SERMON Payoffs

Pentecost 19 (B) (Proper 23) (Lectionary 28) (2009): Amos 5:6-7,10-15; Hebrews 4:12-16; Mark 10:17-31

Cost-benefit analysis is hot. It's being used with virtually everything. Orrin Hatch is applying it to the issue of global warming to argue that cap and trade legislation would not be worth the cost and have no effect. Both sides of the health care debate are appealing to it to support their proposals. On Saturday, The New York Times did a cost benefit analysis of 21^st century invitro fertilization babies: in the case reported , $1.2 million versus two human lives.

Cost-benefit analysis is not confined to the question of whether it pays to try to mitigate global warming or to conceive babies in vitro. There are cost benefit analyses of discipleship. Evangelicals like Joel Osteen offer Jesus' disciples the benefits of (in the words describing his best selling book) "victory, joy and satisfaction every day." My Great Grandfather VanDemark obviously did some sort of cost benefit analysis and concluded -- and this is on the family marker in the Hartford, South Dakota cemetery -- "It pays to serve Jesus." (My Great Grandfather VanDemark was not a Lutheran.)

Both Joel Osteen and my great grandfather are in good company. This morning's account from Jesus' ministry speaks very openly about the costs and benefits of serving Jesus. It is about cost measured in terms of leaving family and fields. It is about payout that is quantified -- actually quantified -- at "a hundredfold now in this age" and assurance of participation in the age to come. Where this account differs from Joel Osteen and my great grandfather is that it is about a man who unlike Joel Osteen and my great grandfather -- decides that it does not pay to serve Jesus.

Now it easy for most of us to distance ourselves from this account for a number of good theological and practical reasons.

As good Lutherans, we know that there is nothing we can do to earn salvation. Nothing. Any inference that we can is simply wrong. Furthermore, even if there were, chances are that what we just heard would not apply to us because, as we well know, the demand that this particular man sell all that he owns is not a demand that Jesus routinely makes of others whom he calls. Think about it. James and John leave their family business, but there is no demand that they sell it.

Nor, unlike Jesus' disciples, are we particularly perplexed that Jesus thought it would be difficult for those with wealth to enter the kingdom of God. Unlike those first-century disciples, we don't (as Lutherans) assume or believe that wealth is a sign of divine favor -- a sign perhaps of other favors, but not ones of divine origin. Practically, we also know no matter how wealthy we may be, there is always Bill Gates. Bill Gates is the camel, and the needle's eye is his problem, not ours.

And, as for Jesus' telling the disciples who had in fact left families if not fields that they would be blessed a hundredfold in this life, well, there at the end is Jesus, telling them -- those who were clearly first -- that in the age to come, "many who are first will be last, and the last will be first." And if that were not comfort enough, Jesus has already held out hope for the Bill Gates types by saying "for God all things are possible" (although one suspects that even God has limits). This gospel account can easily be distanced along with any formal recognition that it "pays" to serve Jesus.

But can it be distanced that easily? What is Jesus really talking about? Look again. There are some things that he is not talking about.

He is not talking about dying and going to heaven. When the man asks Jesus, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" he is not asking: "What must I do to get into [what we think of as] Heaven?" Rather "eternal life" here means the kingdom of God -- the kingdom that Jesus proclaims and anticipates -- God's transformation of this world in this time. The man is asking to be a part of that event when it occurs.

Nor is Jesus talking about "possessions" as we think of possessions. He is not referring to ownership of the first century equivalents of IPhones, Blackberries, or Viking ranges. Rather, the Greek word here for "possession" is very specific and refers to the ownership of property and the financial benefits from owning property.

And that leaves us wondering what's going on here. Why the concern with real estate. And why it is that the demand that the man sell his properties and give the proceeds to the poor "shocks" him and makes him "[go] away grieving."

If this were a simple demand that the man give money to the poor, he would not be shocked. Almsgiving is a demand that Judaism has always made of every Jew of any means. No, it is the demand that he sell his properties that is the sticking point.

A popular explanation for why Jesus's demand is a sticking point is that the man loved his property more than God. One reason for this explanation is because Jesus limits his question about the commandments to those beginning with the fourth and dealing with our relationships to others -- to our parents, spouses, neighbors, business acquaintances. These commandments are ones, you'll recall, that the man can confidently and eagerly tell Jesus that he has obeyed from his youth. The implication is that what is lacking is obedience to the first commandment -- "You shall have no others gods," the commandment that Jesus leaves out. The implication is that the man's "other god" is his property.

But is that it? If the man were someone seriously obsessed with owning real estate, he probably would not have kept all of the relational commandments. He would not be "shocked" by Jesus' demand that he sell all his properties. He would know exactly where Jesus was coming from. And, if it were true that for him owning real estate was more important than loving and serving God, he might go away disappointed that he could not have two gods, but he probably would not go away "grieving."

No, there is much more here. The reason why the man is "shocked" at Jesus' demand that he sell his properties is because, for Jews living in first century Palestine, the land was, as it continues to be, holy land, given to them by God. Land was the most basic inheritance that a father could leave a child. Ownership of land had deep religious significance. Indeed, one's identity as a Jew was tied to the land -- just as it was tied to family.

What Jesus is saying to the man is, to be part of my community, to be part of God's reign when it happens, you have to give up what defines you as a person living in this society. For the other disciples it is family. For you it is property. And, whether defined as family or property, that is a very different, far more difficult demand.

It is a demand that is almost impossible for us to fathom. I recently saw the movie The Queen and was reminded of a Doonesbury comic strip. I dug it out. In the strip, the bearded and aging hippie character Zonker Harris comes close to illustrating Jesus' demand. Zonker has once used some left over lottery proceeds to purchase a British title. Because of his title, he is called in by the British royal family as a consultant to help the Windsors regain the common touch (something they subsequently manage to do quite well on their own).

Realizing the gravity of the situation, Zonker tells the royals: "Okay folks, here's suggestion number one -- get over yourselves! You're not rich and powerful because you're special ... You're rich and powerful because your ancestors stole wealth and power from everyone else! In the modern age having a title of ANY kind is widely viewed as a badge of disgrace!"

While arising from very different contexts, Zonker's suggestion that the royals "get over themselves" and Jesus' demand that the man sell all his properties are in some ways very much the same. They both go to issues of identity -- identity defined by societies that, for different reasons, are no longer relevant.

What is key and central to Jesus' demand today -- the reality that is relevant -- is the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God as it is known here and now in this community and as it will be known. Getting over ourselves in the context of that reality is not a passive endeavor.

We know that from Jesus' actions. For one thing, Jesus makes it plain in questioning the man that being a disciple requires keeping those commandments that relate to others -- including the business commandments. When the man tells Jesus that he has kept them all, Jesus responds in Mark's gospel by loving him -- the Greek verb is agape -- the kind of loving that Paul says Christians should have toward one another. Jesus' community and God's kingdom are about living out those relational commandments.

But there's more. Jesus also makes it plain that God's kingdom is about addressing issues of poverty. Jesus tells the man to give the proceeds from his properties to the poor, not because Jesus wants the man to be poor, but because poverty has no place in God's kingdom. He is, in other words, asking the man to actively address the issue of poverty.

Ultimately God's kingdom is, as Amos tells us, a matter of justice and righteousness, a place and a time when the rights of the poor are not trampled. For Jesus, justice and righteousness begin, here and now, in this community of faith. And they can only happen when we can "get over ourselves" and what this society expects of us and start tackling issues of poverty and injustice. Issues of poverty and injustice that are as real in Cook County in 2009 as those described by Amos as existing in the last days of Israel. Issues of our stewardship of God's creation. The costs of discipleship go to who we are in the real world and how we act in that world.

But what about the benefits? What about the hundredfold payout? What did my great-grandfather have in mind in saying "It pays to serve Jesus"?

Well certainly he did not mean that serving Jesus means material prosperity. We've all read about the brutal Dakota winters and scorched summers of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Farming in eastern South Dakota is, even now, at best break-even proposition. Nor did he mean that serving Jesus means being spared personal tragedy. My great-grandparents lost two children, one my grandfather, in tragic accidents when they were young married adults. They were devastated by those losses.

It was only fifteen years ago, shortly before my father died, that I learned more about my Great-Grandfather VanDemark and what he undoubtedly did mean by saying, "It pays to serve Jesus." Both he and my great-grandmother were dedicated to the church and its service. My great-grandfather was a lay Methodist minister and was active in organizing Chautauqua events in the upper midwest -- events which my father and my uncle always shared with him. For my great-grandfather, as for the early disciples who left family and fields, the payout was in the service itself, service in a kingdom that both is and is to come.

But the payout was also participation in the community of faith -- this community of faith -- our family through baptism -- a family that Eliana is now a part of. It is in this family that God has called Methodists and Lutherans, Catholics and Presbyterians - all Christians -- to be sons and daughters. By God's grace, we are God's sons and daughters, in words of the Marty Haugen hymn, "called to be light to the whole human race." In light of that call, we can (even as Lutherans) say, "It pays to serve Jesus." And for that we thank God.

Amen

October 11, 2009

Ruth VanDemark, pastor

Wicker Park Lutheran Church

Chicago