2023-11-06
Brooke Strong
Sermon Text...
November 5, 2023 Hamilton Coe Throckmorton
Matthew 23:1-12 The Federated Church, UCC
You may have heard this one, but I think it bears repeating. Two men crash in their private plane on a South Pacific Island. Both survive. One of the men brushes himself off and then proceeds to run all over the island to see if they have any chance of survival. When he returns, he rushes up to the other man and screams, “This island is uninhabited! There’s no food; there’s no water. We are going to die!” The other man leans back against the fuselage of the wrecked plane, folds his arms and responds, “No, we’re not. I make over $100,000 a week.” The first man grabs his friend and shakes him. “Listen,” he says, “we are on an uninhabited island. There’s no food, there’s no water. We are going to die!” The other man, unruffled, again responds, “No, I make over $100,000 a week.” Mystified, the first man, taken aback with such an absurd answer, says again, “For the last time, I’m telling you we are doomed. There’s no one else on this island. There’s no food, there’s no water. We are, I repeat, we ARE going to die.” Still unfazed, the other man looks the first one in the eyes and said, “Don’t make me say this again. I make over $100,00 a week, and I tithe. I give 10% of what I make to the church. My pastor WILL find us.”
Giving is a year-round theme here at Federated. Here, we know that God has given us everything we have and are. Here, like the man in that story, we know that hoarding what we have is a sure and certain way to crimp and starve a life, and that there may be unexpected benefits to our giving 😊. Here, we know that generosity is the lifeblood of a fulfilling existence. Our weekly Generosity Impact Moments celebrate the rich rewards of lives that give back.
We know this, don’t we. We know that life is richer when we share. And yet, it’s frequently hard to do, isn’t it. We so often feel frightened at the thought of letting go of too much—“will we have enough to survive; will we be OK in our retirement; if we just hold onto a little more, maybe we can insure that everything will be fine.” It’s sometimes difficult to release the firm grip we so often have on our money and our things.
Those investment accounts and things we cling to are not only a kind of comforting teddy bear for us—reassuring us, we imagine, that things will be OK, even in the face of the threats that are all around us—but they also give us a kind of status in the world. The things we own convey our worth. I, for example, have a newish car, a couple of years old. It runs smoothly and it’s in good shape. And here’s the deep-down, shameful truth: it makes me feel ever-so-slightly superior to the people who drive the rusted old beaters I sometimes pass. I’m not at all proud of this. And of course, my facile dismissal of these drivers of what I see as lesser cars is a zillion miles from being holy or gracious. But in my eyes and the eyes of the culture, my car gives me a kind of status in the world.
Our things say to the world: “Look what I’m worth!” And the corollary may be just as true: look at how these others have not quite measured up. We judge a person by the shoes they’re wearing, by the house they’re living in, by the stylishness of their glasses, by the handbag they’re toting. Years ago, Mary and I had some dinner guests one evening, and when we were both busily doing something in the kitchen, we heard, from the dining room, one of them whisper to the other about our flatware, quietly, so as not to be heard, “I think it’s silver plate.” Which indeed it was. And because of that, our guests were, at least in their own eyes, one up on the social ladder.
And it would be easy to dismiss them as judgmental. But, as I say, I do it, too. And I’m guessing you do, as well. “Not such a nice house they have. That’s a lowbrow restaurant they frequent. They have an Android rather than an iPhone. Our hosts don’t have very luxurious sheets and towels. Those are cheesy holiday decorations the neighbors put up every year.” Our position in the world matters to us. And too often, our things convey that position. What are we worth? What’s our status? Where do we stand in the social hierarchy? Our things are so often the measuring stick. They say to ourselves and to the society in which we live, “I’m pretty special. Just look what I have!”
And as innocent as it may sometimes seem, Jesus knows this is one of the countless ways we have of distancing ourselves from each other. We do things right, we think. They don’t. So we’re at least a tad better than they are. We matter more and have got it right. They matter less and just don’t have it quite as together as we do.
When, in today’s gospel story, Jesus excoriates the scribes and Pharisees for the excessive showiness and hypocrisy of their faith, it’s not really those ancient religious leaders that he’s after. He’s after the crowds and disciples who are following him. He does find fault with those religious leaders. But it doesn’t stop there, with those others. It’s really his own people, his followers, the people who proclaim their allegiance to him whose habits he’s calling into question. And when we hear his words today, we know that we’re not let off the hook, either. Jesus is speaking to us: no puffing up our chest because of our car or our fancy trip to Europe or our exalted zip code. When we’re honest with ourselves, we know Jesus is speaking to you and me. And the truth of the matter is we don’t come out so well in Jesus’ eyes. Hypocrisy and showiness run rampant in this culture.
As always, though, Jesus doesn’t just let things stand with a dismissal of our worst instincts. Jesus never concludes his tirades with unredeemed condemnation. Jesus always offers a way out. “The greatest among you,” he says, “will be your servant” (Matthew 23:11). You want a way to transcend your hypocritical judgmentalism? Then servanthood is your road. And maybe our first reaction is: “Ouch! That’s not what I signed up for. I thought following Jesus would give me some sort of privilege, some palpable rewards for my exemplary faithfulness, some status that would put me at the top of the heap. Servanthood? I don’t think so.”
In Jesus’ mind, though, privilege is not what it’s about. Or maybe, as a framed print we have hanging in our house says, “Let it be your privilege to have no privilege.” We can only be whole as we offer ourselves and our things to others. We can only be true children of God as we step down from the pedestals of supposed superiority onto which we so eagerly climb. We can only fully be the selves God made us to be as we share what and who we are with a world that is always teetering on the edge of imploding. In a world where the Middle East has devolved into violent chaos, in a culture where cruelty and shared disgust so often predominate, in a nation where a shooter takes eighteen lives in Lewiston, Maine, the city in which my wife Mary was once the Critical Care Coordinator at the local hospital—the very hospital that was inundated by the arrival of those innocent victims—in such a world, there is no other road to wholeness than for us to offer ourselves to each other, to devote ourselves to something larger and grander than our own status and privilege. So we strive for peace. We enact what ought to be common-sense gun laws. And we share of our resources and ourselves such that the world is leavened by generosity and love.
Max DePree, the former CEO of Herman Miller office furniture, famously defined leadership this way: “The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between the two, the leader must become a servant and a debtor.” To be a servant, as we’ve noted before, is to wear an apron rather than a bib. It’s to be in a posture of offering and generosity. It’s to be responsive to the needs around us.
It’s safe to say most of us here aren’t making $100,000 a week. But financially it’s probably fair to conclude most of us are doing fine. And we have the opportunity, in this season of generosity at Federated, to let go of some of the things and wealth we too often think define us, and to shape the world in gentle and gracious ways. On this All Saints Sunday, this is some of what it is to be a saint.
Jesus has invited us all to be saintly servants, people who know ourselves to be blessed beyond belief, people who seek to use our resources to make this world a better place, people who let go of some of our things to contribute to the marvelous work this church is doing in the world—the work of thwarting evil, the work of multiplying kindness, the work of spreading love. As we pray this week about our Intentions to Give for 2024, and as we next Sunday dedicate those Intentions, may we stretch ourselves to give and give generously. As we do, we contribute to goodness and love. Such servanthood is what Jesus was about. Such servanthood is the height of saintliness. May it always be so.