Compassion, Mission & Sacrifice.

On this our stewardship Sunday my text for this sermon comes from the last verses of Matthew chapter 9:

35Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. 36When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; 38therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest.”

 

One of the dangers for us is that we place Scripture in the spiritual realm and remove it from the practical material world. We can read the most difficult of scriptures and domesticate them by placing them within the spiritual, not at all directly related to the ordinary life of human beings such as ourselves. By doing this we render them powerless to change our lives or to bring in the kingdom of God.

Today’s text is not a text about giving, it’s not even a text about duty and faithfulness. It does not allude to church growth or financial security. It is not a text about being grateful in a way that empowers our response to God through the church by giving more.

 

This is a text about sacrifice. No, not sacrifice in terms of giving until it hurts. Money isn’t even mentioned. What is mentioned is even more confronting than any discussion of money can be. It is about giving up everything out of compassion for those who are lost and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

 

Jesus makes a direct connection between compassion, mission and sacrifice. Now we struggle with the word sacrifice in a world of instant gratification, me first and entitlement. We are comfortable with it when we use it theologically to refer to the death of Jesus to all things material but we stumble when are asked to apply it to ourselves and how we are to define our membership of the church – our discipleship. We struggle to give up our personal opinions, biases and self-defensive attitudes, we struggle to sacrifice our comfort and leisure, we struggle to give up our comfortable buildings and practices to make room for those outside our walls.

 

Yet sacrifice is essential if we are to respond with compassion to those outside the borders, those Barbara Creed refers to as strays, the people and creatures who do not exhibit the same attitudes as us toward material things or who challenge our way of life. For Creed that includes stray animals, refugees, indigenous peoples, homeless and anyone who does not subscribe to the goals of a consumer society. For Jesus these were the people he met on is wanderings and those who, although Jews, were beyond the borders of the religious world of the times.

 

Jesus calls for such sacrifice, not because we should be grateful for our place in the world but because of compassion for others. Jesus encountered people who had no centre, no place to call home and no-one to care for them. These were not people who were different but people like them. Jesus does not give the reasons we might for compassion – hungry, lonely, homeless, unemployed etc – and there fore see what we are doing as helping, as reaching down and bringing people up. No Jesus uses the word compassion – that deep sense of belonging and connection which rises up from within, an emotional not a rational response, from the heart and not from the head.

 

It is difficult for us to have compassion. We live in a world of hardening borders, of economic rationalism, of media portrayals of others as enemies, or if not enemies , at least someone to be afraid of. We have clearly defined categories of those who are lifters and those who are leaners, we have categories for those who have Australian values and those who don’t and any number of ways of referring to who is in and who is out.

 

Yet Jesus sets the example and calls his disciples and us to have compassion and to sacrifice ourselves on behalf of others. This is the call for the church and therefore it is the call each of us must answer in some way. This place is not here for our personal gratification. It does provide us a place in which we can worship and gather but it is not the full expression of who we are. What emanates from this place is what counts. If this place becomes all we do then it is a millstone around our necks. If all we are doing is maintaining the edifice then we are not fulfilling the call of Jesus.

 

We have witnessed this in all wings of the church over many years as a result of the clergy abuse scandal. The church sought to protect what it had for itself and failed to have compassion and therefore make the necessary sacrifices to deal with the issues. In the end the church has been forced to make those sacrifices, not willingly through such as royal c,missions.

 

The questions we need to answer here at St Oswald’s is: do we have compassion on those outside our walls who are “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” Your neighbours, friends and those you share this community with. Those who are shut in, forgotten and denied access to all you and I take for granted. I am not talking about our service or our giving to other charities or organisations, it is not their job. Jesus calls his disciples to do this work in their place and to make the necessary sacrifices to do so.

 

While organisations such as Anglicare and others have their place, they should not take the place of the work of the local church. As Ian Cutmore says, “If it is not happening where you are, it is not happening.” We cannot offload our responsibility for others to others. Our sacrifice, our giving must be sufficient to meet the needs of the local community. 

Like many churches this is not the case. We, as a congregation, do not give  enough to meet the running costs of this parish without significant help from hall hirers and fundraising. As a result we are unable to make a considered financial contribution to compassion for our community - the mission of God. 

We have no budget for mission empowered by compassion. And a church without mission or engagement is a church of stagnation. We cease to exist for others and only maintain what has been important to us - liturgy that makes us feel we have been to church, a choir that suits our purposes as its members and groups that keep us comfortable.

 

Jesus calls us to compassion and mission through sacrifice. This is not just about getting more people and resources in from the outside, but more people and resources out from the inside. He goes on to say: 7As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ 8Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment. 9Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, 10no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff; for laborers deserve their food.”

 

Jesus does not call us to the comfortable life, individually or as a church, we are to be partners in the abundance of his kingdom. We are called to give up our expectations for ourselves and to ensure others have enough  by virtue of our compassion.

 

As we take the time to make our commitment to our church for another year let us to do so with compassion and sacrifice and with an eye on the kingdom of God.Compassion, Mission and Sacrifice 

Wealth Equals Debt

Read the following article this week:

“In what local authorities are calling a "near tragedy," Charles Wentworth, a 17-year-old senior student and member of the affluent Wentworth family, came perilously close to suffering a consequence resulting from his own wrongdoing Saturday.

 

Wentworth, reportedly ignoring the protests of his classmates, got behind the wheel of his turbocharged Supra 2000GT after consuming half the contents of a bottle of Goldschläger at a friend's party. While driving westbound on Route 27, a disoriented Wentworth drifted across two lanes of traffic and collided with a minivan carrying a family of four, bringing the teen face-to-face with a potentially life-altering lesson.

 

Wentworth escaped unscathed and unpunished, however, when his airbags deployed and a team of high-powered attorneys rushed to the scene and rescued him from the brink of personal responsibility.

 

"Amazingly, Mr. Wentworth did not experience a single repercussion for consuming alcohol under age or operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated, and is furthermore completely unaware that he did anything wrong," local police chief Marvin Taylor said. "He is a very lucky boy."

 

"If he had been driving just 5 mph faster, or if his parents hadn't had the influence to keep the matter out of court and the endless financial resources to lease a car of the exact same make and model to prevent him from having to face even the relatively trivial humiliation of being taunted by his peers for driving a slightly less expensive vehicle—my God, who knows what could have happened?" Taylor added. "He could have died or, worse, been held accountable for his actions."

 

Now this is obviously satire as it comes from The Onion, a satirical magazine, yet it is an almost accurate picture of the society in which we live. Entitlement is the buzzword, spoken or unspoken, witnessed in the actions, words and lifestyles of many modern people.

 

Not us of course. We would not dare to think like that. Or would we?

 

Paul writes to the Galatians to remind them of who they are, heirs of God’s promise to Abraham. It is a reminder for them not to lose sight of who they are in the midst of a chaotic and adverse world, a world in which they are persecuted and run the risk of becoming embroiled in the lifestyle and philosophy pressing in on them.

 

One could read Pauls statement as the Galatians being entitled to their inheritance. It is theirs. It belongs to them.

 

Yet it is also a reminder of the obligations that goes with their position – to live in such a way as to always give a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to God. To turn the totality of life towards God and away from any sense of self as the centre of existence. To recognise in our worship and living, God as the source of all that exists and that we possess and that we are totally reliant on God for our life and existence.

 

WEH Stanner suggests aboriginal spirituality is built on this deep sense of relationship with the Creator Being in exactly the same way the ancient Hebrews were. Causality belongs to God and we are to respond to it with the totality of our being. Modern man lives by the myth that he/she has had some influence on their existence. That somehow each of us is responsible for where we are in life and therefore are entitled to make the decisions about what we do with it.

 

Such responsibility is indeed too much responsibility if we think about. If we are indeed fully responsible for who and where we are we are also responsible totally for the impact we have had on self, others and the world. No wonder people collapse under such responsibility.

Elizabeth Farrell writing in the Sydney Morning Herald states it plainly:

"Wealth isn't really wealth. It's really debt.
Everything we have, from jobs to bodies to microchips, we take from the earth. But – and here's the thing - it's not a gift, it's a loan. Everything must be repaid. The ancients knew this, constantly making down payments via death and sacrifice. But for us – more inclined to sacrifice nature than sacrifice to her - the bigger the pile, the greater the debt." 

Recognising our true place as heirs of the promises of God we can commit ourselves to living a life of praise and thanksgiving for we understand who is the source of our being and our existence. All that we have including our success and failures, wealth and poverty, health and sickness are covered by the promises of God that are our inheritance.

 

From this position we are able to commit all we have to God with fear, without the prospect of there never being enough for us. The Episcopal Diocese of Minnesota Environmental Stewardship Commission echoes the words of Paul by claiming: "In the wake of Christmas, then, the household of faith is freed from its self-preoccupations as it is sent forth into the world to participate in that grand process by which God works throughout Creation toward the energetic 'fullness of time.'

 

On this stewardship Sunday we will take time to consider what the participation in the inheritance that is ours may look like. What will be my weekly gift, what roles and tasks will take on, how will I work within this parish to further the kingdom of God? How will my decisions indeed be a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving?

 

While Paul laid down the challenge, it was up to the Galatians to live it out.  The same goes for each of us today. The challenge s God’s, the response is ours. 

Making More or Being More?

James Hillman commented when asked about his book, ‘The Terrible Love of War’, that we live in a world where we live in competition with one another. For one to advance, another loses. We are expected to drag ourselves up by our bootstraps and always to grow. The numbers count. How many have joined the church since you arrived? How has the bottom line grown? The G20 being held in Brisbane is setting a growth target for the world to achieve this very weekend. 

Each of us is deemed to be a perpetual growth machine designed to always be hitting the goals society sets, chasing the Joneses like a dog chases its tail only to find out that when he catches it, it already belonged to him. In political terms, from Menzies to Hockey, we have been divided into lifters or leaners. You must make use of what you are given according to the rules or you will be cast out, with much gnashing of teeth.

The parable Matthew relates in Matthew 25:14-30 is often used to encourage us to use our God given gifts or suffer the consequences. Traditional interpretation suggest the businessman is God and his servants those of us who have been entrusted with the kingdom of God. Each are given gifts, in this case money and are expected to make it grow. Two are successful; the third apparently fails miserably and suffers as a result. Much sermonising builds on the story to encourage, or more often, apportion guilt liberally on those listening who, for a whole range of reasons, haven’t been able to double their investment.

Is this what this parable is really about? What happens if we move a little to the side and have a quizzical look at the story, putting it in its context and avoiding the personalisation of post-reformation theology or the imputed violence of the extortionist and his three henchmen as a symbol of the coming of the kingdom of God?

This parable is as challenging to Jesus’ contemporaries as last week was to the men of the time. How inappropriate for them to be compared to unmarried teenage girls who sillily forget to trim their lamps? How inappropriate to tell a story about a rich man who most likely lived abroad (a foreigner), a non-Jew as an archetype of God. He leaves money with his subordinates to invest for his future. Yes, this is a story about money, for that is what talents were. In modern terms the amount for the 8 talents is about $3 million dollars, something those listening could only imagine as the product of theft, bribery or extortion. You could not, in their eyes, amass such wealth any other way.

So how did the servants double that investment? Well, as the story assumes, being non-Jews or acting on behalf of a non-Jew, they could lend money at exorbitant rates (30-50%), enforce repayment or send people to prison. They would drain the poor people taking an unfair share of harvest or grain production as repayment. They were unscrupulous, breaking all the accepted Jewish rules and become wealthy, not for themselves but for their master.

The third slave seems to have had a moral conscience. Some commentators say he feared his master and didn’t want to lose the money and be punished, and so he put it in a safe place. As there was little or no inflation, burying the money was a safe and prudent option. He simply wasn’t prepared to be involved in any immoral or unjust acts, or break any religious taboos just to make money.

Yet when the landowner returns he punishes the prudent one, and rewards the unscrupulous. Is this an accurate picture of God and how God deals with people? Is God prepared for us to be unscrupulous in order to advance the Kingdom? Is God’s kingdom a violent and unjust place where we are punished for doing what is morally right and appropriate?

Or is Jesus channelling the spirit of satire, joining the ranks of the Chasers and Shaun Miccalef, holding up before those he was speaking to that the Kingdom of God does not fit easily into the personal growth program of the world. The kingdom of God is at odds with the Kingdom of the world and we need to let go of the benchmarks held up by society and seek a much more dangerous path, the path of righteousness and love. It will not bring you wealth, you in fact will be cast out by the rulers of this world, pushed aside and seen as irrelevant, you will be a leaner not a lifter, someone who needs to have their income managed by governments, programs approved by bureaucrats, sermons approved by the city council as is happening in some US cities and, generally, deemed irrelevant by those you live amongst.

I suggest the third servant actually ‘saw’ what was going on and made a conscious decision to live out his beliefs. His dialogue is blunt, exposing the brutality of the system, holding up a mirror to the landowner so he could get a good look at himself. The servant remained prudent, diligent and fair, and probably scared half to death, with good reason, yet he did not back down.

So what does that say to us as we move through Advent? What does it say to us as a church as we look to the future? What are we waiting for and how are we going to see it when it arrives?

May I respectfully suggest we look closely at the unsuccessful servant and remember?:

 ONE: That we are to be the church in the world. We are not a business, a professional centre or even a school. We are the church, the body of Christ alive in the world and committed to being ‘a peculiar people’ in a peculiar time.

TWO: That we are to holdfast to what is the God News, as troublesome as that may be, the imitation of the living Christ, and remain committed to the blueprint for the kingdom of God as outlined in the sermon on the Mount. There is no room there for making money, or anything else, unjustly.

THREE: That we remain comfortable with being cast out because we avoid what is acceptable practice on the basis it is not in tune with the practices of the Kingdom of God. Paul reminds us in Phillipians 4:8, ‘Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think about such things.’

FOUR: That we remain faithful even though we know our actions will be greeted with ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth. Thomas Merton writing to a despondent Jim Forrest during the fight for equal rights in the 1960’s in America, says, ‘“Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself.”

Our challenge is to sit in the place of the outcast servant and do what is right in the eyes of the kingdom and its people. Gandhi rightly suggests that ‘The main purpose of life is to live rightly, think rightly, act rightly’. Our love lives in relationship and we work to ensure that God’s love is real right where we are, even if that pushes us to the outside. That is what God is waiting for.