No hero here: October 26, 2025

Luke 18: 9-14                                                                 Year C, Pentecost 19                                                        

              Every time stewardship Sunday comes up, I look at the readings with a little more trepidation than usual.  Early on in my ministry I made a promise to myself that I would always preach the text of the day. I felt that would hold me accountable, rather than just talking about what I wanted to talk about on any given day.   Sometimes, that is really inconvenient, especially today, because it’s hard to fit a stewardship sermon into these texts (but I am going to try).

          Jesus loved to tell parables to illustrate a point.  The author of the Gospel of Luke used them more than any other Gospel writer.  Often parables seem like they were meant to be confusing. Sometimes they are confusing because they don’t translate well to our modern context.  Sometimes, they seem very obvious, but they’re not.

          That is the situation we have today.  The first line sets the scene, but in a kind of ambiguous way. “Jesus told a parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.”  I have some questions. Who are these people?  Are they his disciples? Are they Jewish leadership who might be trying to trap him?   It would be natural to assume that Jesus was talking to Jewish leadership—the Pharisees, as there is a Pharisee mentioned in this parable.  Jesus often used parables when communicating with the Pharisees.  However, Jesus was usually a little more subtle with Pharisees. I don’t think he would have told them a story where they were the main character.  I believe the author of Luke intended this to be vague so that it would apply to lots of different kinds of people.  Most of us have trusted in ourselves from time to time…and maybe just once or twice, regarded another person with contempt.  This parable is for all of us.

          It seems straightforward, but isn’t, because they rarely are.  There are two characters…one is the righteous Pharisee and the other is the penitent tax collector. If you have heard enough of my sermons, you know that I like to be careful in how I talk about Pharisees. They were vilified in the gospels to some extent and that led some Christians to vilify all Jews.  We know that was not Jesus’ intent. 

The Pharisee’s prayer sounds obnoxious because he’s comparing himself to others.  It sounds like he’s bragging. But then he goes on to say, “I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.”  First of all, how many of you know someone who loves to tell you how great they feel doing intermittent fasting? Are they any worse than this Pharisee? Fasting was only required a few times a year in the Jewish faith.  This man was going above and beyond.  He wasn’t doing it to kick start his metabolism, it was a form of prayer.  The reason fasting is a spiritual discipline is because it focuses the mind and helps people focus on God.  He was praying and that’s a good thing. Then there is the giving.  This is why this is an unfortunate text for stewardship.   The guy who gives a tenth of his income is the one who isn’t justified.   He is righteous…but not justified.  Is it because he gives, or is it because he relies on what he can give, rather than what God has already given?

          It’s the tax collector who goes home justified.   Now, most people probably don’t love the IRS, but in general, we don’t perceive their profession as sinful.  During Jesus’ time, the tax collectors were often Jewish people who were working for the Roman government.  They were collecting taxes from their fellow Jews.  That money supported the Roman occupation of their land.  To make things worse, often tax collectors would take even more than the Romans were asking for to line their pockets.  Given the guilt this man was experiencing, there is a good chance he was one of those people.  Yet it’s him who is justified.  Was there something magic in this prayer, the prayer that is often referred to as the “sinner’s prayer?” “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” It wasn’t the prayer itself.

          Let’s return to the first line of this reading.  “Jesus told a parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.”  It’s not about either of their professions or even their characters.  It’s about with whom they were putting their.

          For all we know, the Pharisee was righteous.  He was following the law, praying, worshipping and being generous.  He was making sure that he was doing all the right things because he wanted to be right.  Righteousness is about what we accomplish, what we can earn and do.  It’s not a bad thing.  It’s actually a good thing to some extent.  But where we go wrong is when we use our righteousness to put other people down.  Where we go wrong is when we think that we can do this all ourselves.  We don’t need God’s forgiveness or grace because we are good on our own.  We still might worship God because that is the right thing to do, but we don’t worship God because we need God.

          The tax collector wasn’t righteous, but he went home justified.  The difference between being justified and righteous is that it’s God who justifies and if God justifies then we are counted as righteous no matter what we have done.  The tax collector went home justified because he recognized his own need and that he was nothing without God’s love and forgiveness.  The Pharisee didn’t bother asking for forgiveness because he didn’t realize he needed it.

          You might be thinking, well I am definitely not  like that Pharisee and you might be even thinking of a couple people who you have known who are a bit like the Pharisee and isn’t it great that you aren’t like them. And if you are thinking that, well then you have committed the same sin as the Pharisee.  That’s the little twist of the parable.   That’s why it’s not as simple as it appears.  If you walk away thinking there is a hero in this story and there is definitely someone who is wrong, then it’s time to reframe.

          The last line of this reading says, “I tell you, this man (the tax collector) went down to his home justified rather than the other…” If you look at the Greek that is translated to “rather than”, you will see that it could also mean “along side.”  It would read, “I tell you, this man went down to his home justified along side the other…”  There is no winner or loser.  There is no hero of this story.  They left along side one another.  Maybe they were 20 yards apart not daring to look at one another.  But in God’s eyes, they were the same, sinners in need of love and forgiveness. 

          It’s the same with this church community.  We are all in this together.  Some of us might be really good at following the rules and checking all the boxes.   We might be comfortable in these pews, confident that we belong here. Others might have had a rougher road and feel like we don’t belong here, that we aren’t good enough. In the end, we are all sinners in need of redemption. None of us are good enough on our own.  It’s God who makes us good.  It’s God who justifies. 

The thing about church is we need all sorts.  We need the people who are good at following the rules.  We need the people who know what it is to be desperate and to rely on God because God is the most steady thing in their lives.  We need the people who can give generously and we need the people who can’t provide financially, but can give in a number of other ways.  We are all in this together. 

          We give not because it’s the right thing to do, but because we are better people when we give.  We give not to be righteous, but because we have already been justified by the one who gave everything.

Taxes, Money and Giving: October 21, 2017

Year A Pentecost 20                                                         

 

            I have never liked talking about money.  I know very few clergy who do, but there are some who are better than others. I am not one of them.  This is why I don’t talk about pledging very often. Last week was our Celebration Sunday, which is when we celebrate what God has given us by giving back. To put it more bluntly, it is when we ask people to turn in their pledges.  It seems that I talked about it so little, some people had no idea what was going on.  This was a lesson for me.  It was more of a reminder, because I know better.  First of all, preaching about money and giving is a good and necessary thing.  It is a huge part of life.  It is what God asks of us.  God asks us to be joyful givers.  Jesus talked more about money than he did about the poor or loving your neighbor. So I know that I need to talk about money. But then I thought, oh well, celebration Sunday was last Sunday, I can talk about it next year. Then I saw the Gospel for today.  Taxes, money, giving.  This is proof that God has a sense of humor.

            It is a clear from the very first verse of this passage what is going on.  “The Pharisees went and plotted to entrap Jesus in what he said.”  Over the last few weeks, we have heard several parables that Jesus shared.  In most of these parables, the Pharisees were not portrayed well.  They came across as hypocritical, narrow minded and just plain wrong.  The Pharisees could not let these teachings continue, so they came up with a plan.  They devised the perfect question to entrap Jesus and then recruited Herodians to be with them when they asked the question. 

While we do not know a lot about the Herodians, we know that they were associated with King Herod.  They were Jewish, but were perceived to be closely allied with the Romans who had appointed Herod to be the king of the Jews.  This was especially offensive to most Jews because only God could appoint a king of the Jewish people.  The Pharisees and the Herodians did not usually get along. Thus to have these two groups working together implied that Jesus had upset not just the Pharisees and Chief Priests, but the Roman leadership as well.

            In this nation, we are divided on taxes.  How much should they be? Where should the income from the taxes go? In Jesus time, the Jewish people were extremely burdened by taxes.  Scholars estimate that there were 3-4 different taxes and most of the income from those taxes went to the Romans.  The Jewish tax money was helping pay for their imprisonment. I think we can all agree that would not be something we would support in this country.  The question was, “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” If Jesus answered the question by saying that it was lawful to pay taxes to the Romans, he would have upset the Jews.  He would have lost many of his followers.  If he said that it was not lawful, he would have most likely been arrested by the Romans.  There was absolutely no good way to answer this question.   Jesus took another tactic.

            He told them, “Show me the coin used for the tax.”  In asking for a coin, he was first of all admitting that he did not have any coins.  Someone from the group who was trying to trap him with this tricky question handed him a denarius.  A denarius is a Roman coin.  It would have had a picture of Caesar with the words, “Tiberius Caesar, Son of the Divine Augustus Pontifex Maximus.”  This coin had  an engraved image of a Roman god, an idol.  Just having this coin would have technically meant that any Jew holding it would be breaking the first two commandments. 

            In some ways, the question about whether it was ok for Jews to pay taxes to the Roman was a fair question.  Yet the fact that the Jews asking the questions were the ones holding the coin indicates their hypocrisy.  They were asking if it was ok for them to participate in a system that they were already participating in.  That is why Jesus called them hypocrites.  Jesus really did not like hypocrites.  Remember, Jesus did not have the coin.  He had to ask for it.

            When he had it, he asked them whose image was on the coin.   It was the Emperor’s image.  Jesus then provided his now famous answer, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” In other words, if it has the emperor’s face on it, give it back to him.  A lot of people have used this response to help explain the divide between church and state or sacred and secular; as if Jesus was drawing a line between what was God’s and what was Caesar’s.  That was not the case.

            Jesus asked whose image is on the coin.  Whose image.  Think about the first chapter of Genesis. Genesis takes us through all of God’s creation.  After creating earth, water, plants, animals, God created male and female in his image.  We are made in the image of God.  Therefore when Jesus tells them to give the coin to Caesar because that is whose image is on the coin…well that is a very small thing compared to what and who bears the image to God.  We give coins to the leaders of this earth, but we give ourselves to God.  There is no divide between the sacred and the secular because every part of creation is sacred. 

            The reason talking about stewardship and pledges is difficult is not just because clergy don’t like to talk about money; it’s that talking about what stewardship really means is far too daunting.  Everything belongs to God.  We earn nothing because all we have is a gift from God.  That is a difficult thing to wrap your mind around especially when you have worked very hard for what you have.  But it also explains why giving of ourselves is part of what we do in church. 

In my last church, we had a very outgoing stewardship chair.  He had a deep southern accent and was a little pushy at times, but always charming.  He loved the church.  Once I saw him sidle up to someone in the hall before the service.  It was not someone I saw regularly, not someone I would have expected to pledge.  He put his hand on the man’s shoulder and said, “Dan, do we have your commitment.” Dan looked a little confused.  The stewardship chair stopped so Dan would have to look at him.  “Your commitment.  Are you committed to this church?” He was so earnest.  It even made me uncomfortable.  Yet it made me think of what it would be like to be cornered by Jesus.  What would it be like to have Jesus pull you aside, look into your eyes and say, “Do I have your commitment?”   That is what he asks each one of us every minute of every day.  Are we committed to him? Only you know that answer.    

Letting go: Mark 12:38-44

Year B, Pentecost 24                                                         November 8, 2015

            Our Gospel reading is a deceivingly difficult text.  At first glance, it seems like a gift from heaven. Here we are in the middle of our fall stewardship campaign and the Gospel reading is the widow’s mite.  Everyone knows that story…the woman who has little gives all she has to her faith community. It’s almost like we purposefully picked this reading for this time of the year.  But then you have that darn context again.  Right before this lovely story about the widow is Jesus telling the crowd to beware of the scribes who like to walk around in long robes….who devour widow’s houses for the sake of appearances say long prayers.  These scribes that Jesus is warning about are the same scribes who might benefit from the gift that this poor widow is making.  Furthermore Jesus is accusing them of taking advantage of the plight of widows like her and here she is giving everything she has to them. It seems odd that Jesus would support such a action.

            We hear a lot about widows in the New Testament as well as the Old Testament.   The Bible tells us again and again how important it is to care for widows.  There were several reasons this group of people received special attention in the Bible.  Now when we think of widows, we consider the emotional ramifications, the loss one experiences when he or she loses their spouse.  While that was certainly a factor at this time, the primary social concern was related to caring for the physical needs of the widows. 

At this time, women could not inherit money or property.  If her husband died, she would be left with nothing.  If she had a son, the property would all go to the son and the expectation would be that the son would care for his mother.  However, if there was no son, then there was no safety net.  If the woman was still young and able to have children, she might be able to marry again.  If this was not possible, then her options were limited to: depending on the kindness of male relatives, begging on the streets, or becoming a prostitute.  Working was not an option for women and there was no social security or Medicare.  Widows epitomized what it was to be completely vulnerable and dependent on others for their own well-being.  This is why the people of God were commanded again and again to care for widows. 

In the Gospel for today, we are told that not only was this woman a widow, but she was a poor widow, which tells us that she had no one caring for her.  She had nothing except for two coins.  She gave both of those coins to the treasury of the temple.  The traditional understanding of this text (and the one that is most convenient for stewardship sermons) is that she was a model of sacrificial giving.  She gave everything she had to God.  Jesus was holding her up as an example for all of us to follow. The more critical interpretation is that Jesus was using her to illustrate how unjust the system was, another example of how the poor and vulnerable were abused.  Right after he pointed her out, he predicted the destruction of the temple.  Why would he encourage her or anyone else to give to a temple that was about to be destroyed? 

The more I wrestled with these two interpretations, the more frustrated I became. I realized that I could not with integrity preach the traditional interpretation of the text with the emphasis on sacrificial giving but I also felt that she had more to teach us than what was wrong with the world at that time. 

We had a funeral recently and I was reading the liturgy and I came to a part that I have never given much consideration.  “For if we have life, we are alive in the Lord, and if we die, we die in the Lord.  So, then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s possession.”  We are the Lord’s possession.  It seems strange to me that we find comfort in this statement after someone has died because I am pretty sure there is no other time when we refer to ourselves or others as the Lord’s possession.  People would probably balk at that idea. Nobody wants to be someone else’s possession, even if that someone else is God.   It is only when we lose someone to death that we can allow for the possibility that they are now God’s possession.

That reminded me of the widow in this story.  All the commentators and scholars, when they talked about her being a widow, it was only to explain her plight, her financial circumstance.  It was never about the fact that this woman had lost not only her financial stability, but her partner in life. I know that there are many people here who have suffered that loss, or the loss of a child, a parent, a sibling, a close friend.  Most of us have lost someone who is precious to us.  I can only imagine the pain that must come with losing a partner in life.  In my limited experience with loss, what I have learned is that even in our grief when we acknowledge the person as the Lord’s possession, we still have to find the strength to let go, to truly accept that they are the Lord’s possession.  We have to let go of something that was once ours to hold and give it to God.  When you have experienced that kind of loss, then letting go of a few coins, even if they are the only coins you possess, isn’t that big a deal…not much of a sacrifice at all. 

I wonder if this widow, in her intimacy with loss and grief, knew something that the great scholars of her day and ours cannot quite grasp.  Whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s possession.  If we can understand that while we are still living, then we become free from everything.  When we declare that we are the possession of the Lord, then we no longer feel as possessive about what we have or think we have.  This woman is held up as a model of sacrificial giving.  Perhaps that is true, but not because she sacrificed a few coins, but because she learned to let go.  She learned the hard way, but she learned.  I imagine that is one of the hardest lessons in life, letting go of people, letting go of control, letting go of things, letting go of independence, letting go of prestige…. The way we find strength to let go is to trust that we are not letting go into some abyss.  We are letting go so that God can take hold.  In letting go, we are giving…we are giving to God.   

Where's the joy? October 18, 2015

Year B, Pentecost 21                                                                         
Job 38: 1-7, 34-41 & Mark 10:35-45                                                             

            When our stewardship chair (Eleanor) and I decided on a date for the ministry fair and the kick off to our Fall stewardship season, I immediately looked at the readings for the day.  Since our theme is joy, I was hoping I could find something related to joy in the readings.  When I saw the Old Testament reading was Job, I knew I was in trouble.   The only thing worse would have been the Book of Lamentations.  But I thought, well this is the end of Job….this is where God finally answers Job’s prayer.  Surely this is the good news we have been waiting for.  As I mentioned last week, the primary question that Job had was not why all these bad things were happening, but where God was in the midst of the pain and suffering. One would hope that when that answer came, there would be relief, possibly even joy.

            Then I read the text and it did not make me joyful.   The text begins with, “Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind…” First of all, it is almost never good news when God enters the conversation with a storm.  It’s not like the storm was a coincidence. This was God’s storm.  From the storm, God said, “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me.”  That is not the tone that I was expecting.  I have read this text many times and every time it comes up, it shocks me.  To begin, God told Job that he knew nothing.  Then there is the “gird up your loins” line which seems a little peculiar.  In biblical times this phrase was used when people were preparing for battle, when great courage was expected.  God was basically saying, get ready because this is going to get uncomfortable.  This is not going to be an easy conversation.

            God proceeded to ask Job over 70 questions…none of which Job could answer…none of which he was expected to answer.  The first question is a good example of what comes, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?”  If I was to sum up the questions, it would probably come down to, “Do you have any idea who you are talking to?”  One would think that would be an obvious question.  Job has been questioning God. But what God is saying is that any knowledge that Job may think he has is a tiny tiny fraction of what God knows.  It is a mere drop in the ocean of God’s vast knowledge. And I understand that (as much as my tiny tiny human brain can) but I still find myself disturbed by God’s response.  After all that Job has been through, I would think that it would not be too much to ask for a little compassion on the part of God.  We know that God is a loving God, but that side of God is not evident in this reading.

            I could say, well this is the Old Testament vengeful and wrathful God.  Jesus brought us the softer and gentler side of God.  Yet I do not really believe that.  I believe that the God we meet in the Old Testament is the very same God that we meet in the New Testament.  It’s just different sides to a very complex and incomprehensible God.  At the same time, as Christians we have received some special intel from God.  God came in the form of a man so that we could get to know God.  God wanted to be known.  God also knew that as humans, we needed to know him.  We need a relationship with God. So God with his infinite power and infinite knowledge was born to a peasant in the form of a baby and then lived among real people, people like Job, who wanted to be in the presence of God. 

            This is not to say that once Jesus came in the form of man, we all got with the program.  We can see from the Gospel reading that even the disciples were still having trouble understanding.  Jesus had just told them about his death so they would understand the kind of sacrifice he was making.  They responded by asking him whether they could be in the seat of power when he received glory.  While Job could not understand the God of absolute power, the disciples could not understand a God who acted as a servant.  Not only that, but Jesus expects us all to be servants.

            Where is joy…where is the joy in a God who comes from the storm and makes us uncomfortable?  Where is the joy in a God who asks us to sacrifice and serve?  It’s not a happy or carefree joy, but it is joy.  There is joy because we have a God who is present in our lives.  When God asked Job all of those questions, the questions referenced many of Job’s questions.  God had been listening to all that ranting and raving.  While Jesus has asked us to make sacrifices and serve others, he is only asking what he has already done.  We have a God who listens to us, knows us, wants us to know him, and who wants us to experience joy, not only here but in the life to come.  

            One of the questions that God asked Job was, “Who laid [the earth’s] cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted with joy?”  The joy that God brings is bigger than us.  We have a God to whom the stars sing and the heavenly beings shout with joy.  And that same God who has the power to create the stars-- came down from heaven so that he could heal the sick, feed the hungry, give hope to the hopeless, forgive the sins of many and then be insulted, betrayed, abandoned, beaten and killed.  There is nothing we can do, nothing we can say to a thank a God who did all of that. 

There is another hymn that is sung around Christmas that I love.  The last verse is:

 What can I give Him, poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;

If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;

Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.[1]

Our God, the creator of all things, the salvation of all people continues to ask something of us.  God thinks that we have something to give.  There is joy in that.  God thinks that we have something to give.  Who are we to question God?

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[1] In the Bleak Midwinter, Christian Rossetti