Genesis has taught us that we are given the choice to be stewards of God's creation or we can grab all we can and call it our own. Every act of giving is an act of faith. Every gift of our money or time or energy to the church is a declaration that God comes first in our lives. It is intriguing how often in the Bible money is addressed as an idolatry . Jesus' rule is that you cannot worship God and money and Paul tells us that the love of money is the root of all evil.
Money has the spiritual power to win our hearts as a seductive snake in the grass.
But, perhaps the deepest challenge to our personal life comes from the way this text becomes an invitation to the sacrament and addresses our longing for God. The great irony, uncovered by our text, is that when we try to be like God, we rise to grasp the position of power that belongs to God alone. The key mark of Jesus is that he did not take the role of ruler but of slave, servant. He came not to be served, but to serve. He did not grasp after equality with God but became obedient to death, even death on the cross.