Storage

Scriptures:       Hosea 11:1-11                 Psalm 107:1-9         Colossians 3:1-11         Luke 12:13-21                         

When I moved from South Philly to Conshohocken, I was going from a row home to a one-bedroom apartment – and in fact I still live in a one-bedroom apartment in Conshohocken, just in a different complex.  And so I had to downsize slightly, but didn’t know what to do with various accumulated books, mementos, tools and such.  I ended up renting a storage bin.  The monthly charge was annoying, but for a time I rationalized to myself that it was a choice between a storage bin or renting a bigger and more expensive apartment – and so I went with the bin – for a while anyway.  But after a number of months I had to ask myself:  The monthly charges are adding up to hundreds of dollars.  Is the stuff I’m storing worth it?  Do I really need this stuff?  Really?  And eventually I ended up giving away the usable items, making a number of folks very happy at least for a moment, and tossing a lot of accumulated junk that wasn’t doing me or anyone else any good, that surely wasn’t worth the monthly cost of a storage bin.  It pained me a bit at the time to part with some of the items….but several years down the road, not only do I not miss them a bit, I can’t even remember what most of them were.

There have been many articles on “simplifying your life” – ridding your house of unwanted clutter, giving away items that aren’t being used.  I remember one such article advising that “If you haven’t worn a given shirt or pair of pants in six months, you’d be better off giving it away.”  (Whoever wrote that suggestion must live in California where they don’t need different sets of clothes for winter and summer.)  All good ideas – and ideas I should consider, because I can be a bit of a pack rat - not so much packing away extra clothing – what clothing I own is in regular use, and a lot of my clothing has really seen better days, and by the time I give clothes away they’re usually in such bad shape that even homeless people don’t want them.  But I’m a pack rat mostly with books and backdated magazines, though I’m trying to do better.

Today’s Gospel reading sounds a little bit like one of those magazine articles on simplifying your life.  But Jesus reminds us that the stakes are much higher than simply uncluttering our minds, that our actions have real consequences for others and perhaps eternal consequences for us.

In our Gospel reading, Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, and is teaching his disciples along the way, with the crowds following.  At a point in the journey, a voice comes from the crowd: “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.”  This request may seem odd to us, but it might not have been unusual for Jewish teachers to be asked to intervene in family and property disputes.  In fact, Moses himself, in the book of Numbers, had handled a family dispute over property, though of a different kind.  Likely the father of the two brothers had left the farm as a unit to both brothers – traditionally, the elder son received twice as much land as the younger - and it would seem that some family friction between the two brothers led to the younger brother’s request that the farm be divided so that he could be independent of his older brother – a request that the older brother evidently had refused.  Jesus sees beyond the legal issue that the brother raised to the spiritual issue behind it.  He responds to the brother, “Friend, who appointed me as an arbitrator between you?”  And then to the crowd he said, “Take care! Be on guard against any kind of greed, for one’s life does not consist of one’s possessions.”

And then Jesus tells a story about a man whose fields produced a bumper crop, produced more crops than the man knew what to do with.  It was more than he could store in his barns.  And though it was a nice problem to have, nonetheless it was a problem – where to put all this food.  Today the man might consider renting a storage bin, but the man’s plan was to pull down his barns and put up bigger barns, and kick back and enjoy life – “eat, drink, and be merry”  But, as we know, there’s another part to that saying, specifically the words “for tomorrow we die” – and that’s exactly the message the man gets from God.  “Fool!  Tonight you die!  And all the goods you’ve stored up, whose will they be?”  And Jesus concludes his parable by telling the crowd, “And this is how it is for those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

That phrase “rich toward God” refers, among other things, to giving to the poor and helping those in need.  Remember that elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus told a rich young man to sell all he had and give to the poor, *quote* “and you’ll have treasure in heaven.  Then come, follow me.”  In the Jewish culture of the time, “treasure in heaven” specifically meant almsgiving, charity. Elsewhere Jesus said, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”  The man with the bumper crop had ample treasure on earth, but he kept it for himself.  So when he died, he had nothing to show God, no treasure in heaven.  Metaphorically, his account in heaven was overdrawn, or at best had a zero balance.  Put another way, the man went into eternity spiritually bankrupt.

The original words that I interpreted as God saying “Tonight you die!” were interpreted in the New Revised Standard as “This very night your life is being demanded of you.”  The original Greek is odd; it reads “This night they will demand your soul.”  It’s commonly interpreted as “God will demand your soul back from you.”  But it could also be interpreted as “your possessions will demand your soul”; that is to say, your possessions, the very things you’re carefully storing up because you think they improve your life,  will instead cost you your life.  A sobering thought.

The thing that’s striking, of course, is that it didn’t even cross the man’s mind to use his bumper crop to help his neighbors.  His thoughts were all about himself:  what shall I do, for I have no room to store my crops.  I know what I will do: I will pull down my barns and put up bigger ones.  Then I shall say to my soul “Eat, drink, be merry”  I, me, my, mine.  As far as he’s concerned, it’s his world, and everybody else was just in it.  But God’s words remind the man that even his life was not his own, but was just on loan from God.

Sayings and parables such as this are not popular among American Christians, particular those who consider themselves conservative Christians, Bible Christians, those who see themselves as taking every word of the Bible literally, but whose Bibles apparently have some pages missing from the Gospels, who harass their neighbors with obscure and out of context verses from Leviticus while ignoring verses in the Gospels that go right to the very heart of Jesus’ teaching.  One of the scandals of most televangelists and many megachurches is the amount of money they have coming in, and how much they keep for themselves. For example, eyebrows were raised in 2014 when thieves broke into a safe at Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church and took the offerings from that weekend’s services - $600,000 in cash and checks!  For one weekend!  Multiply by 52 and we get a picture of a church dealing sums of money you and I can hardly imagine.  And who is that money benefitting?

Now I want to be clear:  we can’t use charity to buy our way into heaven.  That’s an especially strong teaching in Protestantism.  One of the things that led to the break with the Catholic Church was Rome’s selling of indulgences – get out of purgatory free or at least cheap cards.  But the church doesn’t have the power to issue “go straight to heaven” cards, not at any price.  Before God, all of us are bankrupt, and it is only by God’s grace that any of us are saved.  But God saves us, not to keep us as the persons we are, but to transform us into the persons God would have us be. As Paul in Romans put it, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind” And a sign of that transformation is sharing with others, is caring for neighbor rather than just for ourselves.

If we are living in the way of Jesus, we cannot separate our faith from our behavior; as Jesus said, “You can tell a tree by its fruits; a good tree bears good fruit and a bad tree bears bad fruit” and “Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”  Jesus also said, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”  Regardless what we may tell ourselves or others about our faith, if we’re honest with ourselves, two of the best ways to tell our priorities, is to look at our checkbook or credit card statement, and to look at our calendar.  How do we spend our money?  How do we spend our time?  What we do here at church is intended to praise God, and also to refresh us and to help us make decisions about what we do out there, including how we spend our money and our time.  Out there is where the rubber meets the road.  If our faith makes no difference to our life, we may have cause to doubt the reality of our faith.  If what we do here on Sunday has no effect on how we live Monday through Saturday, we’re wasting our time.  It’s important to recognize, though, that, for many of us, the question of “where does my money go” is answered with “food and shelter, we’re barely staying above water”, and the question “where does my time go” is answered with “I’m working three jobs so my family doesn’t starve.”  And so this is where those in the church who have the means can make life a little less grindingly hard for those who don’t.  And regardless our income level, we are all faced with decisions every day on whether, in considering a purchase, “Do I really need that?  Is it a need, or want, or a whim?  Is that something I want, or something an advertisement convinced me I want?”

Taking Jesus’s parable in a slightly different direction: Remember, the rich man in the story likely didn’t harvest his own bumper crop.  He likely didn’t get his hands all that dirty. He owned the land, but he likely had day laborers do much of the actual hands-on work.  Did he pay them fairly?  Could he have given them an extra portion of the harvest that they had helped produce?  I ask this only to lead us to consider ourselves, where our food comes from, who harvests it – and how they are rewarded for their labor.  There’s a picture that circulates on the internet, usually around thanksgiving, that I put in the bulletin.  The top panel shows a family gathered around the table, praying, “Thanks, Jesus, for this food.”  The bottom panel shows a Latino man, presumably named Jesus, loading vegetables onto a truck – and the caption says, “De nada” – “it’s nothing”.  The photo asks us to remember that while our food ultimately comes from God, between God and our kitchen table stand a whole succession of people involved in making it available to us – those who plant, those who harvest, those who transport the food, those who stock shelves at the supermarket. And are those who do the hard work of planting and harvesting fairly compensated?  While family farms such as those of the Amish who sell at the Reading Terminal are an exception, those who plant and harvest at large industrial size farms often endure miserable wages and working conditions.  The Coalition of Immokalee Workers, based in Immokalee, FL, which represents farm workers in a number of states, campaigns for fairer wages and better working conditions for farm workers, who often work under conditions that could be considered modern-day slavery.  Their Fair Food campaign asks fast food companies and food retailers for an increase of a penny a pound paid to tomato pickers. A penny a pound, such a small amount that could make a major difference in the lives of these workers.  After long campaigns, Taco Bell, McDonalds, Burger King, Chipotle, among others, have agreed.  Wendy’s is still holding out – refusing an increase of a penny a pound. The UCC has supported the Immokalee workers in their efforts to get Wendy’s to sign on to pay the extra penny a pound, to improve the lives of these workers.

Jesus said, “One’s life does not consist of one’s possessions” – and thank God for that!  May we guard from being possessed by our possessions, and instead keep our eyes on the prize of following Jesus.  Amen.

Note: 

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers campaigns for fairer wages and improved working conditions for farm workers.  Learn about their Campaign for Fair Food at http://www.ciw-online.org/campaign-for-fair-food/   The UCC has supported this campaign; learn more at http://www.ucc.org/boycott_wendys

Ask, Seek, Knock

Scriptures:       Hosea 1:2-10    Psalm 138

                        Colossians 2:6-19         Luke 11:1-13          

         

In Luke’s gospel, Jesus and his disciples are on their way to Jerusalem, and Jesus is teaching his disciples along the way.  We’re told that Jesus was praying in a certain place, and after Jesus had finished, the disciples asked, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”

You who are raising children, or who have raised children, understand this moment.  How many times have you been doing something – cooking, pulling weeds, building a cabinet – and your two year old or four year old or six or eight or ten year old walks up behind you and says, “I want to help” or “Can you show me how to do that?” Or those of us with no children may remember when we asked our mom and dad to show us how to do what they were doing.  It’s a very humble, trustful moment, either as a parent with those little six year old eyes looking up at you…..or perhaps remembering yourself as a six year old looking up into your father’s or mother’s eyes as you asked them to show you how to hammer a nail, how to plant tomatoes, how far apart to space the plants, how deep to plant..….

And Jesus responds in the same way, encouraging his disciples to pray to God in that same humble, trusting way.  “Father” (or “Our Father” as Matthew has it)…..the original word is Abba….Daddy.  And that’s the spirit in which Jesus instructed his disciples – and instructs us – to pray – humbly, trusting.  Trusting that the one to whom we pray loves us and cares about us. 

Luke’s version of the Lord’s prayer is a little shorter than the more familiar version from Matthew’s gospel that we pray every week, but it has the same basic elements:  to pray that God’s name is held sacred, to pray for God’s kingdom or, put another way, that God will rule as sovereign, to pray that God will provide food for the day, and for God to forgive our sins – with the qualifier that we forgive everyone indebted to us.  And for God to save us from the time of trial, from temptation.

And then Jesus taught them to be persistent in prayer.  He asks them to consider what they would do if they had a friend land on their doorstep late at night, and there was nothing in the house to eat.  This would not have been uncommon – travel was slow, and difficult, and travelers met up with unpredictable obstacles and delays along the way….so plan as they might, they could very well get to their destination at midnight or the wee hours of the morning.  As was mentioned last week, in that culture, providing hospitality even to unexpected guests was a huge big deal, and to have no food to offer a guest would have been a huge embarrassment.  And so if these disciples unexpected found themselves hosting a visiting friend who had arrived at an inconvenient hour, they’d go to a neighbor – at midnight or whenever – and asked for assistance.  Of course, they’d have to keep knocking in order to wake the neighbor up – he wouldn’t just knock once or twice and then walk away.  And of course the neighbor would be cranky – “It’s the middle of the night; we’re trying to sleep!  Go away.”  And probably a few choice words besides.  Houses were so small that not only the homeowner, but the entire family would have been wakened if the homeowner got up.  But if they kept knocking, eventually the neighbor would give him what he wanted just to make him go away.  And so if they could by persistence get what they needed even from an unwilling neighbor, how much more will we receive when we ask a loving God who wants to hear our prayers.

And then he goes on: “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you.”  And then he asks them to look at their own lives:  even though they’re far from perfect, they will take care of their children.  How much more will a good God take care of his children.

But Jesus’ examples also tell us that if, like children, we reach out in prayer for something that’s not good for us, God has the wisdom to know what we need, which may or may not be the specific thing we ask for.  In the Sea of Galilee there were eels and water snakes that, to a child, might look like a fish, and a scorpion might pull itself together into a ball, and a child might mistake it for an egg.  A child might mistakenly reach out for the eel or the balled-up scorpion, but of course the parent would know that what the child reached out for was harmful, and give the child what was actually needed.  How much more will God give us what we really need – and it’s telling that in Jesus’ telling, what we really need is the Holy Spirit – “How much more will God give the Holy Spirit to those who ask.”

Now lots of prosperity preachers have distorted Jesus’ words into a theology of “name it and claim it”…but that’s not what Jesus is saying.  Remember that Jesus tells us first to pray that God’s name will be honored, that God’s kingly rule will come to pass – and then to pray for our daily bread.  He didn’t tell us to pray “O Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz.”  Nor did he tell us to pray, “Santa baby, a ’54 convertible too, light blue…..”  The prayer Jesus taught his disciples isn’t about making up a wish list for Santa.  It’s a prayer for people living in community – “give us our daily bread/forgive us our sins/save us from the time of trial”  Ultimately, the Lord’s prayer isn’t even primarily about us, but about the Lord – it’s a prayer for God to shape us into people who will honor God’s name and live according to God’s will. 

But within God’s will, we’re told to trust, and we’re told to persist in prayer.  We will need to ask, and seek, and knock.  We may need to pray on a longer time horizon than we’d like.  Think of the Israelites in the wilderness for 40 years seeking a home.  Think of the civil rights struggle, which took decades, not days, and was itself part of a centuries long struggle for equality.  Many of those who prayed died without seeing an answer to their prayers, but their children and grandchildren saw at least some answers to those prayers.  God was faithful.  And as we pray for an end to violence, an end to mass shootings and terrorism, an end to hunger and inequality, we too need to be prepared to persist in prayer….to keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking. And we may need to pray, not only with bowed head, but with outstretched arms and marching feet…..we may need to pray not only with our words but with our actions, so that our whole life becomes a prayer……remember that hymn we sang earlier that said that prayer doesn’t just happen in church walls, that our life’s work can be a prayer.

“Lord, teach us to pray” the disciples asked.  May God continually teach each of us to pray, and teach us to let our lives be living prayers for the coming of the kingdom.  Amen.

       

Company's Coming

Scriptures:       Genesis 18:1-10a;         Psalm 15   

            Colossians 1:15-28       Luke 10:38-42         

    

You may have read in the newspaper or heard on TV:  millennials, those born after the year 2000, are suddenly finding their way to church!  They’re showing up in church buildings, church parking lots, even in church cemeteries.  Hallelujah!  Unfortunately, no, they’re not coming to worship or learn about Jesus, at least not at first.   The new game Pokemon Go has sent Pokemon devotees to all sorts of unlikely places in search of these fictional, Japanese anime characters, including churches.   I know virtually nothing about Pokemon – I’ve never played, and have no desire to do so – but apparently Pokemon Go uses the camera in a smartphone, and as the player looks through the camera at their surroundings, evidently pictures of Pokemon appear in the frame from time to time.  For those who play, it’s apparently so entrancing that some players have literally walked into traffic and even off cliffs, all while staring down at their phones.   So if you see random teenagers wandering out in the cemetery and around our building, you now know why.   And I’ll ask you to keep an eye on these random teenagers so they don’t tumble down the stairs or end up with their feet in a gopher hole.

Our Old Testament reading gives us an odd story about an encounter between Abraham and the Lord.  What’s odd is that the appearance starts off fairly low-key – no burning bush, no bright lights, no voice from heaven.  Instead, Abraham is sitting at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day, looking down at the ground…maybe in the heat of the day he was starting to doze off.  But a shadow appeared on the ground in front of him, and he looked up…and when he looked up, he saw three men standing in front of him.  He ran out to greet them in the customary manner of the time, bowing low before them and inviting them to wash their feet in refreshing water and to eat with him.  We should understand that in that culture and in that desert region, giving and receiving hospitality was not just an option, but literally a matter of life and death – for travelers, there was no Motel 6 along the way promising to keep the lights on.   Travelers relied on the hospitality of those they met along the way.  So Abraham provides generous hospitality, killing and serving up a calf for his visitors, along with milk and cheese.

Up to this point, the story sounds like the encounter anyone in Abraham’s society might have had with travelers.  But then the conversation becomes a bit less routine.  We’re told that they said to Abraham, “Where is your wife Sarah?”  Now, Abraham actually hadn’t told the visitors the name of his wife, or even that he had a wife or that she was still living – after all, Abraham was quite old.  At the very least, a lucky guess on their part.  Abraham responds, “She’s there, in the tent.”  One of the visitors said, “I will surely return to you in due season, and  your wife Sarah shall have a son.”  Now, part of the backstory for today’s reading is that God has told Abraham a number of times over the years that Abraham would not only have a son, but that this son would have descendants too numerous to count – Abraham would be known as the “father of nations “ - but also that Abraham and his wife have been waiting for years and decades for God’s promise to come true.  We’re reminded that both Abraham and Sarah are very old, long past childbearing age, and we’re told that Sarah laughed to herself inside the tent, saying “After I have grown old and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?”  And the visitor who has been speaking – who’s now identified as “the LORD” – asks Abraham “Why did Sarah laugh?  Is anything too wonderful for the LORD?  At the set time I will return to you, in due season, and Sarah shall have a son.”

Abraham and Sarah were blessed by what seemed at first like a random visit by a group of strangers….in our day, we might think of a bunch of Pokemon players wandering into church, or perhaps strangers from out of town landing on our doorstep for some other reason.  Welcoming strangers – and we hope having them leave and return as friends – is a core part of the mission of the church.  There’s a saying that you can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your family – and church is a family of faith that God has chosen for us.  And just as no family is perfect, and in any family there are some members that work everyone’s last nerve - no church is perfect either.  When visitors come to church and stay, they inevitably bring their baggage – life challenges, personality quirks – and the church has to welcome and work with that as well.  But welcoming strangers is a blessing, a gift from God.  As a later Biblical writer tells us, “Let mutual love continue.  Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some have entertained angels unawares.”

Our reading from Luke’s gospel also includes a moment of hospitality, this time for Jesus.   Luke’s gospel tells us that right after the encounter with the lawyer, in which Jesus told him the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus was visiting a certain village – from John’s gospel, we know it’s the village of Bethany – where he visited Martha and Mary.  The sisters welcomed Jesus.  But Martha was busy in the kitchen preparing dinner, while Mary sat at Jesus’ feet with the other disciples, listening to him speak.  Martha got stressed out, and asked Jesus, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me with all the work? Tell her to get in here and help.”  But Jesus answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing.  Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”   So there is more than one way to show hospitality – yes, by providing food and shelter, but also by listening, by inviting others not only into our physical space, but also into our mental space, into our span of attention, into our minds and hearts.  I’ll also mention that by allowing Mary to listen to his teaching, Jesus was pushing against the gender roles of the day – in Jesus’ day, rabbis taught only men, not women – in some ultra-Orthodox Jewish circles it’s the same even today - and so by allowing Mary to listen with the others, he was putting her on the same level as his male disciples.  

We might want to connect last week’s reading from Luke, which had the parable of the Good Samaritan, with this week’s reading.  In last week’s reading, discipleship was helping the stranger by the side of the road.  In this week’s reading, the better part of discipleship is sitting and listening to Jesus.

Doing and listening.  Listening and doing.  Two parts of hospitality – and, ultimately, two parts of Christian discipleship.  Each of us is likely drawn more toward one than the other – some of us are doers while others are listeners.   I’m a doer, a “get it done” kind of person, hyperactive – my friends sometimes tell me I’m a perpetual motion machine - and my discipleship includes quite a bit of social activism – and so I constantly need to remind myself to slow down and listen – to listen to God, to listen to other people.   To be in action without taking time to listen is a recipe for exhaustion.  Others of us may be better at listening, and may need to be reminded that it’s important to put what they hear into action.   Listening and doing. Doing and listening – both are necessary.  And both are ways in which God can bless us.

But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her."  May we choose the better part of listening to God – which may involve listening to our fellow church members or our neighbors or even strangers.  And may we welcome those whom God sends our way, finding a blessing for ourselves by being a blessing to others. Amen.