The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for June 28, 2009

Texts: Ezekiel 22:23-31/Roman 12:13

Title: “Contribute and Extend”

              The population of America is approximately 304 million people, and of that number approximately 227 million, adults and children, are professing Christians “at varying levels of commitment.” That’s a lot of Christians. Can we agree that there are behaviors, attitudes, and values that distinguish the Christian from the non-Christian? The question is, what are they? For the past three weeks we have been reviewing Paul’s response to the question as it is elaborated in the twelfth chapter of his letter to the church in Rome. 

              On the first week in the current sermon series we looked at verse 9 of chapter 12 where Paul enjoins the Romans to “let love be genuine.”  We discovered that Paul had some very defined ideas on the subject of genuine love.  “Genuine love” by Paul’s definition was a love shaped and molded after the example of Jesus Christ, in whom, Paul writes to the church at Colossae, “the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.”

             Aware that “genuine love” needed a delivery system, in the second week of this sermon series we hear Paul exhort the Romans in verse 11 of chapter 12 to do their loving with zeal and ardor. Service to the Lord, Paul fervently declared throughout his ministry, should be item number one on any Christian’s “to do” list, and, he insisted, the effort was to be made with all the zeal and ardor the Christian could muster. 

            Last week, week three, we took up verse 12 of chapter 12, “rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer.”  As I pointed out, conditions in Rome were unfavorable for the Christian, a plight shared by virtually all of the Christians with whom Paul interacted. Short of being in their midst to counsel and suffer with them, there was little Paul could do except to urge them to stay strong and maintain hope. “Rejoice in hope.” No, God had not forgotten them. The night of suffering would give way to the dawn of God’s new day.

           Marks of the “true Christian,” week four, verse 13, “Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.” In today’s verse Paul is wearing his community organizer hat.  In the first instance he is soliciting support for a Christian community in Jerusalem who were experiencing hard times. Wary of trouble, the Jewish and Roman authorities in Jerusalem kept the Christians of that city under tight surveillance.  “Contribute to the needs of the saints,” or said another way, “We must look out for our own.” 

            In leading up to this instruction, Paul writes in verse 4, “For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.”      

           “We are members of one another.”  In making that claim Paul was tapping into the very bedrock upon which Christ founded the church. Though Christ used different language in describing the unity he was seeking to build among those to whom he ministered, his emphasis is clear. He challenged his followers to redefine the term neighbor. “Neighbor,” as Christ understood the term was not a designation reserved for a person of the same clan, a person commanding an equal level of status, or a person who necessarily lived a spotless life. Paul maintained the same convictions.

             While he appealed to the Romans for their help in supporting a particular community of Christians, the Christians in Jerusalem, Paul understood that Christ had not only charged him to build up the church through the very practical means of sharing material support for fellow believers, but he understood his mandate from Christ to extend much further. The Christian was to “extend hospitality to strangers,” for in Christ’s eyes that “stranger,” spots and all, was neighbor as well.

           Recall that wonderful story in Luke’s Gospel where a lawyer stood up “to test Jesus,” inquiring “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus, as he so often did, turned the question back on his questioner, “what [Jesus asked] is written in the law?” With great assurance the lawyer responded by reciting the “great commandment,” in the Jewish law, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”  

             Jesus readily commended him for his answer.  The lawyer, however, wasn’t satisfied with  Jesus’ commendation, instead, “seeking to justify himself,” Luke tells us, he posed a second question, “And who is my neighbor?” The question prompted Jesus to tell a story.

            A man, beaten and left for dead on the side of the road, is for all intents and purposes ignored by two holy men who happen to pass by.  Not very neighborly. The men presumably feared they would become ritually impure by attending to the man’s wounds. A valid consideration under Jewish religious law, however, in Jesus’ eyes the needs of the neighbor trumped all other considerations.

            Two holy men left the victim to suffer his fate, but what another passerby saw, this man a Samaritan, a “stranger” with whom the Jew maintained strained relations, [what that man saw]was not a stranger, but a neighbor who deserved hospitality. The Samaritan bound the victim’s wounds and delivered him to a place where he could be cared for. Neighbor.

          “Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.” For Jesus, and later the Apostle Paul, stranger and neighbor merged as one.  While Paul petitioned the Romans to be generous on behalf of their own, hospitality to those who they did not consider to be part of their clan, was a priority.

          Clearly the neighbor with whom we live and work, with whom we socialize makes the kind of priority claim on us that the stranger across town, across the nation, across the world does not. That fact must be recognized. Yet when Paul wrote to the Romans, he was not merely admonishing the Christians in Rome to maintain unity and harmony among themselves, or maintain unity and harmony with other Christian brothers and sisters in Ephesus, for instance, or in Colossae, but he was challenging them to think in a much broader frame. There is no way Paul can be read to exclude any child of God from the body of Christ, and this would certainly conform to the teaching of Jesus. Yes, “contribute to the needs of the saints,” the neighbor who lives next door, but likewise “extend hospitality to the stranger.”

            There is a fact, however, that you and I readily acknowledge, perhaps too readily, and too conveniently, acknowledge. We know that there is but a finite quantity of contributions we can make, and hospitality we can extend, to insure that all God’s children have food on the table, shelter, access to education and health care.

             The other night at about 8:45 I received a phone solicitation from a person who was raising money for multiple sclerosis.  When the solicitor thanked me for a previous contribution I had to tell her that I didn’t recall ever having made a donation. I was informed that I made a donation in 2002. Seven years since I made a contribution and my name and number still shows up on the donor list.

             There is great need, and as we all know only too well, the pot from which we draw is growing smaller in these difficult economic times.  Incidentally the same day I received the phone solicitation, I heard from the Wilderness Society, Oxfam, an agency devoted to hunger relief, Green Peace and the National Wildlife Federation. There is virtually no day when I don’t receive at least two such solicitations. If you like mail, make a small contribution to one of those agencies and you will be set for life. But you already know this to be true.

             The neighbor needs our help, but so too the creatures that inhabit the planet with us, and the planet itself. Yet for every need identified in press reports there is a matching article focusing on scarcity. Even as we read about more and more families facing insolvency and outright poverty, we read about or hear the sort of thing I heard on National Public Radio last week.

            Facing a deficit of several billion dollars, the governor of California is calling for cutbacks on a massive scale to stave off insolvency. At the same time teachers across the state protest that the schools cannot do with less money. The people who maintain the state’s infrastructure, who do the policing, the firefighting, and manage the states parks and public facilities, protest that they cannot make it on less money.

             Scarcity. Unless you lived through the Great Depression, it is unlikely that you have heard scarcity talked about with the kind of frequency we have heard it spoken about in the last several months. Jobs are scarce, financial investment opportunities are scarce, positive economic news of any sort is scarce. Economic scarcity may not be the only news being reported, but its footprint is unavoidable everywhere we turn.

            “Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.” Ever notice that scarcity isn’t really acknowledged in the New Testament? While poverty and destitution were pervasive in the world in which Jesus and the Apostle Paul lived, the message that Christ taught, and Paul and the other disciples appropriated and then taught, could well be summarized in the well known section in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount where he declares, “I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear...[instead Jesus says]strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and [I’m paraphrasing here]and your needs will be taken care of.

             We say we are “all tapped out,” “we don’t have this, we can’t do that.”  “Money is scarce, we’ll have to cut back.  So where do those cutbacks most often occur? They occur in those line items on our personal budgets, our state and federal budgets, that cover “contributions for the needs of saints,” and “allocations for hospitality to strangers.”

            In Sunday school a week ago conversation turned to the Depression and how it impacted those who lived through it. Some observed that those impacted by the event refused to buy on credit thereafter, refused to carry a credit card, and having experienced hunger, stored abnormally large quantities of food in the pantry.  Scarcity breeds prudence, which is good, but it also breeds fear.

Fear of scarcity is forcing many families to retrench.  Many, obviously, have no choice in the matter. For others, however, it is the fear of scarcity, rather than the fact of scarcity, that is causing them to retrench.

              Christian Smith and Michael O. Emerson recently wrote a book entitled, “Passing the Plate,” subtitled, “Why American Christians Don’t Give Away More Money.” In it they write, “Most Americans----even among the upper middle class---often see themselves as ‘just getting by.’”  This “not really enough, just getting by attitude,” the authors observe is preventing Christians from making, according to their calculation, a potential 46 billion dollar impact to address the needs of the world. That figure is calculated on committed Christians giving a tithe, or 10% post-tax, contribution to the work of the church.                 

              The fear of scarcity, for many of us unwarranted, is preventing the church from having the impact it otherwise might. In these challenging times this church, like many others, faces major budget challenges. Scarcity dominates the conversation. “We must cut back.”  “These are hard times, the congregation can’t be asked to do more.” Now, nowhere in the New Testament do you hear a call to cut back and retrench.  Nowhere do you hear a call to back off from asking believers to do or give more. No, instead you hear, “Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.”  “Do ministry.”   

              There are people around the world who knock themselves out living out Paul’s call to contribute and extend hospitality. Scarcity doesn’t cross their minds. They are doing ministry without a dime in the bank.  They are mounting ambitious programs without a dollar to fund them. The word scarcity doesn’t appear in their vocabulary even when their only assets for ministry are a storefront building with a couple of folding tables and chairs. Meanwhile their “God will provide” talk is mocked as being naïve and out of touch.

           We who plead scarcity have so much to learn, so very much to learn. The question is will we learn it in time?  Or will fear of scarcity prod us to retrench ourselves into nonexistent?

           “Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.” Contribute and extend are action verbs, and we are privileged to have the resources, and have access to further resources, to do ministry.  It is up to us to fully utilize those resources. AMEN

PRAYER

              Our Eternal Father, Lord of all, you are our hope for today, and our hope tomorrow. In praise and thanksgiving we gather today to celebrate the renewal that is taking place in the lives of those who hear and heed your voice. May we number, O God, among those who feel the power of your Spirit directing their lives, who have experienced the liberating power of your word, and who have found within themselves the courage to live without fear of scarcity. Where we are slow to embrace the lessons that Jesus taught, O Lord, and slow to trust that his approach to life is valid for our time and circumstances, expand our ability to grasp eternal truths.

              O God, you want us to be free, but we resist doing that which would make us free.  We resist challenging the power of sin as it twists and contorts our lives.  We say we want to change and live more fully after our Lord Christ’s example, but we are slow to pray, even slower in opening our Bibles to learn the truths Christ taught. We want effortless Christianity, Christianity on our terms, on our schedule.  Forgive our self-centered, me-centered ways, O God. Forgive our hypocrisy for mocking the folly of others who claiming to be Christian do unchristian things, even as we similarly offend against your will.

              The mark of the church is hospitality to all.  Forgive us when we withhold hospitality, O God, for excluding others by failing to acknowledge that their needs may be different from our own.  Forgive us for the clannish that keeps others at bay, for giving preference to our own needs and priorities when designing worship and hospitality.

              You sent your Son to create a revolution, O God, a mission which he fulfilled, a mission that got him killed.  No, we didn’t want to hear the radical things he was saying. “Love your enemies,” “give without thought of receiving in return,” “go to the end of the line and serve others.”  Give without fear of scarcity. Radical, too radical.

             O God, forgive us who have so much for giving so little.  Forgive us for allowing so many to go without food, shelter, and medical care.  Forgive for crying poor when confronted by the needs of others, even as we fill our homes with the latest electronic gadgetry.  

              Lord, hear the cries of the oppressed longing to be free. We pray for a revolution of freedom in Iran, Afghanistan, Myanmar, North Korea, and other nations where dictators reign.  From bondage release the capture, from pain and suffering let the victimized find release.

               In thanks and praise we celebrate a wonderful week of Bible school.  We lift up Alicia and all those whose efforts contributed to a major success. Having blessed the children by their efforts, may those who volunteered feel your blessing and encouragement for a job well done.

                 Lord, be with those who live in despair, who cry out for relief but find none. Strengthen those who in this hour have chosen to give up, who contemplate doing harm to themselves or others.  In your mercy, O God, reveal a way out of the valley.

                Hear our prayers for our church that we may be a faithful partner to all who seek our counsel, support, and friendship.  Grant us vision to be bold in our plans and expectations.

                Abide, O God, with all who gathered here, even as we lift up persons with special needs….