“The
Coin of the Realm”
Luke
16:19-31
First
Presbyterian
The
Reverend Thomas A. Sweet
September
13, 2009
Stewardship
Sunday
When it was determined
that next Sunday would be the day on which we would celebrate the previous 175
years of our church’s ministry, it seemed to me that such a celebration would
not be complete or fitting without renewing our own place in the long and yet
unfolding story of First Presbyterian Church of Jamestown, New York.
So in addition to welcoming back pastors John Schmidt and Sandy McConnel
to our pulpit, partaking of the sacred sacrament of Holy Communion, and
receiving new members, we’ll also dedicate our pledges to the financial
support of our church in 2010.
I know some of you
might question my judgment in choosing to preach on money on our first Sunday
back from our scattered summers. (I
question my judgment!) But I
preach thus anyway because I have had a growing conviction over the last few
months that money really is a key to our own personal relationship with God as
well as to the health of our church community.
I wish it was otherwise. I
wish I could say that the key was basking in the glow of Mary Oliver poems or
repetitive preaching on the parable of the prodigal son or singing over and over
again “Lord, You Have Come to the
Lakeshore.” But that is not
what scripture says. It is not what
Jesus says. Time and again, and in a
myriad of ways, they say it is about money.
Why? Because it is so
easy to form attachments to money and what we think it can do for us that they
skew and skewer our relationships with God and neighbors and Mother Nature.
Think how often relationships are strained or severed and how even the
creation itself groans in travail as we pursue bigger profits and more money.
That is why the apostle wrote in his first letter to Timothy that “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their
eagerness to be rich some have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves
with many pains.” It is not
money per se that is the root from which many evils blossom, but the idolatrous
love of it. Any preacher who does
not talk about money, and does not do it often, is not being faithful either to
scripture or congregation.
If you check the
opening sentences of the Gospel according to Luke, you will find it was written
especially to Theophilus. We are not
sure of the identity of Theophilus. In
Greek, the name “Theophilus” means
literally “friend of God,” so “Theophilus” could be simply a generic
name for those with affinity for God. But
many Bible people believe Theophilus to have been a particular person, probably
a priest. Whoever he was, Luke
cautions Theophilus to guard against acquiescing to the seductive ways of the
culture and world around him. Whereas
a newfound movement, like the one centered in Jesus, usually starts out with
great passion and zeal for its beliefs and tenets and possibilities, over time
and in the midst of the burdens and demands of daily living, there is a tendency
for a movement to flatten out, to lose steam, and for its followers to
acculturate and accommodate themselves to societal and social norms.
Luke will have none of
it. The ways of Jesus, radical and
demanding, are front and center in Luke’s gospel and are offered as irritants
in the life of a church that was (and still is) becoming ever more settled and
comfortable. They are offered as
thorns in the side of a church that is content to serve more as a religious
clubhouse for the “haves” than as a haven of healing, hospitality, and help
for the have-nots. Most of the time
when pastors and sessions ask new members why they are joining the church, they
say something like “because I am comfortable here.” That
is understandable, of course, and we do want people to feel “at home” in the
church. But, I wonder if it wouldn’t commend the church more if they were
to say, “I am joining because this
church makes me uncomfortable.”
Let’s look for a few
minutes at this irritant of a scripture passage that Luke sets out for us:
Most of the story is
set in Hades. Hades is not Hell as
is sometimes supposed. The Jews in
the time of Jesus believed in a waiting life of departed spirits or souls before
the Judgment. Souls do not go
directly to Heaven or to Hell but to Hades or Sheol or Abraham’s Bosom as the
Bible variously calls it. At the
time of Jesus and for many centuries thereafter, “hell” did not have the
rigid, severe meaning that we associate with it today.
It was a place, an unseen place, of safety, a place for sorting things
out, for coming to oneself. When the
King James Version of the Bible, sometimes called the Authorized Version, was
written in the seventeenth century, the word “hell” often was used instead
of the word “hades” because “hell” had a different meaning than our
concept of it today. For instance,
there was a children’s game called “Kiss in the Ring” and in this game
there was a place of safety outside the ring, called “hell,” to where the
girls could run to escape being kissed by the boys.
Taking into account the meaning we now often associate with the word
“hell,” contemporary translations of the Bible again are using the words
“Hades” or “Abraham’s Bosom” or “
So, Luke gives us a
story told by Jesus of two people who have departed this mortal life.
One, a very wealthy man, had not given much consideration in his earthly
life to developing his essential self, his spiritual life, or what we often call
our soul. The other, a very poor man
named Lazarus, had virtually nothing of material comfort in his earthly life but
must have been very receptive to spiritual insights and wisdom.
Thus, the rich man (named Dives by tradition though not by Luke) was
very uncomfortable in Hades, “tormented” is the word that Luke uses in
relating the story, when he was made to reckon the character of what his life
had been. Meanwhile, Lazarus was
contented there. Jesus said that
just as there had been a great gulf between Dives and Lazarus on earth that
Dives showed no inclination to bridge, there exists “a great chasm” between
Dives and Lazarus and their experiences in Hades.
Dives is conscious
that life on earth still is going on even as he himself is in Hades.
He becomes concerned about his brothers still living their earthly lives,
that they are “misspending” their lives as he had misspent his and that they
will suffer the same tormented fate he is suffering in Hades when they discover
that they, too, had lived superficially and selfishly.
So, he wants to get a warning back to them in the earthly realm but
Father Abraham says, “They have Moses
and the prophets; they should listen to them.”
But Dives guesses that his brothers are as oblivious to the divine
call on their lives to live generously, justly, and hospitably as he had been
and so presses his case: “No, father
Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.”
But Abraham answers Dives, “If
they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced
even if someone rises from the dead.”
In other words – they have ample opportunity to learn the ways and will
of God for life on earth. Let them
listen to their prophets and poets and preachers.
(Hence, my justification for a sermon on money on our first day
“back” to church!)
Hades predates final
judgment so it still is possible for souls, like Dives’, to be cleansed and
healed. It must be an excruciating
experience to have to face up to the reality that what one’s life on earth has
been about has missed its deeper purpose, has gone astray of the “love mark”
to which God directs our lives. (Here
in WNY at the start of another Bills season, we might call it “wide right!”)
To be confronted with the truth that all of the accoutrements we accrue
in our lives to impress ourselves and others do not impress God must be scary
and awful. To find that such a life
is its own reward because God is not moved by it must be dreadful.
So, on the one hand,
the gospel is an irritant to a church and its people who simply want to baptize
their worldly accommodations with holy water.
On the other hand, the gospel is good news and a great joy to a church
and its people who have the courage and commitment to dare to do what it says to
do and to live in the way it says we should live which can be summed up in the
command of Jesus “to love God and to
love our neighbors as we love ourselves.”
I do not want to make
too much of it because it does not cost us very much to do it, but our “Hot
Dogs and Hospitality Nights” on our piazza in the summer serve as a kind of
reverse picture of the story of Dives and Lazarus.
Dives did not even give Lazarus the scraps from his table, so unconcerned
and maybe even angry was he about the beggar in his midst.
What we do on Thursday nights with the hot dogs is a prototype, a
glimpse, a hint of what we are being called to do in much larger measures.
In so many ways, we are Dives, at least in terms of our relative wealth,
and the Lazaruses at our gates are legion. They
are not just “the poor.” They are
human beings, too, and in Jesus they are our brothers and sisters.
Perhaps it is an irritant in the flow of a comfortable life to hear the
gospel give us, give the church, responsibility to and for them, but it does.
So often people who
come to the church during the week for some kind of assistance say something to
me like “the church should help us.”
And, to my embarrassment, I still get a little “irritated” at
their presumption. Who do they think
we are that we should make up for their “deficits”?
Oh yes, right, we are the people of God and if there is no hope to be
found here in us, where is there any hope?
Someone asked me
recently if it is harder to ask for money when the economy is difficult, but I
think it is just the opposite. When
times are easy and the money is flowing, it does not take a great act of faith
to give some of it away. We can do
it almost unthinkingly. But when
times are tougher, the opportunity to determine what we really believe and in
what or whom we really trust stands before us in stark clarity.
Do we love our money or our neighbors more?
To which do we have the greatest attachment?
Do we trust most what money can do or what God can do?
That irritant gospel!
Just as it gives us no props for loving those who love us for, as Jesus
says, everyone does that, but only for loving our enemies, so, too, is our
generosity not to be dependent on the stock market or our good fortune but on
our commitment to a way of life commended by Jesus.
Love, made flesh by our giving, is the coin of God’s realm.
So, in advance of our
anniversary celebration next Sunday, each of us will be given the chance this
week to consider our financial support of our church for the coming year and to
bring our pledges forward as a part of our anniversary worship next week.
Our history is prelude to a faithful present that calls forth the best
and deepest in us.
Otherwise, the present will become postlude and history is all we shall
have.
As John Calvin reminds
us, worship only begins here in the
sanctuary. It can only be brought to
fulfillment “out there” in the decisions we make and the paths we take in
our daily lives. I ask as you make
them and take them in regard to your giving that you keep in mind the irritant
gospel that is the way to true life and living.
Amen.
Copyright
© First Presbyterian Church 2009