When the Church has the freedom itself to be poor among the poor, it will know how to use what riches it has. When the Church has that freedom, it will know also how to minister among the rich and powerful. When the Church has that freedom, it will be a missionary people again in all the world. When the Church has the freedom to go out into the world with merely the Gospel to offer the world, then it will know how to use whatever else it has–money and talent and buildings and tapestries and power in politics–as sacraments of its gift of its own life to the world, as tokens of the ministry of Christ.
–William Stringfellow in A Private and Public Faith, 1962
I was just commenting the other day that church leaders often give more value to money than their members who are too greedy to tithe. Many of us tend to whine about selfish people refusing to share their money, not realizing that we are idolizing their money with the very belief that their money is going to help save the kingdom. Jesus commanded the rich man to give all his money to the poor not to help the poor, but the save the rich man. The message of the gospel is freedom. What a liberating feeling it must have been for Chris McCandless to burn the last of his money and free himself from its grip on his life.