Sermon – Mark 10.17-31, P23, YB, October 10, 2021

Tags

abundance, follower, gift, giving, God, Jesus, love, money, poor, rich, Sermon, stewardship

This Sunday, we kick off our stewardship season, whose theme is “Every Perfect Gift.”  I know a lot of people hear we have entered stewardship season and internally groan, knowing full well that we will have to spend the next few weeks talking about how we are sharing our time, talent, and treasure.  This can be especially hard for those of us who were raised to believe that there are certain taboo subjects in public – and money is definitely on the banned list.  I’m not sure why:  money is one of the topics Jesus talks about more than any in scripture.  But even Jesus seems incapable of eliminating Southern hospitality mores. 

Knowing our predisposition to loathe talking about money, imagine my own groan when I read today’s gospel lesson earlier this week.  This is the lesson we get on the kickoff of stewardship season?!?  A lesson about how the only proper relationship with money is to give money away to the poor and follow Jesus; a lesson that asserts getting a camel through the eye of a needle is easier than the rich to get into the kingdom of God.  And just in case any of us were hoping for an out, I already checked, and yes, we are considered “rich” by Jesus’ standards.  We might like to think ourselves exempt because we know plenty of people who have more than we do.  But given global standards, we certainly fall in the same category as the rich man in this text.

So, if your shoulders are already tensed, your foot is nervously tapping the ground, or your arms are crossed over your chest, I want you to take a deep breath in, and as you slowly exhale, allow the tension in your body to slowly release.  As you take in and release a second breath, I want you to clear you mind and listen to the text again with me with an open mind.  A man of deep faith runs to Jesus and throws himself at Jesus’ feet – he is already a faithful follower of God, and yet we see in him a yearning for deeper relationship, to align himself with the goodness of this man named Jesus.  He is a seeker, he is humble, he is passionate.  And, the text tells us, Jesus looks at him and loves him.  This is not a dependent clause.  This is a declarative, gracious, merciful statement of deep, abiding love.  Jesus looks at him and loves him.  Period. 

Many have described the next part of the story as an incisive judgment or a condemnation.[i]  But I see the next part of the story is an invitation – for the wealthy man, for the disciples, and for us.  The invitation is to contemplate the nature of our relationship with wealth.  Jesus never condemns wealth.  Jesus just knows that wealth has the power to corrupt: to corrupt our generous spirit, to corrupt our sense of self-worth, to corrupt our ability to see that every perfect gift comes from God – not from our hard work, our intelligence, or even our good looks. 

One of my favorite children’s sermons from my dad involved an apple.  He sat down with a paring knife and asked us kids to think of the apple as the money that we have.  He asked us, “What are some of the things we have to spend money on in life.”  The answers started flying:  housing, clothes, school supplies, food.  With each answer, he would slice off a part of the apple.  Then he leaned in and whispered, “Now what are the things we like to spend money on?”  We had those answer too:  bicycles, TVs, video games, candy!  With the last suggestion, we realized he had cut every last part of the apple away.  Then he looked at his empty hands and said, “Uh oh.  Did any of us save anything for the church?”  That morning, both the kids and the adults had guilty looks on their faces.  Fortunately, my dad had stashed a second apple and suggested we start over, this time giving the first slice to God.  We were amazed how we still had room for both needs and wants, even losing that crucial first slice.

That is the invitation of our stewardship season too:  to take a look at every perfect gift in our lives, to look at every perfect gift within ourselves, and to look at every perfect gift in others and to understand all that abundance comes from God.  When we allow ourselves to see the magnitude of that abundance, we can then see what Jesus is inviting the wealthy man, the disciples, and us into:  a posture of abundance, that sees all the perfect gifts we receive, we have, and others around us have and to become agents of abundance who, with relaxed shoulders, untensed bodies, and unfolded arms long to share that abundance.  Amen.        

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[i] Debie Thomas, “What Must I Do?” October 3, 2021, as found at https://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay?id=2944 on October 8, 2021.

On Shining Our Light…

Tags

abundance, anxiety, church, community, giving, Jesus, joy, light, money, nervous, passionate, pledge, relationship, shine, stewardship

Photo credit:  https://wels.net/let-your-light-shine-3/

A couple of weeks ago, Hickory Neck had a wonderful guest preacher who talked to us about stewardship.  He led with a participatory set of questions.  The first was, “What is your reaction when I tell you today is a Stewardship Sunday?”  The responses ranged from “anxiety,” “nervousness,” “dread,” and “frustration” (though some people studiously responded, “gratitude”).  The next question was, “How do you think your rector feels about Stewardship Sundays?”  The responses were fairly similar, and the preacher surmised that stewardship is something rectors dread too because so much of what they can do is based on what parishioners are willing to give.

The funny thing is though, as I sat there listening to the preacher’s question about my own feelings, my initial response about how I, as rector, felt about stewardship season was “joy.”  I know what you are thinking, “Come on, Jennifer, we know you get stressed out about money as much as we do!”  And there is probably a latent sense of anxiety or at least uncertainty.  But mostly I feel joy.  I love talking about stewardship because to me, talking about stewardship is a lot like evangelism.  Both involve talking about something you love and inviting people into that passion.  And I absolutely love and am passionate about the community of Hickory Neck and the powerful ministry we are doing.  I see every day what a powerful place this is for people, and what an incredible impact it is making on their lives.  So, asking people to financially support this place is really just a matter of inviting people to affirm that goodness in their life – to give with the same abundance that is experienced within this community.

The other reason I feel joy in talking about stewardship is because talking about our financial giving is what people do when they are in relationship with one another – they talk about what it is important to them, and what effects their everyday lives.  Money is one of those things that is at the very heart of our lives – we need it, we use it, and we often wish we had more.  Jesus even talked about money perhaps more than any other issue in his ministry.  But the reason many of us get uncomfortable talking about money is because money feels personal and intimate.  But being in authentic relationship means sharing things that are personal and intimate.  With whom else can you talk about money if not with those to whom you are closest, who support you in your darkest moments, and who love you unconditionally?

The last couple of months I have run into many colleagues and long-time friends, and invariably they ask me how things are going at Hickory Neck.  I have noticed when I answer that inquiry, my body has a visceral response.  I immediately and unconsciously smile and let out a sigh of satisfaction before I launch into what I love about our community and the work we are doing together.  As you are working on your pledge cards this week, I hope you can first think about what those things are at Hickory Neck that give you joy, that make you excited to be here, investing your time and energy.  Then I hope you can allow your financial pledge to be a testimony to that joy.  Come, shine your light with me!

Sermon – Luke 16.19-31, P21, YC, September 29, 2019

Tags

chasm, Christian, community, corrosive, dignity, goodness, Jesus, judgment, Lazarus, light, money, parable, rich man, scripture, Sermon, stewardship, wealth

I was listening to my favorite preaching podcast this week, which is hosted by three to four seminary professors and scholars.  Usually they spend about a third to half of the podcast talking about the gospel lesson, and then spend the rest of the time on the three other lessons.  But this week, the focus on the gospel was pretty truncated.  In fact, one of the scholars basically said, “If you are looking for some new knowledge or some hidden message in this gospel, there isn’t one.  This one is pretty straightforward.”[i]  After a convoluted, at times ambiguous, lesson last week about a crooked manager who gets praised for his deviousness, this week’s gospel has very little ambiguity.  You can almost hear echoes of Luke’s beatitudes from chapter 6, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God….but woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.”[ii]

We could easily read this parable about the rich man and Lazarus and think, “Wow that rich man really messed up; I am so glad I am not rich so I do not have to worry about that kind of poor behavior.”  But here is the thing:  Jesus is not telling a story about “that guy.”  The fact that Lazarus has a name but the rich man does not gives us a big interpretive tool for this parable.[iii]  This is not a parable about a man who messed up ages ago.  This is a parable for faithful people everywhere who daily must navigate the truth of scripture with the reality of being persons of wealth.  Our very citizenship in this country means that we are people of wealth.  We are the rich man.

So, if we are the rich man, what can we learn from him?  Unlike in our passage a few weeks ago, Jesus is not telling us to give up our possessions so we are no longer rich.  What Jesus is saying is our wealth will make behaving faithfully very difficult.  Later, Luke will tell us behaving faithfully with wealth will make getting into the heavenly kingdom as difficult as getting a camel through the eye of a needle.  Jesus warns us because wealth has a corrosive impact on our lives.  Wealth can make us confuse wants with needs.  Wealth can make us think we somehow deserve wealth – as if we did something to earn favored position in life, instead of blessing coming from the grace of God.[iv]  Wealth can deaden our empathy, turning us inward, slowly turning us into people who avert our eyes in the face of poverty, who dehumanize those in poverty, seeing them as servants instead of equals, who become convinced just being Christians and not living as Christians is enough.

We can see how the rich man in our parable gets there.  We are told his clothing is of fine quality.  He eats sumptuously every day.  He clearly ignores Lazarus, sitting by his gate every day.  We know he actively ignores Lazarus because we find later he knows Lazarus’ name without ever having reached out to him.  Even in his death, the rich man is buried with dignity and care.  Therefore, his behavior in Hades, or Sheol, should be no surprise.  Even in suffering afterlife, the rich man dehumanizes Lazarus.  He regards Lazarus as a servant and messenger who can be ordered around to bring him water or warn his brothers.  When your whole life has been blessed by wealth, slipping into a pattern of forgetting to respect the dignity of every human being is quite easy.

The judgment of the parable is both gentle and direct.  Beloved father Abraham, who gathers Lazarus into his bosom, still sees the humanity in the rich man.  Calling him “child,” he almost sadly has to remind him of his poor earthly behavior.  When the rich man desperately tries to help his living brothers, Abraham finally has to be firmer.  Like the beloved father he is, Abraham draws a definitive boundary.  As the rich man insists his brothers need a personal testimony to change their own wealthy behavior, Abraham reminds the rich man they have already been warned by Moses and the prophets. And if any of us wonder if Abraham is being overly dramatic, we need only catalogue the scripture lessons warning about wealthy behavior:  Exodus 22.21-22, 23.9, Leviticus 19.9-10, 19.33, 23.22, Deuteronomy 10.17-19, 15.1-11, 24.17-18, Amos 2.6-8, Hosea 12.7-9, Micah 3.1-3, Zephaniah, Malachi, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and on, and on, and on.[v]  And Abraham is not even talking about Jesus’ warnings.  Even later letters, like we heard today in the first letter of Timothy, take up the mantle.

So if our very citizenship makes us like the rich man, what can we do to resist the corrosiveness of wealth?  The gospel lesson today seems to suggest three things.  First, one way to combat the seductive lure of wealthy living is to root ourselves in Scripture and Christian community.  One of the things our Discovery Class attendees are learning is how steeped in Scripture Episcopal worship is.  Just by coming to church on Sundays, we hear a large portion of the Bible’s words.  Add in our songs and our prayers, and suddenly we find our liturgy is dripping with the words of Scripture.  Coming to church and hearing hard texts like this one and the ones we have been having for weeks, we find ourselves among a community of people who want to live life differently, and need Holy Scripture and each other to do that.  Of course, reading and praying with scripture and your Prayer Book outside of Sundays doesn’t hurt either.

Second, another way to resist the pull of wealthy living is to spend time examining the chasms in our lives.  Abraham insists Lazarus cannot help the rich man for many reasons; one of those reasons is the great physical, uncrossable chasm between the two realities the men now inhabit.  But that chasm is just a reflection of the chasm that existed on earth too – the rich man’s gate that prohibited connection, help, or even awareness of Lazarus’s suffering and need.[vi]  We create those same chasms, those same gates in our everyday lives too.  We ignore the dilapidated housing we pass on our drives, we allow ourselves to forget the vast number of students on reduced and free lunch in our schools, we choose homes and sidewalks that allow us to avoid the homelessness we meet every winter at the Shelter.  Today’s gospel lesson encourages us to use our eyes to see, really see, the gates we have built and to begin to dismantle them.

Finally, another way we fight the power of wealth is to use the wealth for goodness – to shine our light into the world, as our stewardship team will be encouraging us to do this month.  I know that kind of charge can feel overwhelming – we could give away every cent we have and not heal every Lazarus we meet.  I am not saying we should not use some of our wealth to try – whether we give to the Lazarus in front of us, the non-profits that create support systems for Lazaruses, or, and particularly important, we use our wealth to support this faith community:  the community that teaches us how to be faithful, that brings together the community of support we need to follow Jesus, and that propels us into the world as enlightened people of faith.  As the dishonest steward taught us last week, we can use our corrupting wealth for goodness.  We can use the precarious nature of wealth to be agents of light in the world – to shine our lights as Hickory Neck.

The work will be difficult.  Jesus assures us the work will be hard and shows us that reality in parable after parable.  But we are encouraged today because of the people in this room.  This is a community of people who not only give us a sense of belonging and support, this is also a community of people who have your back in figuring out this whole faithful Christian living thing.  This is a community of people who vulnerably, humbly, and joyfully are willing to walk with you.  We can shine our lights because each person in this room is shining their light too.  Together we can do the work to open gates, dismantle closed doors, and fill in chasms of separation.  Together we can turn the lure of wealth into a tool for goodness.  Together we can show the world another way, shining our lights.  Amen.

 

[i] Matt Skinner, “Sermon Brainwave #682 – Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Ord. 26),” September 21, 2019, as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/brainwave.aspx?podcast_id=1180 on September 24, 2019.

[ii] Luke 6.20, 24

[iii] Charles B. Cousar, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 117.

[iv] Fred Craddock, Luke, Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville:  John Knox Press, 1990), 196.

[v] Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, Sacra Pagina Series, vol. 3 (Collegeville:  The Liturgical Press, 1991), 253.

[vi] Skinner.

Sermon – Lk. 16.1-13, P20, YC, September 22, 2019

Tags

ambiguity, black and white, dishonest, Episcopal Church, glorify, God, gray, Jesus, money, place, power, relationship, Sermon, via media, wealth

In seminary I took a class about Reconciliation, and one of the requirements of the class was to lead a Bible Study at the local jail.  Our team of four Episcopalians waltzed into the jail, prepared with study notes, a lesson plan, and as much of an air of confidence as we could muster.  Not very long into the Bible Study, though, we realized we were in trouble.  You see, many of us had been drawn to the Episcopal Church because the Episcopal Church embraces the via media, or the middle way; we are a church that affirms the sacredness of the gray over the black and white.  But an inmate has no time for gray.  Their whole lives are governed by black and white, right and wrong.  The rigidity of life in jail is applied to Holy Scripture as well.  Most of the inmates were either perplexed by our suggestion of any ambiguity or gray in Scripture, or simply thought we were wrong.  Fortunately, our professor had come along.  After about forty-five minutes of debate and disagreement, our professor quietly spoke.  He invited the men to reflect on life where they were from, the complexities of the street, racism, and poverty.  If life at home was so layered, ambiguous, and complicated, surely Scripture could be too.  I am not saying my professor made any great strides in the debate around the literal interpretation of Scripture, but I believe he may have opened a window for some of the inmates.

I think today’s Scripture lesson is a bit like that jail classroom.  At first glance, this could be considered a text that is black and white.  The final verse of our gospel says, “No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”  There is no gray in Jesus’ words.  Either we choose God or we choose money.  And based on the fact God is one of our two options, there is no ambiguity about which of these options we should choose.  But here is the problem with trying to assert this passage of scripture is black and white.  Whereas as the end of the passage Jesus seems to be saying we must choose God or money, in the parable, Jesus seems to be saying something else.

If you recall, in the parable, we have a poorly-behaving manager.  The manager has squandered away the master’s money.  When he is caught, the manager takes a good look at himself and admits some honest truths – he is not capable of doing manual labor and he is too embarrassed to beg for money.  Having been honest about who he is, he connives his way into a solution:  he will engender goodwill among his neighbors by doing financial favors for each of them – forgiving portions of their debts in the hopes that they will sometime very soon return the favor.  Both the master and Jesus recognize the shrewdness or wisdom in the manager’s behavior because the manager uses his wits to get out of a devastating position.  In verse nine, the text says, “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.”

This is where things get confusing.  At first, Jesus seemed to be clearly saying money is evil and we must choose God over money.  But when Jesus says to “make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth,” Jesus seems to be claiming money can sometimes be one of those gray areas of life; in fact, money can be used as a means to an end.  Now, we all have varying philosophies about money.  Some of us manage to care very little about money, with money holding very little power over us.  Some of us struggle with money, sometimes remembering how money can be used for good, but most times feeling like money creates stress and anxiety in our lives that we cannot seem to shake.  And others of us become narrowly focused on money – either in how we can acquire more or what ways we can spend and enjoy money more.  What Jesus knows we often forget is money is inherently “dishonest.”  Money creates systems of injustice and hierarchies of power; money can destroy marriages and friendships; and money can be the ruin of many a person.  So when Jesus says to make friends through dishonest wealth, he does not mean to become a dishonest people; he means money inherently lures us into dishonesty, and we can either throw our hands up in the air in resignation and a refusal to be associated with that dishonesty, or we can use that dishonest wealth as a means to something much more important – relationship with others.

One of the things I like to do when I am struggling with a challenging Biblical text is to look at other translations to see if I can make more sense of Jesus’ words.  This week, I found the most help from a translation called, The Message.  Now as ample warning, The Message is a very contemporary paraphrase of the Bible, which takes a lot of theological liberties that I am often uncomfortable with; however, I also find that the language from the paraphrase opens up the biblical text enough for me to start seeing the text with fresh eyes.  The Message translates Jesus words in this way:  “Now here’s a surprise:  The master praised the crooked manager!  And why?  Because he knew how to look after himself.  Streetwise people are smarter in this regard than law-abiding citizens.  They are on constant alert, looking for angles, surviving by their wits.  I want you to be smart in the same way—but for what is right—using every adversity to stimulate you to creative survival, to concentrate your attention on the bare essentials, so you’ll live, really live, and not complacently just get by on good behavior.”

What Jesus is trying to say to us today is layered, and very much lives in the gray of life.  First, money has a corrupting force in our lives.  As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, Jesus talks about money incessantly in scripture, from telling people to give away all their money, to scolding people about storing up their money in larger barns, to reminding people not to stress about money, to this odd text about money.  As Luke concludes today, Jesus tells us that we cannot serve God and money, because of the all-consuming way money can corrode our relationship with God.

Second, we cannot escape money.  Money is a part of our everyday lives, and as we all know is necessary for functioning – for food, for shelter, for clothing, for comfort, for ministry.  Even those monks and nuns who take on a vow of poverty still rely on the money of others for support.  Money, with all its potential for corruption, is inescapable in our lives.

Finally, once we understand the power and place of money in our lives, Jesus reminds us that when we are wise, keeping God at the center, we can use money as a means to goodness in our relationship with God and with one another.  The manager “transforms a bad situation into one that benefits him and others.  By reducing other people’s debts, he creates a new set of relationships based not on the vertical relationship between lenders and debtors (rooted in monetary exchange) but on something more like the reciprocal and egalitarian relationship of friends.”[i]   This kind of work is not about charity per se, but about making friends.[ii]

Many years ago, there was a commercial circulating around the internet.   In the video, a boy is caught red-handed trying to steal a bottle of medicine and a soda.  A woman is berating him in front of a marketplace, wanting to know why he would take these things.  He confesses that the items are for his mother.  A local merchant steps forward, and hands the woman a handful of money to cover the cost of the stolen items.  The man then quietly asks the boy if his mother is sick.  When the boy nods yes, the merchant has his daughter also bring a container of vegetable broth and other items, and sends the boy on his way.  The next clip of the commercial shows the merchant thirty years later, still working in his shop.  He collapses and is taken to the hospital.  The daughter becomes completely overwhelmed as the medical bills add up, even selling the shop they had once run together.  As she is found crying near her father’s bedside, she finds a revised copy of their medical bill.  The amount due is zero.  We find out through the video that the doctor who forgives the bill is that same boy who stole medicine thirty years ago.  He writes at the bottom of the bill, “All expenses paid thirty years ago with three packs of painkillers and a bag of veggie soup.”[iii]

Jesus knows how money corrupts our world.  To be sure there is no ambiguity about the place money takes when talking about God.  We are to choose God.  But Jesus also knows that we can shrewdly utilize our money as a tool to create relationships that glorify God.  This is Jesus’ invitation for us today:  to examine how our relationship with dishonest wealth can be used for goodness.  Jesus affirms for us this week that the way into the black and white, the right and wrong of life, might just be through the path of gray.  Amen.

[i] Lois Malcolm, “Commentary on Luke 16.1-13,” as found on http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx? commentary _id= 1783 on September 18, 2013.

[ii] Thomas G. Long, “Making Friends,” Journal for Preachers, vol. 30, no. 4, Pentecost 2007, 55.

[iii] As found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XADBJjiAO_0 on September 20, 2019.

Getting Real and Giving Generously…

Tags

budget, church, giving, journey, Living Generously, ministry, money, motivation, passion, pledge, real, resources

Photo credit:  www.associationserviceswa.com/2016/08/value-of-a-well-prepared-budget/

The year after I graduated from college, I volunteered fulltime through the AmeriCorps program at a Food Bank in North Carolina.  In addition to working in the warehouse and monitoring agencies, my fellow volunteers and I also had monthly classes on a variety of topics.  My favorite was a budgeting class.  Though most of us were scraping by our living stipend, we still had income and expenses like everyone else.   Our homework was to track our expenses and income for a month and then come back to class to talk about what we noticed.  After that month, I realized that I had picked up a terrible habit.  I had worked very hard to save money during that year.  As a reward for saving money, every week I would treat myself to something small.  But when I did the math, I realized the amount I had saved was much less than the amount with which I was treating myself.  The realization was shocking and wildly disappointing.

On Sunday, we are submitting our pledge commitments for the coming year at Hickory Neck.  Part of our Living Generously campaign has been talking about the powerful ministries at Hickory Neck that mean so much to us.  We have read parishioner reflections, biblical reflections from national church leaders, and a great narrative budget that helps us see how our finances function.  My husband and I are inspired and expectant about the future of Hickory Neck, and we are overjoyed to join the pledging effort to support our ministry.

Inspiration has not been a problem.  In fact, my husband and I talked about how we want to increase our pledge this year.  But as we looked at the numbers, we realized in order to align our budget with our passion, we were going to have to adjust some things.  For us, that means at least a few less meals out each month.  It also may mean being a bit more discerning about wants versus needs.  It will certainly mean keeping an eye on making sure that we are able to keep our pledge next year by saving the amount needed for our increase and not “treating” ourselves disproportionally to our increased pledge.

As the Vestry talked about Stewardship, the Vestry all realized our church giving was motivated by different things.  For some of us, understanding the mission of the church and how our pledge would be used was critical.  For others of us, we needed our giving to be rooted in a theological or spiritual understanding of resources and our stewardship of those resources.  While for others of us, our giving was more motivated by looking around us, taking stock of all the things we like about church, and calculating how much those things cost.  My hope is that our campaign has addressed all of those approaches and that our journey through stewardship season has inspired and rooted you.  I look forward to hearing your story of our journey together and kicking off another great year!

Sermon – Luke 16.1-13, P20, YC, September 18, 2016

Tags

debt, dishonest, economics, friends, God, Jesus, kingdom friendships, loyalty, manager, master, money, parable, relationship, Sermon, shrewd, steward, tango, wealth

Often when we talk about Jesus, we marvel at his parables, and we encourage each other to follow his teachings.  We ask questions like, “What would Jesus do?” as if the answers are obvious.  We describe Jesus as illuminating God, helping us to understand God in an incarnate way.  We even say that all things necessary for salvation are found in Holy Scripture.  And for the most part, all of those things are true – until we get to today’s parable.  Most of us listen to the lesson for today and can only say, “Wait….what?”

Here’s the problem.  Unlike many of Jesus’ parables and sayings, most of us come away from this one completely confused.  Jesus starts off simply enough.  A rich man has a manger, or steward, and the manager is accused of squandering the master’s property.  The master threatens to fire the manager, and so the manager goes off and talks to all the debtors of his master.  Knowing he is about to be fired, the steward strikes deals with the debtors, decreasing their debts, in the hopes of making some friends who will feel indebted to him and may take him in once he is fired.  But what happens next is where the parable gets confusing.  When the master finds out what the steward has done, instead of being angry, he commends the manager for being shrewd.  And to top off this odd response, Jesus completes this whole parable with an instruction that all of us should be like the shrewd manager, making friends by means of dishonest wealth.  Jesus concludes the story by telling us that no one can serve God and wealth.

Confused yet?  You are in good company!  Even most scholars disagree about what the parable is trying to do.  Though we all might understand the part about our loyalties being torn between God and money, the parable hardly helps us get there.  The manager is a schemer – he is about to be fired because he has mismanaged things.  But instead of righting the situation with his master, he confesses that he is both lazy and proud.  He sneakily makes deals with the master’s debtors in the hopes that the debtors will see him as an ally and will help take care of him when he is fired.  But what is most confusing about the whole story is that Jesus says we should go and do likewise.

What might be helpful in getting our heads around Jesus’ strange parable is to understand the economics of “Roman-occupied Galilee in the first century.  Rich landlords and rulers were loan-sharks, using exorbitant interest rates to amass more land and to disinherit peasants of their family land, in direct violation of biblical covenantal law.  The rich man … along with his steward or debt collector, were both exploiting desperate peasants.”  Wealthy landlords of the day would hide interest charges in the money owed by the peasants.  According to scholars, someone like the wealthy steward could be charging the average peasant anywhere from 25-50% for the landlord, an additional cut for the himself, and then a Roman tax on top of all that.[i]

Now before we get too self-righteous about the injustice of the Roman economic system, we have to remember the economic system we operate under today.  Think about modern college students, who not only attend colleges with soaring tuitions, but also are being offered student loans with higher interest rates that ever before.  Add on top of that a weak economy and you see our young people being buried under unfair debt.  Or think about predatory payday loans.  Those scraping by to make ends meet start slipping behind.  Bills are due and they do not have enough to make ends meet, so they get lured in by the immediacy of a pay-day loan.  But by the time all is said and done, they lose more of their paychecks to the interest charged by loan sharks than if they had just kept their money.  And just in case we think we can get away with blaming student loan and payday lenders, we cannot forget our own country’s lending policies with impoverished countries.  Leaders of third world countries agree to harshly austere loans we make, but the poor of the country end up bearing the brunt of the burden.  In fact, “the Lutheran World Federation calls oppressive debt terms imposed on Honduras and other Latin American countries ‘illegitimate debt’ and likens such debt itself to ‘violence,’ because of its crushing effects on people’s futures.”[ii]  Though we may not have everyday contact with stewards or managers, their economic system is more familiar than we may realize.

What is unclear about the steward’s actions is how he is able to forgive some of the debtors’ debts.  In forgiving the debts of the debtors, the manager may have been forgiving his own cut of the interest being charged.  In that way, his actions seem a bit more noble.  Obviously, he is cutting out his own salary, but he is doing so in a way that seems to, at least outwardly, condemn the system.  Or, the steward could have been eliminating all the hidden and prohibited interest in the contracts.[iii]  This would have been a bolder move, as he would have been denying the master his typical amount due.  But because he is enforcing Jewish laws around interest, he would have ingratiated himself to the local Jewish peasants.   This is why the steward may receive commendations from the landlord and Jesus – not because he is noble per se, but because he manipulates the unjust system to curry favor with his neighbors – the very ones who might lend him a hand when he is fired for doing something supposedly just.[iv]  Whatever the self-interest of the steward is, what he is able to do, and perhaps why his master calls him shrewd, is use an unjust system against itself.  Just or not, the steward is able to see that the power of mutuality, of relationship, is the better bedfellow than the unjust economic system of the day.

One of my favorite classes in college was a class called “Social Dance.”  We spent the semester learning the Fox Trot, Waltz, Tango, Cha-Cha, and Swing.  My class happened to have more men than women, so I never had to sit out a dance.  I just switched from partner to partner, trying to adjust as each lead learned the steps.  There were many hard lessons in that class, not least of which was learning how to let the man lead.  But the hardest lesson was learning that no matter what dance we were doing, and no matter how intertwined our bodies were, my frame was a vital component to the dance.  Even in a dance like the Tango, where bodies seem to be intertwined, each partner is holding on to their frame, protecting their space.   I was fascinated to see how two bodies could function in such unison, looking like one unit, and yet, be two differentiated, separate units.

As I studied our gospel lesson this week, I wondered if Jesus’ lesson about wealth is not unlike a couple dancing the Tango.  Living in the world that we do, there is no way for us to escape the dancing partner of wealth.  Given that wealth has the power to corrupt, we will always need to keep our frame in place – keeping the dance going in unison, but never letting ourselves forget to be differentiated from dishonest wealth.  Though the steward seems unseemly and self-interested, he shows us an intricate tango with wealth – how to manipulate wealth so that wealth only hurts itself, not those most in need.

The way that we keep that firm frame is by being in relationship – by making friends as Jesus tells us.[v]  When we invest in friendships (not just friendships with people we like, but kingdom friendships[vi] – the kind of relationships that are unexpected, but feed us more than any wealth can), then wealth begins to lose its power to weaken our frame.  Kingdom friendships are those friendships with people at church or in the world with whom you thought you would never have anything in common.  Kingdom friendships are those relationships you develop with those who are different – either socioeconomically, racially, or ethnically.   Kingdom friendships are those relationships that develop when you realize that despite the fact that you are trying to help someone else, they are actually helping you.  The steward may have made kingdom friendships out self-interest, but the results are the same.  He realizes once he sees the humanity in those he is oppressing – once he makes kingdom friendships, the wealth he is pursuing no longer matters.  That is what Jesus invites us into today – that is how Jesus knows that we can hold onto our frame when dealing with the master of wealth.  Jesus invites us to nurture our kingdom friendships because when we nurture those friendships, we strengthen our sense of self, ensuring our frame never slips in our tango with wealth.  Amen.

[i] Barbara Rossing, “Commentary on Luke 16:1-13,” September 18, 2016, as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2982 on September 14, 2016.

[ii] Rossing.

[iii] Rossing.

[iv] G. Penny Nixon, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 95.

[v] David Lose, “Pentecost 18C:  Wealth and Relationships,” September 14, 2016, as found at http://www.davidlose.net/2016/09/pentecost-18-c-wealth-and-relationships/ on September 15, 2016.

[vi] Thomas Long, “Making Friends,” Journal for Preachers, vol. 30, no. 4, Pentecost 2007, 57.

Sermon – Luke 12.13-21, P13, YC, July 31, 2016

Tags

accountability, barn, community, financial management, God, greed, Jesus, money, relationship, rich, rich toward God, self-centeredness, Sermon, wealth

One of the last things that happens when you graduate from seminary is the staff from the Church Pension Group comes to talk to you about money management.  They help you understand how retirement funds work for clergy, encourage you to make sure you are doing some additional savings and investment planning, and remind you that, like tithing, how you manage your finances is a witness to your congregation for being good stewards.  That lesson is reiterated each year, as the priest is encouraged to be a smart investor through email reminders.  We even go to a wellness conference a few times over the course of our ministry to make sure we are tending to our financial wellness in addition to vocational, spiritual, and bodily wellness.  The lesson to clergy again and again, is to be good stewards of our financial resources.

So imagine my discomfort with the parable from Jesus today.  At first glance, this is a story about smart financial investments.  A man has a bumper crop – the land produces so abundantly he cannot fit the excess crops into his current barns.  Knowing that the land is fickle, maybe even having taken some notes from our ancestor Joseph who prevented a seven-year famine by stockpiling during a seven-year boon, the man decides he will just have to build a bigger barn to hold all the extra crops.  Quite frankly, his actions do not sound that far off from what any investment counselor who might tell us to do – store the excess away so that when a rainy day comes, or even when retirement comes, we can still “eat, drink, and be merry.”  All in all, his logic sounds pretty spot-on to me.

Here is the kicker though:  the day the newly enlarged barn is finished is the same day that the man will die.  All those plans, hopes, and dreams for a secure retirement are gone.  He never gets to enjoy the fruits of his labor.  He never gets to retire in comfort.  He never gets to eat, drink, and be merry.  Our immediate reaction to this tragedy might be to proclaim how life or God is not fair.  But into our disappointment, Jesus says, “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

In these last words from Jesus, Jesus takes the wind out of our sails.  Jesus reminds us that being a good steward of our resources means lots of things:  being smart with our money, saving for times of famine, giving to the church, and caring for our neighbor.  But most importantly, being a good steward of our resources is not just about sound financial practices.  Being a good steward of our resources is also managing our relationship with our money – and more specifically, managing our relationship with God in relation to our money.

Now some of you may be thinking, “Here she goes.  She’s going to tell me how I need to give more money to the church to right my relationship with God.”  No need to get too anxious today.  I do not think Jesus is looking for a specific action today – as if to say, “Do not be like the man with the barns.  Give your full ten percent to the church and all will be well.”  No, what Jesus is trying to do is help us see that our relationship with money matters.  Unlike a polite dinner guest, Jesus never shies away from talking about money.  He is constantly warning us about the potential of riches to corrupt our relationship with God.  So the answer to what the rich man should do may not be a clear-cut formula, but we get some obvious clues about what Jesus means about being rich toward God.

Going back to the story is particularly helpful.  The most obvious thing that we see happening in the parable is that the wealthy man has become completely self-absorbed and ego-centric.  Listen again to the words of the parable, “And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’”  The list is long:  What should I do?  My crops, my barns, my grain, my goods, my soul.  All the words of the wealthy man are self-referential.[i]  Nowhere does he talk to God.  Nowhere does he talk to his family or a trusted friend.  Nowhere does he consult his property manager, or the local priest.  He never praises God for the abundance.  He never acknowledges that the land has provided.  He never even considers sharing his abundance.  He is self-interested, self-protecting, and self-centered.  And all of that focus on the self comes from a relationship with money and with God that is out of whack.

So how do we avoid the slippery slope that leads to self-centeredness and greed, luring us to constantly redefine how much is “enough”?  What exactly is being rich toward God?  Jesus tells us the answer to our quandary throughout Luke’s gospel.  As one scholar explains, “Being rich toward God entails using one’s resources for the benefit of one’s neighbor in need, as the Samaritan did (10:25-37).  Being rich toward God includes intentionally listening to Jesus’ word, as Mary did (10:38-42).  Being rich toward God consists of prayerfully trusting that God will provide for the needs of life (11:1-13, 12:22-31).  Being rich toward God involves selling possessions and giving alms as a means of establishing a lasting treasure in heaven (12:32-34).”  In other words, “Life and possessions are a gift of God to be used to advance God’s agenda of care and compassion, precisely for those who lack resources to provide for themselves.”[ii]

Last year, while serving on the board of the Episcopal Ministries of Long Island in New York, we were surprised by a bequest of about 1.3 million dollars.  The bequest came from a woman who had seemed to be of little consequence.  Each year she had probably given the charitable group about $25 a year.  We assumed that was about all she could do.  So when the gift came in, we were stunned.  After some prayerful discernment, we elected to put one million into our endowment, to ensure that we could keep helping ministries on Long Island.  But the three hundred thousand would be for us to try new and innovative ministries – and luckily for us, there was already a proposal on the table that we thought we could not afford:  a food truck that would take food around to the homeless in Brooklyn, and maybe even host a social worker and or nurse.  I do not know what sort of life this woman led or how she managed her money.  But even in death, her richness toward God was obvious to us all.

The challenge of Jesus this week to be rich toward God is not just a challenge for self-centered men of means.  Though we may be tempted to finger-point, Jesus and we know that money has the power to corrupt all of our relationships with God.  And unfortunately, the consequences are not limited to our relationships with God – our ability to live lives rich toward God impacts our neighbors too.  The good news is that we have a community of faith sitting right next to us who can be our support system as we work to turn our hearts and our riches to God.  Now I know we all value being respectful dinner guests, but this time, we are going to need to follow Jesus’ lead.  In order to really turn our hearts and riches toward God, we are going to need to start talking with our friends about the place of money in our lives and in our relationship with God.  We are going to need to talk about our struggles and failures.  And we are going to need to celebrate our victories and successes.  We are basically going to need to become a giant support group for becoming rich toward God.

I once heard about a “congregation who invited families to not buy any unnecessary new thing for six months in order to break the culturally-induced habit of trying to buy happiness.  But they didn’t just invite people to do this, they formed a culture in which they supported each other.  They read and talked about a common book on abundant life, they kept in touch via small groups and email, they shared where they were succeeding and struggling and what they were learning.  In short, the formed a community so that they could stand against the all-too-human and culturally supported belief that if we just had a little more we’d be happy.”[iii]

I do not know what model or what goals are going to work for each of you.  But I do know that just by our very citizenship in this country, we face more temptation toward greed than in probably any other country.  If we are going to follow Jesus, to avoid a life of self-centeredness, and claim a life of being rich toward God, we are going to need each other.  Whether you want to form a small group or just find a trusted friend, this is the important work Jesus invites us into today.  My guess is that building up a community of support that is rich toward God will create much more opportunities to eat, drink, and be merry, than any bigger barn could ever give us.  Amen.

[i] Audrey West, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 312.

[ii] Richard P. Carlson, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 315.

[iii] David Lose, “What Money Can and Can’t Do,” July 29, 2013, as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=2668 on July 27, 2016.

Giving and Sharing…

Tags

church, Episcopal, grow, home, memories, money, stewardship, talent

This week we continue a series of guest blog posts by parishioners at the Episcopal Church of St. Margaret in Plainview, NY.  They are reflecting on what stewardship means to them, and how God the Giver has been a part of their lives.  Our guest post this week is from parishioner Mike Hadden.

In this latest season of stewardship, I reflect on the things that I can do to give back to the Episcopal Church that has provided me many fond memories; camps, dances, youth groups, just to name a few. I’ll share one memory. There was a point when I was a kid, growing up in Shelby, NC (Church of the Redeemer), that my father was out of work for an extended period of time. Mom and Dad were always active members in church (they later went on to found an Episcopal Church in Mooresville, NC – St. Patrick’s Mission). They had good friends through church, and participated in many activities. Deep into that employment transition for my Dad, the church vestry had apparently decided to use a portion of the discretionary funds available to cut a check to them, to help pay for our expenses. I’ll never forget the tears rolled down my Dad’s face when he accepted it.

However, stewardship isn’t just about money. It’s about what you can give back to the church through use of your talents – fundraising, maintenance work, etc. My family certainly doesn’t pledge a tremendous amount of money to the church annually. We can’t afford to. What we can – and do – do is give of our time; Mari on the Altar and Flower Guilds and teaching Sunday school; me on Vestry and Stewardship/Fundraising Committee. I firmly believe this Parish has the potential to be great. To grow back into one of the more prominent Episcopal churches on Long Island. We have lots of activities available, and are starting new ones all the time. What we need now is to use that positive momentum to drive forward in growth. The “Town Hall” meeting this Sunday felt like another step forward. Let’s continue that forward push, together.

Thank you all for everything you already do to make St. Margaret’s a great place to call my church home.

Respectfully,  Michael Hadden

 

Sermon – Matthew 5.1-12, All Saints Sunday, YA, November 2, 2014

Tags

Beatitudes, blessed, discipleship, God, Jesus, journey, money, path, road, Sermon, stewardship, walking the way

Courtesy of http://firecatching.blogspot.com/2011_04_01_archive.html

Today we hear one of the most beloved pieces of scripture.  The Beatitudes from Matthew’s gospel have been the source of inspiration for Christians for centuries, for artists and musicians, for entire ministries, and even for comedians like Monty Python.  As soon as we hear that phrase, “Blessed are…” our eyes close and we let the words flow over us.  We nod in assent, and maybe even whisper, “Yes!”  And as the preacher for In-Gathering Sunday, getting the Beatitudes in the lectionary is like being handed a silver platter.  What other inspiration can we need on a Sunday like this than to think about blessings?  That is what our Stewardship Committee has been encouraging us to do for weeks: to think about the ways that we are blessed and to return that blessing to this community through the gift of our financial resources.  That message could not be better captured than in the Beatitudes from our gospel lesson today.

Or at least that is what I thought before I started really working with the Beatitudes this week.  The more I poured over the text, the more I became confused.  Then the questions came pouring in:  What does it mean to be poor in spirit?  How do we know if we are pure in heart?  I might prefer peace, but could any of us in our everyday lives be considered peacemakers?  And those are just the surface level questions.  When we read at a deeper level, ethical questions begin to emerge.  Our news outlets have been flooded lately with people who are reviled, persecuted, and having evil uttered against them.  All we have to remember are Christians in Iraq, Palestine, or Burma whose very faith means a life of oppression and sometimes death.  Is the word for them today, “You are blessed”?  Many a liberation theologian has balked at the idea of Holy Scripture being used to keep down oppressed peoples.

Luckily, I stumbled on two things this week that opened up the Beatitudes for me in a fresh way.  First I began to look at what the word translated as “blessed” really means.  There are a couple of words in scripture that are translated in English as “blessed,” but they do not necessarily have the same meaning.  In our Beatitudes today, one scholar argues that the phrase translated as “blessed are you when…” is more rightly translated as “You are on the right road when…”  For example, “You are on the right road when you are poor in spirit.”[i]  So blessed does not really mean, “Happy are you when people persecute you,” but instead, “You are on the right road when people persecute you.”  Somehow this translation makes for a much more sober, honest rendering of Jesus’ words.  Jesus is not saying that these things are cause for happiness in a superficial way.  Jesus is saying that we are fortunate in those experiences because they point us to a deeper truth:  that we are heading in the right direction, making the right decisions, and living a meaningful life.

The other source of insight I found this week was from The Message’s translation of this text.  If you are not familiar with The Message, The Message is a paraphrase of the Bible:  not a literal translation of the Biblical language, but a modern rephrasing of the text to make the text more accessible.  Of course, biblical scholars often cringe when they hear certain paraphrases of key texts, but in the case of the Beatitudes, I found this paraphrase quite useful.

I have taken the two ideas – The Message’s paraphrase and the new introduction of “You are on the right road when…” and want to read for you my hybrid rephrasing of the Beatitudes.  Our text now goes like this:

You are on the right path when you’re at the end of your rope.  With less of you there is more of God and God’s rule.  You are on the right path when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you.  Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.  You’re on the right path when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less.  That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.  You’re on the right path when you’ve worked up a good appetite for God.  God’s food and drink in the best meal you’ll ever eat.  You’re on the right path when you care.  At the moment of being ‘care-full,’ you find yourselves cared for.  You’re on the right path when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right.  Then you can see God in the outside world.  You’re on the right path when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight.  That’s when you discover who you really are, and your place in God’s family.  You’re on the right path when your commitment to God provokes persecution.  The persecution drives you even deeper into God’s kingdom.  Not only that— You’re on the right path every time people put you down or throw you out or speak lies about you to discredit God.  What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and they are uncomfortable.  You can be glad when that happens—give a cheer, even!—for though they don’t like it, God does!  And all heaven applauds.  And know that you are in good company.  God’s prophets and witnesses have always gotten into this kind of trouble.

This Stewardship Season, we have been talking about “Walking the Way.”  Certainly Walking the Way is a metaphor for our journey into a time of reflection about the value our money holds for us and how our relationship with that money is connected to our relationship with God.  But the Walking the Way metaphor is one that goes beyond just our money too.  Walking the Way is a metaphor for our entire journey with God – a path that is ever winding, has steep slopes at times, is sometimes full of potholes and rocks, and at other times is as smooth as a freshly paved road.  Our entire life is a journey – one in which we mature in faith from the time of our birth and baptism to the time of our old age and death.  We are constantly Walking the Way with Christ, growing, learning, messing up, and returning to a loving God.

What I like about this reworded rendition of the Beatitudes is the affirmation in them.  When we are on a journey, Walking the Way, we sometimes struggle to know whether we are on the right path.  We wonder if we are where we should be and whether God is really with us.  This rendition of the Beatitudes gives us a tiny glimpse into that affirmation:  You are on the right path when…  Of course, the description is not all roses.  Mourning, persecution, and making peace are not easy roads.  But a sign of true discipleship, of Walking the Way, are those times when the path is in fact quite rocky.  Then we know that we are on the right path, and Jesus is walking right beside us.  Amen.

[i] Earl F. Palmer, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 238.

A Lifelong Process…

Tags

alive, church, dreams, flourish, God, hope, living, money, stewardship

This stewardship reflection is offered by St. Margaret’s Parishioner, Kim Irvine.  

Courtesy of http://www.churchleaders.com/pastors/pastor-articles/156872-don-linscott-why-i-m-glad-my-church-needs-money.html

It seems that people often associate stewardship with feelings of dread, awkwardness, and anxiety, when in fact the goal of a stewardship campaign is to generate excitement and energy about the achievements our church has experienced, and share the hopes and dreams for the future.  We as a community in Christ need to have intentional discussions about the financial standing of our church.  How can we know what the needs of the church are, without having these crucial conversations?  This year let’s try not to view stewardship as a time we have to “get through”, but instead embrace stewardship as a way of life; living each day knowing that all we have is a gift from God, and we are responsible to use what we have been given to the glory of God.

I believe we at St. Margaret’s are witnessing first hand how stewardship results in helping not only the members of our congregation, but also those in our community and beyond.  New programs are being developed, we’ve seen new initiatives launched, and the buildings and grounds we are blessed with are being maintained and improved.  None of this would be possible without your stewardship.  Your pledges and generous contributions are facilitating growth and change within and outside our church.

In doing some research for this blog post I came upon the following quote:

“Have you ever heard anyone say, ‘My church is always asking for money.  I wish I could belong to a church that never needed any money.’  Surely they don’t mean that.  Any church that is alive needs money.  Only dead churches do not call on their members for support.  If anyone should accuse your church of always needing and calling for money, regard it as a compliment.  Invite this person to rejoice with you that you both belong to something that is living and productive for Jesus Christ rather than a dead, stagnant organization from which glory of Christ has departed.”[1]

For me, these words were really eye opening; they made me grateful to be part of a church that is “alive,” and full of God’s love.

Please prayerfully consider your pledge for this year; your continued financial support of St. Margaret’s will propel us to do the amazing things God has planned for us, and keep us flourishing in faith!

Respectfully submitted by Kim Irvine

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[1] http://www.tonycooke.org/free_resources/articles_leadership/pastoral_helps/quotes_thoughts.html