The Promises of Membership: Gifts

Luke 18:18-30

How do you know what someone really believes? Do you ask them? Do you find out how they think? Do you find out what they feel? How do you find out what someone really believes to be true and trustworthy in their life? How do you find out what a business believes? What a school believes? What a country believes? What a church believes?

The English word belief, said the late South Georgia preacher and New Testament scholar Clarence Jordan, “comes from the old Anglo-Saxon be, which means ‘by,’ and lief, which means ‘life.’ What one lives by is actually his belief or his by-life.”[1] Jesus had another way of putting this. He said that our lives were like trees, and that we would be known by the fruits, by the products of our lives. In other words, no matter what we say we believe or feel we believe or think we believe, the way we live our lives — the priorities we give for our time and our money and our attention — is the truest statement of what we believe. How well we talk the talk is irrelevant — what finally tells everyone who we are is how we walk the walk.

That, it seems to me, is the compelling difference between the lives of Princess Diana and Mother Theresa. After her tragic death, much was made of Diana’s compassion for the poor, and her qualities as a mother. All that may be true. It is also true that the Princess spent the majority of her time not working with the poor but jet-setting with the extremely wealthy. She died not with her children but with her multi-millionaire playboy lover. Mother Theresa, on the other hand, was not known for her speeches or her appearance, but for a life spent with the poor and homeless and dying. Diana and Theresa verbally and emotionally shared many of the same causes, but their by-lives could hardly have been more different.

When the rich young man comes to Jesus, he asks what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus immediately points him to God, the One who alone is truly good. If the man’s life were centered in God alone, he would not wonder about eternal life. But this is not where the man is, so Jesus points him to the commandments. Keep the commandments, Jesus says. While Jesus cites the commandments about adultery and stealing and killing, once again Jesus is really pointing the man to the central issue, which is the first commandment: You shall have no other gods before me. Incredibly, the man answers Jesus, “Been there, done that. I’ve kept all the commandments since I was a child. What else do you want me to do?”

It has long seemed to me that churches should be chapters of Sinners Anonymous. Like any Twelve-Step Group, when one of us gets up to speak, we should begin by saying, “Hello, I’m Brooke, I’m a sinner.” But instead of the Twelve-Step response – “Hello, Brooke!” – we should say, “In the name of Jesus Christ you are forgiven.” I once asked the members of a church to turn to each other in the pew and say, “Hello, my name is (fill in the blank), and I’m a sinner,” and then respond with forgiveness. A woman named Marcie said she turned to the woman next to her and followed the instructions, and the woman responded, “You know, I really don’t sin.” Marcie grabbed her hand and said, “In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven!”

That’s just what the young man is saying to Jesus. "I live this perfect life — my belief system is impeccable. Now, why do I keep feeling as though something is missing?”

The real issue is not what we feel or think, but how we live our lives, Jesus is about to say. Elsewhere he had said, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. . . You cannot serve two masters. You cannot serve God and money at the same time.” So, seeing that the man is very wealthy, Jesus tells him to sell everything he has, give the money to the poor, find his treasure in heaven, and follow Jesus.” This is the real bottom line. What must the man do? He must live his life completely at God’s disposal. Now, what the young man wants is something to think or to feel. He wants a magic phrase that is the key to life. What he gets is not a thought or a feeling. He is told to live his life completely at God’s disposal. And, for him, that means the only way he can stop trusting his wealth is to get rid of it.

I learned a long time ago that if you really want to know what a church believes, you don’t look in The Book of Discipline or in back copies of sermons or in mission statements on the wall or what people say. If you really want to know what a church believes, look at how it spends its money. If it spends most of its money on fixing up an empty building, or in paying salaries, and spends little on ministry and mission, that is its real by-life. By the same token, if you want to know what a nation or a business or a school believes, look at how it spends its money. And, if you want to know what a person believes, don’t ask what they think or what they feel. Look at how they spend their money. That is the most accurate indicator of what we really think will bring us eternal life.

Money is the great conversational taboo in church and in life. We talk much more easily about sex and drugs and crime and shame than we do about money. Jesus, on the other hand, talks a lot about money, and how it is the most significant obstacle to eternal life. Being rich, Jesus tells his disciples, is not a sign of God’s favor, as they had supposed. Wealth is an obstacle to faith, because it is so easy to trust in our possessions to give us happiness and meaning and life.

When we join the Body of Christ, we give our whole selves to God’s service through the Church. We have talked the last two weeks about what it means to surrender our prayers and our physical presence. The third promise of membership is our placing our gifts, including our financial gifts, completely at God’s disposal. It is not that God wants his cut, and then we can do what we want with the rest. One hundred percent of our money belongs to God. How we spend every penny is a sign of our by-life. The kind of food we buy, the kind of amusements we enjoy, the kind of house we live in, the kind of clothes we wear, as well as the amount we give away to the needy are all signs of our by-life. In the early days of Methodism, Methodists were ridiculed by the world because they wore plain clothing, lived in simple houses, wore no jewelry, participated in no activities that did not glorify God. But they also cared for the poor and the imprisoned and the lonely and the lost. There was no question about what they believed, because of their by-lives.

Let’s get specific. The Biblical standard for giving was the tithe — ten percent. Now, it is true that was before income and state and local tax and health insurance and social security. But it’s still the standard. I know that it is possible to tithe, and still have enough money to waste, because I do both. For some of you, tithing would be impossible — you could not put food on the table and keep your house warm. For some of you, tithing is not enough: the ninety percent you have left is far more than is necessary for your needs. This week, I want each of you to figure out what percentage of your income you give to the church. I know about Scouts and Red Cross and the Rescue Squad and Habitat for Humanity. I give to those, too. If you give one percent to the church, can you give two? If you give four percent, can you give five? And if you tithe, God bless you — but what are you doing with the rest?

If every member of this congregation would give five percent – half a tithe -- of their income to the church, we wouldn’t need an extra financial campaign to pay off our new building. We wouldn’t need the Stewardship Campaign at all. And if every member of this congregation would put not five or ten but one hundred percent of their gifts at God’s complete disposal, then our by-life would transform this community in unbelievable ways to the glory of God.

What do we really believe? Whom do we really trust? The answer isn’t in what we think or what we feel. It’s really in how we spend our money.

---

[1] Jordan, Clarence, The Substance of Faith, ed. Dallas Lee, Association press, NY, 1962, pp. 42-43

The Promises of Membership: Service

Matthew 25: 14-30

I want to tell you a story about my family. It’s a good story, especially with Halloween coming up. My mother’s maiden name, believe it or not, was Carolyn Wilson — with one L. When she married my father, she became Carolyn Wilson Willson, and we lived on Wilson Avenue — one L — in Baltimore. She grew up on a farm in Dorchester County, Maryland, which is still owned by my aunt. The patented name of the farm is “Hackett’s Adventure,” named after Thomas Hackett, who was one of my ancestors. The northern border of the farm is a small stream called Puckum Branch, and the farm is more familiarly called “Puckum.”

My great-great grandfather was Benjamin Hackett, who lived at Puckum with his wife, Bethany, and his children. One day his daughter passed by the door to a room in the house, and, looking through the partially opened door, saw her father sitting on the floor surrounded by stacks of money, counting it. She went to her mother, who came and watched silently with her.

Not long afterwards Benny became ill, and it was clear he would not survive the next day. As he lay on his deathbed, his loving wife and daughter asked him what he had done with all the money they had seen him counting. With his last breath, he laughed and said, “I’ll be sitting on top of the tallest tree in Puckum watching over that money.” Before long, he died, never telling anyone what had happened to the money. Now, here’s the Halloween part: Benny was buried in the family cemetery behind the barn. And rising from the center of his grave is a tall cedar tree.

Little boys used to play Pirate, and pretend they were searching for buried treasure. I had my own pirate game, in which I would find Benny's buried loot. Alas, no one in the family has ever found the money, so we continue to live not by Benny’s fortune, but by great-great-Aunt Hettie’s Law: There’s no sense in being poor and acting poor too.

The parable of the talents in Matthew 25 is about the difference between using and burying treasure. A biblical talent is an enormous, nearly incalculable amount of money — roughly equal to fifteen years average wages. Let’s take my average wage, and multiply it by fifteen: it’s just under a million dollars. A rich man going on a journey divides his wealth among his servants, each according to their ability. He gives the first servant about five million dollars. He gives the second two million dollars. He gives the third “only” about a million dollars. The first two men invest the money. They put it to work. Thanks to compounded interest, a reduction in the capital gains tax, and a booming stock market in small cap funds, the result of this investment is that each doubles his original investment, with which the master is delighted when he returns.

The third and least able servant still has an enormous gift to manage. In fear of his master, whom, he says, “harvests where he does not plant and gathers where he does not winnow,” he buries the one talent, like Benny Hackett. The irony of the story is that if the master truly “harvests where he does not plant and gathers where he does not winnow,” then the master clearly expects the talents to be planted and invested and to grow. The third servant acts contrary to the character of the master by protecting the one talent and burying it for protection. It is the first two servants who in fact take the least risk with their master, because they follow his example. The third servant acts least like the master, and suffers for it, regardless of how safe the talent is.

The English word talent, which we define as a natural ability or aptitude, actually crept into our language from this story. The Greek word for talent is talenton. There was no other word for translators to use — no English equivalent for fifteen years wages.

Every single person ever born has received gifts from God that God expects to be used as part of the Body of Christ. Some of us have many gifts. Some of us have few. Some gifts are obvious, and some are hidden. But every single one of us, says Ephesians 4:12, has been given gifts for the work of ministry, for building up the Body of Christ, until we all come to the fullness of Christ. The question is not whether we have gifts. The question is whether we’re going to put them to work, or whether we’re going to bury them on the farm until Jesus returns.

Now, let me provide some phrases for those of you who are looking around for shovels to bury your gifts.

• I don’t have any gifts God can use. Then you are calling God a liar. And that is blasphemy. And so put yourself in the same place as the one talent servant — remember where he ended up.

• I’m just not ready yet. As my favorite hymn, Come Ye Sinners, Poor and Needy, says, if you wait until you’re ready, you will never come at all. The way to develop your gifts and get them ready is to use them. The third servant probably was waiting until he was ready, too.

• I have no time. There is another parable about a rich fool who builds barns and houses for all his possessions, only to be told at the height of his power his life is being demanded of him. The man had confused time with eternity. You don’t have time to use your gifts for God? Then you’d better take a long hard look at what you are doing with your time, because you have an eternity to explain it.

• I’ve done my part. It’s time to let someone else do something. If that’s true, then it’s not your talent you’re burying, it’s your life. Sorry, but no one gets to retire from the kingdom of God. No one gets to retire from being a disciple of Jesus Christ. This isn’t even a life-time commitment — it’s an eternal commitment. Besides, you’ve got an eternity to rest. Don’t stop now.

The parable makes clear that the master is coming to settle accounts with his servants. One day he will want to know what we have done with what he’s given us. Did we put it to work? Did we plant it and feed it and let it grow and feed people? Or did we preserve it carefully, burying it where no one could find it, harm it, or use it?

The irony of the parable is that the first and second servants aren’t risking their talents at all. They’re copying their master, who is always putting his gifts to work. It is the third servant who is taking a colossal gamble by failing to imitate his master and by burying his talent. When the master returns and finds the third servant unfaithful to the purpose of the talent, he casts him away into the outer darkness, where he will never have to worry again about being put to good use.

The biggest gamble of all is not to put our gifts to work in God’s service through his Body. And United Methodists, you know, never gamble.

The Promises of Membership: Presence

Pentecost 20C, 2010 10/10/2010

1 Corinthians 12:14-27

On this second Sunday of October, the second Sunday of our Stewardship month, let’s look at the second promise we make when we become members of a United Methodist congregation. You’ll find those promises on page 38 of your Hymnal. Last week we talked about our promise to support the ministry of the congregation with our prayers. How did you do this week? Did you pray for our church? Did you pray for our leaders, our members, and our mission in the world? Did you pray about the Fall Festival – that you’d survive it? Did you pray that lots of people would come, that we’d have good weather, and that it would be a blast? See – prayer really works!

The second promise we make is to support the ministry of our congregation with our presence. That’s ce, not ts. That is we promise to show up. When we’re at home and not away, and when we’re well, we promise to show up. If you’re sick, we don’t want you here. And it’s good to get out of town now and then. But when you’re here and you’re well, we expect you to be here.

But why?

I sat in on a discussion about this with our youth a couple of Sundays ago. One of the issues we have when we talk about “church” is what we mean by that term. “Church” means a whole host of things – the building, Fall Festival, Sunday School, Bible Study, Youth Group, Choir, Vacation Bible School. It also means what we’re doing now. Except that what we’re doing right now is that part of church called “worship.” All worship is church, but not all church is worship.

Not once in the Bible does Jesus invite us to go to church. On the other hand, Jesus calls is to be his church – to be his Body of people in the world. The word “church” comes from the Greek word kyriakon, meaning “of the Lord,” as in kyriakon doma, “the Lord’s house.” It’s not a house of bricks and stone – it is the people who gather to agree in Christ’s name.

But, I heard someone say, can’t I be just as good a Christian by staying at home as by “going to church?” There’s that phrase again – “going to church” rather than “being the church.” You can’t be church by yourself. There is not a single instance in the Bible where a person encounters God and is not called into community. The primary work of the Holy Spirit is to unite God’s people into faithful community. Every depiction of heaven in the Bible is of vast community: of thousands of saints and countless angels gathered to praise God. That’s why the popular Christian song of a few years ago, I Can Only Imagine, bothers me: in the song, there’s no one in heaven except Jesus and the singer. That’s profoundly unbiblical: I expect to see apostles and prophets and saints and lovers of God, but also a whole lot of people I didn’t expect but who are there by the grace of God. I also firmly believe in the saying that all the dogs I’ve ever loved will meet me at the gates. Cats, I’m not so sure . . .

We use the word member, and we get it from Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth. Corinth was a church tearing itself apart because of infighting over spiritual gifts in the congregation: prophecy, healing, ecstatic tongues, interpretation of tongues, and other miracles. There were arguments, which persist two thousand years later, about which spiritual gifts are better, and which are required for salvation. Paul’s response to these arguments is to compare the church, God’s gathered people, to a human body. Just as our bodies have different parts with different functions – eyes, ears, mouth, hands, arms, feet, legs – not to mention parts we won’t mention but which Paul calls our “less honorable parts,” so God has given different gifts in the church to make up the whole Body of Christ. Yesterday was a wonderful example of the varied and interdependent parts of the Body of Christ. Not everyone made Brunswick Stew, not everyone baked, not everyone worked as cashiers, not everyone served lunch, not everyone made or sold candles, not everyone took out trash, not everyone directed traffic in the parking lot. Which of those gifts was the most important – aside from me making two rum cakes? What if a hundred of us decided to direct traffic, or all of us decided to collect money, or the whole church tended the fires under two stew pots? On the other hand, suppose Libby and Craig Smith decided to make and keep their candles at home, or Janet Brockwell decided she could better sort children’s clothes by playing golf, or Ralph Ishler decided he could make stew by going to a football game?

Paul uses the word member to mean a body part: a hand, leg, eye, or foot. That’s the original meaning of member: an integral part of a whole body, cooperating with other parts of the body to care for the whole body, not just itself. That is why, Paul says, the eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you.’ The foot cannot say, ‘because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the Body.’ We are connected to each other, and we depend on each other. Jesus says that if the vine becomes disconnected from the vine, it dies.

We live in a culture in which membership is not the prevailing understanding of the relationship of individuals to each other. Our culture teaches us that people are not primarily homo sapiens -- wise man, or homo religiosus – religious man, but that we are homo economus – economic man. The world teaches us that all of life can be divided into vendors and consumers. We are no longer members of our communities or our nation – we are consumers, unhappy because we’re paying too much and not getting what we want. We’re not members of our schools – we are consumers who aren’t getting what we want. We don’t belong to our workplaces – and our employers don’t treat us a family – our lives are ruled by laws of supply and demand, especially the vendor’s attempt to supply the cheapest possible goods for the highest possible price, and the consumer’s attempt to achieve exactly the opposite.

This is what people bring with them to church. I only attend worship – I’ll put money in the plate for that, but since I don’t go to Sunday School, I’m not going to help with that big new wing they built. Or, I don’t think worship is very exciting, so I’ll come to Bible Study but not worship. Or, I’ll be there on Sunday morning, but I’m not going to waste a beautiful fall Saturday stirring Brunswick stew or selling Kathleen Shultz’s coconut pies. There’s nothing in it for me.

Exactly. That’s the point. I’m going to ask you to do what I asked the youth to do two weeks ago: turn to the person on one side of you and say, It’s not about you. Now, turn to the person on the other side, and say, it’s not about you, either. This is about God. It’s not about you, or about me. It’s about God. For just one hour a week, could you come and tell God you think he’s wonderful, and listen to what he might want us to do together? Just one hour out of one hundred sixty-eight in a week, could you focus on somebody other than yourself, and something other than what you want? If you do, then maybe you could stretch it to two hours, or four, or ten, or twenty-four, or seventy-two. Do you think it might be a good thing if we learned to get over ourselves? Do you think it might be a good thing if we stopped being consumers, and started being members of something and someone bigger and better and more important than ourselves? That’s what we’re supposed to be doing here, you know: getting over ourselves by putting Jesus first, others second, and ourselves a very distant third. We’re called to be interdependent members of the Body of Christ, not lonely, independent, voracious consumers.

An English priest went to the house of a man who had been separated from the church for a long time. The two of them sat down by the man’s fireplace, and talked about faith. Justifying himself, the man said, “Well, Father, I believe you can be just as good a Christian without going to church.” The priest said nothing, but after a moment, with the tip of his boot, pulled a coal away from the fire. As the red hot coal sat on the hearth, it cooled and turned black. After a few minutes the priest bent down, picked up the coal in his hand, examined it, and then threw it back in the fire. In a few minutes the coal was red hot again. There was a long silence before the wayward parishioner cleared his throat and said, “Father, I’ll see you at worship Sunday morning.”

Standing On The Promises: Prayer

Matthew 21:18-22

This month I’d like us to consider, in five sermons, the promises we make when we become members of the United Methodist Church. Look, with me, at the service of baptismal covenant in your Hymnal, beginning on page 34. In baptism, the baptized or their parents or sponsors are asked about their faith: do you reject evil and repent of your sin; do you accept God’s power to resist evil; do you confess Jesus Christ as your Savior. Then candidates are asked (line 6) if they will be faithful members of the Body of Christ and represent Christ in the world. Those answers, with baptism, make us members of the holy catholic universal church. On page 38, we become members of the United Methodist Church, promising to be loyal and to strengthen its ministries. Finally, at line 15, candidates are asked to do five things as a member of this congregation: to faithfully participate in its ministries with prayers, presence, gifts, and service. In 2008, General Conference added a fifth promise to that list: will you participate in the ministries of this congregation with your witness.

In the Fall of every year, we go through a process of deciding what our ministry will be for the coming calendar year. We nominate church leaders, we develop a budget, we evaluate what we’ve done the past year. It’s a time to measure ourselves. For the next five Sundays, I’d like us to look at what these five promises every one of us who’s a member of this congregation made. Today, what does it mean to faithfully participate in the ministries of this church with our prayers?

In the gospel lesson for this morning, Jesus is returning to Jerusalem from Bethany on Monday of Holy Week. He’s stressed by what he knows will happen to him, and he is hungry. He passes by a fig tree that is in leaf but has no fruit. “May no fruit ever come from you again,” he declares, and the tree instantly withers. When his disciples marvel at this event, Jesus tells them that if they have faith and pray, they will receive, no matter what obstacle — empty fig tree or mountain — confronts them.

This is a hard text. What has the fig tree done? In fact, it’s not even the season for figs – that would be in the summer, and this is the spring. Why does Jesus condemn the fig tree for not producing figs when it’s out of season?

It seems to me that Jesus is telling the disciples, and us, that fruitfulness for God is always in season. God doesn’t expect us just to be fruitful on Sundays, or when we’re distributing door hangers in Five Lakes, or at Bible studies. The real test of our faithfulness and fruitfulness is when we’re “out of season:” on vacation, at work, or school, or at play. Or maybe when we’re sick, or in the hospital. What kind of fruit do people see in you when you’re least expected to be producing fruit for God?

A vital prayer life makes us constantly fruitful: when we begin and end and saturate our days with prayer, it’s like living in a greenhouse of faith: we live in the light and warmth and rain of God without ceasing. That’s what the Bible means when it tells us to “pray without ceasing:” we bathe our days in conversation with God, so that everything we are and do is through the presence of God in the power of the Holy Spirit.

That is why I began our conversation about The Promises of Membership with prayer. Prayer is absolutely the foundation for everything you and I do and are as disciples of Jesus Christ. Jesus, more than anything else, was a man of prayer, and if we are going to follow Jesus, that is the absolutely best place to start. His conception in Mary’s womb begins with Mary’s prayer of praise to God. His last words on the cross are a prayer. He is constantly separating himself from the chaos around him to pray. He slips into conversation with his Heavenly Father as easily as you and I turn and talk to our best friend next to us. Jesus wraps every day and every action in a conversation with God. My Baptist preacher friend Charlie Barton says that sin is pretending God does not exist. That’s what it means when we say Jesus is without sin: there is never a moment in which Jesus pretends God does not exist.

I believe the healing of human beings, the healing of Christ’s church, the healing of this and any nation, and the healing of the cosmos can only happen when there is dedicated, deliberate, disciplined prayer. If you and I and all God’s people will commit ourselves to deep, daily, dedicated prayer, then we won’t have to worry about the economy and justice and politics and the environment and anything else. The mess we are in is because we do not pray. We do not surrender ourselves to the presence and the will of God. And anything I say about showing up and gifts and service and mission and anything else is a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal if you and I are not first and last and everything in between people of deeply committed prayer. So, as we begin this month of more deeply committing ourselves to the promises we made when we joined the church, will you join me in committing to deep, time-consuming, committed, prayer?

Now, how do we pray? In four ways:

Pray regularly. Create a regular meeting place and time with God. Of course we can pray to God anytime, anyplace. But if you create a special time and place for prayer every day, you will expect to meet God there. Expecting God, you will be more open to him. Like eating and exercising and working, it makes all the difference to have a disciplined pattern of prayer. Like they used to say on TV, same time, same place.

Pray in faith. Pray surrendering yourself to God. Trust that God will hear and respond. Faith, I like to say, is like swimming: you have to trust that the water will hold you up. Pray surrendering yourself to the fact that God loves you, hears you, and is answering you.

Pray with help. Surround your prayers with scripture, other holy readings, sacred pictures, music, and anything else that helps you be closer to God. If you will read some scripture before you pray, it will remind you of what God’s voice sounds like, so you’ll recognize it when he speaks.

Pray with listening. The telephone has a mouthpiece and an earphone. You can talk without ever being connected. It’s listening that proves we’re connected on the phone or in prayer. Listening to God is where we really become available to God.

Being available for God is what being a member of the church is all about. As we pray for our brothers and sisters in the church, as we pray for the ministry of the church, for the finances and the building and the work of the church, we are placing ourselves at God’s disposal.

Are you praying for this church? Are you praying for its members and its leaders? Are you praying for its mission and ministry? Are you praying for God to use you as God pleases? Are you praying to be fruitful for God, in season and out?

Well, you promised.

The Great Chasm

Luke 16: 19-31

When I was thirteen, I was elected into the Order of the Arrow, a fraternity of honor campers in Boy Scouting, dedicated to brotherhood and cheerful service to others. Initiation into OA requires a weekend-long Ordeal consisting of 24 hours of silence to turn one’s thought’s inward, a night camping alone under the stars to prove self-reliance, a day of scant food to demonstrate self-denial, and a day of arduous toil to prove one’s willingness to serve others. Once a Scout is inducted into the Order, he can then serve as part of the team leading others on their Ordeals.

Several weeks after my own ordeal, a friend and I showed up at the Scout Camp to help with another Ordeal weekend. We were looking forward to being as hard on new candidates as others had been on us. There in the parking lot where the candidates gathered, we picked out one rather grizzled, middle-aged man in uniform, standing among the younger Scouts. He had no OA insignia on his uniform, so we asked him if he was an Ordeal candidate. “Yeah,” he answered. “I’m a candidate.” “Boy, are we going to have fun with you,” we teased. “I know a great place for you to sleep tonight – on that rock pile up on the hill – and we have some great work projects for you this weekend.” “Whatever you say,” the man responded.

That night, as the Ordeal team met to organize, I was shocked to see that same man meeting with the team, wearing a Vigil Honor sash, denoting the highest level of honor within the lodge. Fortunately, Joe Ohler was a kind, forgiving, and fun-loving spirit who became a very close friend of mine in the Lodge. That night I learned a lesson about dealing with people I thought were “beneath me.”

Who are the people “beneath us?” Someone new, sitting in “our pew,” new neighbors who don’t look quite as classy as the people they replaced, the wait staff at our favorite restaurant, the cooks and dishwashers in the back – probably without green cards – that we never see, the janitors at school or work, the people who pick up our garbage, the hospital orderly who empties the bedpan, the usher at the movie theatre or ballgame, the children who will be running around the church this week, the man who panhandles every day at the ramp from Powhite Expressway to Cary Street. Police, firefighters, rescue squad. Or perhaps the numbing, nameless numbers dying every day in Baghdad, Gaza, Somalia, Haiti, or the streets of our own cities. People we have learned just not to see.

The parable of Lazarus and the rich man can only be understood as an extension of the Kingdom values Jesus preaches in the Sermon on the Mount – called in Luke 6 the Sermon on the Plain. In the Kingdom of God, Jesus says over and over, the values of the world will be reversed. The poor inherit the kingdom, the hungry will be filled, those who weep will laugh, the hated will be rewarded. On the other hand, the rich in this world have already received all the reward they’re going to get, the full will be hungry, those who laugh now will weep, and the popular will be numbered among the false prophets.

Thus it should be no surprise that when the rich man, who symbolically has no name, dies, he ends up in Hell. The poor man who lies at his gate is named Lazarus, which is Hebrew for “God has helped.” Lazarus is right there at the rich man’s door, he is starving and sick and alone, but the rich man is focused on his designer clothes and gourmet meals. The dogs are the only being who show Lazarus compassion. So, in the great reversal of death, Lazarus is in heaven, healed, at the side of father Abraham, who represents Lazarus’ inclusion in God’s covenant family.

The rich man sees Lazarus in comfort and calls to Abraham to send Lazarus with water to quench is thirst. On one hand, verse 23 says Abraham is far away. On the other hand, he is still in sight. So, the far away is not a physical distance – it is another kind. Hold that thought for a minute. Abraham answers that this is the great reversal – in mortal life, the rich man got everything that was coming to him, but Lazarus got sorrow and misery. Now, the tables have been turned. Besides, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.

The distance is not physical: heaven and hell are within sight of each other. The distance is spiritual. What is the nature of the distance, and who created it? Not God. The chasm has been created by the rich man. It was created in his own front yard, when he decided that Lazarus was not his neighbor, and not his responsibility. That the chasm continues into death, and that no one can cross from one side to the other is demonstrated that even in the agony of hell, the rich man still expects Lazarus – and Abraham – to serve him, instead of the other way around.

What we sow in this life has eternal consequences. If we sow selfishness and greed and separation, that will continue into eternity. On the other hand, if we sow forgiveness and charity and community, we will find ourselves in a place of those things. You may remember the 2006 movie Click, which tells the story of a much-too busy man, played by Adam Sandler, who is given a remote control for life. More than anything else, he uses it to fast-forward through the unpleasant parts of his life – his wife’s complaining, his boss’s ego-driven lectures, his children’s activities. It is a deeply flawed movie, but what spoke to me was how the fast-forwarding of his life goes on automatic, and he finds himself too quickly old and sick and dying, having missed all of the small moments that make life holy. What we plant in the smallest moments in life produces a crop that we will have to eat forever.

How, then, can we begin to bridge the chasm between us and the Lazarus who lies at our gate? The Christian writer Bill Pannel used to say that when Jesus tells us to love our neighbor, the first place for us to look is to our right and our left. Who is on your right and left, right now? Look around you. Who are those people? What are their dreams? What are their hurts? What are their joys? Right now, turn to your neighbor and ask, What is your dream today?

When you leave here today, slow down enough to look for Lazarus: the Lazarus who will wait on your table at the restaurant, the Lazarus cooking or washing dishes. Look for the Lazarus who delivers your mail, who takes out your trash, who cleans your office. Who is the Lazarus who works in the next cubicle, who lives next door or down the street, who shows you to your seat at the game? Get down on your knees this week and ask a child you don’t know her name. Put some candy in your pocket and give it away.

Let me challenge you to a more specific act of neighborliness. I invite you to visit someone who lives near you but you don’t know with a gift of food. Find out who they are, what they do, and what they enjoy. Invite them over for coffee, or maybe a meal. After that, find out where they go to church, and if it’s nowhere, offer to pick them up next week and bring them with you. Don’t invite them to come on their own – carry them.

There are people at our gates we never see. Jesus says that chasms we create last forever. Jesus is God’s bridge across the troubled waters of sin; if you and I are going to follow Jesus, we have build a bridge to the Lazarus at our door. If we don’t, the loss is eternally ours.

Luke 16:1-13: The Small Faithfulnesses

Pentecost 17C, 2010

9/19/2010

Sometimes Jesus’ parables are pretty clear in their meaning and application: the good Samaritan, the lost sheep, the prodigal son, the sheep and the goats. Love your neighbor, search for the lost, welcome the repentant, care for the poor. That’s why preachers’ eyes light up when those stories come around in the preaching cycle: don’t have to wrestle this week – I’ve got at least ten sermons in the barrel on that text!

And then there’s the parable of the dishonest steward. This one doesn’t get preached very much. In fact, I’ve never heard anyone except me preach on this text. And it’s little wonder why: for all intents and purposes, Jesus concludes this story by commending the fraudulent accounting by the steward. This passage could be the favorite text for Enron, AIG, Bernie Madoff, Lehman Brothers, and the United States Congress. In the parable, a rich man figures out that his business manager isn’t managing his accounts well. He asks for an audit of the books before the man is fired. The accountant realizes he’s in big trouble, because years of bookwork have rendered him unable to do manual labor, and he doesn’t want to be a beggar on the streets. So, he calls in each of his employer’s creditors and reduces what they actually owe. There are some forced interpretations of this passage, trying to protect Jesus, which argue that the manager is only eliminating his own commission. If that were so, Jesus would not refer to him as dishonest. The hard truth of this parable is that the manager steals from the employer about to fire him, in the hope that the creditors will be so grateful they will take care of him when he has no job. Jesus concludes the story with an incredibly troubling admonition in verse 9: And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes. What in heaven’s name is going on here?

Francis Ford Coppola’s epic Godfather films tell the story of a poor Sicilian immigrant, Vito Corleone, who stands up to a bully controlling a neighborhood in New York, and begins to protect his neighbors from abuse. When he has done, or is about to do a favor for a neighbor and they ask how they can repay him, his answer is always the same: Someday I will ask you for a favor. When I do, I want you to remember what I did for you. Don Vito’s career begins by protecting his family and friends, and he builds his crime syndicate by calling in favors from those he has protected.

The parable of the dishonest manager is a first-century version of The Godfather. The manager is doing favors, so he can call them in later on.

The entire gospel of Luke is filled with concern with how wealth and possessions can be primary obstacles to discipleship. Parable after parable reflects the view that anxiety over wealth – by both rich and poor – diverts energy and attention from faithfulness. From the Magnificat of Mary to the sermons of John the Baptizer, to the blessings and woes on the Plain, the parable of the rich fool, warnings about anxiety, advice to hosts and guests, and the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, the gospel of Luke, in the words of the great preaching teacher Fred Craddock, insists that a generous sharing of one’s goods can free one from the danger to the soul which lives coiled in the possession of things.[1] Jesus is saying that the best use of money is to bless others, not ourselves.

Craddock points past the dishonest steward to the next few verses: Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is unfaithful in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? A few verses later, Jesus, speaking to the Pharisees, concludes God knows your hearts; what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God. The parable, Craddock says, is meant to point out how the children of this world act decisively in a crisis to provide for their future. The steward is going to lose his job anyway: the master announces at the beginning of the parable that he is going to be fired. In response, the steward cooks the books so those who are in debt to his master will be grateful and perhaps welcome him into their homes. They might not want to hire him as their accountant, but he has reduced their debt and they may respond accordingly.

If the children of this world act to care for their earthly future, Jesus asks, shouldn’t those of us who are entrusted with eternal riches also be wise stewards of that gift? You and I have been given the gift of eternal life through the love of Jesus. More than that, you and I have been made stewards – caretakers of that enormous account. What does it mean for us to be faithful with that pearl of great price?

I believe this parable tells us that it’s the little faithfulnesses that really count in most of our lives. Probably none of us will be lined up against a wall and threatened with death if we confess Jesus as our Lord and Savior. Probably none of us will ever be asked on national television to account for our faith. Few of us will have to make a life-shattering decision about whether we will be obedient or not. Perhaps none of us will ever have to quit our jobs, give away our money, be rejected by friends and family, lose our homes, or otherwise change our lives dramatically in order to follow Christ.

But every day you and I are called to the little faithfulnesses. This week you will have the chance to write someone a note or call them on the phone. You will have the chance to tell a child a story, to visit a nursing home, to befriend a stranger, to feed the neighbor’s cat, go to choir practice, say yes to a church office, give a cup of cold water, offer a ride, vote for someone running for office. You will have the chance to teach Sunday School, to let someone into line ahead of you, to pick up something someone dropped, to forgive someone a trespass, to give money to the needy, to run an errand, to introduce yourself to a new neighbor, to invite someone you don’t know well to dinner. You will have the chance to attend a play or a ball game for a child in your neighborhood or in the church. You will have to opportunity to volunteer at a school or a library or a roadside cleanup. You will have the chance to pray for an enemy, to lend a book, to tell someone you love them. You will have the chance to thank your pastor, or a fireman, or a doctor, or a nurse, or a teacher, or a policeman, or a member of the government, for what they do. You will have the chance to listen to a child, to cry with a stranger, and to laugh with a friend.

Oh, but I heard you say, “I don’t have time.” The time you spend on Facebook, or watching something on TV you really don’t care about, or a hundred other little harmless distractions adds up to hours and days and weeks you could be blessing someone else.

And then, there’s what we can do to change the world with our money. I don’t know you very well yet – maybe hiding in our congregation is a Bill Gates, a Warren Buffet, a John D. Rockefeller – and if you’re out there, we have a great opportunity for you. But you and I have the chance every day to make a difference with our money. Little things add up. In the stewardship materials you’ll receive soon, you’ll see a chart showing how much coffee at Starbucks, or one pizza a week, or a daily soft drink, or that unused gym membership adds up. He who is faithful in a little will be faithful in much. . .

Every day you and I are offered a thousand chances to exercise our stewardship of the eternal riches. Once in a great while some of us have the privilege of making a life-or-death difference for someone – a deathbed conversion, a marriage saved, a tragedy averted, a life-changing insight imparted. But the hard truth is that even for those of us who preach and teach week after week, our work is measured not by tidal waves but drop by graceful teardrop on the hearts of people. As the roughest stone is slowly worn away over time by water, so our lives are shaped by small kindnesses, small loves, small faithfulnesses.

The Christian psychologist Keith Miller tells of a couple he had been counseling for a long time over their conflicted marriage. The husband and wife had huge differences in their expectations of each other, and battled nonstop. After months without progress, one day the couple came in smiling and holding hands. “Things are wonderful,” the wife reported. “What happened?” the astounded Miller asked. “It was the garbage,” answered the husband. “I decided I would stop fighting about the garbage, and I took it out. That changed everything for her, and for me.” In reflection, Keith Miller wrote The hinge on which great doors swing open is often very small.

The children of this world, Jesus says, are wise enough to use the small things to change their future. You and I have been given gifts great and small, including the greatest gift of all: the love of God in Christ Jesus. Today, and tomorrow, and every day, you and I will have a dozen, a hundred, a thousand chances to live out the little faithfulnesses. Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is unfaithful in a very little is unfaithful also in much.

---

[1] Luke: Interpretation Commentary, John Knox Press, 1990, p. 189