The Gospel of Prosperity
The Rev. Sandy Selby -
Proper 23, Year B –
Texts: Amos 5:6-7, 10-15 and Mark
10:17-31
“Does
God Want You to Be Rich?” That question was asked in the cover story of Time magazine four weeks ago. To which,
says the article, a growing number of Protestant evangelists respond a joyful Yes!
This
morning thousands of people will flock to
Why is he so popular? For one thing, he is said to be a
very likeable guy. People call him the “smiling preacher.” But more than that,
Joel Osteen says a lot of things that people want to hear. Some of what he says
is just good advice, like “have a positive attitude,” and “discover the power
of your thoughts and words.” But what people really like is that Osteen preaches the prosperity gospel. Improve
your attitude, keep your chin up, and God’s blessings will come to you. As
Osteen says,
…God
wants us to be rising to new heights. God wants to increase you financially, by
giving you promotions, fresh ideas, and creativity…you were created to live in
health and abundance.
In his book Your
Best Life Now Osteen tells how he and his wife got the house of their
dreams by believing, seeing, and speaking that it could happen. “God has so much more in store for you, too,”
Osteen says. “Start making room for it in your thinking. Start seeing yourself
rising to a new level, doing something of significance, living in that house of
your dreams.”
This is the gospel of success, in which “success” is
defined by middle-class American culture: a nice house, material comfort, a
good family life, and happiness. And let’s face it, who wouldn’t want to live
like that? It’s a world in which “success” is defined by our terms.
In
this worldview God is present, but apparently in large part to bless our
desires by ensuring that we get what we want. God’s purpose, it would seem, is
to serve us—not the other way around.
A man ran up to Jesus, knelt before him and asked, “Good
Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He went on to tell Jesus all the
things that he had done, like keeping the commandments since his youth.
And he had been rewarded for his good works—after all,
look how wealthy he was! The man’s attitude was typical of the way that the
people in Jesus’ time viewed wealth. It was seen as a sign of God’s favor. This
is why the disciples were astonished when Jesus told them how hard it would be
for the wealthy to enter the
Well, this man was very rich—presumably because he had
lived a righteous life-- so it was natural for him to ask what he should do to inherit eternal life. He had his
checklist of what he had already done, and he was waiting for Jesus to tell him
what else to add to the list so that Jesus would punch his entrance ticket to
heaven.
So
Jesus said, there’s just one box left to check on your moral checklist, and
once you can put the big red mark by that box, then come and follow me. The man
went away sad, because checking off that box would mean selling his
possessions.
The
truth of the matter is that every person who approaches salvation with a
checklist will, sooner or later, walk away sad. If attaining eternal life is
about getting a perfect score on life’s checklist of virtues, we all have at
least that one box that we find all-but-impossible to get checked off.
This
man believed—as preachers of the prosperity gospel would also have us
believe—that the favor of God is conditional, and if we do and say all of the
things on the checklist, we get what we deserve. It’s a gospel of reward.
The Time article tells the story of a man
from
There
is no question that Osteen’s words gave the man hope. Here’s what he hopes for:
“Twenty-five acres, and three bedrooms. We’re going have a schoolhouse (his
children are home schooled). We want horses and ponies for the boys, so a horse
barn. And a pond. And maybe some cattle…Why would an awesome and mighty God
want anything less for his children?”
What
is striking about Joel Osteen’s book is that of the nearly 150 references from
Scripture, many are from the book of Proverbs but very few from the gospels.
Apparently Jesus didn’t preach the gospel of prosperity!
The
Christian life is not about self-improvement and prosperity. It’s about transformation to new life. Someone once
said that he’d never seen a hearse pulling a U-Haul. One of the Collects in the
prayer book says it more gracefully: “Increase and multiply upon us your mercy;
that with you as our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal,
that we lose not the things eternal.”
Joel
Osteen’s book is called Your Best Life
Now. He’s got it wrong. The shape of our “best life now” is the life of
Jesus Christ. “That shape includes a cross and a totally unexpected triumph in
the form of resurrection. It offers hope rather than mere optimism, and a
church gathered in worship to remind each other that God’s promises will come
true” (Jason Byasee, The Christian
Century). The promise of God that we proclaim today isn’t a new house, but
new life in Jesus Christ.
The
prosperity gospel tells us that if we
enlarge our vision, if we develop a
healthy self-image, if we discover
the power of our thoughts and words, if
we let go of the past, if we find
strength in adversity, if we give of
ourselves abundantly, then God will bless us with everything we want. In other
words, the favor of God is conditional, and if we do all of these things, we
get what we deserve.
The
gospel of Jesus Christ tells us that in the