Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser
SECURITY
Oct 14, 2018 Pentecost 21-B Mark 10:17-31
Oh, there are so many sermon
possibilities in this Markan text! And
I’ve preached a good many of them - I love where it says, “Jesus, looking at
him, loved him.” Jesus loved this young
man who could say out loud that he had kept all the commandments from his
youth. What dedication he had to the
ways of Torah! To God’s service! What a strong backbone he must have had, to
keep all the commandments in life so far.
I kind of identify with him, because I worked hard from 6 or 7 years old
on, to follow everything I was taught - with a few lies here and there, and a
good bit of anger off and on - but I was a rule-follower, and believed it was
an offering to God. So - been there,
done that mostly.
So Jesus tells this young wealthy
man that he lacked one thing - and that he should sell all he had, give to the
poor and come follow me. This man in the
story went away sorrowful - Simon and
Garfunkel would say he was, “slip-slidin’ away.” What made him leave sorrowfully? That he wanted to let it all go and follow,
but felt obligated to his family? That
he had worked out in his own mind that he could serve God best with his
wealth? That he liked making generous
gestures that his wealth let him do?
That he liked the distance his wealth gave him - he could donate money
without getting personally involved?
That his wealth kept him from the panic of insecurity, and he needed
that security to function?
Then Jesus says that thing about a
camel getting through the eye of a needle, which is a really ridiculously funny
image, even with a big needle. People
used to talk about a certain gate in Jerusalem’s wall that was colloquially
called ‘the eye of the needle.’ The
story was that to get through this gate, the camel had to have all his burdens
removed, and crawl through crouching.
That makes a good comparison to the rich guy needing to let go all his
riches to follow Jesus. But you could
always take your camel to another gate, and archaeologists haven’t found any
proof of such a gate or tradition, so maybe Jesus is just giving us an
outlandish picture of how difficult it is for a rich person to make the kindom
of God. After all, the disciples do
respond as if no one can make it, then….and Jesus has to assure them that with
God, even seemingly impossible things are actually possible.
Most preachers don’t take these
words literally, and urge parishioners to give away all their money to follow
Jesus. I’ve read that rather out-there
and cultish, suspect groups require their followers to turn over their wealth
in order to join. But in our churches we
talk about tithing, and ways to use the gift of being well-off, if we are given
that gift, for good. And preachers like
nice salaries, too - if we wanted to take a vow of poverty, we’d have joined a
different group. Most preachers never
expect to be rich, although like everyone else, we’d like to feel like we can
pay our bills, take care of our families, and have some nice things.
Besides any other interpretations,
this section of Mark is one of the many times Jesus speaks about money - Jesus
actually speaks more about our connections to our finances than he does about
anything else. Our attitudes to money
reveal our hearts like nothing else - where your treasure is, Jesus says, is
also where your heart is. So I’m going
to talk about money today - and share with you all the attitudes in a few
congregations I’ve served. A common
mistake these congregations have made is in carrying over into the church how
we treat money in our personal lives or our business lives - and that is a
mistake, because Christ’s church is different from those, and the place of
money is Christ's church reflects not the culture of earth but the kindom of
heaven. And getting them mixed up makes
for problems. The goals of being the
church are different - not wealth, not preparing for retirement or setting up
an empire - the goals of church are serving the community in God’s name - not
just ourselves, but all those whom God loves and sent Jesus to save.
My first call was in a northern
presbytery, and I think it was a good introduction to keeping the goals of
mission and ministry in the front of the congregations’ life. LArger churches in the presbytery gave
towards a fund that financially supported the smaller - if those smaller
churches did their homework about identifying their mission, goals to get
there, and honestly looked at their own people’s ability to give. It was a good discipline so that the
congregations receiving assistance kept their focus on more than survival. The presbytery was pretty smart that
way. My five-church parish were very
up-front and transparent about their collection of tithes and use of their
monies, and could state their Christ-centered mission.
My other calls haven’t always been as clear or clean. My first Interim I did was with a church
enclosed by a declining neighborhood, whose remaining members were the last of
the professionals of the older generation.
They remembered when the church was full and Sunday School overflowed,
which hadn’t been the real situation in years.
They skimped on paying for long-distance phone service, and had me using
a complicated calling card in order to order materials or talk to General
Assembly folks. At the same time, they paid a company to keep their books and
paid a member to play with their
dwindling capital. They were in major
denial about the state of their future and their finances; I quickly realized that calling a full-time
pastor again would never happen without a renewed vision and growth, which I
prayed for diligently with folks who never really got through their
denial. They were unwilling to change
anything, or even consider changing anything, so they went forward with a
part-time, certified lay pastor and may still be hanging on in their large,
mostly unused building - I don’t
know.
The next congregation I want to talk about was still a good
size and able to both support a pastor, care for their building, and do mission
in their presbytery and locally. A good
many years back, a wealthy spinster had left her holdings to the congregation
in the form of a trust, stating that the income from the trust become a stream
of income for the church to be used for “normal ministry.” Initially the
Session designated that new money to a split between international, national
and local mission giving. But
maintenance of the fund quickly fell into the hands of people of power who
liked to play with money, and who decided that, rather than give the income to
the session, as per the trust’s instructions, they would invest the income and
grow the fund. Then they quickly took to
themselves the power to decide who got ANY money from the trust, making the
Session jump through hoops to justify their project as ‘normal ministry,’ and
so enjoyed pulling strings in their small pond. A smart pastor some 30 years down the road,
after some of these power brokers died, made the entire Session into trustees
of the fund, which worked for a while; but the temptation to use the money for
power reasserted itself when that pastor retired. When I arrived, everyone was afraid to touch
any of the money, and it sat there growing and not supporting the church in any
meaningful way. I took on confronting
this attitude as a part of Interim work, paving the way for a new Installed
pastor, but instead was bullied and abused by the power brokers, whose view of
church money was no longer scriptural or mission-oriented, but that of a place
they could act out their control.
The next congregation I’ll talk about had a huge problem
with transparency and boundaries around their monies. When I arrived, a staff person often counted
the offering by herself when the appointed Ruling Elder was absent; and her
spouse, who wasn’t a member, kept the books. They did have a separate treasurer
who paid the bills, but he was getting forgetful and often got confused and
made mistakes, although he’d been very good earlier. He asked to be replaced, then wouldn’t
quit. Meanwhile, the staff person’s
husband was making the church’s budget up by himself, as no one wanted to get
into the budget issues. And when the
session tried to make the budget more transparent, after a nasty annual
meeting, the staff member, her spouse and the treasurer, who were all friends,
refused to cooperate. The issue was that
salaries, other than the pastor’s which had to be voted on annually, were all
lumped together, so we could not determine anyone’s actual salary, including
the staff member. The congregation had a
split opinion about the staff person and all the pies she had a finger in, and she
was also friends with the executive presbyter.
She and her allies organized a secret meeting of the Session lamed me
for all the problems, and forced me out in 6 mo, with the collusion of the
presbytery exec. This congregation just
about caused me to quit the ministry.
Another congregation I was involved in took money raised in
benevolent giving for a staff person’s time of need, made the family apply for
it and prove need, then took over the remainder of the money for a balloon
payment on a new construction. Yet
in this same church, one Ruling Elder annually made sure the church totally
tithed its budget to international, national and local mission - over and above
their benevolent giving to presbytery. So it was a mix of attitudes working
there.
The final congregation I want to tell you took a giant risk
with their financial security in order to follow what they discerned God was
asking them to do. This well-educated
upper middle class group, decided that other than a fund to pay expenses for
the first 2 months of the year, they would zero-out their money every December,
and give out the remaining offerings to various benevolent church causes. They would trust in the giving of committed
members, knowing folks would also come through for any unexpected repairs. They were still going strong when I left the
presbytery. I was surprised yet pleased
that a congregation would take such a risky step; it was an experiment motivated
by their vision of the purposes of church.
They wanted their gifts out there working, trusting that God would
provide if their need increased.
I’m pretty clear about what the work of the Church of Jesus
Christ is - our Book of Order and our confessions of faith spell it out for
us. The church is to promote and
preserve the worship of God by believers; we are to nurture each other in our
faith and lives; we are to spread the good news of Jesus to those who haven’t
heard, and nurture them into the community where they can grow and thrive and
serve; and we are to do good those in need, both in our communities and around
the world, seeking justice for the oppressed, feeding the hungry and
ministering to the sick, honoring all people, and living lives that exhibit the
new vision of the kindom of God in this world.
Our collections are to support this vision and the paid workers, and
nothing else.
Obviously we olks in the congregations are all sinners still
growing and learning to do all these high ideals, and our own quirks and issues
get played out as we relate to one another and work at these goals together,
and especially when it involves money.
Truly our finances reveal a lot about our values and the faith of our
heart! The church of Christ was never
meant to be just a place of inward comfort, but also a place of
challenge and of looking outward for service.
The church of Christ was never meant to be just a place of taking
care of ourselves, but a place of sacrificial care for the world, just as
Christ left off the privileges of being Divine and came here with us, and gave
his life for us. The church of Christ
was never meant to be a place of high finance, although being smart planners
for the future involves a wise use of moneys.
The church of Christ was never meant to be a place of business,
interested only in its continued and enhanced life, but rather engaged in
giving itself away. The church of Christ was never meant to be a well-loved
community fixture of remote holiness, but a place where struggling folks reach
out to help other struggling folks know God.
The church exists because of its mission, the mission of
Christ. If the church is not doing
mission, it has ceased to be the church.
Indiantown Pres has a unique situation among congregations I
have served. Our congregation lost a
good many members a few years ago, and no longer can match our giving with our
budget. However, I have never
before served a church whose faith ancestors left the future so ready for a
rainy day. Shortage of money is not what
threatens us. We have the ability to
invest in our own future mission and ministry, if we so choose. We have the ability to pay a full-time,
seminary-trained pastor to lead us in reaching out to that future, and not just
at the presbytery minimum, either - we have the ability to pay an experienced
pastor a good salary. We have the ability to keep our structures up and
safe. We have the ability to do mission
in this community - to look at the needs of our community, and find ways to
address those needs.
What I see, after a year here, is that we want to thrive and
move into the future, but don’t yet have a vision to guide us. There is still grieving over the recent
split, which can make anyone numb and unable to think ahead. I hear us pinning our hopes on a new pastor
to bring new people in, while still hoping things won’t have to change too much
from our historic ways.
Friends, what we need to pray for is a vision for mission to
take hold of us; a desire to serve God by serving this community God has placed
us in. A fire needs to start in OUR
hearts, and the God’s Spirit will move us into the directions we need to
go. We need to give ourselves away for
Christ, whether that results in new people or not - mission is the purpose of
the church, and God adds to us those God wants to add. We have a wonderful property and buildings,
and we have financial security left to us from the folks before us, who looked
to the future beyond their time. We now
need to look into a future beyond our time. We have the, what can I call it, the challenge,
of living at a cusp time of Christ’s church, a time of transition - we can sit
back and moan about the changes, and let things wind down and out;
or we can jump in and risk to see what new thing God wants
to do with us. I know what my vote would
be for. May God stir in our hearts and
give us the strength and vision to do a new thing. AMEN.
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