Sister Jose's Dad Buys Ice Cream 11/11/18 Pentecost 25B

Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser

Sister Jose’s Dad Buys Ice Cream

Nov 11, 2018         Pentecost 25-B             Ruth 3:1-5, 4:13-17  &  Mark 12: 38-44

            I was blessed to meet Sister Jose Hobday when I was working on my D Min in CA.  Raised on a reservation in a family that had converted to Christianity through Roman Catholic missions, she took on a religious life as a young woman. However, she never forgot her Native American roots, and was a powerful teacher, powerful…..she taught using her stories, and incorporating the wisdom and ceremonies of her Native tradition.  It was a privilege to be in her class and her presence.  My sermon title comes from a story that sticks in my memory because it made me question and think.

One day, she says, in her poor and struggling family, they were down to their last few dollars with bills still to pay.  She heard her parents debating which bill to pay with their last dollars, and getting angrier as they debated which bill was more important. Finally, there was silence, and then she heard her father say that he didn’t like it that they were fighting over dollars, & that their voices were raised in anger over bills- this was not helping the family.  SO…. he was taking the remaining dollars and buying ice cream enough for the whole extended family; her mother was to invite people over, have a celebration.  So that’s what they did. 

I couldn’t understand the story – the first thing I resalized was that I’ve never been poor enough to understand.  I’ve had some hard, hard years raising my children as a single mom, even with regular child support from their dad.  We were both pastors, so it wasn’t like child support was based on a large salary.  And I was just working part-time at first; and while I scrambled to find more work, we qualified for free lunches and breakfasts at the kids’ elementary school.  I made too much to qualify for government assistance, but not enough to be easy.  I had to apportion the dollars carefully, and saved coins in a mayo jar that we used for a treat when I was out of money otherwise.  So I did understand the need for a treat - a treat raised our spirits when we were coping with a pair of sneaker with holes in the toes. We did the buy-one get-one deals, sales, thrift stores and coupons.  The worst thing I did was to send my kids to their grandparent’s house once with their worst clothes, hoping the grandparents would spring for some new clothes when they saw the state of things.  They did, but not as much as I’d hoped. 

But we always had a roof, we always had clothes & shoes, and we always had food, and welcomed their friends to our table, even if it was leftovers.  We had medical insurance so we could go to the doctor. I had enough to pay bills, although I prayed for no crises to happen.  I actually had great credit, and more offers coming in the mails regularly.  Since I managed to pay the bills, all the companies wanted me to go in debt to them…..

So I still don’t understand the level of poverty that Sister Jose lived in on the reservation, although I know how good it feels to have just a small treat when things are pinched all over.   I can’t imagine not being able to pay bills, or the stress and angst of the family as they tried to muddle through.  But I could just stretch my mind enough to understand Sister Jose’s father not wanting the family fighting and bogged down over this never-ending drama of bills due; I could just barely imagine how he felt to see the rancor and disintegration in his family all over money, and the lack of celebration of life.  

I also get the ice cream thing.  My mom’s family passed along to us a love of ice cream - after all, her dad’s name was Howard Johnson, although not the rich one!  Grandpa Howard, whom I never met, was a coal miner and a staunch union man during the Great Depression, and worked his hands to the bone. Yet on the 4th of July he’d go up to the store and get everyone in the family their own pint of ice cream in their favorite flavor.  My mom had great memories of sitting on the porch with a whole pint to herself.  So we had ice cream every Sunday after church, stopping at those old High’s Ice Cream stores and everybody getting one scoop. The first thing I did after the kids and I moved into our house without their dad, was to get ice cream for supper. 

When I approached the text in Mark, I made the mistake of wondering why it seemed to have two unrelated parts - the uppity scribes part and then the widow's’ mite part.  After studying, I realized that these 2 parts were connected, and had to rethink things.  Jesus is both contrasting the religious practice of the rich and the poor; and he is also showing the relationship of one person’s poverty to the wealth of others - a negative connection, but a connection all the same.  Jesus observes the religious higher-ups walking around in their own self-importance, knowing that they got that way through what he called “devouring widows’ houses.”  That is, taking advantage of the poor and powerless, demanding temple taxes on top of the unjust and increasingly punitive civil taxes people paid to Rome, finagling things that took advantage of the poorer folks who had no standing. The scribes evidently liked to be seen making large donations (with their names attached) and praying long, pompous prayers.  Jesus saw that the reason they could make those large donations was because the poor, like widows and orphans in that day, who had no power or voice, funded them…. Jesus judged that their wealth often came from gouging the pockets of the disenfranchised, or at least was augmented by these pretty much invisible people.  

Jesus, on the other hand, also observes the widow coming to give.  Evidently, the poor didn’t have to also make voluntary offerings in addition to taxes, but she came and did it.  I hear Jesus calling attention to two things (at least).  One, she was in the position of only having a couple coins left because of the injustice of the system, and those who benefitted from it.  With no men in her family to take her in, she was a marginal person, and the system did not work for her.  And two, she still wanted to give - its what made her human, what gave her dignity, despite it being her last coins. While those desiring attention gave large gifts that they didn’t need in order to keep up their lifestyles; she gave an extremely small gift that was, still, all she had.  What could she buy, anyway, with those small coins? Enough bread for one meal? I don’t know - but she decided it wasn’t worth arguing with herself over the best use of the last coins, and gave it to God.  That’s what reminded me of Sister Jose’s dad and the ice cream. 

When I worked in hunger ministry for a former presbytery, I had to give out two awards for our hunger giving.  We were doing a program called 2 cents a Meal, where folks in our churches were encouraged to give, yes, 2 cents towards hunger for every meal they ate.  Of course the largest offerings came from the largest churches with the most people.  But we also gave a second award, for the largest per-capita giving, which ALWAYS went to a small church.  Maybe because they knew what hunger was?  Maybe because they almost all gave?  I don’t know - it always worked out that way, though.  Even poor people want to give, and do their part of being compassionate humans.  That’s actually the origin of the Least Coin offering that our Presbyterian Women take up, and fund projects all over the world.  It started with a woman in Florida who didn’t have much, but who realized if we all added our least coins together, we could do something for God’s kindom. 

So this text is an economic commentary, and not just about stewardship, which is usually why its preached.  It goes along with the background of today’s reading from Ruth, and the practice of gleaning.  To help the poor under the Jewish Law, land-owners were not to gather all the way to the edges of their fields, and perhaps let the smaller fruits or grains slip through.  Folks with no fields of their own could come behind them and gather what they could.  Ruth went to glean in the fields owned by Boaz, who was evidently a righteous man who followed the practices of the Law. 

We might note that Jesus is equally aware of both the influential and the powerless.  Jesus is aware of human economics, and the way the system works for some and not for others.  Yes, there are people who take advantage of the system from either side - who know how to work it.  Yet there are many more who are simply its victims, born into countries of massive inequality, or families that have been on the fragile spiral of living week to week, where it only takes one tragedy to throw them into homelessness.   For Jesus, and for Jesus’ kindom, the answers are a compassion and caring where the abundance on one hand can bless the need on the other hand.  None of us are intrinsically worth more to God than another; none of us merit more from God than another.  We are one tribe, one humanity, on one planet - and the goal is for all of us to be well. 

I admit that’s a tricky balance to strike - there are those who are manipulative and greedy, and those who are lazy and shiftless.  In between are all the rest of us who are seeking to do well enough considering the circumstances of our birth, and willing to work.  There are the creative as well as the worker bees.  The apostle Paul talks of this artificial economic divide between believers, and chides those non-workers who come early to agape feasts to gorge and get drunk, making those hungry workers who come later, find the table empty.  And he challenges congregations that have extra to give generously for other congregations who are suffering persecution. 

Do we see how the scribes and the widow are connected, albeit inversely?  Can we see the way world economics that make for some to get wealthy also makes for others to be thrown into abject poverty?  Jesus observes the results of sin and lack of compassion just in that square in front of the Temple, a small picture of a large disorder. 

Jesus can have this kind of economic outlook because the kindom of God is different from the ways we’ve done things on our own - Jesus calls for each of us to see the other as our kin, our extended family, important strands in the web of humankind.  To call it robbing the rich to give to the poor is to miss the point of our kinship with one another, and our compassion for our own kind.  In Jesus’ kindom, we all need each other, and we all have to do well for humanity to do well.  Actually, its the only way humanity will do well - and it that sense, it is the way of our salvation. Its not Robin Hood, and its not socialism - it is, however, the love of God in each heart, loving each other. 

I guess I’ve been trying to figure out my feelings and thoughts brought up by this caravan walking up through Mexico to seek asylum here. I find myself understanding the fear that too many more hands in America’s pot might threaten my portion - the cookie may have to be divided and my part get smaller.  I want to hold on to what I have, and I find myself thinking, “They oughta work this out in their country like we did.”  Well, as our ancestors did, because being born here was certainly none of my own doing.  And our ancestors were not sinless in their eradication of the native peoples, the enslavement of others to their own economic ends in the pursuit of their own good and greed. 

I also see the pictures of the people walking, as well as the testimony of people like Rev Lisa about those seeking to get into Europe - I hear the conditions they are fleeing, I hear their desire for their families to be safe and have hope of a better future with the kind of healthcare and possibilities of education that we have.  So I have compassion - they are my sisters and brothers, my children and grandchildren, my aunts and uncles.  I mean, my people came here from Germany for the same ideals - just a few generations earlier, is all. 

Can it work?  Given what I hear in the scriptures, I have to work for that vision of the kindom, even if it means I learn to live with less. Our denomination, in its justice ministries, is already reaching out in compassion to refugees, and advocating for decent treatment. Just look around on our PCUSA website and see the outpouring of love and care already happening.  A lot of my personal feelings and thoughts are based in my view of the kindom that Jesus preached.  I think many people are feeling attacked in their own sense of worth and security - what has been called “lifeboat” ethics - push the extras out so we who are already in the lifeboat don’t get swamped.  But that’s a viewpoint based on fear, not trust.  That’s a viewpoint based on the myth of scarcity, that there’s not enough to go around so I better grab mine and hang on to it. 

And what do those attitudes do to our souls?  That’s what I hear Jesus posing to us in today’s reading.  How can we live with trust in God’s abundance?  How can we live so as not to damage our souls in discriminating, or in greediness?  How can we live with  the open hearts and open hands that God has shown to us?  How can we walk in the love and compassion that God has for us?  These are important questions - they were important in Jesus’ time and they are important in our time.  May God so work that love and creativity and new life in us, that it overflows to the world.  AMEN.