Please join me in my study of John Wesley’s On the Use of Money and St. Basil the Great’s Sermon to the Rich.
These sermons are timeless exhortations that challenge the ethical use of wealth in light of Christian discipleship. Wesley, with his memorable call to “gain all you can, save all you can, give all you can,” insists that money is only good insofar as it becomes a channel of love—caritas—and is stewarded with accountability and care for the neighbor. Basil, even more forcefully, denounces the hoarding of wealth as theft from the poor, rooting his critique in the early Church’s radical vision of shared life. Together, these sermons reorient Christian charity toward the personal, incarnational logic of love—a logic grounded in intimate knowledge, shared burdens, and mutual transformation.
Why read these?
1. These followers of Christ produced powerful, pragmatic guidance on the stewardship of money.
2. These texts are occasions to question our own charitable practices and our dedication to Christ in ‘caritas’.
3. For pastors, these sermons are exceptional models for sermon-craft - theologically rich, practical, strong outporings of the Holy Spirit dwelling in men.
What's the
seminar like?
I aim to facilitate a group discussion of these powerful texts, leaning on those with more developed spiritual lives and stronger faith backgrounds than my own, to glean the wisdom of these great pastors.
My role will be to support deep textual engagement, using my training in philosophic discourse and textual analysis. I won’t be playing anything like an “instructional” role. Rather, I will be supporting an egalitarian conversation, posing questions, and encouraging deep textual engagement.
Structure and formalities:
If you are interested in joining these seminars, fill out the sign up form and indicate good times for a conversation over Zoom.
We will meet twice for two sessions one hour and a half long, over two weeks. In the first seminar, we will read “On the Use of Money”, and in the second, we will read “Sermons to the Rich.”
The seminars will be in the first two weeks of July.
