Enough

Amos 6:1a, 4-7
Alas for those who are at ease in Zion, and for those who feel secure on Mount Samaria.
Alas for those who lie on beds of ivory, and lounge on their couches,

and eat lambs from the flock, and calves from the stall;
who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp, and like David

improvise on instruments of music;
who drink wine from bowls, and anoint themselves with the finest oils,

but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!
Therefore they shall now be the first to go into exile,

and the revelry of the loungers shall pass away.

1 Timothy 6:6-19
Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment;
for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it;
but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these.
But those who want to be rich fall into temptation

and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires

that plunge people into ruin and destruction.

For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich

some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.

But as for you, man of God, shun all this;

pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness.
Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called

and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.
In the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus,

who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession,

I charge you to keep the commandment without spot or blame

until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ,

which he will bring about at the right time—

he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords.
It is he alone who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see; to him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.

As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty,

or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God

who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.
They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share,
thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future,

so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.

Luke 16:19-31
"There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen

and who feasted sumptuously every day.
And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores,

who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man's table;

even the dogs would come and lick his sores.
The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham.

The rich man also died and was buried.
In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up

and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side.

He called out, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus

to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.'

But Abraham said, 'Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony.
Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed,

so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so,

and no one can cross from there to us.'

He said, 'Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father's house--for I have five brothers—

that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.'

Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.'
He said, 'No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.'
He said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.'"

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Many Sundays I have to search for a thread

         that runs through the weekly scripture passages,

         that connect them to one another

         in a particularly Holy-Spirit sort of way.

That was not the case this Sunday.

And it was not hard to see how the message

         proclaimed through this Living Word

         has direct application to our lives these days.

From the prophet Amos, to the parable of Jesus,

         to the letter from Paul to Timothy,

we hear the clear message

         that God has a significant issue,

         not with our wealth or our privilege,

         but with the way we usually choose to use them.

And so, I pray that you will listen

         for the Word of God to you,

         for it is Life for those who have ears to hear it.

The book of Amos

         is almost unanimously considered

         to be the first of the prophetic books of scripture

         `to be written.

Its message is similar to those delivered

         by so many of the Old Testament prophets –

Israel, you have not obeyed the Word of the Lord,

         and so things are not going to go well for you,

         but you have the chance to turn, to repent. 

The sins of God’s people are spelled out in painful detail

         in this book.

We are given just one of many in our passage this morning –

the sin of complacent extravagance.

Note that the problem is not the extravagance in itself,

         the luxury, the wealth, but the way it is being used,

         or not used.

The New Interpreters Bible commentary puts it this way:

“Luxury is a problem when it is gathered

         at the expense of others’ misery,

         and when it deadens the mind and the senses

         to responsibility.”

Amos reminds us that luxury can lead to excess,

         but that is not his concern.

His concern is that a life of excess

         can make us numb to the difficulties of others,

         and therefore we are unaware of the ways

         that we can use our privilege to help others.

He is concerned about the effect of luxury

         on one’s attitude toward life and toward the world.

The more comfortable we are,

         the more effort we will put into staying comfortable,

         to protecting our comfort,

         and the less we will think about the discomfort,

         the pain, the oppression being experienced by others,

         even when we could help to change that.

Jesus picks up this thread

         in his parable about the rich man and Lazarus.

There are so many interesting aspects to this parable.

First of all, it comes at the end of a chapter

         that has been called “Rich Men and Lovers of Money”.

The chapter includes the story of the dishonest manager,

         which you heard Pastor Renee preach about last week,

         and ends with this story

         about the rich man and Lazarus.

In the middle are some rather harsh statements from Jesus,

         which provide context for understanding today’s story. In Luke 6: 14-15, we hear this:

“The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all this, and they ridiculed [Jesus]. So he said to them, ‘You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of others, but God knows your hearts; for what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God.’”

“God knows your hearts; for what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God.’”

And then he goes on to tell the story of this rich man,

         a man whose name we are never told,

         but a man with so much money

         that he can afford to wear the finest purple clothing,

         made of the most expensive cloth around.

A man so rich that he could eat sumptuous feasts every day,

         even on the Sabbath day –

         which means he was ignoring God

         and breaking the law

         by requiring that his servants prepare and serve him

         every day of the week with no break.

A rich man who was able to ignore the poor man

         out by the gate,

         whose name we are told was Lazarus,

         meaning helped by God.

A poor man who was laid by the gate each day,

         presumably by friends who hoped that someone –

         the rich man or his friends who feasted with him –

         would take pity on him and do something to help him.

A poor man who longed to just have the droppings

         from the rich man’s table.

A poor man who was only noticed by the dogs,

         the dogs who probably did eat the crumbs

         from the rich man’s table,

and who alone took notice of Lazarus,

         even licking his wounds

         and perhaps providing some small measure of healing.

The rich man was rich in privilege,

         in status, in standing, and in resources.

Lazarus had nothing but pain, hunger and illness.

The rich man had enough to share,

         but every day he ignored the poor man, Lazarus,

         at the gate.

The rich man’s privilege numbed him

         to the oppression of others –

         which was just what the prophet Amos

         was warning against.

And so the rich man dies. And Lazarus dies.

And the tables are turned.

The rich man is now in torment,

         and Lazarus is being comforted by Abraham.

And the rich man now wants things to improve.

He asks Abraham to send Lazarus to serve him,

         to ease his pain.

But Abraham gently tells him

         that the chasm between him and Lazarus is too great,

         it cannot be bridged.

And so the rich man begs Abraham to send Lazarus

         to his brothers to warn them, before it’s too late.

Abraham, wisely, says,

         “they have the warnings of the prophets” –

         as did the rich man himself.

“If they wouldn’t listen to them, they won’t listen to even one who is risen from the dead.”

It appears that Jesus is speaking of Lazarus – but of course, we know the end of the story. What if we won’t even listen to the commands of risen Christ?

Paul shares the same message as does Amos and Jesus, in his letter to Timothy.

“Those who are rich are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.”

When I read these passages,

         I become more and more aware of my own privilege,

         even as I find myself becoming defensive

         just from thinking about it.

I want to rationalize why I am an innocent bystander

         in a society that has unfairly privileged me

         above others.

I want to point out the ways in which I am not privileged,

         the circumstances that have limited me along the way.

I want to justify how I have earned what I have,

         fair and square.

And I want to make a list of all the ways I have tried

         to use my privilege and my resources to help others.

But the truth is, in this country, without question,

         the deck is stacked in my favor, as a white person,

         and it is stacked against persons of color.

Just as the rich man could ignore the problems

         of people like Lazarus,

         and nobody thought anything of it,

so I am able to go about my business

         without ever worrying about what will happen

         to me or my children if we walk into a store,

         if we walk down the street,

         if we get pulled over by the police.

We don’t have to automatically think

         that we will be judged as a risk or as a problem

         or as someone less capable or less deserving

         or less intelligent,

as someone who somehow deserves

         the oppression they face every day,

         just by the way we look. 

I can ignore the problems inherent in our society

         for persons of color. But they cannot.

And so I have an inherent privilege,

         and I must work to not ignore the problems of others,

         but to use my privilege to help improve their situation.

I suspect that most of you hear this

         and the same sort of defensiveness and,

         if we are honest, a sense of anger rises up in you too – that you have worked hard for what you have,

that you have not had an easy path

         to what you have built of your life, and so on.

I understand that feeling – I feel it myself –

         and it is true that most everyone has faced

         some adversity as they have tried to make their way

         in the world.

But for Lazarus, the deck was stacked against him.

There was no way to pull himself up by his bootstraps. People like Lazarus were just too easy to ignore.

And so Jesus helps us to understand

         that our blessings are not for our singular enjoyment.

They are not for us to just share with our friends and family.

They are entirely blessings that are given to us by God,

         so that we can use them to be a blessing

         to those who need a blessing.

And the place where we most find people in need

         is the place we are most likely to ignore –

the place that feels different to us, or unsafe, or unusual.

Jesus hung out with the misfits, with the marginalized,

         with those who were oppressed or ignored

         or considered unworthy.

As followers of Jesus,

         we who are rich in the love of Christ

         are made abundantly ready to bless others.

So the parable of the Good Samaritan teaches us

         that the true neighbor is the one who

         does not cross the street to avoid the outcast

         who is in trouble,

but who goes out of their way to take the risk

         of helping one who is considered undeserving of help.

And the story of Lazarus and the rich man

         tells us that God helps Lazarus,

         so we are expected to as well.

This summer I read a book by Jim Wallis,

         who is a theologian

         and the founder of a Christian community

         called Sojourners.

The book is titled “America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America”.  

Interestingly, this term for racism, America’s Original Sin, was also used this weekend by President George W. Bush at the opening of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African-American history and culture.

President Bush said, and I quote,

“The museum shows our commitment to truth. A great nation does not hide its history; it faces its flaws and corrects them. This museum tells the truth that a country founded on the promise of liberty held millions in chains. That the price of our union was America’s original sin.”

Because I am still wrestling with how best

         to understand and to discuss this,

I am turning to a few of his statements

         in the Jim Wallis book

         that helped me to see my privilege more clearly.

He says:

“Just as surely as blacks suffer in a white society because they are black, whites benefit because they are white. And if whites have profited from a racist system, we must try to change it. To go along with racist institutions and structures such as the racialized criminal justice system, to obliviously accept the economic order as it is, and to just quietly go about our personal business within institutional racism is to participate in white racism. Racism has to do with the power to dominate and enforce oppression, and that power in America is mostly still in white hands.”

He says, “The church has the capacity to be a much-needed prophetic interrogator of a system that has always depended upon racial oppression.”

And, I think most significantly, he restates the challenge that we also hear this morning from Jesus – the challenge to the rich man, and to all of us as well, in considering what to do with our privilege. This is a powerfully-worded challenge that I have carried in my heart since the day I read it, and I challenge you to hear it with the ears of Christ, and to carry it and ponder its meaning for you.

He says, “It’s time for white Christians to be more Christian than white— which is necessary to make racial reconciliation and healing possible. That’s what the country and, more important, what God is now waiting for.”

“It’s time for white Christians to be more Christian than white…”

So in this spirit, let us hear and heed the Good News of today’s Living Word!

The good news is that it’s not too late for us.

The good news is that we have enough.

We have enough resource to abundantly share.

We have enough privilege to listen to those who are oppressed, who are powerless, to try to see the world through their eyes.

We have enough time to repent, to turn, to follow Christ.

We have enough love from God to be able to love our neighbors – with an emphasis on the ones whose problems we try not to notice, the ones whose lives are so different from our own.

There is enough. We have enough.

God will judge how we use the privilege God has given us,

         how we use the resources God has made available to us,

         how we live out the salvation God has freely offered us,

         the forgiveness and the redemption

                  that make us a new creation, meant for good works.

We are blessed, dear brothers and sisters in Christ.

We are blessed, not for our own life of comfort,

         but we are blessed to be a blessing.

When we repent, we turn, we follow Christ, we live in a new way.

God gives us all good things, not for us to hoard for ourselves,

         but for us to use for good in the world.

There is enough. We are enough.

God’s love makes us enough –

         but only if we choose to truly follow,

         to truly choose the life that is true life,

         by truly loving one another.

Amen.

Hand it Over!

Jeremiah 18:1-11

The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD:

"Come, go down to the potter's house, and there I will let you hear my words."

So I went down to the potter's house, and there he was working at his wheel.

The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter's hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him.

Then the word of the LORD came to me:

Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done? says the LORD. Just like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.

At one moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it,

but if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it.

And at another moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it,

but if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will change my mind about the good that I had intended to do to it.

Now, therefore, say to the people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: Thus says the LORD: Look, I am a potter shaping evil against you and devising a plan against you. Turn now, all of you from your evil way, and amend your ways and your doings.

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18

O LORD, you have searched me and known me.

You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away.

You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.

Even before a word is on my tongue, O LORD, you know it completely.

You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.

For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother's womb.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.

My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.

In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.

How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!

I try to count them -- they are more than the sand; I come to the end -- I am still with you.

Luke 14:25-33

Now large crowds were traveling with him; and he turned and said to them,

"Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.

Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it?

Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, 'This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.'

Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand?

If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace.

So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.

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When I was working for Consumers Energy, one of the things people talked about a fair amount with respect to their career choices was the notion of “work-life balance”.  I guess it’s not surprising that I would think about this on this Labor Day weekend, when we commemorate the contribution of workers to this country’s progress. The concept of “work-life balance” addressed how much of your life was devoted to your work, and how much time you set aside for other parts of your life, such as family, sports or exercise, church life, social life, and so on. It was worth thinking about such things, because for many of us who were trying to climb the career ladder, it was all too easy to let work consume every waking moment of your thoughts, your energy, your life. This got worse, of course, with the advent of the laptop computer, which made it possible to bring more work home than you could previously fit into your briefcase. And then, once personal handheld devices became available, there was no way to escape emails, phone calls, text messages, or any of the myriad ways that work could be your constant companion.

I used to mentor several young women engineers who were just starting out. And I remember clearly the conversation I had with one of them who had recently had her first child. She told me that her boss would regularly send her emails during evenings and weekends. She understood that those times might be most convenient for him to get some extra work done; but her question to me was, “am I expected to respond to him before the next work day?” In other words, is it acceptable for me to shut off work at any time of the day or night, in order to focus on my baby, my family, my self? Her underlying questions was, How much allegiance do I owe to my company, to my family?

Through the course of our lives, we find ourselves pledging our allegiance, so to speak, to any number of entities, either officially or otherwise.

·      We pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands.

·      We pledge fraternities or sororities. Just two days ago, I was meeting with Ron Case, who preached here in July and who is my spiritual director. We meet at a coffee house in the basement of a church on Washtenaw Avenue in Ann Arbor, on a stretch of that road that includes numerous beautiful buildings, many of which are used as fraternity or sorority houses. Since this past week is move-in week at U of M, there was much activity at the nearby houses. As we were sitting outside on Friday, just as we were wrapping up our time with prayer, we were jolted by the sound of about 40 or 50 young women’s voices nextdoor shouting CHI! OMEGA! CHI CHI OMEGA! Pledging allegiance…

·      We pledge our allegiance to our families – in our wedding vows, in our stated or unstated desire and intention to protect them from any harm, to make life as safe and good for them as possible.

·      We pledge our allegiance to the companies we serve with our work lives, too. If you ask any Ford or GM or Toyota employee, you will hear the various ways they are expected to only drive the vehicle their company produces. At Consumers Energy, it was expected that I would contribute to the Company’s Political Action Committee, that I would purchase their monthly appliance service plan, that I would take part in their employee stock purchase program.

·      And we even pledge our allegiance, as alumni of a particular university, especially one with a major football team! We pledge our allegiance to that university, to that team, being expected to cheer for it above any other, and also to be reviled by those who have pledged their allegiance to any other team.

These are some of the bigger ways we may find ourselves pledging our allegiance, but the truth is, our society challenges us to pledge allegiance to all sorts of other things. We implicitly pledge our time to our gardens, to our music, to our kids’ soccer teams or football teams or hockey teams, to all sorts of things that become our main priority, to which other things take precedence. Even at church, our buildings and our programs that benefit members can often claim our primary allegiance, pushing out the time and resources we feel we can devote to helping and serving others. And like it or not, we can find ourselves devoting our hearts to those things in our lives that are broken – our addictions, our obsessions, our constant worries and attempts to make right what is wrong in our lives. Pledging allegiance.

And in the meantime, Jesus tells us to give up allegiance to anything, to everything, that pulls us away from a life of discipleship. When he read him saying “hate your family”, the word being translated as “hate” does not carry with it a context of anger or hostility. What it means is to not prefer it, to not give it a place of primary allegiance or authority in your life. In other words, if your love of your family gets in the way of your ability to follow Christ, you are called to choose Christ over family, to choose the Way of discipleship over the needs of family.

It’s the same with love of country, or loyalty to company, or cause, or any form of human-created organization. If it gets in the way of your life as a disciple of Christ, there’s a need for a shift of priorities.

The prophet Jeremiah brings the same Word from God in a different way. When he speaks of God as the One who can take whatever has become spoiled, and destroy it like a pot on a potters’ wheel, reshaping it into something new, he is reminding us that even nations can and will come to an end. So it is important for us to not establish primary allegiances with anything having a temporary nature. Our primary allegiance is always with God. The work of our lives is discipleship, is following Christ. This is not part-time work; it’s a full-time, life-long vocation.

And it’s not work that will be easy street for us. Jesus says, don’t start down this path unless you understand its cost. The cost of discipleship is the readiness to give up everything for the sake of Jesus Christ. So just like you wouldn’t start building a tower unless you have the means to finish it, we should not start a life of discipleship unless we intend to take it all the way. All the way to the cross.

Now you may be thinking, I don’t know that I have what it takes to be that kind of disciple. I don’t know if I can make God the absolute center of my life, setting everyone and everything on the periphery. But take heart, dear friends in Christ! Because God knows you better than you know yourself. As the Psalmist says, we are fearfully AND wonderfully made, and God is with us always, everywhere we go.

God not only knows what we need, God also knows what we need to let go of, to hand over. Sometimes we cling so tightly to the things that hold our allegiance, that we are unable to let go in order to make space for the new thing that God is doing in our lives. In my own life, God often seems to move me one step at a time, which means that I end up letting go or stepping away from something before I ever know what it is that I am being released for; what that will enable me to do that could never have been possible otherwise.

God is the source of the strength and power and compassion and humility that makes it possible for us to be true followers. The spiritual nourishment that comes from the invitation to this table, to be nourished in Christ, is what equips us to turn in a new direction, to be more fully the disciples that we are called to be - if we choose to be.

So where is your true allegiance?

What takes precedence over everything else?

What choices does this cause you to make in your life?

What and how will you speak out for what you believe, for who you are and whose you are?

And what will you do when allegiances conflict with one another?

Is your Christian faith a part-time endeavor, to be fit in as time permits, but not to interfere with the other important things to which you have pledged?

When you consider your work and your life to be the pursuit God’s work, Christ’s mission, how does your work-life balance look? How do your possessions and your allegiances line up with that?

The next time you find yourself pledging your allegiance, whatever it is to, take a minute to consider its relative importance in your life; its importance relative to Christ. Then, in humility and faith, hand over your allegiances - to country, to family, to possessions, to life itself – hand them all over to God, and ask God to guide you, to direct your ways, to help you center your life on Christ. Then come to the table, ready to join the feast that has been prepared for all God’s children. Come to the table, and then go out into the world, ready to give up all allegiances, to take up your cross, to follow our Lord and Savior, serving only Him, pledging your allegiance to Him alone.