Choosing Life

Deut. 30:15-20; Matthew 6: 19-24

November 18, 2007

by Dr. Charles Parker

 

I)   Introduction

            In days gone by, when the circus rolled into town, there were always a variety of small side acts like the strong man and the bearded lady.  There was a strong man, whose signature piece was to take a lemon in one hand and squeeze it as hard as he could and then challenge anyone in the audience to come up and squeeze a single additional drop out of the lemon.

            Well, of course there was always a young buck or two who wanted to impress his girlfriend, but one day at the end of his act, he squeezed his lemon dry and challenged anyone to come forward.  And this tiny, wheezened old man in the back raises his hand.  The strong man smiles to himself and invites the man forward.  The old man takes the lemon and squeezes hard; and, after a moment, a drop falls from the lemon and then another and then several more, then a brief trickle.

            The strong man was amazed and said, “I’ve never seen anything like that!”  The old man smiled and shrugged.  “I’m the chair of my church’s Stewardship Committee.”

            When stewardship time rolls around, this is the image that comes to most of our minds.  And some of you have been pretty honest about sharing that perception.  But I hope as we have engaged this process over the past few weeks through our worship and the stewardship devotional, we’re starting to re-think that image and to realize that this stewardship process is first and foremost about deepening our spiritual journey.  It’s about using our giving as a tool for opening our lives to the power and presence of the Holy Spirit.  This is an understanding that is far more faithful to our Scriptural witness and the witness of the great saints of our church.

 

II) Serving Two Masters

            One of those saints, of course, was John Wesley.  On July 2, 1789, two weeks before the start of the French Revolution, John Wesley was in Dublin, Ireland getting ready to preside at a Conference of his Irish preachers.  He had turned 86 three days earlier, and he was feeling it.  He expected that this would be his last year and realizing that he did not have a great deal of time left, he was doing a lot of reflecting on his legacy, on his movement. 

            And he was worried.  He had every reason to be optimistic: the movement was exploding.  In the United States it had become its own church and almost totally supplanted the Church of England.  But he was worried about its spiritual health.

            He titled the sermon that he preached the next day at the opening of the Dublin Conference, “The Causes of the Inefficacy of Christianity” – why it was that Christianity was not a more powerful force for transforming society.  And the answer to that question in this sermon was wealth.  Now that’s fairly counterintuitive for us, because on one level having financial resources allows us to do the work God has given us.   But Wesley, who had spent a great deal of time preaching about the dangers of wealth, saw wealth as the single greatest threat to Methodism.

            He wrote, “I am not afraid that the people called Methodists should ever cease to exist either in Europe or America.  But I am afraid, lest they should only exist as a dead sect, having the form of religion without the power.”  Wesley’s movement, of course, really took hold among the lower classes, the economically disenfranchised.  But by the end of his life, we were becoming a more affluent movement.  And that concerned Wesley, because, as he says, “as riches increase, so will pride, anger, and love of the world in all its branches.”

            Wesley is making the same point that Jesus is making in this passage from the Sermon on the Mount that we heard read this morning: that “materialism” is not simply another societal problem that we must overcome -- another "ism" like racism, sexism, or ageism.  It's not simply one of many sins that we must avoid.

            Materialism is nothing less than an alternative theology, a substitute for God.  It’s idolatry.  It is a religion:

 

(i) It has a gospel: that things provide happiness;

(ii) A temple: shopping malls;

(iii) A God: money

 

            This is why Jesus refers to money in this passage as "Mammon." Our NRSV translates this as “wealth.”  But you will see a footnote there that notes the Greek text doesn’t have the Greek word for wealth, but the Aramaic word “Mammon.”  Mammon is the personification of materialism: it’s the god of wealth – a demonic god, but a god – a god that stands in opposition to, and competition with the God of Israel .

 

            When Jesus says that you can’t serve God and Mammon, he is trying to tell us that we don't have the luxury of buying into both systems; we need to choose.  We need to make a conscious choice that our God is the only source of life and blessing; just as Moses presented before the children of Israel, as they entered the Promised Land.  “Today I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live.”

 

            But making that choice is a hard one for us.  We want to experience the fullness of life that Christ offers us at the same time that we experience the emotional fulfillment of the Neiman-Marcus shopping spree.  Wesley writes to us, “How uncomfortable a condition must he be in [who cannot choose]. He has religion enough to make him miserable, but not enough to make him happy: his religion will not let him enjoy the world, and the world will not let him enjoy God. So that by halting between both, he loses both.”

III. Wesley's solution

            So how do we live in this society without becoming enmeshed in the worship of Mammon?  The solution in Wesley's sermon on July 3, 1789 had three points of increasing difficulty:

 

1. Methodists must go ahead and "earn all they can."

2. They must also "save all they can."

3. But then they must "give all they can."

 

            Let’s look briefly at these three rules.  Wesley’s instructions to “earn all you can” is not simply a call to make money, but a call to what Bishop Kenneth Carder calls "vocational holiness."  It is an affirmation that God has given each of us gifts to use to God's glory, and that when we use them, we will, in turn be blessed. 

 

            How we use those gifts is a matter of stewardship:  Do our careers upbuild the people around us?  Do they honor and protect the created world that God has given us charge of?  Each of you has a gift that God has given you for the upbuilding of the Kingdom.  Wesley is simply saying, “use that gift and celebrate its rewards.

 

            The next part of this trilogy is a little harder: save all you can.  This is a call to “life-style holiness": a call to simplify our lifestyles and avoid extravagance.  This is a tough one for us, because in our society, more is always better.

 

            Let's look at food as an example:  We have all seen how proportions in meals have exploded in the past decade.  Do we need more food to live than we did a decade ago?  Of course not!  30% of the people in our country are obese, another 30% "merely" overweight.  And we’re experiencing this epidemic of obesity at the same time that 16,000 children die each day from hunger - one every 5 seconds. 

 

            I would argue that there is something truly demonic in a system that encourages some to overeat, while others starve.  Where are the places in your lives that you can simplify?  What are the things that you really can live without?

 

            When Bishop Schol felt the call to start the Hope Fund a couple of years ago, he sat down with me and asked what kind of personal gift would demonstrate to the Conference that he was really serious about this effort.  We talked about a number and then he went away and prayed on it a bit and came back a little while later with a higher number – a number that was a significant stretch for his family.  And then later, he heard a stewardship sermon that really challenged him, and he and Beverly put their heads together and figured out that if they put off buying a new car for an additional year, they could squeeze a little bit more into their pledge.  And they did it.  Those are the kinds of calculations involved in simplifying your lifestyle.

 

            The third and final piece of Wesley’s direction is to “give all you can.”  And this, of course, is the big issue for us, because our money is our security.  I heard Bishop Kenneth Carder tell a story that happened before he became a Bishop and was serving as the pastor of a church.  One of his parishioners, a successful entrepreneur, was speaking at a Rotary Club meeting and wanted his pastor to hear him. 

 

            So Bishop Carder went to the meeting, and his parishioner started his speech by saying, “everything I learned about successful business, I learned from John Wesley.”  Well Bishop Carder perked right up and was feeling pretty good.  “The first thing I learned,” the man continued, “is to ‘earn all you can.’”  Bishop Carder nodded and smiled.  “And the second thing is to ‘save all you can.’”  Bishop Carder kept smiling.  And then the man stopped.

 

            Well, Bishop Carder, to his great credit, preached a sermon the next Sunday that he entitled “On being two-thirds Methodist.”  In this sermon that he preached at the Dublin Conference, Wesley’s own words are not quite as gentle: to those who ignore the third directive, he says, “And yet nothing can be more plain, than that all who observe the two first rules without the third, will be twofold more the children of hell than ever they were before.”

 

            So what does it mean to "give all you can"? I don't know, that is what this discernment process is about.  And we’re all at different points in this journey.  In my own case, Jeannine and I decided this year that in our giving to Metropolitan we will tithe on the gross amount of my salary and housing allowance.  Like many of you, we also support a number of other organizations, and we will do that giving out of a tithe on Jeannine’s salary.

 

            Again, there’s nothing magic about that amount but it represents a sacrificial gift for where we are right now.

 

            I read an article in the Washington Post last year about a math professor at NOVA whose a bit ahead of where I am on this journey.  He had set a goal for himself to give away a million dollars.  Now I’m sure that math professors make decent money, but not that kind of money.  But he had pared down his living expenses so that he was living on 60% of his salary and giving 40% per year away. 

 

            But then the article said that he was taking on odd jobs so that he could earn extra money to give away.  And the author of the article interviewed a number of people in this man’s life, and they all said that he was one of the happiest people that they knew.  That’s what healthy stewardship looks like.

IV. Conclusion

            Many of you remember the comedian Jack Benny, who made a running joke of being miserly. One of his standard skits has a robber approaching him and saying "your money or your life."  When Benny doesn't answer, the robber asks again, and Benny responds, "I'm thinking, I'm thinking."

            These words of Jesus remind us that that choice is the same one we are all called to make.  May we respond in the words of Moses: Choose Life.