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*** I sometimes wish that the newspaper carrier would deliver the morning paper with a kind of warning – “the contents of this newspaper may be hazardous to your health.” * Rather than the headlines I’ve been reading, I would much prefer to read something like this: “Gentle rains and light breezes caressed the Gulf Coast and Texas today, as the levees held strong, to no one’s surprise, and state and national governments once again cooperated in a coordinated and effective effort.”
* Rather than the headlines I’ve been reading, I would much prefer to read something like this: “Senators Obama and McCain got together yesterday for a dialogue that focused on the issues, rather than personalities. The debate was civil and well-mannered, as the two senators respectfully shared their goals and visions for the nation and world. The audience appreciated that there were honest differences but also significant commonalities, and all came away hopeful about government and this nation’s future, and energized to vote. Later, reporters noted the apparent absence of the use of certain terms in the debate, including ‘elite, maverick, change, experience, community, organizer or lipstick.’”
* And rather than the headlines I’ve been reading, I would much prefer to read something like this: “Wall Street works things out by focusing on the needs of average citizens. Any hints of greed and corruption are faint. The government says to give it a call if it can help, while exercising appropriate and effective regulatory oversight. No parachutes are needed, and politicians, economists and TV pundits work together to offer clear information and thoughtful solutions.”
* And finally, rather than the headlines I’ve been reading, I would much prefer to read something like this: “Ohio State easily handles USC, while the Cubs lock up another World Series appearance.”
But we live with the headlines we are given, even as we are called to transform the world into which God has called us. This month we are asking a simple question with endless permutations: what kind of church are we to be? The focus has been on the church, but it has also meant that the focus has been on each of us, we who make up the church, this church. One thing goes without saying, but not quite. We are to be a relevant church, one that makes a difference in the real world. One that neither ignores the headlines nor rejects them, but takes them seriously. This week as we heard news of Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley and AIG and Freddie and Fannie, the kinds of questions we might ask – along with how this impacts the Third Church endowment – the questions generally missing, are the theological ones, the ethical ones. So we would seek to be a relevant church. That kind of church sounds interesting to me. Join that relevance with some earlier articulated qualities. A church based on love, based on a primal and fundamental commandment to love one another. A church based on unconditional welcome and unconditional forgiveness. It would be a very human church. We are not prone always to love, but God is. We are not prone always to welcome, or forgive, but God is. And here, today, we discover another quality, a quality we are not always prone to, but that God is. What kind of church? A church that is generous and just, that mirrors God’s generosity and justice to us and with us, in the continuous and ongoing face of human complaining and ingratitude. We know the Exodus story well, but we forget what happened on the way, the incessant “are we there yet” whining of the Israelites post-Egypt and pre-Promised Land. And it was more than whining. It was questioning Moses, it was questioning God, it was planning outright and open rebellion. And it is likely that we – had we been on the trip – would have been in the company of whiners. Today we get just a glimpse, driven by hunger. The Israelites had been wandering for several months. They are hungry. Very hungry. And they are not afraid to verbalize that hunger. At least in slavery we had food, they complain to Moses. You’ve just brought us out here to kill us. God hears all of this, and has compassion, and devises a complex scheme whereby they will receive just enough food for the day. And the Israelites are hungry no more. James Newsome writes that “even though the people are callous ingrates…Israel’s God is one who is zealous for the well-being of the people and whose compassion is expressed by continuing intervention in Israel’s life.” (Texts for Preaching: Year A, pages 488-489) What kind of church? A church that is aware and alive to the news – and who shares that news with the world – of God’s intervention, as Newsome says, of “God’s provision of food to feed present hunger that also fulfills a deeper need that transcends present appetites.” And then Jesus comes along and tells this outlandish and audacious story about workers in the vineyard. “What do you mean, I get paid the same, even though I worked hard all day and they worked only a little. How unfair is that!?!?!?” And again, we brush up against the nature of mercy and grace, which is inherently unfair, because if God operated with any version of a fairness doctrine, we would all be in big trouble. Rather, with the same generous compassion demonstrated to the whining Israelites, God provides – the day-long worker received what was needed, the latecomer received what was needed. Charles Cousar writes that this story was a threat to the insiders. Perhaps it still is. “Divine grace,” he writes, “does not rest on the merit system.” We second-guess God, in large part because we presume we are the ones who show up on time. But Cousar writes that “divine grace is a great equalizer which rips away presumed privilege and puts all recipients on a par.” (Texts for Preaching: Year A, pages 494-495) And had we heard the story, like the whining and complaining Israelites before them, we would have been in the company of whiners and complainers, even as God provides in a fully unanticipated, unexpected and unmerited way. What kind of church? A church that believes in a generous God who makes things right when our attempts fall short. These two stories reflect abundance in the face of perceived scarcity. There was enough food. There was enough money. It was distributed in a highly unorthodox manner, but there was enough. There is enough. This is not an easy abundance, not cavalier in any way. But the resources are available. Food and money seem interchangeable here, even though this is about more than food or money. Providence is a big Presbyterian word, and we have, more than some traditions, talked about a sovereign God whose provision for creation and creatures is ever sure. This is not casual providence. It is difficult considering an easy providence with one who has lost a job, or had a home foreclosed, or, worse, received a cancer diagnosis, telling them blithely that God will provide, that everything will be all right. But the Exodus story is insistent to us that in the face of dire circumstances, God delivers and God provides, even when we grumble and whine and complain, that God provides generously, from compassion. And Jesus’ parable in Matthew is inherently unfair. But even then, it is insistent to us that God provides to those in need at their time of deepest need, according to their need. This is not casual or cheap. And it grates against our deeply held convictions. It upsets the apple cart of cultural and political and economic expectations. But none are without, and all have, and God has compassion, for all. This is not liberal. It is not conservative. It is Christian. And it is good news. A relevant church needs to imagine this, promote it, live into it, for its members, for us, for the world. It does have something to do with money; but don’t grab your wallets just yet. There are things, it is said, that one doesn’t speak of in polite conversation – sex and money and religion being among them, with money, perhaps, at the top of the list. In the gospels, though, Jesus is concerned about money and always talking about it – much more than he seems to be concerned about than “s-e-x.” He is concerned about what we do with it and he is concerned about what it does to us. We need to pay attention to that. We need to pay attention when he tells a rich young man to sell all that he has and give it to the poor. We need to pay attention when he says that it is easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than to enter heaven. We need to pay attention to today’s parable, which rubs up against our sensibilities. We need to pay attention when preachers today tout something called a “prosperity gospel,” the perverse notion that God wants us to be rich, to accumulate, to have stuff. Rather, the gospel we encounter this morning testifies to a God who provides what is needed, and who takes seriously the poorest of the poor, the weakest of the weak, leaving those of us with more enough to make it, but also evaluating what we do with what we have. The prosperity considered here is not about acquisition, but about compassion, about giving away, about meeting the needs of all, about abundance. The kind of church we are called to be is one that embraces and proclaims Jesus’ strange mathematics, that the first are last and last first, a church that embraces a radical alternative ethic of love and welcome and forgiveness, and now of generosity and justice that turns world inside out and on its head. A church that makes the deep connection between what we receive and what we give away – a kind of generous and just recycling that reflects the abundance of who God is in the face of human perceptions of scarcity. That’s the ethic we embrace, and the ethic we share, with atypical evangelical fervor, with a world aching to hear it. This weekend some of us have seen a film called “A Man Named Pearl.” It is worth your seeing. It tells the story of Pearl Fryar, an African-American from South Carolina with modest resources, who turns the self-taught avocation of topiary sculpture into a transforming activity for him and his community. The story is a thing of beauty, and a gospel parable to me. And it all gets started because Pearl Fryar recovers bushes and trees that the city nursery has thrown out, discarded, put in the garbage pile. Pearl takes them, nurtures them, cultivates them, into things of beauty. All from nothing. From less than nothing. Like quail and manna. Like a day’s wage. That’s the church we are, and the church we are called continually to be. A church that keeps alive the rumor of a God who is generous and just, who makes something out of nothing, who breaks all the old rules and writes new ones in our hearts, rules about abundance in the face of scarcity. A church that keeps alive the rumor of a God who releases us from our fears, who forms and reforms and transforms and conforms, who offers no easy answers or cheap grace, but who promises to be with us always. A church that keeps alive the rumor of a God who feeds us – who feeds us – the bread of heaven until we want no more. Until we want no more. Amen.
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