"If the point of the Lucan discourse about anxiety and possessions (12:22-34) is to draw out the implications of Jesus' advent for economic life, then there is a third option, which is neither to disregard it nor to take its call for divestiture as a permanent and binding rule. Instead, it may serve the church as a call to single-heartedness and a warning against the insidious idolatry of a safety medicated by what one owns. Within this framework, its imperative, "sell your possessions and give them to the poor" stands as a model of, and a provocation to, "seeking first God's kingdom." It is a counterweight to every complacent self-assurance, "I have given enough," and a continual challenge to consider what the church's material life says about the true objects of its trust and its worship. To take seirously as a model is to call into question many of the assumptions of middle-class existence, including the fundmanetal assumption that there is such a sthing as "economic security" and that Christians are entitled to it."
Okay, I could go on. I wish I could post the whole book, but alas, I'll spare you. So, given the frequency of the Oprah show hosting financial analysits who work with common middle class Americans to help alleivate their debt (almost as much as that Dr. Oz is on now), I do not think we are in a position anymore to claim any sort of economic security in the middle class, which is probably just another reason that the rich are getting richer and the poor, poorer. And if the middle class comprises a large majority of American church-goers, what is the true object of our churches material lives as they relate to what they actually trust and worship? Dare we allow ourselves to be this honest? Aren't most churches claiming economic security (because they love God) and therefore fail to see opportunities to follow Luke's Jesus that teaches give more because they feel they have already given enough?
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