The Gospel starts out so hopeful this morning: Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom..” It would have been good for most of us if Bob would have stopped reading after this first verse and we could have all responded “Thanks be to God.” But Jesus takes what seems to be hopeful news and we, if we would have stopped at this point, would have all been giddy. But Jesus, being Jesus, doesn’t end here. He didn’t stop. Instead he follows it up with this: “Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.”
This is where I tread lightly. It is too clever by half to try to water this down. “Oh, Jesus didn’t mean this.” Or “In the first century, they understood selling your possessions differently than we do.” I know there is a temptation to do that because I have done that. Many times. I don’t think I did this purposefully but in reality, as I look back, that’s exactly what I have done. I didn’t want to make anyone mad, especially if they were wealthy and gave a lot to the church. After all, I don’t want to bite the hand that feeds me, do I?
When I arrived at Holy Apostles in Katy, I started my ministry on the day pledge cards were due. It was a big and important day. I have sometimes felt that my sermons were graded from time to time, and none more than on that day. If I had fallen flat, it would have had implications on the budget year. I didn’t know anyone and so preaching a stewardship sermon on pledge Sunday is something that I’ll never forget. And by the way, I don’t recommend it.
Somehow we got through that Sunday and I don’t remember much about what I preached. I did get an anonymous note that said “Good job Darrel,” and so I think my sermon must have limped by with a passing grade. But a year later it wasn’t so successful.
I had experienced some profoundly moving moments in the church I served before I landed in Katy by changing the way people turned in pledge cards. I thought it would translate well to my new church. So a year later, I thought it would be a clever thing to have people come up, one after another, immediately following the stewardship Sermon and place their pledge cards on the altar. Nothing wrong with that, right? Or so I thought. A week later I learned that one of the largest pledgers of the church was offended. “Why did we have to be so visible and have an altar call to place pledges on the altar,” I was asked. Before I could reply, this person made it known that they were leaving the church over that. That is always a wounding experience for a priest but this was made worse by the fact that this family represented one of the largest pledging units of the church. They left and took there $70,000 dollar a year pledge with them. Ouch.
With that in mind, I read the Gospel this morning and quickly wondered how I might take the sting out of Jesus words or maybe just preach on the epistle or Psalm. Surely I wouldn’t stand up here and tell you to sell your possessions. I could spend the entire week, immersed in commentaries and biblical dictionaries in order to find a loop hole that would let us all off the hook. Especially if you pledge $70,000 dollars a year. “Jesus didn’t mean what he said,” I could preach. Or maybe “you don’t have to sell your possessions if you pledge $70,000 a year.” But, as you probably know by now, I am not going to try to make this more palatable for anyone. But, I can also say, “don’t leave yet,” what appears as impossible and something no one can do, hang in there with me for a moment.
In the midst of telling people to stay alert, Jesus inserts a brief encouragement to be alert, he says, be dressed for action and have your lamps lit.” Why? Because a thief is coming. If we don’t stay awake and alert, this thief will break into your house and steal everything.
Ok… how did we get from selling all our possessions to staying alert because there is a thief that lurks around? I am glad you asked. Who is the thief? As you unpack this lesson, it becomes clear that Jesus is talking about fear. But before I get there I want you to notice what Jesus did NOT say: He did not say sell ALL your possessions and then give alms. And so the question becomes clearer. Do we know that spending all our time, energy and money on ourselves or our family doesn’t give us any sense of comfort, peace or security? I know we forget that because we are bombarded with ads on TV, on the internet or whereever we browse around that our time is best spent in accumulating stuff and keeping it for ourselves. We heard about this last week with the farmer who tore down his barns to build bigger ones and yet ended up in the same place we all eventually will find ourselves: dead. But Jesus isn’t talking about dying here… he talks about living. And when we center our lives around material things and ignore the plight of others, comfort, peace and security aren’t found anywhere. It is impossible to find them when we hoard our own wealth and refuse to share it with others. You see it is not about selling all our possessions to give to others but, now I am going from preaching to meddling, when was the last time we sold ANYTHING in order to help someone else.
Now if you’re following me you might ask a simple question: OK, if I sell something to help others, what’s in it for me?” Now if you asked that question, I think you need to spend sometime in the wilderness discussing this with God. You know, it’s not always about us. Why is it that we have to get something in order to give something?
I could make this all religious and tell you that you will get eternal life if you obey this command. I know it will hurt but just keep focused on Heaven. Can you imagine what the line leading to heaven would look like, what the people who grudgingly gave up stuff and now they were getting their heavenly reward? I. can’t think of a larger collection of people who would still be grumbling over selling something to give to someone else. But I will let you in on something that seems like a secret but isn’t: you don’t earn your way into heaven. Grace gets you there as it will everyone else. No, don’t give because you think it will be repaid you in a great big old mansion in the sky.
That’s not what Jesus is talking about. He’s talking about a thief to breaks into your house and steals your contentment, your joy, your hope. That thief has another name. It’s called fear. And fear steals and destroys. The only way to escape the demands of this fear is to find contentment, hope and joy. And the only way this thief is destroyed is by understanding the power of giving. And if you don’t feel you can give, sell something in order to be able to do so. It’s worth it, again, not because of a heavenly reward but because generosity is a reward for us now.
And there is another thief. Alyce McKenzie refers to God’s own self as a thief. But this holy thief is a “burglar who returns to steal our false priorities and overturn our unjust structures.” When this thief breaks into our carefully guarded lives that are undergirded by a fear of scarcity, you know we just don’t have enough for ourselves, let alone enough to give to others, which immobilizes us and keeps us stuck. Jesus loves us too much to leave us there. As the Holy thief, God replaces our fear with what we wanted all along but didn’t know how to get it: joy, hope and contentment. And ultimately that is what Jesus continues to do for us, seeking to rescue us from a life of meaninglessness.
But Jesus doesn’t force anything on us so we tend to wander through life with nothing more than a glimpse of what direction we should head and a whole lot of dissatisfaction in only finding emptiness in those things we thought would bring us contentment. I think it would help us if we focused less on heave and more on our lives we are living right now. It’s not that heaven isn’t a real place but we’re not there, we are here among so many people who do not know there is a better way to live than to simply acquire more and more.
In describing our world, the Obery Hendricks says it this way: “We are living in insane times. Like purveyors of a bad Orwellian joke, [there are those who have ] hijacked the meanings of justice and equity and cynically perverted them into their very opposites. The Hebrew Bible and the Gospel of Jesus both command all who hold them dear to care for the poor, the weak, and the vulnerable, yet [many] preachers shamelessly interpret the Bible in ways that serve America’s rich and ignore the suffering of its poor.” And we are left with lives all around us in shambles. It seems to me that as followers of Jesus we should leave this world better than we found it. This means more than buying poor people stuff that will end up distracting them as much as they distract us. It means that we are called to stand up and against anything that treats undocumented immigrants like lesser forms of life, or supporting and hungering after unprovoked wars of domination and thinking security is found in a blossoming IRA or a rather dangerous looking firearm. No. We might think that way from time to time, but Jesus has a way of meeting us where we are and taking us to where we didn’t know we wanted to be but once there, find exactly what we were looking for. It is Jesus’ desire to make us like him. What does that look like? He challenged scripture inerrancy, broke church laws angering the religious-right of His day, hung out with fringe groups and did NOT use any weapons when the govt of His day came to kill him.
Today we baptize a baby, Ian Noel. His journey is just beginning. We have an opportunity to help him and his family to live fully into his new life in Christ. What do you say that we bend over backwards to witness to Ian that a life in Christ leads to an understanding that in order to truly live, we are called to be generous in our love, our possessions and how we support him and others with our time, talent and treasure. That, my friends, will leave a legacy and is the only way to live a life that makes a difference.