November 9, 2014 ~ All Talents-Today & Tomorrow, the Body of Christ from John Knox Kirk on Vimeo.
A sermon preached at John Knox Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on November 09, 2014.
1 Corinthians 12: 4-13, 27
and Luke 12:13-34
(Click above link for the Scripture texts upon which this sermon is based)
Editorial note: I’m working on correcting spacing issues. Thank you for your patience in the meantime.
Macklemore is a rapper.
And he’s either the greatest thing since sliced bread
or he’s a knockoff who gets too much credit.
Take your pick, but I like him.
Macklemore helped me this week, as I’ve tried to piece together
all of my thinking about with this text.
On the one hand, I’ve been sitting with this parable of the man seeking his inheritance
the one who comes to Jesus to have Jesus adjudicate a family squabble.
Not a crazy request, not if you’re in the Rabbinical tradition
and you know Moses and other religious leaders of Israel
settled this sort of thing all the time, or at least from time to time.
Teacher, Rabbi, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.
Not really all that crazy a request: Apply the laws, the rules, and lets move on, Jesus.
But Jesus doesn’t want anything to do with it.
“Friend, who set me as a judge or arbitrator over you?
Take Care! Be on guard against all kinds of greed.
One’s Life does not consist in the abundance of possessions….”
And then Jesus goes off on one of his parable tangents….
Rich man, a farmer, too much stuff
–Tears down already existing storage to build more…
prudent capital investment, so he can keep it all
–Rests comfortably, thinking all that stuff is going to give him security
even though this very night…
A classic Jesus parable.
Things stored up for ourselves; Things stored up for God.
So there was that.
Been with me all week, as I processed election results
and made my mortgage payment
and got groceries. All week.
Every time I got out my wallet or my checkbook.
Then on Friday my daughters and I went to a middle school play.
We drove to Liberty and saw our friend Simon
play the Dogcatcher and a servant
for their production of Annie, Jr.
It was great fun. Annie was played by a 6th grader who could sing in tune.
Sandy the dog wasn’t a dog, but a kid who crawled.
Sandy even had a line or two in a song. Made my daughters laugh and laugh.
It was great.
There is this scene in Annie, Jr.
Where Warbucks sits Annie down in his mansion to talk.
What had been, at first, just a temporary arrangement,
Warbucks was seeking to make more….well, permanent.
And in an amazing display of sensitivity and nuance for a middle-school screenplay
the Billionaire Tycoon Warbucks goes to Annie,
almost the very definition of a nobody
and talks to her almost as an equal:
he gets down on one knee, eye to eye, you know
and he asks her
ASKS her, this man who commands wealth and power
who has presidents over for dinner at a whim
he ASKS her what SHE thought about becoming his daughter.
W: Annie, can we have a man-to-man talk?
A: You’re sending me back to the Orphanage, right?
W: Of course not.
Annie, I was born into a very poor family
and both my parents died before I was ten.
So, I made a promise to myself – someday, one way or another,
I was going to be rich. Very rich.
A: That’s a good idea!
W: But, I’ve lately realized something.
No matter how much money you’ve got,
If you have no one to share your life with,
If you’re alone,
Then you might as well be broke…..
And with that he gives Annie a brand new, Tiffany’s made locket
you know, in one piece, not that half-a-locket dingy thing Annie’s been sporting
and offers to replace it, not knowing what it means to her,
not knowing that all the money in the world wouldn’t be enough
for the hope of reconnecting with her parents…
setting in place the second half of the play.
///
Where your treasure is, there your heart is also.
That’s a great, pithy summary of the warning half
of what all these scripture passages are trying to get at.
You’ll often hear it said that the bible talks more about money than it does about sex
and that is true. A LOT more.
Even if that’s not what you might expect
from where and how it is that so many Church communities spend their energy.
Why is it so?
I think its because the Scriptures are concerned
about where our heart is, about what gets between us and God
between us and our neighbor.
And while sex, itself a beautiful gift from God, sometimes does consume us
sometimes does get between us and neighbor, us and God
so much more powerful, it seems, is our attraction to things, to stuff
and to the money which gets us that stuff.
Scripture often talks in extremes to get us to focus on what’s at stake:
–the widow who has next to nothing, offering two mites to the charity collection
—the Rich Ruler, maybe like our Warbucks, asked to sell it all, give it all away
—wee little Zaccheus, the tax collector and reprobate and very rich himself
who offers to sell half of his possessions,
to make amends to those wronged.
–a King who gives Talents to his servants to invest,
TALENTS, each the equivalent of 20 YEARS worth of work
twenty years! We’re talking life savings portfolios here!
And to one he gives five TALENTS, another two, and to another one
and tests to see how they relate to such wealth.
(All those stories, by the way, are worth reading
or at least googling.)
Where your treasure is, there your heart is also.
When we read these stories, the point is almost never the extremes.
Its not just about the 1%
the wealthiest of the wealthy, the Warbucks or the Warren Buffett
or the Bill Gates or what have you.
Thinking that gets us, you and me, off the hook way too easily.
No, instead, it serves to raise the narrative tension, show us what is at stake.
It is meant to have our eyes widen and our breath gasp
as we ponder what it might mean to have … so much…
…and be asked to let it go…
///
Why would we let it go? Why would anyone let it go?
Sure, Jesus calls the guy in our parable foolish
but come on,
foolish would be to let that stuff slip out of your fingers in the first place.
What could you do with all that dough?
Easy stuff you could check off the list: house, car, mortgage, retirement
kids education, vacation plans, maybe a boat.
Then you could get down to some REALLY impactful things:
–maybe the Royals are for sale…
–maybe you could influence politics, Koch brothers seem to go that route
–make a gift to the church, endow a chair at a university
–bankroll an ebola vaccine
–help hundreds or thousands of kids get an education
Why would anyone let it go….?
///
That’s a great question.
And maybe one of the reasons why Scripture focuses as much as it does
on money, on wealth, is because it has so much potential
for good and for harm.
Its so powerful, the allure of money, of wealth.
It has the ability to consume us…
and the ability to feed us, protect us, direct our compassion to others.
Where your treasure is, there your heart is also.
This is what makes Warbucks such a foil to the Rich Man in our parable.
Warbucks, wealthy beyond measure, has his focus redirected by love
by this child who comes into his life
with needs, yes—food and a bath and a coat and affection
but with so much more:
bringing Warbucks love, and joy,
reconnecting him with his humanity
showing him what life is really all for
what all that money might actually be FOR.
And right THERE: he lets it go. The hold it has on him. He lets it go.
Scriptural admonitions about wealth aren’t about the wealth. They’re about the heart.
Where is our heart? Where is our focus?
IS it on the money, or the things the money can buy:
the car, the ipad, the prestige
or is it on God, who asks us to use all things for God’s ends,
for the common good.
///
So, Macklemore.
Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ album The Heist
is actually imbued with theological conversation.
And I sat down to ponder this sermon,
got a pencil out to make notes
started listening more deeply to all these ruminations going on
and set iTunes on shuffle
and up comes Macklemore, and his song Make The Money:
Now, this is my job, I will not quit it
Pulled me out the depths when I thought that I was finished
Yeah I questioned if I could go the distance
That’s just the work, regardless of who’s listening, listening
…
Concrete, bagabon, van telling stories
Humbled by the road, I’m realizing I’m not important
See life’s a beautiful struggle, I record it
Hope it helps you maneuvering through yours and
That’s why we stay in the lab at night
I’ve been staring into this pad for over half my life
…
Make the money, don’t let the money make you
Change the game, don’t let the game change you
I’ll forever remain faithful
All my people stay true
///
Make the money, don’t let the money make you.
Where your treasure is, there your heart is also.
These are good things for us to keep our eyes on, my friends.
There is so much out there teaching us to be anxious,
telling us that life is about accumulating enough stuff
or about having power, in the form of having more than the next guy.
POWERFUL human emotions. Anxiety. Power.
Advertizing agencies command great fees
when they can tap into it.
But Jesus here encourages us to slow down,
to pause,
to think carefully about how WE relate to ALL of what God gives us
and the power IT has over US.
That’s why Jesus transitions from this story about the wealthy hoarding farmer
to talking about lilies and birds and all God’s creatures
because Jesus KNOWS that our THINGS have a tendency to CONTROL us.
That our Money makes Us, as Macklemore puts it…
///
Fair enough. But what is the alternative?
It’s a different question depending on how where we are, of course:
Someone who is poor
who scrapes by day to day, week to week
who barely has food to feed her kids
who chooses to go hungry herself so they can eat
and its an entirely different question, for her.
Or one of us thinking about kids,
sure, young now but college is JUST. AROUND. THE. CORNER…
Or one of us thinking about retirement,
which used to just be an afterthought, now is looming all too quickly…
Or one of us in retirement, relatively fixed income
which has to last us ….
Or one of us upwardly mobile, seeking some measure of competency at work
keeping up with the Joneses
or our classmates who will JUDGE us if we’re not wearing the right things.
Do you get a sense of why this might be important for us to talk about?
///
Where your treasure is, there your heart is also.
If there is a warning half to this story in Luke about Jesus,
there is also a blessing half to it. An opportunity half.
What happens to us when we orient ourselves to God?
What possibilities open for us when stop operating just in a world of scarcity
and start looking at a world of abundance?
Paul talks about a God who gives us all good gifts,
ALL gifts, for a purpose.
Our energy, our imagination, our intelligence, our love,
our wisdom, our compassion, our skill,
our prayers, our hugs, our ability to read a spreadsheet
our conservation of precious, rare resources,
and yes, our money too,
all of our gifts, for a purpose.
That purpose isn’t to have them control us.
That purpose isn’t to be wracked with guilt or anxiety or fear
about whether we have enough, for today or for our lifetime.
God KNOWS we need food, and shelter
that we need resources to help us live our lives.
No. Paul says all these things: our attributes and our possessions,
all of it, is for the common good,
for the realm of God:
where the hungry are fed
the outcast are welcome
and the oppressed are set free…
And boy…do we not sometimes feel OPPRESSED by
all this talk about and worry over our THINGS.
Freedom might be nice, Jesus. Please, Jesus.
///
Here’s the theological core of the Gospel:
The truth of the matter is that God is the Giver that keeps on Giving.
And whether it is in piecing together an incredible, audacious, mess…
or in the simple, mundane, earthy everyday blessing of our
lives: up at 6,
brush teeth
eat breakfast
go to work, go to school, go play golf
read, talk, play, laugh, worry, cook
home, dinner, study, bed….
God is there: creating, renewing, loving, healing.
Our challenge is to live right THERE, there alongside God,
and to celebrate how all we have is a Gift from God.
This is Stewardship season at the Kirk.
We stop and pause in part out of a practical necessity,
a building as a tool for ministry and mission
a staff that equips you for our shared ministry together
our outreach, our serving…all of that takes some financial resources to work.
But stewardship in our tradition is ALWAYS more than the financial practicalities.
Stewardship means SEEING that all of THIS…
all of life
all of existence
our friends, our abilities
our time, our interests
our passions, our annoyances
the things that anger us to action
in the search for justice
our jobs, our education,
our moments of rest and renewal
our amazing incredible bodies
our deeply creative minds
our soaring, connecting spirits
all of THIS …is a gift.
Gifts that WE didn’t create ourselves:
these are good things from God.
Gifts that ARE GIFTS
even when none of them are working quite right
when we are stressed or ill
or struggling with relationships
or not making good choices about them.
The truth of the matter is that God is the Giver that keeps on Giving.
Stewardship, therefore, is talking about how
we can respond fittingly to that observation:
respond with thanksgiving and a COMMITMENT
to USE all of these things
for God’s ends
for the realm of God on earth
for the common good.
Stewardship is all about opportunity. It is never about Guilt, or Shame, or Obligation.
There is no place for guilt in the life of faith. None.
Stewardship is about celebrating God in our lives. It is meant to be full of joy.
All Talents: Today and Tomorrow, the Body of Christ
///
I don’t know about you, but I’d sure like to be set free from anxiety and worry
the things that cause me to idolize my money and hoard it rather than use it.
And I don’t know about you,
but I’m thankful for the constant reminder
that all of life is a GIFT
and that the opportunity is there, if I can get there
to stop having the Money or the Anxiety or the Stress or the STUFF Make Me
but can instead stop, and recognize all gifts AS gifts
and think about them instead as ways I can share God’s love
amplify God’s hope
feed God’s children
strengthen God’s church
trust God’s future.
May it be so….
Amen.
photo credit: IronRodArt – Royce Bair (“Star Shooter”) via photopin cc. The photographer claims: “These are real, 2000 years old Judean coins. As you can see, they are very small coins. Each was worth about one-fourth of a cent, or one-half of a farthing. (I paid about US$20 each to buy these from a coin dealer — talk about inflation! 🙂“
Leave a Reply