Sunday, October 14, 2018

Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost

Mark 10
17 As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
18 “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. 19 You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.’[d]”
20 “Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.”
21 Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”


I’ve got good news and bad news.

The good news is that I’m not going to preach on stewardship for five Sundays in a row, as recommended by the latest program from the national church. It’s too bad, really, since the resource includes five sample sermons and a nice break for the preacher.

The bad news is that I won’t be letting the topic go, and I will be mentioning stewardship from time to time over the next few weeks—from the pulpit, in a letter, and in other non-invasive ways. I say non-invasive since the program from the national church also suggests we stop my your house and make our case, something few people seem very keen on.

So let’s call it a pact. You receive our letter and consider what it says, and I won’t preach a stewardship sermon every Sunday until Advent. And as an added bonus, no one will stop by, so no needless tidy-up required. I love it when a plan comes together.

So stewardship. You might say “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven” is the stewardship sermon that writes itself. Nice young man wants to know what he has to do to inherit eternal life, Jesus reminds him of the messy interpersonal commandments, and he assures Jesus that he’s kept them all. And then a personalized commandment: ‘Thou shalt sell everything you have and give to the poor.” Mark tells us that the young man went away sorrowful on account of his many possession, Jesus then shares an interesting visual with camels and needles, and the twelve ask the next obvious question, “who then, can be saved?”

I want to look at that question a little later, but first, I want to talk about the next hymn. “Take my life and let it be” is a personal favourite, written by Frances Ridley Havergal, the same poet who gave us “Lord, speak to me that I may speak.” The simplicity and the clarity of her words, her ability to describe the very personal nature of commitment—these are the elements that make these hymns timeless.

My only frustration with the hymn we will sing in the few moments is the exclusion of the best verse—or rather half the verse—as it appears in our hymnbook. I like to call it “the Dutch verse,” and I’ll tell you why after I share it.

Take my silver and my gold,
not a mite would I withhold.
Take my intellect and use
every power as thou shalt choose.

I said half the verse because the hymnbook editors did find a way to retain “take my intellect and use,” but silver and gold when out the window. And it’s not clear why. The verse ties in very nicely with today’s lesson from Mark, and there’s also a reference to the widow’s mite found in Mark 12. And it makes a handy talking point in a stewardship-sermon-that’s-not-part-of-a-five-week-series. So I really don’t understand their thinking.

And the idea that this a Dutch verse—well, you’re just going to have trust me. Culturally, we’re pleased to show all we have, and remind you that it is a product of our hard work, and then quickly admit that everything in this life is fleeting and may soon be gone. For the full treatment, I recommend Simon Schama’s “The Embarrassment of Riches,” a 700-page look into the Dutch psyche—and the extent to which we never really got over the Golden Age.

And you don’t even need to read it really, just look at the front cover: Jan Steen’s formal portrait of a wealthy merchant and his daughter, captured at the very moment that a beggar and her young child stop to ask for a handout. Is it sign of his concern for the poor? Is it a meditation on a moment we have all faced—and a challenge to reflect on how we would respond? Or is it a acknowledgement that fate could see their fortunes reversed? Maybe all three, or just another visual reminder that treasure in heaven comes when you give away your silver and gold.

And all of this leads me to another idea. Take the simple yet eloquent words of a Victorian-era poet, and the cultural and historical world that it opens for me, and you get something that the late Michael White called “absent but implicit.” When we experience something—like a well-loved hymn—it opens a world for us based on our experience. This is a world that is both subjective to me—and maybe some of the other Dutchies in your midst—and carefully hidden. It’s absent but implicit because it’s my lens, and it colours how I see the world.

That’s one half of “absent but implicit.” The other half of this idea is the shared lens that we all carry, the lens that goes unspoken but is very much a part of our shared experience. For this, I’ll take an ancient example that will allow us to circle back to Mark. The reading we didn’t hear today was from the Book of Job, the riches to rags story that recounts Job’s suffering and the lengthy and comprehensive ways in which his so-called “comforters” try to help Job see that it’s all his fault.

‘It has to be,’ they argue, ‘since everyone knows that God rewards the righteous and causes the wicked to suffer.’ Job is suffering, they argue, and argue, and argue, and therefore Job must have done something to offend God. Identify the sin, repent, and voila! back to riches.

The problem is that Job has done nothing wrong. And this small bit of information becomes the heart of the story because it contradicts something that everyone believed: the good prosper and the wicked suffer. This idea is “absent but implicit” in every story of suffering (“who sinned that this man should be born blind”) but also present in every story of prosperity. And that brings us back to the rich young man.

Most people looking in, would see a rich, young ruler who by his very situation must be upright. How could it be otherwise? Consider Proverbs 14.24, almost lyrical in it’s redundancy: “The crown of the wise is their wealth, but the folly of fools brings folly.” So the disciples and everyone in town that day saw this ancient near-eastern dot-com millionaire and thought ‘the crown of this wise young man is his wealth, and something-something folly.‘

Everyone, of course, except Jesus. Jesus ignored the absent but implicit assumption that this prosperous young man must be uniquely right with God, and peered instead into his soul. Jesus overthrew convention and common sense and opted instead for a deeper look—at the anxiety that comes with gaining and maintaining wealth, the pressures of station and status, and the assumptions put on others. He knew, just in his approach, that this person needed to transfer his earthly store to heaven by giving away all he had.

So two things are happening, one a bit scary, and one that needs to be shared. The scary thing is that Jesus wants me to say “take my heart, it is thine own, it shall be thy royal throne.” He’s not interested in outward signs of righteousness, displays of piety, even ostentatious giving (but we don’t don’t mind that). Jesus wants to help us overcome the absent but implicit barriers to devotion that he knows, and we know, and really want to shed.

The other thing that is happening here is a reassessment of wealth in our world, a reassessment that we have tried to forget since the very moment Jesus said that seemingly crazy thing about camels and needles. Wealth is a number—and a lifestyle—but it doesn’t follow that you should be considered clever enough for high office. Nor should we assume it gives someone special insight into how the world works, or more say on the important matters of the age. To be fair, some have displayed unique compassion and generosity: Bill and Melinda Gates come to mind, and J.K. Rowling—famous for being the first billionaire to stop being a billionaire because she gave so much of her fortune away. Jesus smiles.

So we made a pact, we gained a bit of insight into the Dutch brain, and we disabused ourselves of some harmful ideas about wealth. What we’re left with, of course, is that nagging question: ‘who then, can be saved?’ What the disciples meant was ‘if the prosperous aren’t good, and favoured, upright, then who is? Who can be saved?

And Jesus looked at them and said, “For mortals the answer is impossible, but not for God—for God all things are possible.” Amen.

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