Sermon For October 15, 2000
Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
CHRISTIAN GOSPEL: What Must I Do? ~ Mark 10:17-31
SERMON: Living For God in a Rich Society
It is common in many circles today, to take this passage about selling all that you have and giving it to the poor, and spiritualize it. Moving it to another plain. Make it a more general kind of statement. Then the preacher can stand up in front of the congregation and say, "Well, this isn't really about money, this is about anything that gets in the way of being a follower of Jesus. Anything that is a problem in your spiritual life, you need to take care of, so that you can really be a true disciple." It's a lot easier to do that than it is to take seriously some of the things that appear in scripture especially because a lot of the don't give us much wiggle room at all. If you were here last week, the lectionary handed us a passage about divorce, and Jesus' words were quite demanding: "Don't get divorced. Work out your relationship. Stay committed." Now this week we have a command to a rich man who was trying to live faithfully. Jesus questioned him, asking him to answer the very question he had posed to Jesus. The man said, "I have followed all of the laws. I have done everything that has been asked of me, and yet I'm not certain it is enough. So I want you to tell me, what do I have to do, Jesus?" Jesus loved him for his sincerity, but he looked at him directly and said, "Go, sell all that you have, give all of the money to the poor, then come and follow me." The man shook his head sadly and walked away. If we take this passage seriously, if we sell all that we have and give it to the poor and go and follow Jesus, some of us, most certainly, are going to have a divorce on our hands. How do we stay committed to a relationship, how do we follow Jesus faithfully and live out our lives, our span of 60, 70, 80 or 90 years on this earth. For the early disciples of Jesus it was easy. They expected that the end was going to come at any time. So as they heard the words, they took them very literally. With the earliest disciples, we read that they did sell all that they had. They put everything into a common holding. Lived in a commune, as we would say today. Shared everything together. In doing so they experienced exactly the kind of abundance that Jesus promised them that they would know. Because, instead of having one extension ladder, there were five available to use whenever they needed one. Whenever they needed something, someone in the group had one for them to borrow. They shared together the money, and the station wagon and the pick-up truck and they had a good time. But as time went on and they realized that the end that had been promised was not arriving, more and more people began to have second thoughts about having given up everything. So there was a shift and the monastic orders began to develop. Some disciples would give up everything taking a vow of poverty to be of service to the church. Monks and nuns, brothers and sisters in the faith, living together communally. Raising their food, caring about one another, not gathering anything for themselves. But the rest of the Christians lived their lives, built houses, fed their families, began to deal with money in a different way. Now the servants who stood before them, the clergy, were still asked to take a vow of poverty, as even now the parish priests in the Roman Catholic Church are asked to do. But after the Reformation times, the task of being a minister began to be seen in a different light. Now the minister is seen as a fellow pilgrim on the faith journey. Some preachers, as I mentioned, take this passage and move it to a spiritual plain. They say, "Well, what we are really talking about is obstacles to faithfulness. And anything that is an obstacle to faithfulness has to be removed." For this particular man that Jesus was talking to, a devotion to his riches was the one thing that was keeping him from knowing God, and experiencing the full spiritual live that he was seeking. But for others it might be something else, the red Mustang or the job, anything at all that can demand our attention, our devotion, that can help us forget about caring for others or forget about our relationship to our creator. If that is an obstacle in your life, then come to terms with it, put it in its proper perspective so that you can be a devoted disciple.
When we do that, though, we are really refusing to come to terms with the very radical demands of being a follower of Jesus. It's easy to talk about giving up things when you don't have all that much to give up. Critics of the idea of voluntary simplicity, of people in an affluent society learning how to live their lives more simply so that they are not using up a lot of the earth resources, will point out that there are plenty of people living in poverty who are living in involuntary simplicity. They don't have a choice in the matter, and are not given the luxury of deciding whether they are going to live simply or not. There's just not enough money to live any other way.
We struggle with the idea of what we can do with our riches. I was pleased when I opened up the newspaper this morning and found out that I didn't have the six winning numbers for the 26 million dollars, because I was going to have a hard time talking to you this morning about riches. But at the same time, I stand in front of you as Cindy and I are departing for two weeks in Hawaii. This leads to the same kind of dilemma. How do we talk about using money responsibly when we're spending a good chunk of money to go there to celebrate our 25th anniversary? I remember a time when we were first married and I was serving as the pastor of a small country church. We were living in a parsonage, a two story white frame house with a porch, right next to a New England picture perfect church building with a steeple, in the middle of a corn pasture in western Iowa. At that point, Cindy was making about five dollars an hour as a nurse and I was making ten thousand dollars in addition to the parsonage and benefits. We didn't think there was ever going to come a day when we could afford to buy a house. So it's with some shock that we reflect on the cost and size of the house we are living in. We are still accustomed to thinking about ourselves in terms of the middle class roots of our youth. To be living here, five miles away from Bill Gates, really gives us a skewed idea of what kind of riches we need in our lives.
It's important for us to take these things seriously and if we don't understand the challenge of dealing with wealth as Christians then we either have heard the story too many times or we aren't listening very closely. I think Jesus is serious when he says it is difficult to be faithful when you have a lot of money. It's difficult not to be caught up in taking care of all of it. It's difficult not to justify to ourselves why we need one more of those or a couple more of these. When we are sitting in our two hundred or three hundred thousand dollar house and look across the street or down the road to the five hundred or six hundred thousand or million dollar home, we don't feel like we're living excessively.
There are many needs in the world. Those of us who are blessed are called on to try to find ways to live faithfully and respond to those needs. Each year for Children's Sabbath we are bombarded with a litany of concerns. The numbers are very sobering. I'll read them and leave them to speak to your heart. Each day there are children needing a healthy start. Each day one 1,540 babies are born in this country without health insurance. Each day 798 babies are born at a low birth weight weighing less than five pounds eight ounces. There are children who are in need of a head start. Each day thirteen million children are in child care, yet in one four state study only one center in seven received a rating for good quality care. Each day nearly five million children are left home alone after school each school day. Each day 2,806 high school students drop out of school. It's a mind boggling number. Children need a fair start in America. Each day 2,140 babies are born into poverty. Each day 11.8 million children rely on food stamps for their meals. Children need a safe start Each day nearly twelve children and youth under age twenty die from firearms. 647,000 children are in foster care. Over 100,000 children are in detention, correctional or shelter facilities. Children need a moral start. Each day 218 children are arrested for violent crimes. Each day in our country 399 children are arrested for drug abuse. Each day in our country, for a variety of reasons, 5,044 children are arrested by the police.
These aren't numbers that we can cure quickly or simply. They're also not numbers that we can ignore. As people of faith, we need to determine ways we can address the needs of Kirkland and of the greater Seattle area. Ways that we can use our time, our money, our skills and our building to help children who are in need. Our faith calls us to do this. We pray that God's spirit will show us the way. Let's worship God with our offerings.