Sunday, October 25, 2015

Role Models



A Sermon preached on October 25th (Proper 25) at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden
Job 42:1-6, 10-17, Hebrews 7:23-28, Mark 10:46-52

I’m going to start this morning with Douglas’ last question from his sermon last week: “Will we leave this building with a new heart and new hope to transform a world in which otherwise darkness seems to extinguish light?” This was a quote from Archbishop Justin Welby and not only that – it was from the sermon he had just preached at the consecration of the new Immanuel Chapel at my Seminary – VTS in Alexandria, VA. VTS needed a new chapel as the old one had burned down – never heard of a church burning down before, have you! 

But looking at the world today, we do need these new hearts and new hope if we are to overcome the darkness that seems to be trying very hard to extinguish light and whose effects we are experiencing here in Germany with the huge influx of refugees fleeing the darkness of war and persecution and destruction. But even here too darkness is trying to prevail. You might have heard the German President Joachim Gauck compare and contrast a dark with a light or bright Germany: "Es gibt ein helles Deutschland, das sich leuchtend darstellt gegenüber dem Dunkeldeutschland." He said that back in August comparing the positive reaction of so many volunteers – welcoming and helping the refugees – with those who attack and burn down asylum homes or who demonstrate with extremist slogans, and more recently even a mock-up of gallows for those politicians they consider to be traitors. 

There are legitimate fears and concerns about the influx of refugees, about our ability to feed and accommodate them, about how well and how quickly we can integrate them into German society. And some towns and cities may have reached their limit – but not all by any means. Wiesbaden hasn’t. Nor can there ever be limits to compassion or to basic human rights, which are based on the core Christian values of love of God and of God in all our neighbours. Far too often however politicians from the established parties – and not just PEGIDA organisers – take these fears and concerns and instead of dealing with them and solving them, use them to their own gain by exacerbating and exaggerating them and by demonising the “stranger.”  But it is not just politicians who are to blame for the very dangerous increase in right wing rhetoric and inflammatory speeches, but also all those normal citizens who join the anti-refugee demonstrations and who even have the audacity to carry crosses, the symbol of Christianity, with them! They are followers of hate and darkness – unlike Bartimaeus of this morning’s Gospel reading, who is a follower of the way, the way of Jesus, the way of light and love.

And it’s both Bartimaeus; and also Job; who I want to commend to you as role models this morning, because that is what they are being held up as, as righteous examples. Not in everything of course – you don’t all have to go and live on a dung heap like Job, or sit begging on a street corner like Bartimaeus – but certainly in their attitude and in what they do and say.

We’ve reached the happy end of Job’s story. His suffering – let me remind you he lost his family, his wealth, the respect of his peers and his health – is over. But all that time he never lost his faith or his hope – despite the counsels of his so-called friends who were trying to convince him to despair and to give up. He has been rewarded with a personal encounter with God – an overwhelming, awe-inspiring encounter with his creator. No longer, he says, is God just someone he has “heard of by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.” (42:5) God is beyond his understanding and he feels infinitely small in comparison, yet he was not too small or too unimportant for God. God let himself be found by his servant Job. All the new possession Job  receives – the fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand donkeys, exactly double what he had before his sufferings started – are God’s sign to the world that this is a righteous man and one whose example it is worth following. An example that stands for faith in adversity, hope rather than despair, for endurance and for trust that God will not let us down.

As for Bartimaeus, well we only get to hear the end of his story. We don’t know how he became blind nor do we know for how long he had been a beggar and had to sit by the roadside in Jericho day in and day out hoping for alms from all those rich and important people. You might remember that in last week’s Gospel the brothers James and John made a bid for power – not acting as the best of role models despite being founding disciples!  Well clearly Mark is setting up Bartimaeus as a better model to imitate – we are supposed to contrast his faith with the disciples’ infighting. 

Bartimaeus is blind, and yet he knows who Jesus is. Apart from Peter – and some demons – he is the first person in Mark’s Gospel to use the messianic title “Jesus Son of David” in public. When Jesus asked James and John “What is it you want me to do for you?” (Mark 10:36) they ask for power and glory. When Jesus asks Bartimaeus exactly the same question, “What do you want me to do for you?” (10:51) he asks for healing, for a new life and – as it turns out – the chance to follow Jesus. Because unlike so many other people healed by Jesus, who just say thank you (or not) and run off home, Bartimaeus “followed him on the way.” (10:52)

He is a model to imitate – just like Job – in his faith and trust: he knows who Jesus is and what he can do. In his courage: shouting out and not allowing others to quiet him. In his discipleship: taking his new life, his fresh start, his freedom and giving it to Jesus. God has become not just someone he has heard of, but now someone he sees. And Jesus does not make him feel small or unimportant. Jesus, God has this blind beggar called forward and brought right into his presence to be healed. If Bartimaeus had known the words to our Communion hymn, Amazing Grace, I’m sure he would have sung them:
Amazing grace! How sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see.

We could also argue that it was not only Bartimaeus who was blind – the crowd, including Jesus’ followers, were too. The beggar was all but invisible to them and when he first starts shouting out, he is considered a disturbance. So the first miracle of healing was the crowd being given their sight, really seeing Bartimaeus, and bringing him forward for healing by Jesus – they were made aware of those in their midst who need help and salvation, both physical and spiritual.

So in these difficult and dangerous times when darkness seems to extinguish light, I commend the examples of Job – standing for faith, hope, and trust – and of Bartimaeus – standing for faith, hope, courage, and discipleship – and of the crowd – standing for openness to need and for compassion to you. And most of all I commend the example of the one we follow, the Light of the World, “the Son of Man who came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45) Go and follow him on the way. It will save you and save the world.
Amen

Sunday, October 11, 2015

Why give?



A Sermon preached on October 11th (Proper 23) at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden
Job 23:1-9, 16-17, Hebrews 4:12-16, Mark 10:17-31

It is, I promise, a coincidence, or at least not my plan, that the beginning of our annual stewardship campaign coincides with today’s passages from Mark’s Gospel about the connection between wealth and access to God’s kingdom. In my weekly email I asked, a little provocatively I admit, whether Jesus’ instructions to the rich man to "sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me" (Mark 10:21) is the new standard for our stewardship, instead of just the tithe?  

Well, the answer is yes and no. No, because although our church might very briefly be in wonderful financial state if you all sold everything and gave it to St. Augustine’s, it would not be a very sustainable model for stewardship …. And you would all be in a very destitute state! Yes however, if we accept that the call to sell everything, like the picture of the camel going through the eye of needle, is a typical rhetorical exaggeration to make a deeper point about our proper attitude to wealth and what we should do with it. So what is the right attitude to wealth, possessions and money?

When Jesus says to his disciples, “how hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God,” (10:23) they were perplexed at these words. Wealth was considered to be a sign of divine favor – yes the prosperity gospel existed even then – and so if wealthy people were not going to enter the kingdom, especially one who was so clearly devout like the rich man in the story, and who probably also followed the law in giving a share of his income to the poor, who would get in? Not only that, but Jesus even makes wealth sound like a problem, as if having wealth is a barrier to entering the kingdom of God.

That is the case when we serve our possessions, rather than them serving us and the kingdom. As Jesus teaches more than once, far too often wealth and material success become something we focus on to the exclusion of other things and are something we are overly proud of. Wealth and material success become objects of worship – idols and then they do stand between us and God, and God’s kingdom, and God’s people – but as a barrier we have erected ourselves, not as one God puts up. As one participant in the Wednesday Bible Study said of this passage, there is an underlying current of excess pride in the man’s interaction with Jesus “Good Teacher what must I do to inherit eternal life?” (10:17) Please confirm that I am good too … that might explain why Jesus’ reaction sounds so testy and why he tries to draw the man away from his “I” focus back to a focus on the other. The commandments Jesus lists are based on the second six of the 10 commandments, those we might call the relationship commandments, because they are all about how we should live in community with one another.
 
Wealth is neither a sign of God’s love nor of God’s disfavor. Nevertheless everything we are and everything we have comes from God: “All things come from you, and of your own do we give you” (1 Chronicles 29:14) is often used as an offertory sentence to remind us of this. The lesson for our stewardship, for our use of God’s gifts, is not to worship what we have, but only the one from whom it all comes. A pledge is a visible sign of our gratitude to God. And when we pledge, we promise to give back to God (to God’s Church and for God’s mission) a small portion of what God has given us.

Wealth is not a free ticket to God’s favor, Jesus tells his disciples. In fact, for mortals it is impossible to be saved, but not for God; for God all things are possible. Thanks be to God that all of us have access to a free ticket: rich and poor, Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free to use the examples of the time, the ones we know from St. Paul’s letters. That free ticket is Jesus Christ who John describes variously in his Gospel as the way, the truth, the light, and the gate.  For the author of Hebrews Jesus is a great high priest but not one distant from the people he serves. Instead he describes Jesus as a person fully able to sympathize with all our many and myriad weaknesses, because he experienced them all himself as the human being he was, and still is. That is why in the words of Hebrews we can “approach the throne of grace,” God’s throne “with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (Hebrews 4:16) What exactly does that “churchy” word grace mean? My Bible Dictionary[1] defines grace, taken from the Latin gratia or favor as “translating the Hebrew hesed, God’s love for us” and as a translation of the Greek charis, meaning, “the free gift of God’s forgiveness which we can never earn (“free, gratis, and for nothing”), and the power to show love to others which this brings.” 

The second half of that definition contains our second lesson on stewardship. We give – and in doing so we give up a little of what we have - to show love to others and we are empowered and encouraged to do by God’s Grace. It is our response and reaction to the great free gift of forgiveness and love that we know as it was embodied and incarnate in Jesus Christ.  

But there are also benefits to giving in the “here and now.” And by that I don’t mean the positive effect on your health that recent research claims to be a direct result of generosity.  According to an article Andy posted on our Facebook page, “improved mood, better physical health and increased longevity are connected to giving ….. When it comes to your health, it truly is better to give than to receive.”[2] No I’m referring to Peter’s plaintive comment: “Look, we have left everything and followed you.” (Mark 10:28) So are we saved, what’s the benefit for us? You will receive a hundredfold of what you give or give up, is Jesus’ answer. This little rhetorical flourish has unfortunately been taken – and actively sold – literally. There were and are TV evangelists who call on their viewers to send them money with the promise of it coming back a hundredfold, which sounds like a pretty good return considering how low interest rates are at the moment. Again, this is not a sustainable model for stewardship. Nor is it what Jesus wanted to say. His message was one of reassurance. Even if you give up your family and your job to follow me – as many of the disciples had done – don’t worry, a new and much greater family beckons, a new even richer social and religious fellowship is waiting for you, homes will open wherever you go, this fellowship will sustain you even in difficult times, in Mark’s example in times of persecution. 

Stewardship, is also about fellowship and community. This church is a social and religious fellowship, a spiritual family that you support mutually. It is part of the Body of Christ to use the image Paul uses in his letters to the Romans and to the Corinthians: “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” (1 Cor. 12:27) As members of one body we are called to support one another and to each play our role in supporting the whole – each according to our ability and means. 

So while I don’t want you to sell all, I do want all of you to give. The standard for our stewardship is not an amount but an attitude – the “thoughts and intentions of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12) Whatever you give as your response to our stewardship campaign, please give out of gratitude, give out of love as response to God’s grace, give as a follower of Jesus, who gave us himself, and give as a sign of your full fellowship with one another.
Amen


[1] A Basic Bible Dictionary, Michale Counsell (Canterbury Press, 2004), 49
[2] http://health.usnews.com/health-news/health-wellness/articles/2015/05/01/what-generosity-does-to-your-brain-and-life-expectancy