Being Rich

1 Timothy 6:6-19; Luke 16:19-31

How many of you here think of yourself as being rich?

How many of us are uncomfortable with this question?

How many are particularly uncomfortable right now because you were listening carefully to the scripture we just read?

Me, for one.

I mean, I can objectively say that I’m rich in a lot of ways – I have all kinds of choice in putting food on the table, I was able to buy the house I wanted. I worry about money, of course, and there’s plenty I want that I can never afford. But I have some savings for a rough patch, I have a laptop and a tablet and a smartphone.
On a scale of the “one percent”, I’m not even close to rich. On a global scale, I am rich.

And I’m not alone in that, here.

But I’m not especially comfortable thinking of myself as rich, particularly in church.

If you admit you’re rich, they might ask you for more money, right?

Plus, rich people don’t come off very well in scripture – especially what we hear today.

Rich people, Jesus seems to say, are fated for torment after death. You had your good things in life, now you have agony, Abraham explains to an overheated dead rich man.

(The desperately poor, meanwhile, seem to be promised comfort after death. Nobody in the gospel mentions “the middle class” – there’s no middle ground in this vision of have and have not.)

Timothy’s mentor writes to him that “those who want to be rich are tempted and trapped by harmful desires that plunge everyone into ruin and destruction”. Riches pull you away from faith and hurt people, he says, and of course, the love of money is the root of much evil.

Over and over in the witness of scripture, being rich is equated with being selfish, with being separated from God, separated from other human beings, and dangerously at risk of losing your soul. 

Very few people, seeing and hearing and reading that, would want to be identified as rich.

Except that there’s a parallel thread running through scripture – an awareness that riches and comfort and abundance in life are blessings of God, gifts to be grateful for, to celebrate and treasure for the assurance of God’s care.

Timothy’s mentor doesn’t separate those two ideas, advising Timothy to command everyone who is rich not to be haughty – not to be self-satisfied, selfish, or detached, the automatic reflex of riches, apparently – and to set their hope on God, who “richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.”

Riches make you bad. Riches come from God.

It’s a paradox. One I’m tempted to leave well alone.

Except that Jesus – and the prophets, and the preachers, and those early Christian writers – all talk about money. A lot.

Because money – well, not money itself, but our relationship with money – is deeply, powerfully important to our hearts and our souls and our primary relationship with God.

Money itself is not the root of all evil (no matter how often you’ve heard that proverb misquoted).

The love of money, the power of the desire for more money, and for all that money can buy, is a cause of all kinds of damage and evil and pain.

There’s plenty of evidence of that in our shared economic life – the problem of the desire for cheap products and more profit that produces sweatshops; the many-sided pain of the questions of a fair minimum wage or who should pay for health care.
And there’s the damage that the flip side of the love of money does, when the fear of poverty manifests as, say, a plan to sweep homeless people out of California’s cities, and ban the desperately poor from sleeping in the doorways of the rich and exclusive.

And there’s the pain of our relationship with money in our personal lives, too. The hours we work to have “enough” - that always moving target - that unbalance our lives.
The discomfort you might feel (that in fact, I feel) when we ask you to consider increasing your giving to the church, and you wonder if giving more is going to cost you failure somewhere else;
the way we genuinely worry at every income level about “making ends meet” or simply “having enough” for security in retirement or emergencies or daily expenses.

We actually all swim in the love of money and fear of poverty or loss that’s a fundamental reality of the world we live in. We all feel – in different ways and to different extents – the pain of the desire for more and the fear of less that’s within us or around us.

And that pain is why Jesus keeps talking about money. Why he tells this harsh story about a rich man today. Why the prophets and the letter-writers and preachers of the early Christian scriptures keep telling us to give money up and give it away.

Yes, it’s about sharing the blessings of God’s abundance,

but even more, it’s because God is longing, always longing and working, to heal our pain. To choose freedom for us, to invite us into expansive, unbound, trust and faith instead of the tight limits of worry, fear, and doubt.

Loving and keeping money ties us up with the pain of trying to buy comfort and security, connection, respect, knowledge and access, and knowing we can never buy enough in the way of smartphones and cars, clothes and good school districts to actually have what we long for.

God urges us – through Jesus and the apostles, through Moses and the prophets – to practice giving money away to make our hearts and lives depend more on God than ourselves for hope and serenity, comfort and connection.

Jesus encourages us, as Timothy is encouraged, to depend on God for the assurance of our future and that of our families, instead of striving to earn it and keep it by our own effort and resources.

The tragedy of the story of the dead rich man is not simply his agony, not just his complete lack of care for Lazarus.
It’s that even in his flames he doesn’t imagine that he can fully trust in God. Instead of longing to be with Lazarus in Abraham’s closeness to God, he only imagines persuading someone to send a little drop of relief. Instead of trusting in God’s love, poured out in the words of “Moses and the prophets”, he thinks he has to arrange to save his own family.

The tragedy of the love of money is that it focuses our hope on ourselves, and blocks our trust in God. When Jesus tells this story to the Pharisees, when scripture condemns the rich as a class, God is inviting us, calling us, to let go of the smallness of the life we can earn, so that we make room for a trust infinitely greater than our selves. So that we open our hearts and souls and minds to unlimited trust in the abundant, extravagant life God longs to give.

Paul wants Timothy, Jesus wants each of us, to take hold of eternal life, here and now – that restful, active closeness with God that comes from absolute trust, a trust in God that pours into us as daily, constant, freedom from fear, and out of us as generosity and “good works”, love and gentleness.

So that if – instead of asking if you feel rich today – I ask for a show of hands of everyone who knows that you are rich in the love of God, every hand in this place and beyond will go up with confidence, faith, and joy.

Rejoice With Me

Luke 15:1-10 (1 Timothy 1:12-17)

Which of you, having $1000 in ready cash, and losing $10, drops $990 on a table in a public place and goes off searching for that missing $10, not giving up until you find it?

Or – in an example getting dearer to my heart – having ten pairs of reading glasses and misplacing one, drops everything and spends the whole day turning the house inside out until you find it?

This is ridiculous, right? The effort – an entire day of searching – or the risk – of leaving the 99% unattended – seem bizarrely out of proportion to the loss, or the gain.

At least, it’s ridiculous unless there’s something extraordinary about the lost object – the $10 bill signed by Muhammed Ali that you were taking to get framed, or that one pair of glasses that really sits right on your nose.

When you find those things that are lost, you might just call your friends to celebrate. And might just be disappointed when your friend or spouse is more interested in other things than in your lost and found triumph.

So it is today with Jesus, who has found the people God has been seeking so diligently for so long, the people so cheap to the rest of the world and so special to God,

when the scribes and the Pharisees call his celebration ridiculous. Wrong and unfit for a decent religious leader.

And when Jesus tells them these two exaggerated lost and found stories, about sheep and coins, they seem to miss the point of those, too.

Rejoice with me, Jesus says, using the voices of a tenderly impulsive shepherd and a determined woman. Rejoice with me, because I have found what was lost. Celebrate with me, share the joy!

That’s what Jesus is saying to you and me, too, as we listen in on this conversation between Jesus and the local religious leaders. Rejoice with me!

Not because you have been lost and found.

Not because you’ve never strayed.

Rejoice with me because someone else, anyone else, these people you have never met, have been drawn close to the heart of God.

Now, it’s easy to rejoice when I’ve been found. It’s overwhelmingly natural to feel giddy with relief when I have been scared and lonely, disoriented, painfully anxious, or just plain miserable, angry and sad, and someone I trust comes along and finds me – offers company in the wilderness, a return to safety and confidence, relief of pain.

It’s absolutely natural to feel joy when you’ve been yanked back from a dangerous edge or destructive choice, or when you’ve slowly discovered what you were always meant to do, what feeds your soul. Paul tells that kind of story of being found by God over and over; we heard a version of it this morning, full of gratitude and exuberance.

It’s an overwhelming, joyful relief to find the child who’s disappeared from sight, a joy to find the love of your life; a joy to discover that an old friend also wants to heal the years-old conflict that drove you apart.

Jesus and Paul remind us of all that lost and found experience this morning to stir up our joy, because it’s rather less natural for many of us to feel such delight about what happens to people we’ll probably never meet, or people we’re uncomfortable around or just don’t like.

Jesus wants us to notice and share God’s overwhelming joy when a long-haul trucker discovers comfort and inspiration in an audio bible after being bored in church for 40 years.

Jesus wants us to actively celebrate with God when the manager of a McDonalds you stopped at once finds strength in prayer to heal years of wounds in their marriage.

Jesus wants us to drop everything and party with him when the child quietly cold-shouldered out of our church for being too noisy and disruptive is welcomed as a leader at another church; or when a person whose gender is denied by the church they loved finds welcome and the love of God here, even while many of us still feel weird about un-gendered pronouns and bathrooms.

Jesus wants us to pour our whole hearts into sharing God’s joy over reconciliations and blessings that have nothing at all to do with us; to enthusiastically share God’s delight that God has found someone not looking for God; that God has forgiven someone who wasn’t even sorry yet.

God wants us – you specifically, me specifically – to be just as joyful about God’s love for messy, broken, lost and indifferent humanity as God is, and that is a lot of joy.

Sometimes, that’s too much for me.

And most days, I don’t actually feel that joy all the time.

I doubt I’m alone in that.

Because just as it’s natural for us to rejoice when healing or finding or salvation happens to us, personally, it’s equally normal for us to miss what is happening in other people’s lives, in other people’s relationship with God, and God’s relationship with us all.

And God really doesn’t want us to miss that.

So when you or I don’t deliberately pay attention to the discoveries and learning of God’s love that are happening in our Sunday School classes, or in the Friends with Jesus groups and adult Bible Studies; God is missing us as friends to rejoice with.

When you or I don’t keep our eyes on the small steps of healing, nourishment, reconciliation and wholeness that are happening at St. Paul’s in Camden where Trinity volunteers are cooking breakfast this morning, and through the work of St. Vincent de Paul and the many other efforts of our Outreach volunteers and leadership,

we are cutting ourselves off from the joy God wants so very much to share with us. 

If you or I aren’t actively celebrating those moments when someone else’s heart is moved to tears and opened to God by the music and prayers of our worship, by the beauty of this building that none of us designed or built, or the welcome of the 12-step groups that meet downstairs, because you or I don’t feel like we have much to do with it;

then Jesus is wondering why you or I aren’t responding to the call to rejoice with him.

If you and I aren’t actively seeking out these moments of finding and being found, because you or I weren’t lost or involved in the looking, we are missing the urgency and generosity of God’s invitation to celebrate, the party God is throwing in exuberant delight; missing the chance to share the angels’ heavenly joy right here and now.

And that’s a shame.

You see, God is inviting us to rejoice always, all the time, because God’s love is always reconciling, healing and finding, even when we don’t particularly notice.

And God is explicitly, delightedly, inviting us to notice and celebrate God’s work, to see with joy what God has done, even when we personally had nothing to do with it.

It’s God’s work to heal and find and save and transform. And God deeply wants us to enjoy the results. Just like the Eagles want you to enjoy a game-winning touchdown even if you didn’t run the ball one single step.

Now, I suspect that God appreciates it when we find the joy so delightful to share that we start helping. When we start paying active attention to what Jesus is up to in our friends’ lives, and helping open the doors with our prayer, or a listening ear and company along the way; with an hour of time, a donation, a friendship, or an invitation. With the sharing of our own joy, from those moments when I, or you, personally, have found what we sought or been found by love. 

But before we do any of that, whether we do any of that, God still calls to all of us, now and always: Rejoice with me! What was lost is found!  And that is the first and final word of love.

Expensive

Luke 14:25-33 (Philemon 1-21)

Sometimes I wonder if Jesus really wants to have a happy, functional church. Or wants to have a church at all. 

Today is one of those times. I mean, it’s parish ministry Sunday; the day when the church “season” ramps up, and the invitations to classes and ministries and events and fellowship suddenly multiply in the announcement page. The day we try to make it easy and exciting to get involved.

And here’s Jesus proclaiming: If you don’t give up everything, and I really mean EVERYTHING, you can’t be my disciple. If you don’t hate your family – don’t hate your community of identity and support and purpose – if you don’t hate your own life… if you don’t give that all up, then you can’t be my follower.

Oh, Jesus, we’re trying to recruit and support and and encourage disciples here. Why do you have to make this so hard?
Who’s going to sign up for something so expensive?

Jesus doubles down with this story about building towers and counting armies: Figure out your costs, so you know if you’re going to finish before you start. Know what you’re signing up for.

It’s good practical advice but lousy church marketing.

And that, I am very sure, is exactly how Jesus meant this.

Because Jesus doesn’t want a church. Jesus wants it ALL.

It’s the whole world that Jesus has come to save. Every single one of us:

you, me, everyone not in church this morning, everyone mad at God at the moment, everyone who’s already given up. Every everyone.  

Jesus has grace, love, hope for everyone.
But he really doesn’t want us to take that lightly.

Jesus wants us to know exactly how much the love of God is worth. Wants us to know how inexpressibly valuable are the abundant life of God’s kingdom, the depth of generous friendship with Jesus, and the gift of salvation from ourselves, and from the evils, despairs, and petty crap more powerful than ourselves.

You can’t buy that with dollars or diamonds, platinum or pure gold.

You can’t buy it at all, of course. You knew that already.  All that salvation and hope and love are gifts, given by God with no preconditions and no return receipt.

Jesus is using strong language about hating our families to get us to take this seriously.
Not to get you to call up your mother and announce that you hate her; not to quit on your spouse or your kids today, but to shock us into realizing that NOTHING, not even the most important, most loving, healthy, fundamental-to-my-identity things are worth more than the gift of transformative, healing, hope-filled relationship God is trying to give us.

But receiving all of that gift is, one way or another, going to require us to let go of a lot of other things and relationships we hold on to – often good and valuable in themselves, but that can get in the way when we hold on to them as the source of our identity and purpose, instead of finding identity and purpose in the love of God.

So you or I might have to give up trying to prove our worth with all the things we do; give up the drive of success in work, school, or sports; give up the sense of rightness and righteousness that we get from finding someone who shares our views on the issues of the day; give up measuring our value against social fantasies of romance, connectedness, or family values.

The specific sacrifices will differ from person to person, but it should shock you; it should scare you – a lot or a little – that Jesus tells us today that we’re supposed to hate, to give up, even our life itself – that first gift of God.

It scares me.
It’s a spine-tingling reminder that the love and purpose of God that Jesus invites us to share as his disciples is actually worth even more than my whole life.

Which makes me choke a little bit; both because that’s an overwhelming sense of gift, and because I’m not at all sure I’m ready for or capable of giving up that much, even as I receive that much.

I suspect I’m not alone in that.
So it has helped me this week to remember that Jesus doesn’t generally say this the very first time you meet him.

By the time Jesus says this to the crowds following him around, he’s miraculously healed many of them, their friends and loved ones. He’s fed them better than they could feed themselves. He’s taught them – taught us – to hope: to genuinely expect love and salvation and generosity and joy – not just at baptisms and weddings and the start of a school year, but – when the news and world and Facebook are overwhelmingly full of destruction and death and unsolvable disasters, and all our work seems hard and fruitless.

By the time Jesus says this to the crowds who are drawn to him, who’ve already started to leave things behind to follow him – he’s already awakened their desire, our desire, for the more that God promises: the world of generous justice, honest, open love, easily shared healing and abundance, and peace within our hearts that none of us can ever manage to achieve on our own.

Now he wants to be sure we know how much that’s worth, and to invite – no, challenge – us to put our treasure where our hopes are, to gladly turn over our whole hearts and lives, not just our dollars and things, to be filled with God’s love which is greater than our love.

So if you’re sitting here today, and you honestly can’t see how your relationship with God is worth giving up your most important anything, then hear this shocking challenge of Jesus’ as God’s invitation to you to learn more, to give Jesus the opportunity to heal you, feed you, inspire you, fill you with hope. Find out what it is that might really be worth all this.

And if you have already begun to fall in love with the promise of Jesus, begun to long for the more that God invites us to share, have felt some of that healing, that holy hope stirring your heart even when the news is terrible and problems seem unsolvable… If that’s you, today, listen carefully to how Jesus is inviting you to risk a BIG commitment of your heart, time, treasure, or love.

That big commitment might be to helping others find healing, heart-food, or hope through one of the ministries of Trinity – or in a way that Trinity hasn’t tried. Or it might be a commitment of radical forgiveness and re-imagining of relationships, the way Paul asks his friend Philemon to welcome as a brother the runaway slave who robbed him. Or perhaps as you’ve begun to feel the longing, you’ve also begun to feel the shape of the way Jesus is asking you in particular to commit your heart, your life, your all.

And if you happen to be one of those who has already counted up the cost, already handed over the whole of your heart and life to Jesus’ mission and God’s love lived out in the world, I hope you hear Jesus affirm today just how much that gift is worth, just how much it can transform and heal and renew you and your loves and life.

And all of us can hear one more thing in Jesus’ expensive, challenging words today. Because while Jesus is entirely serious about how much being close to him will cost us, Jesus is even more serious about how much this is worth, not just to us, but to God.

All of us – skeptics, dreamers, committers, in-between – must hear the assurance that Jesus has already counted the cost of the love of God that Jesus pours into and around and through us. Hear that Jesus himself has already counted the cost of your salvation, of all of our salvation, healing, renewal, and Jesus will not run out of the vast, expensive grace and hope, or the generous, unshakeable love we need, until the entire world is whole in the heart of God.