Preached Sunday August 8, 2010
Luke 12:32-40
Have you ever been in a situation where two people seem to be talking to each other, but neither side is really listening to the other? Such is the situation that Isaiah describes to us today. God has told the people of Israel what God wants from them, but they haven’t heard and obeyed, therefore God says to them that God will no longer hear or respond to their prayers until such time as they do listen. Nothing is as frustrating as trying to talk to someone and not having that person understand you, or respond in such a way that clearly shows they have totally misunderstood you.
The people of Israel have settled into their worship routines in the Temple to such an extent that they have forgotten why they are doing what they are doing. They are suppose to be worshipping God, but they have become so focused on the pattern of worship, on the specific steps and formulas they were suppose to follow that they have completely failed to honor God with a deep awe and respect, to live lives free from evil actions, and to take care of the vulnerable in society, that is what worship is truly suppose to be. You cannot love God and hate your neighbor, or even ignore your neighbor.
I’ve been in churches where people have fought with each other over what kinds of songs and hymns will be sung. One side wanted worship and praise music because that is what they liked best. The other side wanted hymns and songs from their own worship traditions because that is what they liked best. Neither side would acknowledge the other side’s needs as being legitimate, and therefore neither side in those churches got to experience real worship because every worship service turned into a war. They forgot to worship God and instead focused on what they thought was the right style of music needed for a proper worship service. I’m afraid that like the people of Israel in Isaiah’s time that God gave up listening to the prayers of either side in those worship wars.
It is interesting to note that Isaiah has God referring to the people as worse than the people of Sodom and Gomorrah whose cities were destroyed because of their great sinfulness. You have heard a lot of preachers talk about the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah and usually with much vengeance against our Queer Community as they misinterpret and downright lie about why the ancient writers of Genesis tells us those cities were destroyed. It wasn’t because of their sexual orientation or even because of their sexual behaviors, it was because they failed to recognize God as God and failed to recognize and treat their fellow human beings as worthy of respect, love, and care. Those are the evils recorded in numerous places in the Bible, including by Jesus himself. And that’s exactly what Isaiah tells the people of Israel that they have also failed at doing.
We have celebrated this week the Federal Judge’s ruling that California Proposition 8 was unconstitutional and that Queer Persons have the right to marry just like heterosexual persons. To deny us the that right is to put us into a different and lesser class than everyone else. Our fundamentalist Christian friends may cry foul and try to get a higher court to throw out this ruling on the basis of their own morality and so-called Biblical beliefs, but the judge clearly said that their moral beliefs alone could not be the deciding issue.
Furthermore, their characterization of our sexuality as somehow being sinful and against God and humanity is twisted and though they believe their view is supported by so-called historical interpretations of the scriptures, it is abundantly clear to me and others that those interpretations are based on hate, and on a failure to apply the basic principles of love and acceptance of others valued by God throughout the entire Bible and taught to us by Jesus. When we have to put down another person in order to claim our rights over their rights I do not think that God celebrates that kind of behavior or thinking. It is only when we hold up our love for God and our love for each other as well as God’s love for all of the varieties of humanity that we can truly say that we are living in the New Community of God that Jesus ushered in with his own life and example.
Jesus comes compassionately to teach his disciples and others exactly what it means to follow him, to become new citizens in God’s New Community. We are on a journey with Jesus and his followers as he leads the way to Jerusalem through our scripture readings from the book of Luke. This journey will take us through October. Exactly what does it mean to be a follower of Jesus. Today we learn that it means that we must take care to keep our hearts focused on God and God’s way instead of upon the things the world tells us is important.
Jesus opens this week’s lesson by saying tenderly: “Do not be afraid, little flock,” and then goes straight into the words that strike more fear into Christians than anything else Jesus ever said, “Sell your possessions, and give away your money to the poor.”
Terrifying words. Horrible words to hear. I’m afraid of it because I’m scared that maybe we are supposed to take it literally, that maybe we are supposed to give away all that we own. All of it. Afraid that maybe everything I buy, every meal I eat in a restaurant, every little luxury I purchase for myself, is a sign of my lack of faith in God, of my unwillingness to give it all away and trust God to supply what I need for life.
I can wriggle out of my discomfort to some extent. Clearly it says it is God’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom, therefore we should sell and give. It doesn’t say sell and give in order that you might receive the kingdom. And while that’s literally true that doesn’t entirely make me feel any better.
I’ll have a big problem trying to explain myself out of obeying these verses, because one sixth of all the things the Bible records Jesus as having said are about our relationship to money and material possessions. He speaks more about this than he does about love, about prayer or about forgiveness. Especially in the Gospel of Luke.
Why does Jesus speak so much about money and material possessions? He gives the answer right here, because where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. And perhaps there is nothing else that can lead us away from the things that really matter faster than money, and certainly if we added sex and power we’d probably just have all the reasons we stray away from God’s will and purpose in our lives. Mark Twain : Some men worship rank, some worship heroes, some worship power, some worship God, and over these ideals they dispute, but they all worship money.
Now we could wrestle here with how we might go about being more faithful with our money, or how to learn to live more simply and give more generously, and that would be a perfectly appropriate thing to do with this passage, but I think there is another question that underlies our fear of Jesus talking about money, and if we don’t address that question, we’ll probably be wasting our time pooling our thoughts on the money question.
You see I believe that underneath this is a question about the place that Christian faith occupies in our lives. In fact the very wording I just used is probably symptomatic of the issue. Does Christianity just occupy a portion of our lives, just a small defined place in our lives, perhaps only a couple of hours on Sunday mornings, and if so what is it doing making claims on other areas of our lives? Like our money for example. Or do we ourselves occupy a place in the New Community of God which should and will affect everything we believe, think, say and do?
You will often encounter people visiting a church like ours, or any other church for that matter, as part of their search for the right church for them. Now I have no objection to this - I think it is important to find a church that is right for you - but I think all too often we actually have a similar approach to Christian faith as a whole. We look around for a version of church that sits comfortably with us. We don’t hand ourselves over to Jesus and say, “Whatever, wherever, whenever.” We want meaning, we want purpose, we want spiritual growth, we want fullness of life, but we want it to fit in comfortably with our chosen careers and lifestyles and interests, and most importantly within our preferred time schedule. We want a Christianity that will be the icing on the cake, not something that will trash the cake and force us to rebake the cake from scratch. Or for those of you who now speak computer language, we want a Christianity that is a user-friendly, platform compatible add-on, not a Christianity that overrides our current life-operating system and installs a radically different version.
This of course is no surprise. We live in a culture that trains us early to approach everything that way. “What does this have to offer me and from which I could benefit? What is available here that would make a welcome addition to my life?” For every possible desire there is a vendor offering it to those who seek it. Do I need a break, some time out? There’s the travel agent with a rock bottom price for a week on the Islands. Do I need to unravel my complicated feelings about my relationship with my mother? There’s a psychologist offering an appointment on Tuesday. Do I need to get lost in a good story? There’s the cinema offering the latest movie at 7 pm. Do I need to appease my hunger or spirit or strengthen my sense of connection with the mysteries of life? There’s a church where I can pick up this week’s worship and sermon session at 11:00 AM.
The church becomes just one more vendor supplying another product in response to consumer demand. Our Christian faith and spirituality becomes just one more product in the market place. Pick some up whenever you feel the need. Evangelism of course becomes the advertising and marketing strategy for the product or the particular supplier, encouraging people to pick some up a bit more often.
And why should it be any different we might ask. Why should the church and Christian faith be exempted from competing in the market place like everything else? I’m actually not suggesting that it should be exempted from competing like everything else, but that we should wake up and realize what it is competing for. To revert to computer language for a moment it is not competing against the other aps and add-on modules, it is competing against the resident operating platforms. If you are buying a home computer you first have to choose whether to have a Windows platform or a Macintosh platform. Whichever way you choose, that basic decision will then limit what programs you can run with it. You can’t run Word for Windows on a Mac.
If you want to install Christianity 1.0 on the hard disk of your life, you will have to uninstall the previous operating system. You can’t run it on top of Consumer 98 or Money Sex & Power 7. Contrary to Focus on the Family you can’t even run it on top of Traditional Family Values 55. Christianity is not an add-on nor is it even a general application. It is an integrated operating system, incompatible with all other operating systems, and it dictates what else can be run with it.
Those of you who use computers a lot already know that sometimes an incompatibility doesn’t show up straight away. Sometimes it just starts corrupting things and causing seemingly random malfunctions until eventually the whole system crashes. So it is with attempting to retain incompatible applications with your new Christianity 1.0 operating system.
Career Path 2.0 might have been running smoothly with your old operating system, and at first it may seem to have no problems with Christianity 1.0. Your Growing Share Stock Portfolio Add-on and your favorite pastime Casino 1.2 might initially seem to be OK too. But after a while if you’re noticing things starting to react strangely and malfunction so that you may have to do a careful search, a prayerful search in fact, for the incompatibility problem. If nothing in your life has ever caused a significant compatibility problem with your Christianity, then can I suggest in all seriousness that you haven’t installed Christianity 1.0 at all, you’ve just got the icon sitting benignly on your desktop while you continue to run your old system.
Let me illustrate again completely differently for those of you who aren’t into computers. When I first became a Dad, my oldest daughter just turned 36 this week, I went through a lot of anxiety firstly about whether I wanted to be a dad, and then once that decision became irrelevant, about whether I could cope with being a dad. And one of the main reasons for that anxiety was that I knew that I couldn’t just treat my child as a one more addition to my life. In becoming a dad I knew that I had to be willing to reassess the appropriateness of everything else in my life, I had to let go of my life as I knew it and wait to see what things were compatible with my new life as a dad. Now there is no doubt that there are plenty of parents who treat their children as simply add-ons or aps to their lives and change little else. You’ve probably met plenty of them and heard things like, “We’ve got the house, our careers are established and progressing well, it’s time to have children.” The children are just expected to fit in around their parents’ lifestyle choices. They are just treated as items to be ticked off on a list of goals. “By the time I’m forty I want a townhouse, a beach house at Rye, a partnership in the firm, a blue chip share portfolio, a classy spouse, two children, and a BMW sports convertible.” And they set about ticking off the goals and collecting the trophies.
And I don’t know about you, but my observation is that the people who’ve managed to accumulate all those trophies don’t seem to me to be any less anxious or any more at peace in their hearts than the people who are having to decide what to go without this week - toilet paper or milk. They’re anxious about different things most of the time, but just as anxious. And every now and then something pulls the rug out and calls them to put things back in perspective. I read an interview with Ringo Starr, the drummer from the Beatles. He spoke about how when his daughter was diagnosed as having a brain tumor he suddenly realized that in the face of some things all the fame and fortune is not worth a thing.
“Do not be afraid, little flock, it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom.” The good news is that new life in Jesus Christ is still a free gift. Meaning, purpose, hope, peace, fullness of life - all are a free gift from the God who loves you and longs to bless you more richly than you could ever imagine. It is a free gift to everyone who will accept it. I could hand out free copies of the newest Windows operating system but unless you installed it properly on your computer it’s a pretty useless gift. I suppose you could use the disks as beer coasters or something. I could hand out free Bibles but only those who read them and thoughtfully apply the lessons will benefit.
When we come to this table in a moment you will be offered a free gift - a piece of broken bread. Not something that is of much value outside of this worship space. But if you will allow yourself to hear the words “Take, eat, this is my body,” and recognize the presence of Jesus Christ you will be at a moment of decision. You can take and eat, accept the broken Christ who gives himself to you and say, “I am no longer my own, but yours, Christ. Help me to become what you will, rank me with whom you will; Put me to doing, put me to suffering; let me be employed for you or laid aside for you; exalted for you or brought low for you; let me be full for you or emptied out; let me have all things, let me have nothing; I freely and wholeheartedly yield all things to your holy pleasure and divine will.”
Or you can just eat the bread and walk away, perhaps enjoy the ritual we repeat each week, the sense of mystery, the links with an ancient tradition. Perhaps you will even be stirred by the prayers and the song and sense of sharing a special moment with others. Perhaps even value your friendships with those you come to the table with and appreciate the sense of belonging and community. Or you can just walk away, close the spiritual compartment of your life for another week and go on living your life unaffected by it all with the different part of your life continuing to spin in all directions perhaps even tearing you apart.
You can file a few Christian values and experiences in a little spiritual compartment of your life, or you can open up everything and receive the free gift of the New Community of God. “Do not be afraid, little flock; it is your Parent’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom.”
Sure living that way can be scarier, but if your life is invested in the one who breathes life into the universe, it will also be far richer, deeper, and more integrated. Wading in the shallows is not really swimming. If you can still touch the bottom safely, you’re not really living. It’s time to jump into the deep water of faith. The choice is yours. “Take, eat, this is my body.”
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