What's in Your Wallet?

Nov. 16, 2014                                            

Matt. 25:14-30

Story: Waking Up for Church
One Sunday morning, a mother went in to wake her son and tell him it was time to get ready for church, to which he replied, "I'm not going." "Why not?" she asked. "I'll give you two good reasons," he said. "One, they don't like me, and two, I don't like them."

His mother replied, "I'll give YOU two good reasons why you SHOULD go to church. One, you're 54 years old, and two, you're the pastor!"

Prayer

No… I've never felt like this… sure....  :) 

We are familiar with the image on the screen as a commercial for a credit card company where they offer cash back as an incentive to acquire their card. The tag line… “What’s in Your Wallet?” No… we’re not going to talk about money… maybe sort of.

One could get the same impression from our bible story today that Jesus tells, which by the way seems pretty cut & dry. Jesus tells another story about what the kingdom of God is like where 3 people are given some money. Jesus doesn't tell them what to do with it… but assume they will put it to good use.

Two of them invest the money and double it. Talk about expectations… or a great ponzi scheme….

One with 5,000 coins earns another 5,000

The one with 2,000 earns another 2,000

The 3^rd guy is fearful and decides to play it safe, so he buries his 1,000 coins.

The owner returns… praises the 2 guys for doing well and the 3^rd guy gets chewed on… “You lazy good for nothing!!” and probably some expletives thrown in for good measure too. The story ends with Jesus saying, “You are a worthless servant, you will be thrown into the dark where people will cry & grit their teeth in pain.” Other translations say, “Where there will be weeping & gnashing of teeth.”

So… on the surface… one could see how the story works…

God is the owner…

God gives people opportunities…

God expects a return…

God punishes if you do nothing…

In other words… one could conclude if you don’t earn something for God… your toast. And… you don’t have to go very far to see this at work within some Christian circles… where some believe if you take part in watching certain movies, alcohol consumption, or some other disobedience you’re going to be locked out of heaven. 

Luther certainly started out this way and it’s still an prevalent understanding in some Christian groups. In fact… many Lutherans believe they must earn favor with God despite Luther’s come to Jesus moment that we are saved by faith, not works. And of course you can see the abuses of this as well.

So… on face value this story from Jesus, it’s easy to perceive God as a harsh, judgmental, and follow the rules kind of God.

Rather than perceiving our God & wallets in this fashion… Perhaps the image of our open wallets could be like this… (I Showed some pictures of my family) 

Pictures of our kids… grand kids… families… 

The numerous gifts given from our debit & credit cards… 

The moments of grace that came when someone gave to us… 

Perhaps we could perceive our wallets as a sign of God’s love… 

A God that cares about us and is inviting us to give out of that love. 

Maybe… God is inviting us to re-examine the gifts we carry in our wallets.

So… what’s in Your Wallet?

I have a question…. And I would like to invite your response…

What picture of God do you have in your wallet?

Closing

Jesus tells this story just days before he goes to the cross, not so much as a punishment, but as a testimony to just how far God is willing to communicate God’s love for us all.

Jesus spent his last 3 years of life and ministry proclaiming God’s kingdom, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, offering forgiveness, and welcoming all.

Jesus… above all is proclaiming the love of God thru the prism of the cross and even through the inconsistencies of human behavior to demonstrate God’s provision for all is more than enough to live a love-filled life.

So… we can either look in our wallets to see there’s not enough…

Or we can look in our wallets to see God’s gracious provision and do something with it….

What’s in Your Wallet?

Do You have a Lite?

Nov. 9, 2014                             

Matt. 25:1-13

Prayer

This is another difficult Jesus parable for us to understand. On the surface it seems simple enough… it’s about a wedding, but the problem is no one in our day would do this… However… we need to remember that Matthew’s faith community is primarily Jewish in culture… And even as we read in the CEV bible this story seems somewhat strange. A reason the CEV uses terms like “Girls” which tends to somewhat neuter the story… we understand girls to be young… 5-10 years of age generally. If we were to look at the NRSV or some other versions we word see terms like virgin… hand-maiden… bridesmaids ushering in the groom to the wedding. We don’t do wedding like this. Another reason Matt tends to be quite harsh on the Jewish culture especially religious culture. So… this story from Jesus brings some difficulty about what Jesus wants to convey.

The short answer to this story is that Jesus is trying to help his friends come to grips with him dying. The context of this story is set during the last week of his life and perhaps Jesus is sensing that his disciples are quite grasping what is about to happen. Why Jesus doesn’t flat out just tell them straight up… hey I’m going to die… pay attention! I don’t know. So the theme about being prepared is quite evident in this story.

However… as easy as this sounds… I don’t think we grasp the over-all sense of what Jesus is trying to convey to his friends.

So… I saw a couple of other themes that seem… at least for me… seem to make sense of what Jesus may be saying to us.

Waiting

We don’t like waiting for much of anything in our culture. It’s uncomfortable to say the least and the waiting Jesus implies in this story is the kind of waiting that makes us fidgety. The kind of waiting… like sitting in a hospital waiting for word about how surgery or a procedure went. Waiting like… are we there yet… The kind of waiting that makes us anxious…. Like when will we get a pastor. For Matt… the waiting is for  when Jesus returns. And…there’s a very high expectation in 1^st century Christianity that Jesus is coming back very soon. So… in this story the girls are waiting for the groom… so the sense of waiting for Jesus to come.

Another theme here is Light.

The girls were charged with providing light for the path of the groom. They were to be prepared and vigilant and in the end they weren’t as they lacked oil and they fell asleep at their watch. The light went out when the groom came. As a response… they were shut out of the wedding. Jesus concludes the story by telling his friends to be ready. And you kind of get the sense it go right over they’re heads.

Waiting & Light…. What does this say for us?

Waiting is very uncomfortable for us. We don’t like waiting for much of anything or anyone. We’ve been conditioned to respond immediately 24/7… we have the technology. Because of this, I wonder if there is anything today worth waiting for.

Light also is uncomfortable because we don’t want others to see our imperfections. To see our inconsistencies…To see that what we say, is often not what we do. You see light often shows our true selves. Oh… we may think we are light… shinning light, but often we are not. Are we light by serving in a soup kitchen along side of the guests? Are we light on the front lines of advocacy? Are we light by staying over-night on our week at the Warming Center?

Oh… we shin brightly when we give money, or collect food and someone comes to pick it up, or collect gifts for needy kids.

Not that any of this isn’t important, but our hands are pretty clean. Please forgive my sarcasm… But our lights do shine brightly with each other. That’s a good thing… but if it’s the only time we light up… Well…. which I believe is the point Jesus is trying to make in this story for us.

In our 1Thess reading they and Paul were waiting for Jesus to return. They expected it so much that they literally quit doing most everything. They quit jobs… caring for others… they stopped most everything. They thought… why do anything… Jesus is coming and going to fix all.

I believe we often think this way… Jesus is going to come and though we’ve been waiting… Jesus is going to fix it all anyway… so what’s the point! Paul and his readers fell into the same trap as us. In chapter 5 Paul walks his statements back from his position and in 2Thess. He clarifies and subscribes to the understanding that while we wait we are to be lights to the world.

Again… this is what Jesus is alluding to as well.

Jesus says to be ready… to use ourselves as lights in our community. That being… while we wait we are to light the world with the love of Christ. So… as we approach the season of Advent can we in our waiting, in our Christmas anticipation light up our faith… light up ourselves to better serve our community? We’re getting help my friends. You can go into any store right now and you can hear it. It’s already being played on the radio. We are getting lots of help to be lights in our community. Can we better demonstrate not only for each other, but our love for the struggling, the hurting, the other in our Berkley community? Can we demonstrate in our waiting that God is still at work in us and in this faith community. Can we demonstrate our imperfect lives in the light of God’s grace so that others may see the light of Christ at work within us?

Let’s not hide our light under a bushel… let’s hold it high!