‘C’   //   Pentecost 24   //   11-11-07   //   Celebration of Worship, Northside Presbyterian

 

Scriptures             Haggai 2:1-9         Matthew 6:19-34

 

What are you most afraid of? Beyond self-preservation – including the health of your family and friends?

 

Chances are, we’re simply afraid of not having enough. And that means we’re afraid of not having enough money – which, of course, provides access to self-preservation.

 

How, pray we, to move beyond this primary fear? How, pray we, to honor the spiritual maxim that freedom from our fear of want takes priority over freedom from our want itself?

 

And how, pray we, to move from fear of scarcity … to faith in God … to trust in God?

 

 

Today’s gospel message focuses on two things: treasure … and trust. It’s located in the midst of a three-chapter collection of Jesus’ teachings in Matthew’s gospel known as the Sermon on the Mount, which moves us from an invocation of blessings to various communal and individual fulfillments of God’s law to a series of teachings today that one wag has called “a sermon on the amount”.

 

 

Today, as you know, is our annual financial pledge dedication Sunday – the culmination of a month of what have been billed Stewardship Sundays. When prayerfully pondering what to pledge for the coming year, we are tempted to read Jesus’ words backwards: “For where you heart is, there your treasure will be also.”

 

Perhaps we are prone to do this because we wish to skirt the all-important yet ever-fearful issue of “our money” as much as possible. Perhaps we would like to believe that “our money” will naturally flow from where our heart, the seat of our emotions, is – rather than face the fact that our heart is shaped by the financial actions we take.

 

And yet, Jesus understands money and possessions in the same Jewish way he understands all other spiritual matters: Our actions shape our affections, more so than our affections shape our actions. Act as if, if need be – do what we know to be the next right thing to do, for the common good, where our treasure needs to be – literally as well as figuratively. And our feelings, generally, will follow.

 

 

One could call this “cash down” ethics. Jesus illustrates by asking us which of two masters we will serve: God or, as Matthew’s Greek puts it, mammon. We can either use our treasure to serve God and God’s social purposes, or we can use God to self-serve our personal treasuries. We can serve God’s blessings to us through the servant of money, or we can serve as slaves of money through the imagined blessings of a God of self.

 

Practicing “cash down” ethics – taking actions serving God’s purposes, which then brings our hearts around. Might this help us all overcome what Albert Einstein once called the most vexing problem of the contemporary world: mixing the means with the ends?

 

 

Easier said than done. For what stands in our way of treating money as but a means of life, and not its ends, is a pernicious and daily form of fear known as worry.

 

Those who have spent any sort of time with the truly hard-pressed in this world have witnessed, from time to time, the curious – might we say ironic – phenomenon that those who possess less are often less possessed in how they live. The ones less tied down by their things, the ones who may eke out a subsistence living – those whom Jesus particularly has in mind when he tells them to declare, not ask, God to “Give us this day our daily bread.”

 

We cannot – and should not – romanticize their poverty, or poverty of any kind. Chronic lack: It’s a worrisome thing. And yet, have you ever wondered how it is that the dispossessed in the world are the ones most prone to glorify and enjoy God by throwing all-day fiestas and three-hour worship celebrations, without regard to cost or time or other worldly calculations?

 

(Lest anyone out there is practicing this fear known as worry: this service won’t run over 75 minutes.)

 

 

Recently, in the country of Haiti – by many social indicators, the most impoverished land in the Western Hemisphere – a Haitian man named Wilkens and his American friend were sharing language lessons through the one book they had with translations in both English and Creole: the Bible. While going over the phrase “consider the lilies of the field”, Wilkens asked his friend, “Do you believe this?” Did he believe that God cares for humans the same way as for the birds of the air and the flowers of the field?

 

“Well, Wilkens,” his friend stammered, “I don’t think it is as easy as this makes it sound. Clothing and food don’t just drop down from the sky – we still have to work for these things. I think the point is not to worry.”

 

Wilkens waved him off. The American had missed the point. “I know we must work. I mean, do you believe God gives everyone what they need to live?”

 

The American took a moment to take in the surroundings. He could see almost the entire valley. Across the way, the hill was covered in patchwork fields and terraces, and where the peasants had recently tilled, the soil was a rich, dark umber. He could see the first traces of green pushing up in places, and knew these would become the beans and the corn that people would survive on in the coming year. Off to the left, though, there was nothing but erosion – huge slopes of red earth unrelieved by a single spot of green grass. The water run-off had marked the land with deep valleys and rivulets.

 

The American wondered which would prove more powerful in shaping the future of this valley: the carefully arranged terraces, or the wild rivulets of erosion.

 

He could see people on footpaths snaking in between the fields and houses. Men: returning from their fields, bare feet caked with dirt, hoes or machetes slung over tired shoulders. Women: climbing the slopes with backs held straight under huge baskets of freshly washed clothes. Children: playing outside, dressed only in oversized T-shirts.

 

Wilkens is right, the American thought. It is ultimately not a question of work or diligence. The Haitian man’s question – “Do you believe God gives everyone what they need to live?” – hung in the hot air and in his heart and mind. Would these people receive all they needed to live?

 

“I’m not sure, Wilkens,” the American finally said. “What do you believe?”

 

Wilkens moved his finger to the title the translators had given the passage: “Place your trust in God.” He lightly tapped the sentence with his finger, and then raised his head to give the American the full force of his gaze.

 

And Wilkens said, “I believe in this part.”¹

In God we trust. So say the scriptures. So say the coins in our pockets and our purses. So say the figures on our pledge cards.

 

So say our new members, who find not only a place for their faith here, but who glimpse it and simultaneously long for it as a trust, among us.

 

Are we prepared for the four who reaffirm their baptism today -- as in doing so they express their desire as new members to place their trust in a God who loves them unconditionally in this congregation? Mikyung and Hoon and Kristin and Debra have affirmed, in many ways, that this is the place where their faith in God can grow the best.

 

Can they truly learn to trust God through us: Come job loss … health loss … life loss? Or: Come simple, forgivable resentments?

 

In God we trust. So say I.

 

And you?

 

 

¹David Williamson, “Making Do”, in “Living the Word”, The Christian Century, June 29, 2004, pp. 8-9.

 

In the Prayers of the People last Sunday – the Sunday subsequent to All Saints’ Day – we responded to the naming of the saints who had passed before us with the Spanish exclamation, “Presente!”

 

Let us also respond with this exclamation as I call out the following names:

Debra Davies … Presente!

 

Kristin Klevering … Presente!

 

Hoon Lee … Presente!

 

Mikyung Kim-Lee … Presente!

Deb and Kristin, Hoon and Mikyung, have found a place for their faith in God here, at Northside. Over time, may their spiritual faith be forged into a relational trust, that they, too, may call out – to any and all of us –  “Presente!” As in, “You – dear Northside sisters and brothers – you were present, when I was suffering and/or ashamed.”

 

So let us go out into the world now in peace, to love and serve and trust our God. A God who is always …