T

he stock market is down, but Powerball is up, so I suppose the world is still in balance. Perhaps the prudent strategy would be to liquidate retirement assets and buy Powerball tickets until the Parker’s runs out of paper to print them on? Perhaps not. But, we see two competing forces at play. The market is diving based on a negative view of the immediate future (Thanks, China!), but the positive (albeit unrealistic) hope for choosing the 1 in 292 million winning number set is driving record lottery sales. So are we optimistic or pessimistic? I can’t tell.

Undergirding both realities, I fear, is a dissatisfaction with where we find ourselves today. Both phenomenon are built on the future, and how it looks better or worse than today. Or at least different than today. The stock market is built on the predication that we want to have more in our accounts tomorrow than we do today. That’s why we invest. What we have right now is not sufficient for our perceived needs; more is always better. A good day is a day full of arrows pointing up on the ticker. A bad day is arrows pointing down, and the dreaded minus sign before closing prices. We’re happy when things are up, and we’re less than happy whenever they’re not. A week like this one is the type of week we’d like to forget, and not repeat again any time soon.

The dreams that fuel Powerball sales are based on the assumption that a major jackpot win could bring happiness. The sage

of idiomatic expression tells us that money can’t buy happiness, but most of us would love to have the money anyway. Even people who can afford to play the lottery buy tickets when the jackpot goes this high. Whose life wouldn’t be better with a $400 million cash payout? We’ll just ignore that assumption for the moment. People clearly believe it though. Why else would someone walk into a gas station and drop $500 on tickets for this weekend’s drawing? I suppose the odds sound a lot better if you’re holding 250 combinations of numbers instead of just one. Just ignore the math and it sounds good.

But math doesn’t matter when we hope for the future. Lottery is entertainment. It is escapism. And to a certain degree, so is investing. Any long-time investor will tell you that the markets are a gamble. It’s all about the future, no matter what the investment did previously. Markets can crash and reset expectations in an instant. We know this from experience. Less than ten years ago we had a dramatic swing that took years to recover from. And yet we hope for the future to be better. We keep investing. In those terms, the lottery is a bargain. A lot of hope and dreaming and all for a couple bucks. Sure, it’s disappointing when we don’t win, but those few seconds of adrenaline as we wait for the balls to roll into place are better than any feeling I have experienced waiting for a stock market update.

Clearly the two aren’t the same. I know this. For most of us, investing is our security for the future, which means there is much more anxiety about “losing” in that arena then there is in not holding the winning ticket. But this is why so many people spend so much on the lottery. Millions of people do not have savings, let alone investments, and they have a better chance of winning at Powerball than they do creating a million-dollar portfolio. At least it feels that way. There can be this overwhelming sense of what’s not possible, if we let it grow.

And let’s face it, this New Year has started with litany of challenges; Saudi Arabia and Iran and picking at one another; North Korea may or may not have set off a hydrogen bomb; the stock market is having a rough, rough start to the year; the realization that Abraham Lincoln saw his shadow so we have 11 more months of election cycle to go. That’s just what’s in the news. If you’ve had challenges in your personal life, add those to the mix. Yeah, this may be an uphill start to the year for many of us. But, we are people of hope. It may feel like a Powerball win is more likely than peace on earth and all the other things the world expects out of this baby Jesus we have just celebrated.

For some, their faith becomes a spiritual lottery; living a certain way in the hopes that at our death we win the big one. Our odds are better than the lottery, but life is lived with a hope that we will hear our name when the heavenly roll is called. But in actuality, our faith calls us to something more akin to the stock market. Instead of personal profits, however, we are asked to invest in the world around us, in our children, in our neighbors, in those who are in need. It’s not speculation to imagine what will happen. The world will be transformed. The goodness of God will continue to grow.

We are kingdom builders. God promised to do a lot of good things in this world, and through God’s son we have been invited to take part. It is the same principle as the markets – it tends to grow and compound over time. If we invest steadily over our entire lifetimes, we will see things get better. We don’t do it on our own, but with God.

This new year is as hopeful as we are willing to let it be. We can choose to trust in God’s promises and help them come to fruition, or we can run in terror and pull out of a caring stance towards the world lest we lose more of ourselves. One of my favorite sermon jokes (which I’ve used at Christ Church) is about the guy who loses everything while he’s praying to God to help him win the Powerball drawing. Finally, when he becomes angry with God for not letting him win, God calls out from heaven, “Dave, meet me halfway – buy a ticket.” The point is, we have to be in it to win, and this is true for the world too. If we want to see the world get better, we have to be invested in it; fully invested in it, according to God’s direction.

This is the season of Epiphany, God is in the world; God came to us, and is now showing himself to us. It’s time for us to meet God halfway. God’s invested in us, now we need to invest in God. If we can do that, I assure you, it’s a sound investment. …And if you decide to buy a Powerball ticket this week, please remember to tithe your winnings to the Church.

Tom+

May Christ, the Son of God, be manifest in us, that our lives may be a light to the world; and the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be among us, and remain with us always. Amen.