“What If the Purpose of Money Isn’t Survival?” (Mark 12:38-44)

He continued teaching. “Watch out for the religion scholars. They love to walk around in academic gowns, preening in the radiance of public flattery, basking in prominent positions, sitting at the head table at every church function. And all the time they are exploiting the weak and helpless. The longer their prayers, the worse they get. But they’ll pay for it in the end.” Sitting across from the offering box, he was observing how the crowd tossed money in for the collection. Many of the rich were making large contributions. One poor widow came up and put in two small coins—a measly two cents. Jesus called his disciples over and said, “The truth is that this poor widow gave more to the collection than all the others put together. All the others gave what they’ll never miss; she gave extravagantly what she couldn’t afford—she gave her all.” (Mark 12:38-44)

A group of young and not so young adults were comparing Halloweens. “Back when I was young,” said the oldest person in the group, “There weren’t snack-sized candy bars, just penny candy. And there weren’t businesses and churches that handed out candy. We walked door to door to get one stick of gum or jawbreaker or apple. It took hours to fill up a pillowcase.”

A younger adult interrupted, “Are you kidding me? Our children’s buckets were filled within thirty minutes. Our workplace always dresses up on the Friday closest to Halloween and hands out candy from their desks. The friendly ghosts tossed HANDFULS of small chocolate bars in the buckets. Our children had over ten pounds of candy before going door-to-door in the neighborhood. We counted at least four full-sized candy bars, too. Need some chocolate? We’ll share!”

Another young adult added, “Well we definitely benefitted from snack-sized everything when I was a child. I don’t care what size the Reece’s Peanut Butter cup is, I’ll take it! What’s funny is that I hardly ate any of the candy in my bucket once I collected it. I thought it was special. So I saved it in the bottom drawer of the study desk in my room. I had brothers, you know, so I had to be clever. About the following Easter my mom would DEMAND I throw it away…before the Easter bunny came by with a basket full of candy!”

All three of these persons described our life with money as they talked about Halloween candy—sometimes we work very hard for very little, sometimes we work very little for a lot, sometimes the work and the benefit is proportionate, and sometimes we are so impressed by money we put it away so no one can touch it—and sometimes we are so thankful we share.

A story Jesus told about life with God comes to mind: 

“It’s also like a man going off on an extended trip. He called his servants together and delegated responsibilities. To one he gave five thousand dollars, to another two thousand, to a third one thousand, depending on their abilities. Then he left. Right off, the first servant went to work and doubled his master’s investment. The second did the same. But the man with the single thousand dug a hole and carefully buried his master’s money.

“After a long absence, the master of those three servants came back and settled up with them. The one given five thousand dollars showed him how he had doubled his investment. His master commended him: ‘Good work! You did your job well. From now on be my partner.’

“The servant with the two thousand showed how he also had doubled his master’s investment. His master commended him: ‘Good work! You did your job well. From now on be my partner.’

“The servant given one thousand said, ‘Master, I know you have high standards and hate careless ways, that you demand the best and make no allowances for error. I was afraid I might disappoint you, so I found a good hiding place and secured your money. Here it is, safe and sound down to the last cent.’

“The master was furious. ‘That’s a terrible way to live! It’s criminal to live cautiously like that! If you knew I was after the best, why did you do less than the least? The least you could have done would have been to invest the sum with the bankers, where at least I would have gotten a little interest. 

“‘Take the thousand and give it to the one who risked the most. And get rid of this “play-it-safe” who won’t go out on a limb. Throw him out into utter darkness.’” (Matthew 25:14-30)

In this parable, we understand that God is the MASTER and you and I are the gifted servants. And gifted we are! Everyone has gifts of the spirit—those marvelous inner qualities such as hope and patience and hospitality and teaching, as well as material possessions, to enhance the lives of others! And that’s the point…you and I here to honor God and neighbor with our living…not for God and neighbor to honor us.

Isn’t that why Jesus shames the scribes in our lesson from the Gospel of Mark? Their robes are costumes, according to Jesus—they use religion for status.

What we hear in Jesus’ parable about investment is God’s invitation to us to live a “take a risk, play it big” kind of life. It’s simply not okay with God for us to keep our lives small; to turn our gifts in on ourselves…to secure our own survival and let everything and everyone else figure out this thing called life all by their selves. Jesus was incredibly active in community. He met the needs of others. He never worried where the next meal, or the next bed, was going to come from.

What we learn from the life of Christ is that we, too, are instruments of God’s presence and God’s peace. We are to stay in circulation. We are to use what we’ve been given to build up others. We are to act out of our experience of God’s abundance—which includes our neighbors.  

A few months ago a young man sat down with me. He wanted to talk about work. He just couldn’t find a place to work where he actually LIKED what he did and who he got to be while he worked. For the past five years he’s bounced around. “I’m getting nowhere,” he said to me, “I think I’m going to go try my luck in the oil field.” “No wonder you’re struggling,” I told him, “You only see your wealth in terms of money. By bouncing around you haven’t built up any significant relationships with people. You know, people resources are just as important as monetary resources. Money can’t change the tire on your car, give you a ride to work, suggest a doctor when your child is sick, take you to lunch, give you a promotion at work, or celebrate your birthday.”

Whenever Jesus tells a story he’s offering his audience the opportunity to see the world—it’s people—the way God sees them.

We are used to seeing ourselves the way the world sees us—we are familiar with the rules of status and power and wealth. We know how to adjust our lives so that people are pleased, money is banked, and power is incurred.

God, on the other hand, does not play by the rules of status and power and wealth. These hold no value in the kingdom of God. Love holds the highest place of value; love of God, love of neighbor.

As Jesus watched the crowd putting money into the temple treasury, he knew his friends were watching the activity through the eye the world had equipped them with---the one that would be impressed by the AMOUNT of money.

Jesus directs the disciples eyes away from the wealthy temple patrons and sets them on the poor widow, whom he praises for truly giving the largest gift.

Jesus intercedes to correct their vision. The woman’s financial gift was very small to be sure, but with WHAT she gave to the temple treasury was quite large—she gave with the heart of faith. Faith knows that our well-being depends on God and neighbor. The widow was not afraid to live without a couple of coins even though they were, as the scripture says, “All she had.” Why? Because what she knows is that all she really has is God and community—she lost nothing in the transaction—and gained everything.

The world would say that it takes a lot of courage to follow Jesus …to choose his way in the world…because it will always involve sacrifice. Faith would say that it takes a lot of courage to go it alone, to live as if there were no God and no neighbor.

Sacrifice means to “deliberately forsake the security of satisfying our own needs with our own resources in the faith and hope that God will sustain us.” Through the widow’s gift Jesus teaches us that call to discipleship is a call to the congregation to so arrange our life together that we live on the edge materialistically so that God meets us and saves us over and over again—as opposed to us saving our self. How can we truly experience the amazing support of God and neighbor…if we don’t need anything?

Let Us Pray: Loving God, thank you for meeting us in our time of need...thank you for preparing our hearts to meet the needs of others, and most amazingly of all—to meet you! Amen.

(This sermon was preached by Reverend Dana Keener at Central Christian Church in Billings on November 8, 2015.) 

 

“SHALL Is an Interesting Word” (Mark 12:28-34 )

Wayne Teasdale lives and works in Chicago. Over time he has grown in appreciation for the homeless. He meets a homeless woman named Carol on Adams Street by Union Station where one of the main commuter trains arrives and departs. He meets a man who refers to himself as the “Saint” in Hyde Park where Teasdale lives. He meets Jerome on the stairs to the Metra train at Fifty-Third Street on Chicago’s south side.

A Christian man, Teasdale makes it a central goal of his spiritual practice to move beyond noticing these people to engaging them---conversing with them, learning their stories, hugging them. Teasdale notes, “When we get to know them, we realize that the situation is much more complicated, that our society doesn’t provide much leeway for human frailties. We also learn that they are us. The homeless want to be seen, affirmed, and accepted. They want to be happy and avoid suffering. They need a sense of home—to actually have a home, even a room, which they can enter, close the door to, and live in peace. “

And so Teasdale is personable with the homeless—like he is with persons who are not homeless. He has moved from annoyance, resentment, and inconvenience to spontaneous compassion. He has come to realize that these people are precious---as Jesus did.

Janis rises early, before the neighborhood turns on their kitchen lights and makes their first cup of coffee and turns their dogs out for their first “sniff of the lawn.” She finds the Bible with a bookmark placed in the psalms, and she opens the book she has chosen of late from the bookstore to read that offers spiritual food. A book that sheds a little light on how it is she wants to be with God: patient, faithful, prayerful, compassionate, supportive, and forgiving. She lights a candle in the darkness, reminding her that the light is a present reality. She sets a little timer for twenty minutes and turns off the chatter in her mind.

Even when her life doesn’t make sense—she’s divorced, her son struggles with depression, her daughter is estranged, her work environment is stressful and she’s long since passed the legal age when she can retire—she makes time to listen to God. Janis observes “God is our most loyal and beautiful companion. God is worth rising for and sitting still with. But I wasn’t always this dedicated. If you had met me in my twenties, you wouldn’t have ever thought God would have a chance with me.” 

What Teasdale and Janis have in common is CHANGE. They are not who they once were. Janis can recall the years from her youth when life was all about her and she lived and loved quite selfishly. Teasdale can remember the years when he encountered the homeless on every corner in Chicago and gave them a couple of dollars just so they would leave him alone.

But that’s not who they are not. Teasdale tries to see the needs of the homeless and meet them without judgment. Janis gives God the first hour of the day—her “first fruits.” They do not tell their stories with pride but with awe. Like Mary of Nazareth, wife of Joseph and mother of Jesus, they exclaim “My soul magnifies the Lord.” What they mean is that God has mysteriously but most definitely increased in them and it was not their doing---and they are paying just enough attention to notice it.

This alone is quite a miracle, this paying attention to what God is accomplishing in one’s life despite what is happening in one’s life. It’s so easy to identify with one’s joys and sorrows and one’s losses and gains or one’s age or bank account—thinking it is about this or about that we are experiencing in our OUTER life. It’s equally just as easy to miss the grace God is tucking inside one’s spirit, or the way God is opening you to the value of all things—the homeless, the environment, God’s very self.

·        Someone once said that when something happens once it is a miracle, then after that it is normal. Our grandchildren remind us of this all of the time. Every time Target changes their seasonal display the granddaughters’ clap—just like they clap for noodles and rain puddles. You and I, well, what are we clapping for these days? Is anything a miracle?

Our lesson from the Gospel of Mark invites us to clap for every ounce of compassion God has managed to emit from our hearts. And that’s the insight: God is determined to grow us into compassion. In fact, God promises us that God will grow us in compassion! Where does God promise us that? In the gospel of Mark, chapter 12:28-34 where we encounter an interesting choice of a word in relationship to the delivery of greatest commandment God ushers. The word is SHALL as in “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” It means “expressing a strong intention.” The 1960’s ushered in the anthem “We Shall Overcome.” The movement away from racism in our country wasn’t a should, or a must, it was we shall—it will happen.

God doesn’t say in our lesson text we MUST love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, or that we should. God says we SHALL. It will happen. I like Christian author Frederick Buechner’s observation that “the words YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR GOD (and NEIGHBOR) become in the endless a command than a promise.” God will deliver within us a heart for God and humanity.

It’s hard fought on both ends, isn’t it, this giving birth to compassion? Talk about the world groaning in labor! God removing the obstacles to our resistance to love—while at the same time our being willing to be taught by God; to be raised by the scriptures and the Spirit! As Jesus noticed it is easy to love persons who admire us and who are born to us or married to us—but persons who test us and are unfamiliar to us and so seemingly different than us, well? And it is so much easier to respond to the material world than it is to respond to the Spirit. How do we do that; how do we listen for God’s still, small voice?

Is it no coincidence that the story of God transforming us from hearts of stone to hearts filled with love is told over and over again through a variety of familiar children’s stories?

·        In Margery Williams’ the Velveteen Rabbit we are “loved real.”

·        In Dr. Suess’ the Grinch Who Stole Christmas the Grinch’s heart grows three sizes in one day.

·        In Hans Christian Andersons’ the Ugly Duckling the little swan who thinks he is a terrible excuse for a duck learns that he is a beautiful bird after all—only he’s a bird of a different feather so to say.

·        In Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol Scrooge’s hard-heartedness is confronted by three different spirits whose purpose is to mirror back to him the truth about his existence—he is void of mercy. In this story we understand that the three different spirits represent the work of the Holy Spirit; it’s role, which is to awaken us to our potential to be love, like Christ.

·        And then there is the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion, and Scarecrow all discover that they already had everything they needed to live a beautiful life---community, heart, courage, brains. This is the gift of enlightenment: we have everything we need. We simply forget who we are!

Perhaps you can think of other stories where we meet our God’s promise to us to love us where we are but to not let us stay that way! It’s as if a clue to the journey of the human spirit from fear to compassion is written everywhere…so that we might remember.

Oh there is so much more to a life than what any of us can see…or that anyone can see in us! Can we simply pause for a minute and embrace the magnanimity of God’s work? Let’s give awe and wonder some room to bless us.

The Gospel of Mark urges us to make a shift make a shift in our spirit—a shift from charting our successes and loses in the material world—to observing our successes and loses in the spiritual world. God isn’t interested in our failures; God is interested in what motivates us. God isn’t interested in our religion; God is interested in our relationships---is everyone precious—is God precious?

Ah-ha! God is making good on God’s promise! We shall love! And every step along the way is a miracle…that asks to be noticed.

Prayer: Amazing God, thank for making good on your great promise that we shall love you and neighbor. Give us ears to listen and hearts that surrender to the impulses of your love. Amen.

(This sermon was preached by Reverend Dana Keener on November 1, 2015 at Central Christian Church in Billings, Montana.)