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Choose this Day
Sermon by Brigid A. Boyle November 7, 2004, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill Joshua 24:1-25 Matthew 25:1-13
When asked how I feel about serving the church as an Associate Minister, rather than a Senior Minister, a position many assume I would one day want to hold, I confess that so long as one has a good relationship with one’s colleague, which I fortunately do, I think being an Associate is a beautiful thing. It’s beautiful, I thought this week, until said colleague goes on sabbatical and leaves said associate to preach “the stewardship sermon.” The beauty goes away a bit, I think, because somehow, in the church, stewardship, especially as it relates to dollars and cents, is often misunderstood and so many ministers seem to tear their hair out trying to get its meaning across. Well, I like my hair and the notion of trying to get across a message that one of the best preachers in the country has given you for the last nine years is a bit daunting. What’s more is that, in the church, regardless of how many bald ministers have attempted to help their congregants understand otherwise, when “stewardship season” rolls around it still seems as though the church, and those who fill its pulpits and run its programs especially, are up for a performance review, with increased pledges indicating satisfaction, and decreased indication dissatisfaction. Which is to say that in the church people seem to understand stewardship as an opportunity to vote … with their pocketbooks of course. While most ministers I know don’t particularly like receiving either commendation or critique in such a way, most ministers I know also don’t understand biblical stewardship in such a way. I also know that there are plenty of strategies that simply don’t work to increase stewardship understanding or commitment. Scolding, the kind that says “We know what cars you drive. We know where you go on vacation. We know the annual dues at the club. Your pledges are a pitiful reflection of your commitments,” as much as it is warranted, doesn’t work. Threats, either the kind that say “Listen, without your support, this church staff simply cannot and will not keep doing what they are doing. They working tirelessly in the face of an incredible lack of congregational commitment and that simply cannot go on forever, ” or that say, “This building is falling apart around us. We simply cannot fund another collapsed driveway. Until you start doing your part, you had better say your prayers that the boiler doesn’t go,” don’t work either. So we are left, like we are on so many other occasions in the church, trying to make sense of the same thing we have tried to make sense of year after year. Trying, like we do each Advent and Christmas, each Lent and Eastertide, and every Sunday in between, to tell the same story as though you have never heard it before, that this time, by God’s grace, we might really get it, we might really grow in faith and send our roots deeper and deeper into the ground, we might really be closer to becoming the church God has in mind. On this Sunday before pledge dedication then, I bid you listen again. I bid you put the dollars and cents of the pledge you probably already have in mind out of your mind for these moments, that we might try to understand something anew about our good and gracious God and about ourselves. “If you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve …” These words spoken by Joshua not long before he was to die come at a pivotal point in the story that runs from Genesis to 2 Kings. As the text recalls and as our minds remember, much had happened before these words found their way to Joshua’s lips. Out of goodness and abundant love, with Spirit whirling over the waters, God created. Out of goodness and abundant love, God chose Abraham and Sarah as his people and made a holy promise to them that they would be parents to generations of God’s children. Out of goodness and abundant love, God sent Isaac and Jacob and Moses. Out of goodness and abundant love, God led the people Israel from being slaves in a foreign land and guided them to that land flowing with milk and honey. Joshua’s words come after all of this, knowing well that the gods of Egypt and other lands were as attractive to greedy souls and as gods of money, sex or power are today, we hear, “Choose this day who you will serve.” These words hover between looking back to a promise now fulfilled and looking forward to the life of this people in the land God gave them. Will Israel be faithful to the God who has been so very faithful to them? Will they keep their promises as Yahweh has kept his? Of course, their promises, as soon as the words leave Joshua’s mouth, are to keep up their end of the covenant. Far be it from us that we would worship anything else, they would say. And then, Joshua warns the people about what would happen. Choose God, as you have great things coming. Choose something else, someone else, and you had better watch out, “If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, he will turn and do you harm, and consume you after having done you good.” I cannot read these words without going back to a conversation I had when I was a student in seminary working with some college students during a summer internship. The students were younger than I, more conservative than I, and more enthusiastic than I in their presentation of the faith that was the center of their lives. For many reasons, I did not have an easy time working with them. Not the least of those reasons were numerous conflicts over what they considered their moral values which were, according to them, far superior to my own. I remember one particular occasion when we were debating the issue the ordination of homosexuals. We were on different sides of the issue, and in a very heated moment, one of the young women shouted at me so as to attempt to convert me to her position with fear, “Choose this day whom you will serve. But as for me, I will serve the Lord.” There is no question that this woman relied on her faith that guided her as she made decisions and offered substantial direction for her life. But as I got to know her as our summer together went on, as both of our defenses began to come down, she told me about her growing up, about how she was raised to fear God and to fear the consequences of disobedience, about how as a six or seven year old she had nightmares about burning in hell and how she would live her life so as to be as sure as she could that her dream would never become reality. Her faith was driven by fear. For her, every moment of every day had the potential to be a pivotal moment in her life, bringing her closer to eternal life or sending her down the road toward eternal punishment. Hearing the consequences of the wrong choice, “he will not forgive your transgressions or your sins ... if you forsake the Lord then he will turn an do you harm,” she chose her God every day. Fearful, she chose her God every day. As much as my heart broke when I heard her story, although she was very matter of fact about it, and as much as I made a promise to myself that day never to lift up the fear of punishment as impetus for obedience to God, especially with our children, I know that there are many who do. And I know that anxiety and fear are motivations for so much of what happens in human life. While that affects our understandings of just about everything, I think that it affects our understanding of stewardship, too. Some research from the Lilly Endowment is pointedly relevant. A paper which they had commissioned, “Thinking Theologically About Wealth,” at first seems to confirm the obvious- money and wealth are difficult subjects, and most American Christians and most Americans, regardless of their income level, responded the same way when asked if they had enough money, “I need a little more.” But, rather than ending there with the simple conclusion that we are materialists enslaved to the market dynamics of spend, accumulate, earn more, spend more, accumulate more, and so on, the research went further. Studying All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasedena, California, where most congregants are not lacking for financial resources, she discovered that most knew that money cannot buy happiness, nor can it buy full and meaningful lives. What was discovered is that people there, and I think here, weren’t driven by consumerism as much as by anxiety. They want more money to take care of their families. They experience anxiety “about having enough money to be secure, to have homes in safe neighborhoods, send their children to safe schools, pay extra for security systems, save extra in case of illness …” As much as I do believe, with Walter Bruggemann, that “Though many of us are well intentioned, we have invested our lives in consumerism. We have a love affair with ‘more’ – and we will never have enough Consumerism is not simply a marketing strategy. It has become a demonic spiritual force among us …” I think that anxiety and fear, and the incredible ways in which both policy makers and politicians and even some preachers, play to those fears and that anxiety in this time of great uncertainty is very real. To be sure, the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Maidens, can be interpreted to do the same. This parable, like all the others that haunt us and push us in directions we would rather not go, tells the story of twelve maidens waiting to meet the bridegroom before a wedding ceremony. Ideas for what this story might mean allegorically and metaphorically abound, but the gist of the story is this. Six of the maidens brought enough oil, more than the usual amount, to keep their lamps lit for a very long time, not knowing how long it would take the bridegroom to arrive. Six of the maidens didn’t bring enough, thinking that the bridegroom would arrive shortly. After all twelve doze off, they hear that the bridegroom is about to arrive. The first six turn up the flame on their oil lamps, lighting the path. The other six realize that their lamps have gone out, and after unsuccessfully trying to borrow some oil from the others, head out to buy more. By the time they return though, the wedding banquet has begun. The six run up the walk with lamps burning bright, eager to join in. But they find the door locked. “Open the door, we have returned, “ they say. But the bridegroom doesn’t recognize them and the door stays shut. “Keep awake, therefore, for you know neither the day or the hour,” Jesus concludes. It is interesting that Jesus finishes with an admonition to keep awake, although the problem in the story is not about being awake or asleep, remember all twelve of them went to sleep, the problem has to do with being ready when the bridegroom comes. The issue at hand in this parable has to with preparedness in the face of uncertainty. It has to do with responsible and behavior in the time between the promise of the bridegrooms coming and his advent. It has to do with using resources wisely and faithfully. It has to do with figuring out how not to be afraid in the meantime. Like our text from Joshua, this text, can be used to push fear as the impetus for good behavior, to suggest that if you don’t behave in a certain way, if your life choices and your moral values do not reflect your faithfulness, if you don’t have and keep your act together, you’d better watch out because you might just end up on the wrong side of that door and nobody, nobody, wants to be on the wrong side of the door. But you see, there is more than pep talk and more than threat in these texts. Faith is about more than fear. Obedience is about more than avoiding punishment. And stewardship is more than protecting ourselves. For you see, these texts are about being faithful and responsible with the abundance we have been given. Stewardship is about living in grateful response to promises made and kept, to abundance offer and loved granted. Stewardship is about choosing to make God a priority, not your anxiety or my fear. It is about being given so very much by a good and gracious God and about doing our very best to living in faithful response to that. Stewardship is about trusting God’s providence. It is far more vast and encompassing than a pledge to the church. It is about choosing whom we will serve. It is about keeping our lamps trimmed and burning, not so much that we get invited to the big party at the end, but so that we might, by grace, find a way not to be so anxious and fearful is this crazy thing called life. Probably the most well known text for a stewardship sermon comes from the gospel of Luke, “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” And it’s true. Our checkbooks reveal our priorities and our budgets reveal our loyalties. When we are faithful stewardships of all our resources- our days and hours, our gifts and skills, our dollars and cents- our hearts begin to inhabit a different reality, and I promise you, the fears that fill our days, not of eternal punishment or being consumed by an angry god, not of being left out of the big party at the end, but the other fears which so occupy our hearts- you know them well and so do I- begin to vanish. The fear that you are really alone in the world begins to fade into the assurance that you are held in the hands of a good and gracious God. The fear that I have no real purpose in life and am here but to spin my wheels, is replaced with the knowledge in heart and mind that I was loved into being and uniquely gifted and called to do something in the world. The anxiety that all of us have about resources being too scarce is changed into a certainty that the abundance of love God has for us will ever be enough to get us through. This congregation is at a pivotal point in its life, not unlike the congregation gathered at Shechem that day with Joshua. You (I use the 2nd person quite intentionally here) have an incredible history that reveals God’s presence and purpose in and among this people for long years. You have all the potential in the world for a future filled with incredible things- pews and classrooms full of children and adults excited about living the Christian faith, mission and outreach projects which creatively and powerfully reflect god’s commitment to the least of these, worship through word and music and art that gives so many people a place to enjoy God and glorify him forever, a family of faith which embraces all people regardless of the boundary lines the world out there would draw. You have all the potential in the world to be as a beacon on a hill that all who come this way might find light enough to fill their lamps and not be so afraid in this dark world. But here’s the rub. “Choose this day whom you will serve “Will you serve your fear of never having enough? Will you serve your anxiety that tells you too big a pledge might leave you in too risky a place? Will you serve your worry that one step up in your giving might force you to take one step down when it comes to dinners out or clothes in the closet or lunches on the lawn at the club? “Choose this day whom you will serve.” Will you serve your fear or will you serve the one whose love alone can cast out all fear, whose forgiving love has casts out all fear, and whose perfect love promises ever to do the same? My prayer this day is that each one of us might choose the love that keeps our lamps lit, that the commitments we make this stewardship season will assure us more and more that not only will the church staff be paid and the building maintained, not only will the children be educated and the sorrowing comforted, but that now and in the end his love wins out over fear. Because gratitude for so great a love, more than dollars and cents, more than bills that need paying, more than programs that need funding, is what stewardship is all about. Thanks be to God. Amen. |