,
waiting, and put us to work and make us the hero-heroine of
our own lives. Jesus Christ is his name. Amen.
You have made us for yourself, O God, and
our hearts are restless until they rest in you. We come searching
for something to believe in and live for. We come searching
for a sense that our lives matter. We search for a community
to stand with. As we search, O God, find us. Startle us with
your love and grace, mercy and truth. Amen.
Rev'd. Martin Camroux MA
Trinity Church, Sutton
(United Reformed/Methodist)
Cheam Road, Sutton, SM1 1DZ |
