Twenty-First Sunday After Pentecost
Proper 25 Sunday October 26th
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
Matthew 22:33-46
We all have had people in our lives who have influenced us. Sometimes we’re fortunate enough to recognize years later that a bit of wisdom along the way passed on by one wiser then we, may have stuck and even become a bit of the fabric that is woven into who we are. Such I believe is the greatest complement to those who take on roles in our lives that lead to our betterment. A teacher, a parent, family member, Priest, coach, etc.. Dan Novey was my high school English teacher and coach of the basketball team. In the face of the competition and in life he taught me a foundational piece of wisdom I recognize I strive to live out as part of my fabric. When forces in life, wether on the basketball court or in our daily lives, when things are aligning to confuse, get the better of us, stir our anxieties and fears, provoke the worst in us, his mantra: “Cooler heads prevail”.
“Cooler heads prevail”, stay focused, calm, remember who you are, what you are made of, and move forward with integrity, clarity, and intention! “Cooler heads prevail”! This certainly would have been the mantra for Jesus as he engages a multitude of opportunities designed to confuse him, get the better of him, stir his anxieties and fear, and potentially provoke the worst in him. In the sections of Matthew’s Gospel we have read the last few weeks, we find Jesus fully engaged and at the crescendo of his earthly proclamation of the Kingdom he is enfleshed to usher in.
Remember the engagement! He enters the temple in a fit of anger, he cleanses it, and begins to teach by telling parables that seem to be pointed directly at the authorities of the day, reminding all faithful people of the promise God has entrusted them with to live faithful, compassionate, and just lives, particularly remembering to care for the broken, downtrodden, and despairing of God’s creation! He reminds them through parables about vineyards, and wedding banquets, that God’s craving desire is to have God’s creation live in dramatically just way, and that those who may believe they’ve inherited a place in that equation, just may be missing or have forgotten the essential truths of that promise!
Jesus then finds himself tested, repeatedly (and understandably) by the authorities of the day! First the Pharisees bating him on issues of politics, How do you feel about Rome, and the taxes asked of us to pay. A political question designed to get him either in trouble with the authorities of the day or with those among his audience who may be offended by the tax altogether.
The Sadducees in a part of this progression not included in the lectionary, seek to trap Jesus in a theological conundrum. If one is married and his spouse dies, then remarries, in the resurrection, to whom are they married! The Sadducees didn’t believe in resurrection, but Jesus keeping his head, takes the opportunity not to take the bate on the ridiculous notion of having to establish a family court in heaven, but to remind his engagers the Scriptures clearly speak to the “amness” of God, the God of the living! In this life and the next, the very nature of God invites relationship with the living, in this life and the next!
Finally, in today’s Gospel, Jesus is approached by a lawyer, a technocrat and interpreter of the law, who invites Jesus into the opportunity to declare which ONE commandment is the most important! “Cooler heads” prevail in this final engagement as Jesus refuses to take the bate and hang on ONE commandment but cuts to the heart of the matter of God and God’s Kingdom, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and with all your mind, and Love your Neighbor as yourself!” One these two commandments Jesus says, you will find the prongs from which all of the law and all the writings of the Prophets hang! It is these two commandments that uphold it all in other words!
So, Cooler heads prevail, and out of the engagement the fabric upon which Jesus mission hangs emerges and there becomes that from which all things hang! And so it is for us!
Out of this encounter Jesus leaves those who would follow him and us with the wonderful simplicity of a clear way to live a faithful life! Simple? Love the Lord your God with every piece of your fiber and Love your neighbor as yourself! Seems simple enough, at least until we actually try to live it out! On these two commandments everything else hangs! Oh my.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this life Jesus invites us into as followers of his way. I’ve been thinking of the promises we are asked to make and then try to live! I am mindful that when I preside at wedding for example of the high bar that is set when two people in love dare to set their union in a Christian context! I am more and more mindful of just how ridiculous and demanding the promises are that two Christians make in public as they enter into marriage! Those of you who are married, you remember don’t you? Will you love, comfort, honor and keep, in sickness and in health, and forsake all others along the way. Will you pursue these promises holding them from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, loving and cherishing! Oh to do these things, when things are good, when things are bad, not just when everything is rosy, but even when everything is not so rosy. All the time I’ll pursue these promises, not that there won’t be other offers that come my way, but I promise to forsake them, and not only will I do it when I want to do it, but even when I don’t feel like doing it at all! Oh my! Oh and by the way, this promise we make, is not just for the next 24 hours or even 24 days or months, but until we are parted by death! RIDICULOUS!
And then there is the Baptismal Covenant! What promises we make there! Seeking and serving Christ in ALL persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves. Respecting the dignity of EVERY human being! We promise to seek and serve Christ in ALL persons, and respect the dignity of EVERY human? Are you kidding me? We promise so in following Jesus and such promises seem a high bar to meet at least and RIDICULOUS at best.
All would seem very ridiculous out of context, but we do have a context! The context of course is the context in which God chooses to Love us! Ridiculously! We begin our journey into the mystery of faithfulness to God’s dream for our lives and dare to make audacious promises ONLY when we begin to encounter the way God loves us!
Mother Teresa of Calcutta wrote of this mysterious love when she said, “I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love. Isn’t that the Christian mystery! To be in relationship with God through Jesus Christ is to understand that as we love one another as God has loved us we are invited into the paradox of Love! Think about it! The deepest places of your hearts entrenched with those you most deeply love. I am guessing that this love has invited you on more than one occasion into places of hurt! The deeper you love the riskier it is. WE Know the deepest Loves we experience sometimes hurt, because it touches the deepest places of our hearts and souls. A piece of us is given away, and that sometimes hurts, but when we take the risk to put the chips of love on the table for the growth , betterment, and well being of another, love grows, and the hurt is pale in comparison.
God knew this as he risked in love in Jesus Christ who with us would suffer so that love would have its way!
Frederick Buechner in his work, The Magnificent Defeat, speaks of this ridiculous love this way:
The love for equals is a human thing – of friend for friend, brother for brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles.
The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing – the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world.
The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing –to love those who succeed where we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, the love of the poor for the rich, of the black man for the white man. The world is always bewildered by its saints.
And then there is love for the enemy – love for the one who does not love you, but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain. The tortured’s love for the torturer. This is God’s love. It conquers the world.
I began this sermon with the mantra “Cooler heads prevail”. Jesus invites us into an opportunity to see clearly the Kingdom so difficult to be faithful to. The way in which God loves us gives us the context in which we come to understand and believe we can possibly live into an experience of being loved and loving in powerful ways.
It is the last Sunday in October! The beautiful light on the trees, the crispness in the air, and the multitude of letters and wonderful witnesses also have brought you into an awareness that it is our annual stewardship giving campaign time. This day is “supposed” to be your stewardship sermon. I pray that you have ears to hear that it is exactly that! The heart of the stewardship matter is being invited into a ridiculous love that emboldens us to live ridiculously!
I leave you with the words of Mother Teresa of Calcutta as we continue this journey of faith and dare to live in love of God and neighbor.
Let us more and more insist on raising funds of love, of kindness, of understanding, of peace. Money will come if we seek first the Kingdom of God - the rest will be given.
Amen.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Monday, October 20, 2008
Proper 24/Pentecost 23
October 19, 2008
The Ven. Richard I Cluett
Isaiah 45:1-7 ~ Matthew 22:15-22
Let's review for a moment what was going on in the time of Cyrus and in the time of Jesus. A littler review won't hurt, will it?
The Isaiah passage is the part of the Isaiah prophecy known as Second Isaiah and it was written in the time of the Babylonian Captivity of the people of Israel. For generations Israel has been captive in a foreign land, held completely at the mercy of a foreign power. They had lost whatever self-confidence, self-assurance they had as a people, as a nation and now were living at the mercy of these foreign powers, forced to live lives foreign to their own ways. They were at the mercy – and there was none.
Into that situation Isaiah speaks a word of hope that their deliverance will surely come and it will come from a direction they never could possibly have imagined. Common wisdom was that if, indeed, Persia was going to conquer Babylon, the only change for the Israelites would be at whose mercy they now would be forced to live; a change in masters only. Isaiah prophesizes that Persia, and Cyrus in particular, will be the means of their deliverance into freedom and return to their homeland.
So don't lose faith. God is God and has not and will not leave his people bereft.
In the time of Jesus, Israel is once again in the grasp of a foreign power, living at the mercy of Rome; Roman governors, Roman soldiers, Roman tax collectors, Roman judges. Living at the mercy of other's power, as were their forbearers, except this time it is in their own land.
The Herodians, known to us as King Herod and his brothers and cousins, were Jews who governed on behalf of Rome. The Pharisees were strict constructionists of Jewish faith, life and law, but were not above cooperating with the powers-that-be to protect themselves. And so we have the trick question in today's gospel.
The context of their encounter is the hopelessness of living at the mercy of foreign powers, with no hope of deliverance, no great warrior on the horizon; blind to the possibility that ultimate deliverance, true freedom would be brought in the person of the carpenter from Galilee – in Jesus.
So there you have the Cliff Notes summary of today's scripture and the question remains, "What has that to do with us?"
Let's look at some current context for our lives today. How did you feel when gas prices were racing up in cost to $4 and $5 dollar levels? Did you feel able to change the course or did you feel at the mercy of international and corporate powers?
How did you feel when the mortgage crisis hit and the culpability of banking institutions in the housing collapse was made known and clear to be appallingly malicious and rapacious? Did you feel able to make a difference or did you feel at the mercy of institutional powers?
How did you feel when you realized that we were going down the slippery slope of recession and none of our leaders would own up to it and the policies that brought it about? Could you do anything or did you feel at the mercy of uncaring governmental powers?
How are you feeling in the rollercoaster debacle of the worldwide stock market, and the collapse of credit, and what it means for life today and for the foreseeable future? Do you feel in charge of your destiny or do you feel at the mercy of powers?
The Associated Pres reported this week, "The world's poorest people will be hungrier, sicker and have fewer jobs as a result of the global financial crisis, and cash-strapped aid agencies will be less able to help… The charities that provide food, medicine and other relief … say cutbacks have already started, but it will take months or more before the full impact is felt in the poorest countries…"
Sorry. When I began writing this sermon I didn't set out to be depressing, and I may have achieved that with some of you. But I do want us to realize that we, too, all of us, live at the mercy of powers beyond ourselves as our forbearers did in their day; powers mediated by individuals, institutions, computer buying and selling programs, governments, etc; many of whom operate solely in terms of their own self-interest.
We are all at the mercy of powers beyond ourselves, we all live at the mercy of forces outside ourselves, so "What do we do? Do we wait for deliverance? Do we give in to the cynicism of the age? Do we buy into the Greed Creed of the powerful? Despair? Hope? Look in the usual places for a savior who will make it all better, make it all like it was? Or do we go back to the basics, to what we know and believe and have bet our lives on day in and day out until this very day?
In the church calendar we are creeping up on Advent, just a few short weeks away when we prepare to celebrate the Incarnation. Remember that God did send the Messiah. That God did redeem the world. That the baby grew up, that he gave his all for us, and that he is coming again to judge the world – with a judgment of light, not of darkness, a judgment of hope, not despair, a judgment of life, not of death. It is a judgment of rejoicing, not of weeping, a judgment that "none shall hurt in all my holy mountain…" It is the judgment of the God who is Creator, Savior, and Power of Life.
So where do you look for the power to claim your life, the power to live your life, the power to share the stuff of your life your life with those in need?
Look to the One who is faithful and will deliver and keep on keeping on; doing what you know and believe is good and right and just and true; and sharing some of what you have that others may have some too. And God who is faithful and just will deliver.
Monday, October 06, 2008
Proper 22- October 5, 2008 "Money"
Sermon: Sunday October 5, 2008 Proper 22 year A Matthew 21:33-46
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
The Cathedral Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
I recently visited a website, www.pennyearned.com.” Perhaps this was a giving in to two days of stock market collapse and the media focus on such. I could not escape the reality of giving in to the temptation of focus on MONEY! “Money makes the world go ‘round” is one of the oldest of sayings, and right now there seems to be a whole lot of uncertainty about how well the world may be going ‘round, particularly if one approaches the world with such a view that money is the primary thing that makes the world go ‘round. So, I visited such websites and found there are 15 top songs of all time written on the subject of money. I share the top 5:
Take the Money and Run, Steve Miller Band
Why don’t you get a Job, Offspring
Can’t tell me nothing, Kanye West
Money for Nothing, Dire Straits
Money, Pink Floyd
In each of these “masterpieces” of music, various world views about money are shared! Everything from the reality that to make your way in the world with security you need money, to the abuse and ill effects of having too much money, to the sometimes seeming absurdity of who gets money for seemingly trivial acts, to the fantasy of landing more money than we ever dreamed or imagined as a goal in life, and finally one song even raises the possibility of the interplay between God, our money, and responsibility. (“Can’t tell me nothing” by Kanye West.) One thing can be said for sure, as a people we do actually need some money to make our way, and to another extreme we often are invited into a world view that money actually can bring us happiness, security, well-being and utopia.
We are entering the season of our annual stewardship program! This you will hear much about in the coming weeks! For some, this season invites us inevitably into a conversation about money, for after all, an unavoidable reality of such a program is asking us to look once more at money! For some, one approach to such a conversation can be “cut and dried.” Money makes the church’s mission go! It is true we need money to make the church’s life go! To some this is a seemingly easy conversation with some difficult money realities. Here at the Cathedral, for example, the treasurer reports to us that as per our last year’s budget, we allocated $954,000 to carry out our mission, pay our salaries, fund our programs, pay our utilities, maintain our buildings, and take our part in diocesan and national church life and missions. Where did this money come from? From the faithful and generous response of parishioners, $634,000 came through pledges, direct contributions and open offerings! This, by the way, is an amazing increase of 20% since 2005, when this same number was $532,000. Thank you and thanks be to God! Where else does this money come from? Because of generous and thoughtful stewards, $216,000 comes to us through estate and planned gifts that generate income from interest on reasonable endowment monies that can be used to help carry out our mission. Another $104,000 comes from principal of endowment monies, which of course is a mixed blessing. This figure does not account for other withdrawals to meet unplanned emergency maintenance items. The blessing of this $104,000 being many churches do not have such funds to draw from. The challenge is the more you take the quicker that money is exhausted, the lower the principal, and the less interest income generated that you are relying upon for other parts of the “pie” to make up the total budget.
Money! If the first part of that conversation is “cut and dried,” then in terms of the conversation for some rests reasonably in a world view that to rely on principal means that “we do not have enough” money long term to do things the way we are doing them, or “we do have enough” money to do what we are doing, but not without long term consequences. From a “money” standpoint then, as we take seriously the challenge of proclaiming God’s Kingdom, our challenge is to figure out how to fund our cause and/or cut our costs and do so in such a way that we do not find ourselves having “stopped being the Church” Jesus calls us to be! It is just that “clear cut.”
NOW, if Stewardship were just about money, this lengthy sermon would be over! If I believed for a second the “cut” really is that “clear,” I would move on, no literally move on. But lest I fail you as a priest and we fail one another as sojourners on a spiritual path, let us remind one another about what the scriptures reveal to us about money and the Stewardship of our resources! Stewardship is about spirituality! It is about our relationships, our relationships with an abundantly generous God, and our relationships with one another! The practice of our stewardship is our opportunity to walk a holy walk where our spirit is lifted because we are walking a path that draws us closer to God and to one another! If we do not hold out that spiritual truth, we are missing the point of God’s dream for his creation. If we do not lift this spiritual truth up for one another, we are missing an opportunity to lift one another up!
The parable of the landowner who carefully invests in establishing a superb vineyard with heavy investment in the finest of soil, most solid fence to protect it from corruption, a state of the art winepress to ensure fine quality, and a watchtower to secure it long term, reminds the listeners of the day of the great investment God has made to the keepers of his promises. The investment is sincere, of great quality, and is created in the hope of the finest of fruit being produced. The responsibility then becomes those who are entrusted to work with the promise, the struggle for the listeners of the day would be Jesus clear reading that those entrusted with the promise had lost sight of the gracious investment. So blinded had they become that they themselves could not even see clearly enough to recognize the owner’s son in their very midst! They had lost sight of the sound investment! Instead of responding to the investment with taking care and part in producing the finest of fruit, they instead produced violence and prejudiced. How then do we respond to the fine investment entrusted to us that is God’s graceful dream for us and for the world?
The Bible states a specific obligation to “tithe” — that is, to give back to God one-tenth of what we have received from God. One–tenth! Ten percent! The Bible sets the bar very high — maybe too high for most of us to think about at first. This is an Old Testament standard that reminded an agrarian people that the first fruits (that is the best of their harvest) were to be given in thanksgiving to God for, after all, that which they reaped were gifts from God, that which we reap are gifts from God. This spiritual practice is a life practice, and one that we can step toward and maybe even beyond.
Jesus’ engagement with the young rich man serves as an invitation to further examine our hearts. The rich man is smart enough to see in Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom a taste of wholeness for himself in heart, body, and soul. He wants to be, desires to be a follower who can give his heart to the cause of God’s Kingdom. Jesus’ challenge for him to divorce his heart from his possessions is too much for him, he at the last cannot let go, his things are HIS things. Jesus is empathetic, his heart literally breaks because he knows the young man seems to have a foretaste of the rewards of participating in God’s Kingdom of abundance, but cannot tear himself away from his possessions! Jesus, it seems, wants his followers to understand that all of it, every last thing we have, is gifted to us by God. Maybe the rich young man didn’t think Jesus’ promise of God’s abundance was enough for him to be able to let go of the security of what he thought was enough. When we believe it is ours alone, our hearts are torn! Perhaps you feel this way sometimes; I know I do.
When my son Dillon was a toddler and being introduced to the practice and experience of receiving communion, he once approached the altar area to receive. Peeking into the chalice as it was coming near he noticed the chalice was almost empty. I am certain his young mind jumped to an obvious and concerning conclusion as he expressed loudly, “There’s none left, it’s empty!” His fear, of course, was that there wouldn’t be enough for him! As the acolyte filled the chalice in front of us, I was so grateful to know in my heart and to be able to whisper to him, “See Dillon, there’s more, and there’s more where that came from!” God’s love is like that.
As you enter this time of stewardship for our annual giving program, may I suggest we cannot ignore the realities of money, but more importantly such times are ripe with opportunities to ponder God’s abundance of grace experienced in our personal lives! Time and time again, Jesus reminds his disciples of the magnanimity of God’s abundant grace! We are reminded time and time again that just when we think we’ve got God figured out, we quickly realize the box we’ve sought to put him in just may be a bit small! It’s never a worry in God’s Kingdom that there will never be enough, enough grace, enough forgiveness, enough love, enough! You see, there’s more where that came from! God is like that.
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
The Cathedral Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
I recently visited a website, www.pennyearned.com.” Perhaps this was a giving in to two days of stock market collapse and the media focus on such. I could not escape the reality of giving in to the temptation of focus on MONEY! “Money makes the world go ‘round” is one of the oldest of sayings, and right now there seems to be a whole lot of uncertainty about how well the world may be going ‘round, particularly if one approaches the world with such a view that money is the primary thing that makes the world go ‘round. So, I visited such websites and found there are 15 top songs of all time written on the subject of money. I share the top 5:
Take the Money and Run, Steve Miller Band
Why don’t you get a Job, Offspring
Can’t tell me nothing, Kanye West
Money for Nothing, Dire Straits
Money, Pink Floyd
In each of these “masterpieces” of music, various world views about money are shared! Everything from the reality that to make your way in the world with security you need money, to the abuse and ill effects of having too much money, to the sometimes seeming absurdity of who gets money for seemingly trivial acts, to the fantasy of landing more money than we ever dreamed or imagined as a goal in life, and finally one song even raises the possibility of the interplay between God, our money, and responsibility. (“Can’t tell me nothing” by Kanye West.) One thing can be said for sure, as a people we do actually need some money to make our way, and to another extreme we often are invited into a world view that money actually can bring us happiness, security, well-being and utopia.
We are entering the season of our annual stewardship program! This you will hear much about in the coming weeks! For some, this season invites us inevitably into a conversation about money, for after all, an unavoidable reality of such a program is asking us to look once more at money! For some, one approach to such a conversation can be “cut and dried.” Money makes the church’s mission go! It is true we need money to make the church’s life go! To some this is a seemingly easy conversation with some difficult money realities. Here at the Cathedral, for example, the treasurer reports to us that as per our last year’s budget, we allocated $954,000 to carry out our mission, pay our salaries, fund our programs, pay our utilities, maintain our buildings, and take our part in diocesan and national church life and missions. Where did this money come from? From the faithful and generous response of parishioners, $634,000 came through pledges, direct contributions and open offerings! This, by the way, is an amazing increase of 20% since 2005, when this same number was $532,000. Thank you and thanks be to God! Where else does this money come from? Because of generous and thoughtful stewards, $216,000 comes to us through estate and planned gifts that generate income from interest on reasonable endowment monies that can be used to help carry out our mission. Another $104,000 comes from principal of endowment monies, which of course is a mixed blessing. This figure does not account for other withdrawals to meet unplanned emergency maintenance items. The blessing of this $104,000 being many churches do not have such funds to draw from. The challenge is the more you take the quicker that money is exhausted, the lower the principal, and the less interest income generated that you are relying upon for other parts of the “pie” to make up the total budget.
Money! If the first part of that conversation is “cut and dried,” then in terms of the conversation for some rests reasonably in a world view that to rely on principal means that “we do not have enough” money long term to do things the way we are doing them, or “we do have enough” money to do what we are doing, but not without long term consequences. From a “money” standpoint then, as we take seriously the challenge of proclaiming God’s Kingdom, our challenge is to figure out how to fund our cause and/or cut our costs and do so in such a way that we do not find ourselves having “stopped being the Church” Jesus calls us to be! It is just that “clear cut.”
NOW, if Stewardship were just about money, this lengthy sermon would be over! If I believed for a second the “cut” really is that “clear,” I would move on, no literally move on. But lest I fail you as a priest and we fail one another as sojourners on a spiritual path, let us remind one another about what the scriptures reveal to us about money and the Stewardship of our resources! Stewardship is about spirituality! It is about our relationships, our relationships with an abundantly generous God, and our relationships with one another! The practice of our stewardship is our opportunity to walk a holy walk where our spirit is lifted because we are walking a path that draws us closer to God and to one another! If we do not hold out that spiritual truth, we are missing the point of God’s dream for his creation. If we do not lift this spiritual truth up for one another, we are missing an opportunity to lift one another up!
The parable of the landowner who carefully invests in establishing a superb vineyard with heavy investment in the finest of soil, most solid fence to protect it from corruption, a state of the art winepress to ensure fine quality, and a watchtower to secure it long term, reminds the listeners of the day of the great investment God has made to the keepers of his promises. The investment is sincere, of great quality, and is created in the hope of the finest of fruit being produced. The responsibility then becomes those who are entrusted to work with the promise, the struggle for the listeners of the day would be Jesus clear reading that those entrusted with the promise had lost sight of the gracious investment. So blinded had they become that they themselves could not even see clearly enough to recognize the owner’s son in their very midst! They had lost sight of the sound investment! Instead of responding to the investment with taking care and part in producing the finest of fruit, they instead produced violence and prejudiced. How then do we respond to the fine investment entrusted to us that is God’s graceful dream for us and for the world?
The Bible states a specific obligation to “tithe” — that is, to give back to God one-tenth of what we have received from God. One–tenth! Ten percent! The Bible sets the bar very high — maybe too high for most of us to think about at first. This is an Old Testament standard that reminded an agrarian people that the first fruits (that is the best of their harvest) were to be given in thanksgiving to God for, after all, that which they reaped were gifts from God, that which we reap are gifts from God. This spiritual practice is a life practice, and one that we can step toward and maybe even beyond.
Jesus’ engagement with the young rich man serves as an invitation to further examine our hearts. The rich man is smart enough to see in Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom a taste of wholeness for himself in heart, body, and soul. He wants to be, desires to be a follower who can give his heart to the cause of God’s Kingdom. Jesus’ challenge for him to divorce his heart from his possessions is too much for him, he at the last cannot let go, his things are HIS things. Jesus is empathetic, his heart literally breaks because he knows the young man seems to have a foretaste of the rewards of participating in God’s Kingdom of abundance, but cannot tear himself away from his possessions! Jesus, it seems, wants his followers to understand that all of it, every last thing we have, is gifted to us by God. Maybe the rich young man didn’t think Jesus’ promise of God’s abundance was enough for him to be able to let go of the security of what he thought was enough. When we believe it is ours alone, our hearts are torn! Perhaps you feel this way sometimes; I know I do.
When my son Dillon was a toddler and being introduced to the practice and experience of receiving communion, he once approached the altar area to receive. Peeking into the chalice as it was coming near he noticed the chalice was almost empty. I am certain his young mind jumped to an obvious and concerning conclusion as he expressed loudly, “There’s none left, it’s empty!” His fear, of course, was that there wouldn’t be enough for him! As the acolyte filled the chalice in front of us, I was so grateful to know in my heart and to be able to whisper to him, “See Dillon, there’s more, and there’s more where that came from!” God’s love is like that.
As you enter this time of stewardship for our annual giving program, may I suggest we cannot ignore the realities of money, but more importantly such times are ripe with opportunities to ponder God’s abundance of grace experienced in our personal lives! Time and time again, Jesus reminds his disciples of the magnanimity of God’s abundant grace! We are reminded time and time again that just when we think we’ve got God figured out, we quickly realize the box we’ve sought to put him in just may be a bit small! It’s never a worry in God’s Kingdom that there will never be enough, enough grace, enough forgiveness, enough love, enough! You see, there’s more where that came from! God is like that.
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