Friday of Week 24 Year 1

What is our purpose as Christians? Are we Christians because we want to serve God and serve others? Or have some of us become more and more interested only in serving ourselves? When we look at the church we are attending, is the church only interested in making money and the spiritual growth of the faithful is merely for show, limited or non-existent? Sometimes we could be guilty of putting a price on everything in the name of religion. For example, we have seen how some people have been duped into paying large sums of money to attend a healing rally organised by a so-called famous pastor who claims to be able to heal anyone, when Jesus did not enforce any charges for healing others. People gave out of the generosity of their hearts and not because they were being forced or cajoled to. Does the church we go to have this kind of attitude, where it is only all about money? Are we ourselves having such an attitude also? It is interesting to note that some people seem to think that they can pay their way to heaven, sort of like "cheap grace" where the more they contribute, the better the chances for them to reach heaven. Has our church and even some of us begun to have such thoughts?

In today's reading, St. Paul reminds us sternly: "This is what you are to teach the brothers to believe and persuade them to do. Anyone who teaches anything different, and does not keep to the sound teaching which is that of our Lord Jesus Christ, the doctrine which is in accordance with true religion, is simply ignorant and must be full of self-conceit – with a craze for questioning everything and arguing about words. All that can come of this is jealousy, contention, abuse and wicked mistrust of one another; and unending disputes by people who are neither rational nor informed and imagine that religion is a way of making a profit. Religion, of course, does bring large profits, but only to those who are content with what they have. We brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it; but as long as we have food and clothing, let us be content with that."

This is where we have to honestly ask ourselves: are we a church only for the money? Sometimes we may discover that the church we go to could be only for the money, if the rich, influential and wealthy are well treated, but the poor, the marginalised, those who are not so well-off or even those who are struggling to make ends meet are given little or minimal attention. If the church we go to is treating people differently according to dollars and cents, then perhaps we should seriously consider whether that church is really a church of Jesus Christ at all.