March 8, 2009

Mark 8:27-38 * the Second Sunday of Lent 2009

All of us traverse a lot of life in between the times we see each other here in the sanctuary of First United Church .  None of us, especially not me, can do any more than inadequately guess what all of us have seen, experienced, lost, found, hoped for, despaired about, eaten and drunk since last we have experienced, seen, heard from each other.  Our lives are full, exciting, boring, routine, preparing and ending.

I don't know why you come here.  I come here not because I am paid to do so.  It is great that I get paid.  But, I come here because I love the community that gathers here to care for one another over an extended period of days, months and years.  I want and need faith community.  In addition, I come here because we are a community that is committed to expanding beyond ourselves as we follow the lure, the example, the Way of Jesus.  Jesus is our model, here.

We spend a lot of our time seeking to educate ourselves about who Jesus was, what Jesus taught, what Jesus expects of those who might follow in his steps.  We ponder the spirit of Jesus that was and the spirit of Jesus that is now.  We try very diligently to go beyond traditional interpretations of Jesus that churches through two thousand years of Christian history have taught.  Many times the teachings of many churches have been attempts to do little more than control and manipulate people in organizational structures rather than breathe freely the spirit of the Living God that came through Jesus.   We live in a wonderful time where there is a spiritual discipline, a faith encouragement and academic freedom to examine our faith structures inherited through the centuries.  It is an exciting time to be an active player in faith community development.  And, of course, never has the world been more in need of the active love, the active thinking, the active caring, the active feeling, the active giving that those who claim Jesus as their Christ have to offer.

The Church that follows the Way of Jesus has never been an unchanging organization; no matter that churches often act like we should be the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.  There is no one worship style that God prefers.  There are no set doctrines or creeds or confessions that adequately bring us to the reality of God.  Today we surely know that God who was once located on Mt. Sinai lives no more there than anywhere. There is no mountain high enough or valley low enough where one can escape knowing the presence of God.  Surely God is in my heart and yours—not because we invited God there but because God is everywhere.

If there is anything that we are privileged to be aware of in the beginning years of the 21st century it is that God most probably has no preference for Baptists or Methodists, Catholics or Jews, Buddhists or Hindus or Sikhs.  That what God prefers is that the totality of God's creation be enhanced and lived fully for the betterment of all creatures big and small. 

In this morning's lead up to our Scripture lesson in Mark's gospel, it is surely worth noting what Jesus did.  First, large crowds were following Jesus, being with Jesus.  The story says that the crowds who followed Jesus were hungry and he miraculously lured them to discover that they had enough to share and that in sharing their many hungers were fed.

Secondly he healed them.  The blind ones, the deaf ones, those who were mute, were healed.  Let's allow ourselves to know that most probably we are not talking about physically blind, deaf and mute people.  We are talking that the Way of Jesus, the life of Jesus then and now calls us to remove the blinders from our eyes so that we can see reality as God views it.  Jesus was able to speak so that those who were deaf to truth could hear it and Jesus gave voice to the mute, to those living oppressed and vocally silent lives.  Jesus gave them a platform and a voice as we are called to do today.

Jesus fed, Jesus healed and finally Jesus taught those who followed the Way.  Our lesson this morning is one particular aspect of what Jesus taught.  I'll get to that in just a minute or so.  I'm putting it off.  One reason is because it is so difficult, so challenging, so totally life transforming, this teaching, that few ever choose to follow it and it is just not any fun to preach it.  So, I'm putting it off until later in the sermon.  I want us to spend a brief few moments pondering something less painful, something less provocative.  I want us to talk about our giving of our money.

Perhaps you know and perhaps you don't that the Bible has a treasure trove of faith perspectives on the issue of the giving of our money, and has more to say about money than on any other subject, and Jesus taught avidly and plainly about it.  Here is the basic Jesus position.  He gave it all away faster than his group could bring it in.

Jesus did not seem to believe that money was evil.  Jesus seemed to understand as do you and I that the quest for money, financial security more often than not becomes a primary focus of our lives and that money is a horrible ultimate god.  I have been with hundreds of people as they are dying and no one has ever uttered anything even close in their dying days about,  “Oh, if only I had more money!” But I have heard a lot confessions in people's dying days about how they now understood that their focus in getting and having was a huge distraction in their ultimate understanding about what life was really about, which was loving and helping and sharing and leaving behind treasure in the hearts and souls of people rather than treasure in some bank vault.

If I might be given the latitude to seek to shrink down Jesus' message on money to the rich—which is every one of us in the greater world scene—Jesus' basic message is share out of the abundance that you have, share out of the essence of what you have and learn to be dependent on the spirit of God to provide your daily needs.  Jesus taught that in a community gathered in the name and reality and presence of God, we should fully share.  And if we fully share then not only will we have enough for our needs, but so much will be available that there will be no one who has needs not being met.  I suspect that not many of us believe that to be true, but Jesus did and does.

Jesus took four to five thousand of the poorest men who were following him and demonstrated to them, the poorest of the poor that they had enough to feed upwards to twenty thousand people if they would share what they brought along with them.  Jesus wanted to show the poor that they did not need the rich, the politically connected, in order to have enough and to know the fullness of God's bounty and God's eternal loving care of them. 

Don't be fooled or surprised by the stark political adjustments that the Romans made after Jesus spent considerable time organizing the poor to better nutrition, better health care and education.  Jesus was teaching the majority how they did not need the political control of the minority.  Jesus wasn't nearly as meek and mild as we have so often been taught.  Jesus was politically astute and stood with God alongside those with the greatest real needs.  We too are called to be politically astute and to stand with God.

We are such a wide diverse group of people who gather here at First United.  I don't know what you have been taught or believe about giving to or through the church.  Jesus did not ever speak against having enough money.  He spoke about our moral and religious obligation to share fully so that folks and other creatures were not suffering because they do not have as we do.  We are called to be moral in our having.

I grew up in a church, the Old German Baptist Brethren, who believed that the expenses of the church which for them was the Body of Christ, those expenses were to be shared equally among the church members.  They took all expenses and divided by the membership.

Jesus was a traditional Jew who spoke affirmatively of the process of giving that you and I know as the tithe, as the baseline for understanding giving. Giving ten percent as a minimum is the standard.  Jesus also taught that giving even more was better.

There is a very large church in greater Chicagoland, sort of the parent church of the mega-church movement, that requires the yearly submission of your 1040 tax form to be considered a member in good standing.  They then bill you for your 10%.  Their church members meet in small groups where individual giving is evaluated and encouraged.  They have a lot of members and they raise a ton of money.

We will never be that way here.  We are too free and private in our religious sensibilities to be so direct and demanding.  Yet, we often are more than a little vague about what it takes to run this church that we seek with all our hearts and minds and souls to be a vessel of God's love and outreach.

My partner, Lynn and I seek to be tithers and beyond through our pledging to the combined two churches that we serve.  We pledge to both churches a total of right at 10 percent of our incomes.  Then if we give to any special offerings that is over and above our pledging.  We have a lot of people here who pledge more than 10% of their income.  We have a lot who hit it right on the numbers, I suspect.  And we have a lot of people who probably have never been taught what I assume to be a basic standard.

I believe this church to be a very excellent representative of the Body of God.  I give to it, to what this church stands for, to what this church gives toward, for the people it serves and the beliefs that under-gird this organization.  There is no magic that happens when we give 10%.  I'm just as prone to getting heart disease or cancer, or being hit by an 18-wheeler.  Serious, disciplined giving is good for my soul; it widens it, deepens it and enables us as a faith community to be generous to a growing population whose most basic needs are huge.

This church needs all of us to be generous disciplined givers of not only our talents, but also our wealth.  We are established to be significant leaders in our community, state and nation as a theologically progressive, fully and generously giving congregation.  But, it takes all of us fully doing our parts and our financial giving is an essential ingredient of our faith expression.  I don't know about you, but I am more fully committed if my money is out in front of me first and when I die I hope someone can honestly stand and say that I was an extremely generous person and be telling the truth.

 If you don't know, this church gives more than 10% away, no strings attached.  This is a most giving congregation.  But, we are on the edge of falling behind and it is not fitting to our ability as givers.  As individuals and as a congregation we need to be the leaders in giving that we are more than able to be.

If you were here last week, I left us with a challenge to be able to state in 25 words or less our purpose, our reason for being.  I suggested that each of us should be able repeatedly through our lives to state our purpose in life as we serve in the ways of Jesus, our Christ.  This week's Scripture includes Jesus teaching a purpose for himself, that perhaps we all might want to take a look at as we are writing and committing ourselves.

Jesus says we are to take up lives that lead potentially to dying on a cross.  That does not make many of us really stand up and say, “LET'S GO JESUS!"  Jesus died because of his life.  His living is what he died for.  Jesus stood for, organized, and dedicated himself to living his own life and calling others to a moral authority and ethical standards that were so simply just and sanely profound that the Roman government said, “We can't let this catch on…, it will take away all our privileges and the poor and the destitute and the masses of poverty stricken people will rise up and demand equality with us.  We can't have that.” 

The Romans argued that those with the most had the right to make all the rules.  Jesus said, says, that is not God's way.  Jesus said that a few people have the most and that is not what God intends and in fact God finds that very sinful.  God demands ultimately that our personal and national budgets be moral.  Jesus healed people, all people.  Jesus seems to be in favor of universal health care as a moral standard.

Jesus died on a cross rather than betray what he believed in.  He believed that his way was in fact God's preferences for the world.  He seems to have believed that his life's work would best be served in living fully to the end dedicated to God's ways.  And, indeed, his life, his way has only grown, multiplied because of the way he lived, not because he died, but because of how he lived. 

Jesus seems to suggest that we are called to stand in opposition to the dominating powers of our world and not be shy about knowing that the powers of oppression can be very mean spirited and have no problem killing in order to stay in power.  We are encouraged by Jesus to be wise to the world, not conformed to it, but to be leaders of the way that brings life and life abundantly to the masses, to the poor, to the disadvantaged, the oppressed, and we will find that in so living our bodies may die, but not our spirits, and our souls will soar as if on eagles wings. 

Be radical, my friends.  Be so lovingly strong and vibrant for the right reasons that when folks pass by they risk seeing the very face of God.  It is our job, it is our calling, and it is what it means to be the people that make up the church of Jesus , our Christ.

Amen.