The Blessings of 120 Years

A sermon based on Amos 6:1a, 4-7;

1 Timothy 6:6-19

and Luke 16:19-31

On the 120th Anniversary of the Church

In the name of Jesus; amen.

They might seem like a terrible choice in texts to have as we celebrate our 120 years in ministry at Salem, but these readings from the prophet Amos, 1st Timothy, and Luke have been given to us today and so here they are…fraught with warnings of hell and the evils of loving money. They’ve been read here before, in this sanctuary, by pastors and people who served this church.
They are the words of Moses, and the prophets, and the one who does rise from the dead – Jesus Christ.

And the question is: Are we listening? Are we listening to these words as we remember and celebrate the past 120 years and look to the future of the next 120 years?

If we are listening then these stories are less damning than they might seem. If we are listening then we see underneath the message of hell and see the message of salvation and rest in Abraham’s bosom. If we are listening then these words of the prophets and Jesus points us not toward damnation, but to blessing.

One thing is for certain in our gospel, Jesus clearly loves the poor. In all of his parables, he doesn’t name not one other character except this poor man, covered in sores that only dogs take pity upon. The name Lazarus even means, “God helps.”

But this doesn’t mean that Jesus did not also love the rich. The sin of this rich man was not that he had money, but that he loved it and in loving it he forgot about the one who did not have, who remained sitting at his gate, hoping for scraps from his table.

Over the last 120 years Salem has been blessed. Yes, we have had our fair share of troubles, but we are blessed! We have been blessed by God and the blessings we have received from God have had purpose. We have been blessed in order to do ministry in this community and in the world; to see the financially and spiritually poor at our door and to minister to them.

Jurgen Moltmann, a well-known theologian said this: “The opposite of poverty is not property. Rather, the opposite of both is community.”

This story of the rich man and Lazarus might not seem to be a story of community, but it is. The fact is that they lived at the same address, they shared a house number. The rich man even knew Lazarus by name, but their community was broken by the fine linens and sumptuous foods that the rich man had and loved but didn’t share.

The rich man had blessings upon blessings, but he missed out on the greatest blessing any of us can receive and that is the blessing of sharing what we have with others.

Right now, downstairs in our fellowship hall is a rich feast. There are lace covers on all the tables on top of which is the good china. It is waiting down there for us all to share and enjoy. What a blessing!

And right here, in this very room, filled with beautiful flowers and our finest things, is a feast that Jesus himself prepared for us. What a blessing!

But out those doors is a community of which we are blessed to be a part. God has put the very world at our door, poor, covered in sores, longing to be satisfied by the gifts that we have in this place. We share an address with Lazarus.

We can celebrate all that God has given us over the last 120 years, but our true blessing is in what God wants from us today and tomorrow.

We have been blessed so that we might be a blessing, a perpetual and continuous blessing to those who do not have. And not because we fear the hell we might inherit if we don’t; Jesus created a new inheritance for us in the cross. He laid down his very life so that the divide between heaven and hell could be crossed and was raised from the dead so that we might rest in the assurance of grace and God’s deepest love.

Are we listening?

Are we listening to the Law of Moses, to the prophecies of the prophets, and to the life-giving, hell defeating Word of God, Jesus Christ?

Listen, because God is still speaking that same law, that same prophetic word, and that same grace-filled gospel in this place and God is doing it for a purpose. The law and the prophets and the word of Jesus has been professed, proclaimed, and enacted in this place for 120 years to the glory of God. For 120 years this congregation has been entrusted with the blessings of God so that we might be a blessing to others. And God will continue to bless us as we do the work of ministry to the world.

This anniversary is not a small thing; it is a reminder that God has been with us all these years and it is a reminder that God will continue to be with us in all that we do.

Are we listening? God is with us! And that is why we celebrate today. We celebrate because God has called us into this blessing of church and community and that God continues to call us in the blessing of church and community.

We celebrate because God has blessed us with the work of church and community. This holy, sacred work of caring for our neighbor at our door is a rich and wonderful blessing, finer than the linens on our tables downstairs, more sumptuous than the food we will eat.

We have been blessed with a church to cherish and a community to care for. We have been blessed by the Word of God proclaimed and preached in this place for over a century. We have been blessed by the meal that has been served at this table and at the tables downstairs. We have been blessed by the visitors at our doors, by the needy who have sought our help, by the sinner who has begged repentance at this altar, by the waters of this font that have drowned us and brought us into new life.

We have been blessed by the offerings we have received and the offerings we have passed on to others. We have been blessed by the cans of food we have collected and the children who have laughed in our classrooms. We have been blessed by the lights that have been lit here and by the tears that have been shed here.

We have been blessed by the friends that we have made in this place and the loved ones we have buried here.

We have been blessed and with God’s grace we will continue to be a blessing.

Amen and thanks be to God!

Creative Accounting

A sermon based on Luke 16:1-13

In the name of Jesus; Amen.

“For the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of the light.”

I have been struggling with this text all week. It’s one of those readings that I wish wasn’t in our lectionary and I could avoid it. I take comfort in the fact that I am not alone. Another preacher I know was bemoaning the fact that she had a guest preacher in her church last week, “Why couldn’t I have asked him to preach this week?”

It just seems an odd story for Jesus to tell and not one of the commentaries or web-sites, or exegetical texts or any of the other things I use to research a text before writing my sermon seemed to have one conclusive thing to say about this parable Jesus tells of this less than scrupulous manager.

Sometimes I talk to my husband about the readings to get his take. He says it’s all about hedging your bet if you are a child of this age. Perhaps it is a parable about non-believers and their ability to save themselves. This manager was squandering the money of the rich man and to save himself he made friends with those who owed money to the rich man.

Our second home in New Jersey was a rental house in Atlantic City. Our landlord started talking to us about buying a home soon after I gave birth to our first child. The house was a dump that should have been torn down and rebuilt and he knew it. Our landlord also did mortgages and when we told him we were ready to start looking for a house to buy Scott and I were convinced he pulled some strings for us that weren’t exactly on the level. This was made even more apparent when the realtor he found for us called him “Thumbs” when we were alone with him.

Why had “Thumbs” gone to some troubles perhaps he shouldn’t have? My husband believes it was because he knew we were both pastors and he hoped that in helping us it would help him get into heaven.

This manager seemed to know how to cover himself. Who knows how long he might have been doing funny financing before his boss caught on? The strange thing about this text is that the boss actually compliments his manager when he discovers how shrewdly he acted. But then Jesus tends to like to surprise people when he tells parables by adding a story element no one expects.

I actually wish today’s reading would have ended with verse 9. That last paragraph of the reading seems to be added on; a moral to explain a difficult text that really doesn’t explain anything about the reading.

If the text is about non-believers or believers on the fringe who act shrewdly to gain for themselves some sort of salvation then it says something about us who claim to be believers living as children of the light.

“For the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of the light.”

My first thought on this text was that it was about forgiveness. When the manager discovers that his head is on the chopping block he forgives some of the debt of those that owe his boss. In the process the man who is firing him commends him for his work and is perhaps forgiven as well.

But the language that Luke uses (or has Jesus use) is all about finances. Either way there is some creative accounting going on.

I want this text to be simple. It ends on a simple yet deep idea: “You cannot serve God and wealth.” And so the trouble I might be having is that the characters that Jesus places in his parable all seem to be about serving wealth.

So here it is (at least what I think it is): People who serve wealth seem to be pretty savvy about it. You know, the children of this age. But, we who serve God, we children of the light, if we read into what Jesus is saying, aren’t nearly as savvy.

There was a man at a congregation I served who was the head of the social ministry that took place there. He discovered this program that sold fair trade goods through a catalog. This program insured that the people who made the goods sold in the catalog were paid a fair wage for the work they did.

The congregation was given a customer number and if any of us ordered an item from the catalog and used the customer number the church was given a credit. After a time the credit added up and we were issued a check for the credit. It was never loads of money, but it was enough money to order a case of fair trade coffee which he then donated to one of the homeless shelters in the area.

That was savvy and he didn’t even go through a committee to do it!

We place a lot of energy into money management. How often have you driven a different way home to pass the gas station that has the cheaper gas? How many of us clip coupons or wait for something to go on sale? How many of us invest? Or ask for several bids before hiring someone to do something?

If the dishonest manager is shrewd in how he handles his impending firing should we not also be shrewd in how we do our ministry? Should we not also be shrewd in how we share the story of Jesus? Should we not also be shrewd in how we care for others?

We children of the light are called to serve God with savvy and smarts; to be creative accountants of the love of God.

Amen.

The Cost of Discipleship

Pentecost 15 Year C

A sermon based on Luke 14:25-33

In the name of Jesus; amen…

Flipping channels on the TV the other day I passed some home remodeling show and caught about 15 seconds of it. Something had gone wrong with the project they were televising and there wasn’t enough of whatever it was they needed to finish the extravagant pool for which a huge hole had been dug. The owner commented to the camera that his kids would be disappointed when they came home from vacation and there was no pool for them to swim in.

For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, “This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.”

Years ago I was trying to convince the husband of one of the members of my former congregation that he should also join the church. He attended regularly and had done so for many years. After a long conversation and a nice dinner he asked me point blank, “Why, what are some of the reasons that I should join?”

I was stunned by the question and struggled to come up with a list of answers as to what the church could do for him. It wasn’t until later on, driving home that I realized my mistake. I had tried to come up with a laundry list of all the wonderful perks membership would provide for him. The real reason he should have joined the church was that we needed him to be a member of the congregation. We needed his talents and his willingness to serve and commit to the community that he was often a part of.

I wonder now if his hesitancy was about the cost that he believed he might pay if he officially became a member. There were committees and projects and offerings that would have been expected of him had he become a member. Of course as I remember it he had dated his wife for 9 years before he finally agreed to marry her.

Large crowds were traveling with Jesus; he had quite a following at this point in his ministry. They were wowed by his miracles and awed by his ability to stand up to the religious leaders and make them look like hypocrites. Surrounded by so many people, Jesus must have known that most of them where in it for the effects… the way some of us go to bad movies to see the unbelievable yet realistic car crashes and computer animation that looks like the real thing.

Knowing this he turns to them and says, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sister, yes, even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”

It’s a difficult saying of Jesus to swallow. I love my parents, my spouse, my children, my brother, and the rest of my family dearly. I would venture a guess that most of you feel the same way about at least one member of your family. And quite frankly I would consider myself a bad preacher if I even suggested that you should hate anyone, but there is a subtlety in what Jesus says that we miss in our English translations of the language of the Bible.

"Hate" is a Semitic expression meaning "to turn away from, to detach oneself from," rather than our animosity-laden understanding. In Genesis, we read in one verse that Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah (29:30), but in the next verse, it literally says that Leah was hated ("unloved" in the NRSV).

But Leah was not hated like we usually use the word; Jacob simply loved her less than he loved Rachel. Jacob didn't have an intense dislike for Leah. In fact, he had seven children with her after these verses so there must have been something he liked about her!

It isn’t that we are supposed to hate those who we naturally love. What Jesus says is that we are to love him more, more even than our spouse or our children or those closest to us in our families.

And then there is this business about bearing one’s cross. We often talk about the burdens we bear as being the crosses we bear. We get sick; it’s the cross we bear. We have a boss we don’t like; it’s the cross we bear. We have a difficult family relationship; it’s the cross we bear.

The language of cross bearing has been corrupted by the way it has been used. Bearing a cross has nothing to do with chronic illness, less than pleasant working conditions, or a trying family relationship. Instead, it is what we do voluntarily as a consequence of our commitment to Jesus.

Jesus knew that for many people the commitment they had to him was surfaced at best. They wanted to see the miracles and hear the stories, but the vast majority of them would disappear the moment he was arrested in Jerusalem. Even those who loved him best would vanish when that happened.

There is a cost to being a disciple.

I just read an article about Christianity in China. It is illegal to evangelize in China and while there are some state sanctioned Christian Churches there these are forced to use edited versions of the Bible and they cannot have crosses in their buildings. Public worship is, for the most part, entirely banned so that worshippers gather in private homes. And yet, 10,000 Chinese people convert to Christianity every day, EVERY DAY!

It is estimated that in the next 50 years China will be home to 200 million Christians. 200 million Christians in a place where sharing your faith is illegal and could land you in prison.

Grace is free, but discipleship costs. Following Jesus comes with a price that we pay by praying daily, worshipping regularly, studying scripture diligently, serving for the sake of others, giving generously, inviting others often, and passing on our faith before everything else in our lives.

Making the commitment to pick up a cross and carry it is to choose a different kind of life, but it is choosing a life lived with Christ… the one who chose us and continues to choose us over and over again.

Amen.