Divided Loyalty

WESTMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
May 25th 2008

Rev. Mark R. Bradshaw-Miller
“Divided Loyalty”
I Corinthians 4:1-5; Matthew 6:24-34

I have read and re-read this passage from the Gospel of Matthew and I keep coming to the same conclusion: “Jesus is Crazy!” How can I come to any other conclusion when he says things like: “Do not worry about your life?” I suppose it makes sense from a guy who lived thirty-three years, but what about the rest of us? Jesus does not end there but continues by teaching: “Do not worry about what you will eat?” My response is to wonder if Jesus has gotten the memo about the growing world food crisis. There are riots in Egypt, Haiti and elsewhere and a little closer to home we face food insecurity right in our own community. But the one verse that I cannot get past is this: “Do not worry about tomorrow.” At this point I am ready to throw up my hands and say; come on!? Jesus must have missed all those commercials telling me how I should handle retirement needs. Oh that’s right I forgot he lived thirty-three years.
It is clear that this teaching is not easy. So faced with his words and the reality of or lives what are we to do? Is Jesus telling us to live it up ignore tomorrow and trust that food, clothing, and a retirement plan are all going to magically appear? If this is really what Jesus meant by his teaching, I am not sure I want to be a part of it. However, even as we seek to try and explain away his teaching, I wonder if our attempts at this reveal just how captured we are by the power of money.
Faced with this dilemma we have some choices. We could simply dismiss these words as ancient remnants no longer relevant for contemporary consumer capitalism. We might try to keep some of what Jesus says but blunt his most difficult teaching. Or, we could delve deeper into the passage hoping to hear the world view that Jesus was trying to give to his disciples. It should come as no surprise that I choose the last one. After all, despite what I said at the beginning, I do not believe Jesus is crazy.
Let me admit that I carry some baggage about this passage. I am resistant to the teaching of this passage for two reasons. The first one is that I have been raised in a consumer culture that teaches me to worry about what I will buy next. It also teaches me to get as much as I can for myself and disregard what this might mean for my neighbors in other parts of the world. I do not speak for everyone in this culture, I am just telling you the messages I am getting.
But my resistance goes beyond my cultural baggage. My baggage is also mixed with the interpretations of others and my experience with those must vulnerable in society. I hear these words and immediately think of people who cross my path needing financial assistance. Should I wish them well, pat them on the back and tell them not to worry about their next meal or where they will sleep that night all because Jesus said so? While I think the answer is a solid “No.” I think Jesus is also pretty clear elsewhere in this Gospel, about the need to count the cost and to importance of building your house upon a firm foundation. However, that is a sermon for another day.
It seems to me that if we are not at least taken back by this passage we have not heard or taken seriously what Jesus is teaching. Jesus teaching is in fact pretty clear. “You cannot serve God and money.” This clear assertion still begs this question: “How is it that we serve money over God?” On some basic level we all know that serving God can be understood as loving God with all our heart mind and soul and loving our neighbors as ourselves. But is there a way to clarifying how we serve or love money instead of God?
Well, let me begin by saying it is probably the most dangerous enterprise a preacher will face. It is dangerous because when we start talking about money, people from across the political and theological spectrum often find agreement in this area. And, what they agree with is that the preacher better not say anything about money that makes us uncomfortable or we will withhold our money from the church. It is because of this reality that I believe the greatest crisis facing the disciples of Jesus in North America is financial. While we argue about the decline of the mainline, or concerns about sexual orientation, or political affiliation, we do not bother to evaluate the wisdom of ‘the market,’ through the lens of scripture. Instead, we seek to interpret the words of Jesus though the wisdom of the market. It is an accommodation pervasive throughout all Christian communities. And I believe our passage this morning teaches that we must not be so careless in our loyalty to any economic system. It is in moments like this, when we are all a little uncomfortable, that we are getting close to the heart of the matter.
I am not an economist and do not propose a new economic system. I am a follower of Jesus, just like you, who believes the wisdom of Jesus cannot be closed off from any area of life. And, in this passage, the wisdom in Jesus’ words has to do with worry. Worry is a toxic force in our lives and in our following of Jesus. Jesus understood that when people are worried about their next meal, or what they are going to wear, they will operate from a position of fear. When we fear our ability to love our neighbor as ourselves diminishes exponentially. If we are driven by fear and worry our focus is upon ourselves and we can create twisted justifications for hoarding things. I remember listening to the wife of Kenneth Lay, former CEO of Enron, share how much they had lost and were struggling since they had to scale back to only two or three mansions. Led by fear and worry led this, now, infamous couple lost touch with the reality of their situation. This is an extreme case, but it does remind us that we live in a new Gilded Age where those at the top of the economic spectrum have not only lost all touch with reality; there seems little interest in regaining that touch. Worry affects everyone along the economic spectrum. It leads us all to hoard, and hording leads us further from the path of faithfulness. The way is not a one-time decision but a journey where we find ourselves, like it or not, on our knees worshiping and serving god-money. That is why Jesus is so prolific about the challenges of faith and finance.
At the heart of this passage is a message which cannot be watered down. We cannot worship God and money. Yet this challenging lesson comes with almost ridiculous images of birds, and flowers and grass. It is a reminder that the life of faithfulness is about joy. When we think about the life of faith and finance a smile should form on our face when we consider God’s creation. These images are meant to remind us that in all our worry we have most often lost perspective. It is not meant to gloss over the difficult realities of life but to remind us that so much of what we strive for and work for, and worry about is of less consequence than we want to admit.
A few years ago I was at a conference on stewardship and I heard a story from a pastor I will never forget. She told of an up-and-coming couple who lived very well. He was an executive for a major corporation and they had all the trappings of such a life. The couple had been members of the congregation for about number of years. One Sunday, after the most recent stewardship campaign, the couple asked for a meeting with the pastor. In the meeting the couple told the pastor that their giving to the church would be substantially less in the coming year. The reason they gave had a great deal to do with what the pastor had been teaching.
As you might imagine this was quite a shock to the pastor. However what came next was even more shocking. It turned out they had decided to make some changes in their life because of her teaching on stewardship. They were selling their large home in the suburbs and moving into a smaller home closer to the church. He was leaving his job to take a job with less pay which would allow him to spend more time with his family and serving the church. Through their prayer and discernment they decided this was the way they were called to respond as disciples. I have always been amazed by this story and am personally convicted by their witness. However, this is not a story meant to be heard as; “Go and do likewise.” It is a powerful story of the way in which one family heard the call to worship God over money. The challenge for us is not to duplicate their story but to understand God’s call for each one of us and respond accordingly.
When I first heard this story a few other people in the room, pastors included, called the couple crazy. And some of you might be thinking the same thing. However, their pastor just smiled. While I never asked the reason for the smile, I have come to think of her smile as having something to do with the way in which we encounter these passages and think that Jesus is crazy. Is Jesus crazy to talk like this? Our initial reaction may be to say: “No!” But, I believe we need to ask ourselves one enduring question when it comes to this passage: Are we calling Jesus crazy by the ways in which we relate to money? Amen.