Paul's Stewardship Conference: June 30th

 Year B, Pentecost 6                                                                         2 Corinthians 8:7-15                                                                                                                        

            I have attended a lot of stewardship conferences over the years.  Clergy are notoriously bad at talking about money and so they are always providing educational opportunities for us and other leaders in the church. Just in case that word is new to you, normally when we talk about it in the church, we are talking about how we support the needs of the Christian community with our time and our financial gifts.  The word steward is used in the Bible when talking about someone who is caring for property that is not actually theirs.  That is why it’s an appropriate word for church, we are all called to care for this world and this church that is really God’s. We are just the temporary caretakers.

            I have gotten some helpful information at these conferences…but you know whose stewardship talk I would really like to attend?  The Apostle Paul—the author of the 2^nd letter to the Corinthians that we heard from today.  It would not be a warm and fuzzy stewardship training. There would be no snacks, no bathroom breaks, no tedious ice breakers, but I can guarantee that Paul would get his message across in a tenth of the time of your average speaker. 

            All of chapter 8 and 9 of Corinthians is about giving.  Now normally, when you read an appeal letter that is asking you to donate to a cause, the emphasis is on the cause itself.  There are emotional and inspiring stories about the people who are being helped.  However if you simply read chapters 8 & 9, you would not even know who this money that Paul is collecting is going to.  From other letters of Paul, we know that the money is going to the Christians in Jerusalem. But Paul doesn’t mention that community at all in these chapters.

There was some tension between the Jerusalem Christians and the new Christians in places like Corinth.  The Jerusalem Christians were mostly Jewish converts.  The new Christians in Corinth and other places where Paul was evangelizing were Gentile Christians. These two groups were often at odds because of their distinct backgrounds.  For instance, many of the Jewish Christians felt that the Gentiles should have to follow Jewish law to become Christians.  Many of the Gentile Christians were new to a monotheistic faith, which didn’t give them a lot of common ground…except of course, for their belief in Jesus. 

            Maybe that is why Paul didn’t spend a lot of time about who the money was going to.  But I think the bigger reason that Paul didn’t talk about where the collection was going was that Paul believed that there was one primary reason to give and it had nothing to do with who was receiving the collected money. The reason is found in our reading for today. Paul wrote, “For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes, he became poor, so that by his poverty, you might become rich.” He was appealing to the Corinthians not because of what kind of people they were, or even what the need was…but who they knew.  They knew Jesus Christ. 

The word “generous act” can also be translated to grace.  That Greek word for grace appears 10 times in chapter 8 and is translated to grace only a few times.   In our reading today, it’s translated to “generous undertaking” and “generous act.” I am sure the translator had his reasons, but I wonder if we lost something in not using the word grace over and over and over again.  Because that is what this whole reading is about.  Grace is the free, unearned gift that God gives us.  Grace is the gift that we do nothing to deserve. Grace is without limit.  It’s a gift that can only be fully received when it is shared. That is what grace is.

            Paul was telling the Corinthians that the reason they should give is because they have already received far more than they need.  “Jesus became poor, so that by his poverty, we might become rich.”  We often hear about Jesus being born to a poor family and we emphasize the barn where he was born as it points to his humble beginnings.  Yet when Paul talks about Jesus becoming poor….it was the act of leaving the riches of heaven, the power and comfort that must come with divinity.  Jesus left those riches to become human and experience the pain and anguish that all humans experience as well as the rejection and humiliation that came with death on the cross.  It’s so hard to wrap our minds around this, because we can’t fathom being divine in paradise.

            Imagine a time when you have been the happiest, most comfortable, least anxious, completely content that you have ever been.  Try to call that to mind. Then multiply that 100 times over. That is what Jesus gave up, to be here on this earth with us.  Jesus gave up everything so we could experience some of that joy and contentment that comes with knowing that we are beloved.  We are loved by an all powerful being who sacrificed a tremendous amount so we would have the opportunity to know that love.  When Paul told the Corinthians that the grace of God allowed them to become rich, he wasn’t talking about worldly riches.  He was talking about the richness of God’s grace, that gift that has no limit—no beginning nor end.

            Once you have experienced that kind of wealth, the abundance of God’s grace and love, then  of course you give it to others in need, of course you share what you have.  Because what do you do when something is overflowing, you provide a release valve, you release that abundance because you can’t possibly hold it all.  Paul was reminding the Corinthians of their abundance.  He told them to give not according to what they didn’t have, but what they have.  It seems so obvious, but how often do we start from a place of considering what we are missing, rather than what we have?

When Paul finally mentioned the need of the community he was collecting for, he said: “it is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need…”  Paul wasn’t asking Corinthians to give more than they had or even give to a point that would hurt them.  He simply asked them to consider their abundance according to the needs of others.  That is what Paul asks of us today.  That is what stewardship is…it’s how we care for what God has given us---always considering our own abundance and the needs of others.  But first and foremost, it’s knowing Jesus and what Jesus gave us when he came down to this earth.  That is what is always comes back to.  If we can remember that tremendous gift (that grace) then we will always have enough.

I want a better response to suffering: June 23

Job 38:1-11                                               Year B, Pentecost 5                                              

          The first time I read the Book of Job, I found it slightly unsatisfying. I was always told that if you want to understand why bad things happen to good people, this was the book you read. If you read the Book of Job with that expectation, there is a good chance you will be disappointed. First of all, the whole premise of the book is a bit confusing. It begins with God and Satan having a conversation about what a great guy Job is and how this is proof of the goodness of God’s creation.  Satan argues that Job is only good because God has given him everything he wants and needs.  God tells Satan that he can test him, he just can’t take his life.

And test him he does.  Poor Job is really put through the ringer.  He loses all his crops, his animals and his land—his entire livelihood.  Then his family is killed and he ends up covered in boils.  To make things worse, he has three friends who come and visit him and try to convince him that he must have done something wrong to have such horrible things happen to him---because after all, God is a just and merciful God.  Job refutes their arguments and continues to make his case that perhaps God is not a just God because he has done nothing to deserve this.  Job demands that God show Godself so that Job can make his case to God personally.  Finally, after 38 chapters, God shows up.     

          In the Old Testament, God likes to appear in a dramatic fashion and this story is no exception.  God answers Job out of a whirlwind.  When God speaks out of a whirlwind, or a storm, you know you are about to hear something significant.  While the text says that “God answered Job…” it’s not actually an answer to any of Job’s questions.  Instead of providing a clear answer, God comes with more questions (which was something that Jesus also did in the New Testament). 

If I was so sum up what God was asking Job, it would be with this one sentence “Who do you think you are?”  That’s how I initially read it.   God basically summarized creation in all its vastness and its intricacies, and then repeatedly asked, do you know how to do this…can you explain it? It feels like this magnificent flex on God’s part, like God boasting about all God can do and how little humans can do.  It’s almost a taunt.  “Gird up your loins like a man.” I always read that as basically saying, “put on your big boy pants.”

          I believe that part of the reason that we tend to read it that way is because that is how we have been taught to perceive God.  What’s the most common visual image of God? An old man in a robe with a long white beard sitting in a throne and looking down on us. Jesus tried to change that image for us, but it’s just ingrained in us---this image of a mighty enthroned God looking down on us.

Let me just get into the weeds for a second.  The Hebrew phrase that is translated to “Gird up your loins like a man” is an example of where the most literal translation might not be the best one, at least not for us today.  You could also read it as, “Present yourself in all vigor.”  The next line is, “I will question you and you shall declare to me.”  The Hebrew word translated to “declare to me” means, “make me to know.” You could read this as threat or even a challenge, or you could read it as God wanting to know Job, to understand him and God wanting Job to understand God.  Because if anything is clear from the past 38 chapters, Job desperately wants to understand God and God’s relationship with humanity. What I think God is trying to say with this poetic response is--- you can and should try to know me and help me know you, but the more you try to make sense of this, the farther you get from the truth.

Despite God’s unwillingness to provide a straightforward response and his encouragement that Job recognize his own limitations of understanding and perspective, God never tells Job that he was wrong to struggle with the unanswerable questions.  In fact, in the last chapter of the Book of Job when God was reprimanding Job’s friends for their overly simplistic theology, he commends Job for thinking rightly (42:7). This doesn’t mean that everything Job accused God of was right (it wasn’t), it means that God appreciated the struggle and the conversation that they had. Remember how our chapter begins…God wants to know Job and wants Job to know him. God wants a relationship, even if that relationship involves arguing and lamenting, and even some whining. 

          I started by saying that the first time I read Job, I found it unsatisfying. But it wasn’t just the first time.   There have been many times I have read it and been deeply unsatisfied by God’s response to Job’s suffering.  There is even a prayer in the book I wrote with my friend that tells God in his response to Job, “You can do better.”  I don’t think the Book of Job is a good response to human suffering.  It isn’t pastoral or comforting.  However, I do think it’s a good way to broaden our perspective and free ourselves from the burden of the need to understand how and why things happen. 

Perhaps we can use the story of Job as another opportunity to open ourselves to God, to open ourselves to the struggle that is innate to our relationship with God and also to remember never to give up. There are so many times in our lives when it would be so much easier to just give up on our faith, give up on following Jesus.  It’s hard.  God knows it’s hard and that is why God is always willing to engage in the conversation and to wrestle with us. God never answered Job’s question, but that doesn’t mean God didn’t care that Job was suffering. God listened to all of Job’s questions and accusations.  God even listened to Job’s friends. God stuck with Job through it all.

          In the last chapter, after God has spoken about the wonders of God’s creation and our inability to fathom it all, Job says, “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you…” In other words, now Job knows God.  He might never understand God or God’s ways, but he knows God---he sees God.  In the end, that was the only answer he needed.  It’s the only answer any of us needs. But it’s an answer that we have to fight for.  It’s worth the fight.  It’s worth the struggle.

Spreading like a weed: June 16, 2024

 Year B, Pentecost 4                                                                  Mark 4:26-34                                              

We use the word parable a fair amount when we discuss the bible.  Like many things, I am not sure we do a good job at defining it. Parables are stories, but they are more than that.  For a long time, I thought that parables were meant to help us understand Jesus’s point.  They were another way to teach. That is true to an extent, but often the parables are confusing, and that is not just because we are reading them in a different time and place.  Jesus’ message wasn’t always clear to those who were hearing the parables 2000 years ago.  Jesus was teaching something that was so new, so counterintuitive, there was an innate mystery in many of the stories he told. Sometimes it seemed like he was just trying to confuse people.  I think the purpose was to help people think differently. He was taking a conventional story and shaking it up. 

While his stories were confusing at times, the images that he used were familiar.  Chapter 4 of Mark has a lot of stories about seeds. This was an agrarian society, so talking about planting and harvesting would have made the message accessible. 

Jesus told two parables in our reading for today.  The first one seems rather mundane.  Someone scatters a seed, goes to sleep and it sprouts and grows.  The person who does the scattering doesn’t seem to know how it all works, he just knows that what he scatters grows. The next story is of the mustard seed.  Many of us know that story…or at least the image…faith the size of a mustard seed. It’s become a symbol in the Christian faith. That comparison to faith is actually in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, but not Mark.  Matthew and Luke also have this story about the mustard seed growing into something bigger, but it’s not connected with the idea that having faith the size of the mustard seed will allow you to move mountains. 

In Mark (as well as Matthew) the growth of the mustard seed is a way to describe the Kingdom of God.  It would be natural to assume that the Kingdom of God is heaven or the afterlife.  But the Kingdom of God is not relegated to what comes next---it’s also in the here and now.  Part of what Jesus was doing in telling these parables was teaching people how we can bring the Kingdom of God to our world and our community.

In Matthew, the tiny mustard seed becomes a tree.  In Luke, it becomes a huge tree.  In Mark, it’s the greatest of all shrubs.  That’s not as impressive as the huge tree, but still indicates that God has growth in mind for the Kingdom of God.  Over the years people have interpreted this parable as the success and growth of the church of God—which is the church getting bigger.  Yet what we know of organized religion over the past 50 years, is that it’s getting smaller.  Does that mean that the seed isn’t growing---that God’s work is not being done? Of course not.  Jesus was talking about the Kingdom of God, not the church. What Mark does is show us a different way to perceive growth and success.

Here is the interesting thing about Mark. The Greek word that is translated to shrub is also (perhaps more accurately) translated to plant or vegetable.  The mustard plants that would have been growing in Galilee looked a lot more like yellow flowers than shrubs.  In some circles, they are classified as an invasive plant because they just take over. It’s like mint or ground ivy. It’s more of a weed than anything else. This is not to say that it didn’t have its purposes.   The mustard plant could be used as medicine…but there was typically more than was needed. It was also a tough plant, very difficult to kill.  No one then would have considered this a valuable crop. That’s why this parable would have been so confusing, because the listeners knew all this.  They were probably wondering why he chose the mustard seed and plant when he could have talked about a seed that grew into something truly impressive.

There are many reasons that churches and cathedrals were built to be tall. Partly it was about symbolizing a connection to God---reaching up toward heaven. But I wonder if it was more basic than that.  People wanted them to be seen from far away, to be an important land mark in the community. These tall building were meant to represent our importance in the community.  In some ways, these tall buildings became a symbol of what we wanted the church to be.

Yet I wonder if we have missed the point, just a little.  What if Jesus was telling people in this parable not how high they could go, but how far and wide they could go…how much this message was meant to spread and take root, even in the places that didn’t want any more weeds in their soil. The Roman Empire definitely didn’t want a new religion.  They didn’t want this faith that taught that all are equal, all are welcome, all are beloved----spreading across their lands.  In some ways, our world still doesn’t want that.  Many would prefer if faith was confined to these building where it can be easily ignored.  And even some of us in these buildings would rather our faith be a beautiful orchid than an invasive weed.

I have heard the Episcopal Church referred to as a niche denomination or even a boutique and there is a part of me that agrees.  It’s not for everyone.  Maybe it’s our traditional worship, or our unwillingness to teach basic messages and repeat things over and over.  Maybe that is not what most people want.  But the message that we have, the message of compassion, forgiveness, sacrificial love, and belonging…that is a message that the whole world could use.  I don’t know a single person who could not benefit from that message.  Are we ever going to convince everyone of how critical the weekly Eucharist is? No. Do we need to? No.

I believe that Christ Church and many churches should consider how we can both stay true to our rich traditions of music, sacraments and thoughtful theology while also finding ways to get closer to the ground, be that invasive mustard plant that can grow just about anywhere and is almost impossible to eradicate.   

You know the other thing about the mustard plant…they are bright and lovely. They bring color to wherever they grow.  Philly needs some more irrepressible color and joy. I mean, this city is colorful in some unique ways, but I am talking about bursts of color.  The mustard plant has the power to transform an entire landscape.[1]  So does the Kingdom of God. Let’s bring color, tenacity, compassion, joy, and love to our community.  May it spread like a beautiful invasive weed.   

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[1] Commentary on Mark 4:26-34 - Working Preacher from Luther Seminary by Matt Skinner. This commentary was integral for my sermon.