Sermon, "Whole-Life Stewardship: Time," Luke 12:22-40

Sermon 11/4/18

Luke 12:22-40

Whole-Life Stewardship: Time

Today we’re starting our November sermon series called Whole-Life Stewardship. Stewardship means the task and role of taking care of things on behalf of someone else. As Christians, we believe that the earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it. In other words, everything belongs to God, our Creator. We do, the universe does, our time does, our things do, the animals and the trees and the mountains and the air we breathe; it all belongs to God, really. We’re just the caretakers, the stewards of all that God has given us to watch over. We don’t act like this is true sometimes. We forget that we are stewards. We think that we are in charge. We think that we are the true owners of all that is. And so we need to remember. We’re doing that in a small group, as we read through Adam Hamilton’s book Enough. We do that when we gather for worship, when we sing praises to God and remember that God is God and we are not. We do that when we pray “Your kingdom come, Your will be done.” And we’re doing that in this sermon series. Every fall, we spend some time reflecting together and searching our hearts as we think about how we will support the ministries of this church through our financial gifts. But this year, we’re broadening our scope. We’re stewards of every aspect of our lives. It all belongs to God. How do we remind ourselves of that when we lose sight of the truth? Are we good stewards? How are we doing at managing the resources God has given to us? Each week for the next three weeks, we’ll look at an aspect of our lives as we assess our stewardship and our faith: our time, our talents, and our treasure. At the end of the month, we’ll celebrate the commitments we make with a time of thanksgiving, consecration, and fellowship around the table.

Today, we begin with time. God gives us time. How are we doing at being stewards of the time that we have? Honestly, I think being good stewards of our time is the most challenging thing. How are you using your time from God for God? I don’t know about you, but managing my time is a struggle. On the one hand, I feel like I can be obsessed with getting stuff done. I try to cram so much into my time. I want to feel productive, accomplished, and there never seems to be enough time to do all that I want to do, need to do, should do. And I know I waste too much time, filling hours with things I don’t really care about, or even with things I know I should actively avoid. Whenever United Methodist pastors are ordained, we’re asked what are called the “historic questions,” questions based on those John Wesley, founders of Methodism, asked of pastors, questions that we’ve been asking of our clergy for hundreds of years. One part of these “historic questions” reads like this: “Will you observe the following directions? a) Be diligent. Never be unemployed. Never be triflingly employed. Never trifle away time; neither spend any more time at any one place than is strictly necessary. b) Be punctual. Do everything exactly at the time.” Pastors have gamely answered “yes” to these questions for hundreds of years too, while secretly saying to ourselves: Never be triflingly employed? Never trifle away time? Do everything at exactly the right time? Seriously? Wesley’s directions sound like a formula for burnout. But he himself observed a rigid schedule of prayer, fasting, personal study, group study, serving the poor, and preaching the faith. How are you spending your time?

I’m not sure I even want to see an honest, factual breakdown of how I spend my time. For example, the latest software update to my cell phone came with a way to set time limits on any apps on my phone I want. If I want to, I could set it so that I can only be on my web browser for an hour a day, or only on facebook for thirty minutes. I could do that. But I haven’t yet. I want to, I think it would be wise. I think I use my phone too much. And yet, I’m not sure I’m really ready to confront my dependence on my phone, on the internet, on facebook, on distractions. Am I a good steward of my time?  

And yet, I also feel like we get so obsessed with productivity, with doing, with achieving, with checking things off our endless to-do lists that we don’t enjoy the time that we have. Our time is a gift from God, isn’t it? And yet, we don’t savor it very well. The scriptures speak of resting in God. Jesus took time away to be alone with God. “Be still and know that I am God,” the Psalms command. But it’s so hard to do! We’re so wired to be productive that when we finally get the rest that we crave we’re too stressed to enjoy it. I think of my most recent vacation, when I visited Lake Placid for a few days. My intent was to just relax. I wanted very much to have a vacation where I just didn’t do anything. I booked a room with a beautiful balcony view of the Lake and a fireplace and a tub with jacuzzi jets. And then, I started to think that I wasn’t really making the most of my vacation unless I was taking in all the sights of Lake Placid. Shouldn’t I hit all the shops? See the Olympic landmarks? Go hiking? Visit the wildlife refuge? Hit all the vegan restaurants? I had planned on driving up Whiteface, but it was so foggy during the timeblock I scheduled it, I thought it would be kind of a silly trip. But I was stressing about not checking it off my list. Tina had to remind me that it’s just a couple hours away, and I could go back whenever I wanted. The most relaxing day of vacation was the day that I felt sick. I was dizzy all day and I had to just lay around if I didn’t want to feel like the room was spinning. It was the most relaxing day of vacation I had, but a part of my brain felt guilty for wasting my time.

In the midst of this muddle, this tug of war about how I spend my time, a refrain from the country band Alabama runs through my head (yes, I had a country music phase in high school): “I’m in a hurry to get things done. Oh I rush and rush until life’s no fun. All I really gotta do is live and die but I’m in a hurry and don’t know why.” Our time is a gift. God asks us to be good stewards of our time. And somehow I feel unproductive, exhausted, and like I spend too much time doing nothing worthwhile all at once. I’m guessing that relationship with time feels familiar to many of you, too.

I think our scripture passage today reflects some of this same tension. Usually, when we hear this passage of Jesus’s teaching that we usually classify as “about worry,” we read it from the Gospel of Matthew, where it is part of what we call The Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ long chunk of teaching to the crowds gathered on the mountainside. But it also appears here in Luke, a little later in the gospel, not part of Luke’s Sermon the Plain to the crowds, but instead a teaching given just to the disciples. Luke’s version is just enough different than the one that I know so well from Matthew that I was able to listen to it a little more carefully. My attention caught on this: “Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?” Both gospels include this verse. And Luke adds, “If you are not able to do so small a thing as that, why do you worry about the rest?” If anything, all we manage is worrying so much that stress steals hours of our time.  

We talked about striving last week, our endless quest for success. Here, Jesus says that it’s the nations, or in other words, people other than God’s people who spend their time striving for more food and more drink and more clothes and more stuff and even more time. If we’re going to strive, Luke says, strive for God’s kingdom, God’s reign on earth. Luke says that it is God’s “good pleasure,” a phrase with extra emphasis - it is God’s deep joy to draw us into God’s reign. So, Jesus says, let go of your stuff. Give with a generous heart. Try to accumulate eternal treasure instead of earthly treasure, because wherever we accumulate treasure is where our heart will finally dwell, and we want our hearts in God’s eternal home.  

But then, in the last several verses of our reading for today, Jesus shifts gears. God’s people should be people of action, dressed and ready, lamps lit, alert and waiting for God’s arrival. Jesus uses imagery of slaves in a household who are blessed if they are always ready for a Master’s return home, even an unexpected return. “You must be ready,” Jesus concludes, “for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” It sounds a little contradictory. How can we be both free from worry about how much time we have, and ready all the time, without even a chance to sleep lest God catch us unawares?

I’ve talked to you before about the theological concepts of time we find throughout the scriptures - chronos time and kairos time. Remember, chronos is the Greek word for our regular, ordinary, everyday time. Our human time. The seconds, the minutes, the hours, the days moving just as they do. But kairos – kairos is time in a different way. Kairos is God’s time – specifically, “God’s right time for action.” Usually the word “chronos” is used in Greek texts to talk about time. But in the gospels, for example, this “kairos” – God’s right time for action – is used more often than chronos – regular time. And that makes sense, because the scriptures are full of stories about God’s right time for things to happen. “In the fullness of time.” Kairos. God’s right time for action. It’s not that God isn’t in chronos time. All time is God’s time. But our lives are this strange mix of ordinary days and spectacular moments, days that blur together, and seconds that stretch out and feel like each moment contains an eternity. And all of these days, these years, these seconds - they’re all God’s time, and all of it is a gift for us.

We live in the tension. God is both in the ordinary of our daily routines, and breaking in in unexpected ways. God transcends time. And I believe that God wants us to be mindful of God at work both in our daily routines and in the grand moments. God wants us to both use our time well to serve God and neighbor, to put to use our gifts and talents to share the love of God, and to rest easy in God’s arms, not trying to earn God’s love with our relentless busyness, not trying to drown out our spiritual emptiness by filling our hours with meaningless distractions. God wants all of our time - our purpose-filled hours of work, our quiet hours of rest and renewal, our hours of devotion and prayer, our hours spent together with God’s other precious creations, enjoying God in the everyday moments, and ready for a God who also acts at just the right times too.  

How are you using your time? How will you spend your days? Today is All Saints Sunday, a day when we are remembering those we have loved so dearly. I’m guessing that as we remember, most of us are not thinking that we wished they were more successful or productive. We’re just wishing we had more time. And that’s why I treasure this day so very much, when we remind ourselves that we are a part of the communion of saints. The “communion of saints” means the whole of God’s people, past, present, and future. And in the way that God works in chronos time and kairos time, the communion of saints means that time is flattened. We are all living in God right now, which is also always. The saints are alive to God always, and so they are alive to us and we are alive to them. We celebrate that in particular when we share in Holy Communion - we’re together with all who have gone before and all who will come after us at the table of grace, which is always kairos time, always God’s right time to act. We miss them so, but we are also together with them. We live in the tension.    

How are you using your time? How will you spend your days? God has made a gift of time to you. What gift will you make of your time to God? Whether you are working or sleeping, busy or resting, praising or mourning, rushing ahead or falling behind, longing or remembering, your every moment is a gift that God is ready to receive. Amen.

Sermon, "Strengthen Your Core: Gifts," Luke 20:45-21:4

Sermon 5/6/18

Luke 20:45-21:4

Strengthen Your Core: Gifts

            I want to thank you all again for the thoughtful celebration/beautiful basket of gifts you gave me last week for my birthday. I shared some pictures on my facebook page, and I have to tell you, my clergy colleagues are occasionally a little jealous at how well you treat me, and the love that you consistently demonstrate and shower me with. There’s a book called The Five Languages of Love by Gary Chapman that many pastors use as part of pre-marital counseling with couples planning to be married, and in the book, Chapman suggests that we have five main ways of expressing and receiving love from one another: acts of service, quality time, physical touch, words of affirmation, and giving gifts. One of my pastor friends commented on the images I posted from last Sunday: “Their love language must be giving gifts.” I said this works out well for me, because my love language is receiving them! Truly, I am blessed by your generous nature, shown to me and to others all the time.

             Today we’re talking about strengthening our core through giving. Giving isn’t just something we do at birthdays or holidays because we feel obligated or it is expected. Giving is a spiritual discipline, a practice we engage in to show our love, our commitment, our devotion, our gratitude. In the life of faith, we celebrate the gifts that God gives to us, including our very lives, and we seek to give back to God, and to give to neighbor, in thanksgiving for the God of abundance who blesses us so relentlessly. When we talk about how we give to God, we’re talking about how we give of our time, how we give of our money, and how we give of our talents – the gifts we have, the skills we have, the abilities that God gives us that we can use in God’s service. How do we strengthen our core through our giving? Is there more to it than just trying to give more of all these things.   

            We turn together to our text from Luke’s gospel. Sometimes we can’t get the full meaning of a passage of scripture without reading what comes before or comes after. It is always a good idea to see what takes places around the text we’re studying, because reading the scripture in content deepens our understanding. Take a couple weeks ago, when we read the story of the Feeding of the Five Thousand. Yes, we can read the text on its own, and learn from it. But Jesus’ compassion for the crowds is all the more moving when you realize that Jesus was looking for some solitude because he was grieving the death, the execution of his cousin John. The context adds important information.

            Part of today’s reading is probably very familiar to us. It’s a story known as “The Widow’s Mite.” Jesus is teaching in the Temple, when he looks up and sees people putting their gifts, their offerings in the treasury. He sees many rich people contributing, and then he sees a poor widow putting in two small copper coins. He remarks to those around them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.” His words seem to be a commendation, an affirmation of the generosity of this widow, who gives so much of herself to her faith through her offering in the Temple. And indeed, his words match up with what we know about giving. Although individual exceptions abound of course, on the whole, those in the bottom 20% of income earners in the US give more than double, in terms of percent of income, than do those in the top 20% of income earners.[1] There are many theories about why this is including isolation: we tend to live near people who share our level of wealth, thus the richest are somewhat isolated from the poorest – and empathy – those who are poor know what it is like, and so give more readily to others when they can. In Jesus’ brief commentary about the widow offering her two copper coins, many have read just such reflections into his words. The text makes for a great stewardship message, urging all of us to give all that we can, like the widow.  

            There’s nothing wrong with that message per se. It’s just that it is a bit out of context, ignoring what comes before and after this text. Our passage from Luke comes during what we know as the events of Holy Week. Jesus has already entered Jerusalem on a donkey, greeted by crowds who laud him like a king. He’s been teaching in the temple, and his teachings during these few days before his arrest and crucifixion are some of his most blunt and critical of the practices of the religious leadership today. And the buildup to the “Widow’s Mite” part of our text is a perfect example. Jesus, “in the hearing of all the people” Luke tells us, tells his disciples to beware of the scribes, that is the scholarly interpreters of the law who hung out around the temple, telling people how to apply the scriptures to their lives. Jesus says that they are interested most in the respect and status they have. They say long prayers just to look religious, he says. And, they “devour widows’ houses,” he says. For this, they will receive condemnation. The text doesn’t tell us exactly what he means by this phrase – “They devour widows’ houses” – but the gist is clear enough. The property and possessions and money that belongs to widows – one of the most vulnerable classes of people in Jesus’ world, one of the groups of people most frequently listed as needing and deserving special protections in the scriptures – the livelihood of the widows is somehow being eaten up, used up, by the religious leaders. Immediately after this, Jesus watches a widow put “all she [has] to live on” in the temple treasury. Suddenly, Jesus’ words take on a different tone. Perhaps rather than offering simple praise for her actions, Jesus is expressing a lament – she’s just given everything she’s got to a place that is sucking up the resources of poor widows! And then just after his words about the widow, Luke tells us that people are speaking about the temple, how beautiful the stones are, and how it is adorned with gifts dedicated to God, and Jesus responds by telling them that the stones of the temple will all be thrown down someday. Oof. In context, this sweet story is something more, a warning, it seems. 

            So, ok, great! We’re off the hook, right? Jesus doesn’t actually want us to give so much of our time, talent, and treasure to God – is that it? Well, that doesn’t sound quite right either, does it? What I think Jesus is calling us to do is to figure out if what we’re giving our all to is giving us life, or devouring our house, devouring our spirit. What are you giving to – time, money, talents, energy – that is really just devouring what you give? Devouring you? What are you giving heart and soul to which results not in you being strengthened in the core of your spirit, but in you being depleted, so that all that you had to live with is used up? When I hear Jesus’ words, I think of so many contemporary predatory practices that suck up the limited resources of the poor. I think of the way hours and hours of our time gets used up staring at screens of one kind or another. I think of the money we spend on disposable things, piling up mountains of trash, or the money we spend on things that hurt us, feeding one kind of addiction or another. The image of devouring widows houses is so vivid, and I think we can all think about ways that we’ve been giving our all to something that is just eating us up, body, mind, spirit.

            God wants something different for us. Make no mistake – I believe that God does want our all. God wants our everything. God absolutely wants our two copper coins. I believe God wants for everything that we do to be a way that we are offering a gift to God. But when we give our all to God, when we give our lives to God, instead of being devoured, our giving gives to us. Our giving to God gives life, and life in abundance to us. In our Bible Study, we’ve been reading excerpts from the book of Genesis, and focusing on God’s covenants with us. And we’ve seen that again and again, God keeps promises to us. God is faithful, even when we are not. God is trustworthy. When we give our all to God: our time, our talent, our treasure, our lives, heart and soul, we’re give knowing that God creates with what we give rather than destroys. God builds. God grows. Think of the metaphors Jesus shares with us in the gospels of what happens with what is given to God: It’s like fives loaves and two fish that feed a crowd of thousands. It’s like a mustard seed that grows into a tree that can hold all the birds of the air. It’s like a small measure of yeast that makes enough bread for a crowd. We can give our all to God in confidence, because God gives God’s all to us. We are worth God’s all, and God is worth our all.  

            And so, in this community of faith, we make this vow: “As members of the body of Christ and in this congregation of The United Methodist Church, we will faithfully participate in the ministries of the church by our gifts.” I promise that we are striving as a church to serve Jesus, to live up to God’s promises, and to be a place that can help you offer your whole heart, your all, to God. Let’s take our two copper coins, our all, and confidently, put it into the hands of God. Amen.

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[1] https://www.deseretnews.com/article/865625341/Do-the-poor-give-more-than-the-rich.html

Sermon, "How Will You Measure Your Life? By How and What You Give," Luke 6:27-38

Sermon 1/29/17

Luke 6:27-38

How Will You Measure Your Life? By How and What You Give

            When I was little, probably between 3^rd grade and 6^th grade, I was a part of 4H. You can focus on a lot of different skills in 4H clubs, but mine was focused on cooking and sewing in particular. I remember gathering around the kitchen counter of my leader’s home, learning how to cook and bake. Only, there were a lot more rules involved in the cooking and baking than when I learned at home. In 4H, you learn how to do things the 4H Way. Seriously, that’s what we learned to call it. The 4H way of cooking in baking involved a lot of precision, and very careful measuring, and mixing things in separate bowls, and combining them carefully, and washing hands between every step, and making sure to use your level whenever you measured flour. And there definitely was no licking batter off the beaters at 4H. Every year, I would take part in a cooking demonstration at the Westernville Town Hall. I’d prepare a poster board with the recipe I was going to make, and then have to tell a roomful of people how to put together the recipe, making sure, of course, to do everything the 4H Way. Believe it or not, I used to be petrified of public speaking, and these demonstrations were among some of the most terrifying times in my young life!

I loved being a part of 4H – don’t get me wrong. 4H was a centerpiece of my social life! But cooking and baking at home with my mother and grandmother was a lot different. I can’t remember, to be honest, ever using a level to precisely measure something. There were a lot of recipes in our family that included helpful instructions like “until it looks right,” if it was even written down at all. Tasting the batter was a right of the baker. My grandmother was always making a little extra dough so that if she was baking bread, for example, there was always enough to make us kids our own little mini-loaves to have. Everything was made with a generous hand.

I think about going out to eat with friends. I have a couple of friends, friends I love dearly, but they drive me a little crazy when it comes times to dividing up the bill and calculating a tip. I try to be a generous tipper. Not excessive – I couldn’t afford some of the extravagant gestures I read about sometimes in the news. But generous. However, I have a few friends who, though sufficiently well-to-do, seem to use the $5 or $6 that might be a reasonable tip as the place to start pinching pennies, shortchanging the server by a $1 or $2 – something that would really add up for the server but not make much of a dent to my friend. I believe in being frugal, thoughtful with how I spend my money – but if I’ve already decided to go out for a meal, I don’t want my savings to come at the expense of my server.

Today we’re continuing to think about how we will measure our lives. We talked two weeks ago about who and how we love – and I asked you to be intentional about your loving actions. You even got an extra week to work on it! Today, we’re thinking about measuring our lives by how and what we give. What do we give? How do we give it? Our gospel reading today is from Luke’s gospel. It’s part of what’s called The Sermon on the Plain, a big chunk of teaching from Jesus that takes place while the disciples and crowds are gathered together to hear him. He touches on many topics, some in depth, some with short sayings. Our passage for today is a kind of medley of teachings, but Jesus’ words coalesce around some common themes. He teaches that crowds to love their enemies and do good to those who hate them. Perhaps we are enough used to or familiar with Jesus’ teachings that those words no longer stop us in our tracks, but they’re pretty extreme. Love your enemies. He calls us to give to anyone who asks from us, to give even to those who don’t bother with the asking! “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” After all, he says, if we only love those who love us, and do good to those who do good to us, what does that say about our character? Everyone can do that! Jesus expects more of us than being nice to people who are nice to us. “Love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return.” When we do this, we’re modeling behavior after God’s, because God is kind and merciful, even to those who are ungrateful and evil. Don’t judge, don’t condemn. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Finally, Jesus concludes: “The measure you give will be the measure you get back.”

            When we measure our lives, friends, what kind of measure are we using when we give? Are we measuring the 4H Way, making sure to be exact, not a pinch too little or too much? Are we like a stingy tipper, cutting corners in what we give to others to make sure we have as much for ourselves as we want? Or do we look to how God gives, how God measures? Jesus says the measure put into our lap is one that is running over. And indeed, throughout the scriptures, we find images of God’s abundance, God’s extravagance in giving. Just yesterday at Katie Moore’s funeral, we shared together in the 23^rd Psalm, saying, “My cup runneth over.” How does God give to us? God gives like one who knows there is no end to the supply of what is available. God gives like it is God’s greatest joy to give to us. God gives to the kind and loving, and to the ungrateful and hard-hearted. God gives to us like we’re God’s favorite things in the world! God gives with a generous measure, always putting in extra for us.

How do we give? There are many places in the Bible where we get to listen in when someone asks Jesus a question. I read that there are about 65 questions that Jesus gets asked across the gospel accounts. There are a variety of questions, but I notice that several of them that lead to some major teaching from Jesus in response share a theme. Here are a few of those questions: Is it lawful to cure on the Sabbath? Do I have to pay taxes? How many times must I forgive someone? Is seven times enough? Who is my neighbor? What do I have to do to get eternal life? Do you sense the theme? As I hear them, in all of these questions, if we strip away to the core of it, the person is asking: What is the very minimum I can do and still be ok? What’s the least I have to forgive? Who is not my neighbor? How little can I give? How little can I do and still “get into heaven?” It seems like a lot of times we want to know: What’s the least I can give and still be ok? I’m not just talking here about how we give financially – although that’s something to consider. I think sometimes we act like we want to know the least we can give of our time, our energy, our lives, our hearts, our control, our plans, ourselves, and still be ok with God.

God wants so much more from us and for us! God want us to do unto others as we’d love for them to do to us, to measure for others like we’d like them to measure for us. Our best bet, as always, is to follow God’s example. How does God measure with us? I don’t want God to be using a level, making precisely sure not to give me too much, making sure not to leave too big a tip, trying to save few pennies when it comes to blessing me or my loved ones, frankly. I’m so thankful that God is so generous, so extravagant, so ready to fill our lives to overflowing! I want to learn to measure with the same measure God uses on us.

Pastor Adam Hamilton shares about a conversation he had with a man who runs auctions, especially estate auctions, where a persons’ possessions – often a whole household of trinkets and furniture and treasures and collectibles – will be auctioned off at a special event. The auctioneer says he often talks to families before the auction to give them a few words of warning about how this will feel. He tells them, “We’re going to take your life’s work and dispose of it in 4 hours.” But Hamilton reflects that the auctioneer’s words are only true if we see our life’s work as the stuff we’ve accumulated. What if, Hamilton asks, your life’s work is to pour yourself out into other people? “We can only take with us what we give away,” he says. (1) How are we giving? We are called to pour ourselves out in generous measure, overflowing the lives of those we meet with love and compassion, just as God does for us.

What’s left is simply to discover what it is that we’re called to give. Here’s what’s on my list: Love, of course. Mercy. Forgiveness. Compassion. Our time, which we treasure perhaps even more than our money. Our hearts. Our selves. All of us have these gifts to give. And all of us live in a world that is aching with need for the very things that we can pour out with a generous measure, and still find ourselves with yet more to give. This week, I want you to pay special attention to what you give and receive. Who will offer you forgiveness, and who will you forgive this week? Who will show you compassion? Where will you offer mercy instead of condemnation in a world that thrives on instant judgment? How will you spend this gift of your time this week? Who can you make time for? How will you give your heart to God this week? What will we make our life’s work? How generous is the measure you use?

“A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.” Amen.