Last week, I had to preach on money. Which was a little ironic—or timely.
My friend and colleague Grace Pomroy and I have just finished developing a new Faith+Lead course on preaching generosity. We spent months thinking together about money, possessions, generosity, Scripture, and the challenges preachers face when these subjects find their way into the pulpit.
And then Matthew 20 showed up in the lectionary.
It’s the parable of the workers in the vineyard. A landowner goes out early in the morning and hires workers for the usual daily wage. He goes back at nine, noon, three, and finally at five o’clock, hiring more workers each time. At the end of the day, everyone receives the same wage.
The people who worked all day are understandably irritated.
And, candidly, this is where someone who just developed a course on preaching generosity can look at Jesus and think: Ooh. What am I going to do with that?
This is not the kind of text that translates easily into our basic imagination of stewardship. There’s no obvious appeal to give more generously or manage our resources more faithfully. Instead, Jesus tells a story that challenges our notions of fairness—and it’s unavoidable that there is cash changing hands in the story. Wages matter. Who gets paid matters. When they get paid matters. The fact that everyone receives enough for the day matters.
Jesus is talking about the kingdom of heaven, but he’s doing it through a story about economics. And the economics of the story are what make it uncomfortable.
That’s hardly an isolated experience for preachers. Again and again, we encounter Jesus talking about money, possessions, wealth, poverty, wages, and debt, and our first reaction is something like: That’s a hard teaching. What am I supposed to do with that?
The first step is simply to resist looking away.
That’s one of the convictions behind Preaching Generosity, the Faith+Lead course Grace and I developed together. We don’t begin with fundraising strategies or techniques for a successful stewardship campaign. We begin by asking preachers to return to Scripture and pay attention to what it reveals about generosity, about us, and especially about God.
A God Who Gives
Stewardship begins with an important theological conviction: everything belongs to God, and our lives and possessions are entrusted to our care.
Generosity invites us to linger a little longer with the character of the One to whom everything belongs.
Before asking what God has entrusted to us, what happens if we spend more time with the God who gives?
Again and again, Scripture reveals a God whose life is fundamentally self-giving. God gives creation and daily bread. God gives mercy and forgiveness. And ultimately, God gives God’s own life in the gift of the Son.
Christian generosity begins there.
That’s also why shifting the conversation from stewardship to generosity opens up so much Scripture. The wedding at Cana in John 2 becomes a generosity story: Jesus provides not simply enough wine, but an astonishing abundance of exceptionally good wine. The Samaritan woman in John 4 encounters the gift of living water that never runs dry. Even John 3:16 is fundamentally a generosity text: “God so loved the world that he gave…”
Before generosity becomes something God asks of us, it is something God reveals about God’s own character.
Money Is Such a Good Idol
A pastor friend of mine used to say that part of the reason Jesus talks about money so often is that money is simply such a good idol.
I think there’s considerable wisdom in that.
Idols are bad things. But the things we turn into idols aren’t necessarily bad things.
Money is necessary for all kinds of realities of human life. That’s precisely why its idolatrous claims can be so persuasive. Money actually has power, and that makes it easy to imagine that its power extends farther than it does.
Money begins promising things that sound almost godlike: I can secure you. I can save you. I can give you the life you’re looking for.
Jesus repeatedly exposes that illusion as a lie.
Think of the rich fool in Luke 12, building bigger barns because his abundance has convinced him that he can finally secure his future. Or think of Jesus holding Caesar’s coin and asking whose image it bears. Caesar’s. Fine. Give Caesar his coin. But what bears the image of God?
You do.
Money belongs to a remarkably limited sphere of life. God’s claim extends to the whole person.
That may help explain why questions of money and possessions are so deeply intertwined with Jesus’ proclamation of the reign of God. The reign of God isn’t an abstract spiritual idea. It concerns the concrete realities of human life: flourishing, relationships, justice, mercy, power, economics. What we do with our possessions is never far removed from the question of what kind of world God is bringing into being.
Giving Forms Givers
All of this means generosity isn’t simply about transferring resources.
We give because God is generous. Our generosity is responsive. We are recipients before we are givers.
But I think it also works in the other direction: we give so that we remember God is the giver.
In Matthew 6, Jesus places giving alongside prayer and fasting: “When you give alms.” “When you pray.” “When you fast.” Giving is not simply a financial transaction. It is a practice of discipleship.
Every time we release something we could have held onto for the sake of another, we push back against the illusion that money is our security, identity, or salvation. Generosity becomes a hedge against idolatry. It decenters money, and it decenters us.
We give because God is the giver. And in the act of giving, God keeps teaching us to trust that this is actually true.
The Gospel’s imagination for generosity is also much larger than money. Generosity includes hospitality, forgiveness, time, presence, and attention. In a distracted and hurried world, attention itself has become a remarkably scarce commodity. For many of us, writing a check may be easier than giving another person an uninterrupted hour.
Yet Jesus is remarkably generous with his attention. Jesus notices. Stops. Listens. Eats with people. Makes room for interruption.
And one of the hallmarks of God’s generosity in the Gospels is that it creates community. People gather around tables. Hungry people are fed. Outsiders are welcomed. Relationships are restored.
Generosity participates in God’s work of creating communion.
Trust Jesus
Which brings me back to Matthew 20.
After spending months developing a course on preaching generosity, I still encountered one of Jesus’ economic parables and thought: What am I going to do with that?
Maybe that isn’t a problem to overcome. Maybe it’s a good place for a preacher to begin.
Jesus’ teaching about money can make us uncomfortable. It challenges our assumptions about fairness, security, possessions, deserving, and what makes for a flourishing life. And sometimes our discomfort tempts us to soften those texts, hurry past them, or preach around them rather than through them.
So one of the simplest convictions of Preaching Generosity is also one of the most difficult: trust Jesus.
Lean into these texts. Let Jesus ask uncomfortable questions. Let Scripture make its claim. Trust the Word of God and trust the work of the Holy Spirit.
And if someone complains that you talk too much about money, possessions, and economics in your preaching, perhaps you can smile and say, “I wish Jesus would stop talking about it too.”
But Jesus doesn’t.
Because ultimately these are never simply questions about money. They are questions about worship. About trust. About our neighbors. About the reign of God.
And about what it might mean for our lives—and our preaching—to participate more fully in the astonishing generosity of God.
