Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor
Nov. 11, 2012 Proper 26
Mark 12:38-44
38As he taught, he said, "Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, 39and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! 40They devour widows' houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation."
41He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. 42A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. 43Then he called his disciples and said to them, "Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. 44For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on."
A record amount of money has been spent in the past year on a relentless campaign that came to an end on Tuesday.... well, everywhere but Florida which seems to have staked out election incompetence as their personal fiefdom. In spite of all of the parties, speeches and celebrations, not much has changed after all of the expenditure of resources and time. President Obama remains in the White House, the Democrats remain in the majority in the Senate and Republicans remain in the majority in Congress.
Here in Missouri, we kept our governor, our senator and, in our district, we kept our congressman. I'm glad it is all over. The divisive and not infrequently dishonest rhetoric of the campaign has taxed many friendships, even strained some marriages and polarized communities in most unhelpful ways.
After the horrific events that allowed Hitler to come into power, Germany enacted national election laws that make it illegal to knowingly lie in any campaign speech or advertisement. While we Americans have often used Nazi Germany as the example of government gone mad, they now look at our election process and wonder why we didn't learn anything from the dangers of dishonest electioneering. But in the United States, you can say anything and our media is so devoted to even handed reporting that they will almost never report on fact checking. Which, in fact, makes the existence of churches with free pulpits all the more important though, we all know, that most churches are merely servants of whoever is in power..... as Thomas Jefferson said, "In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection of his own."
Churches such as ours are vital to our nation and yet basic civil involvement in voting is still vitally important. I raised my daughter to treasure her right to vote.
I always get an absentee ballot when I am going to be away on an election day as I was this past week, but there is something quite deceptive about voting that I want to be very straight forward about today.
You have heard me quote the 19th century evangelist, Alexander Campbell, before but my favorite of his sayings is the core of what I have to say today. He was was speaking specifically of prayer but I would interpret it to mean voting or expressing any opinion. He said, "To pray for that for which you will not also rise up and work and sacrifice to achieve is a disappointment to yourself and an insult to God."
I think that one of the most self deceptive activities among our more conservative religious friends is their use of the phrase, "I'll pray," .... "I'll pray for you," "I'll pray about it," "I'm praying for God to do something." I agree with Kierkegaard who said that prayer does not change the One to whom we pray but rather prayer changes the one who prays.... or at least it should.
But in the exact same way, I think that one of the most self deceptive traps among progressive thinkers is that we believe that we have accomplished something because we have arrived at progressive opinions. Having an enlightened opinion about access to health care, education, work, retirement, housing and even food doesn't mean much if you never do anything about it.
The God to whom evangelicals appear to be praying most often seems to me to be an imaginary Santa Claus in the clouds. The God many liberals seem to bow to is their own ego expressed substantially in the opinions we cherish between our own ears.
How is it anything but hypocrisy if you believe that gay people should have the same rights as straight people if you have never risked yourself in any way to help give birth to that social change? I suspect that most of you here and most of you who will join us on the web are outraged by Tea Party politics with all of its anti-women, anti-poor, pro-war, and none-too-subtle racism, and yet, how exactly does it change anything for you to just sit and watch MSNBC every night and repost liberal memes on Face Book? If you feel like you recognize social injustice and are not doing anything substantively to change it then you are, ipso facto, supporting the injustice.
As Elie Weisel said, "Always take sides. Neutrality always serves the oppressor and never the oppressed."
The most difficult decision our little church has faced in our short 4 year history was the decision to buy this building when we had just a year of experience and no money in savings. We started with nothing and after our first year we still had almost all of it left when we first took a look at this property. One family put up the down payment and then the rest of us had to look at one another and figure out if all of the big talk and high minded ideals we had been kicking around for a year meant any real business.
On the day before we bought this building, we could have disbanded this church in a matter of day, giving a few hymnals and some office furniture to some other church and we could have simply gone out of existence. But we voted..... we voted to make an offer, then we voted to accept an offer, then we voted to borrow the money..... each time the largest number of people in the room didn't vote at all. Some couples canceled out one another's vote. Each time we voted to take a step forward with a majority but never anything approximating consensus.
We are a church that has always reached out to the poor and, for obvious reasons; we have always had a lot of members who were barely getting by. And so, it is not a surprise that nearly half of the people who attend our church do not contribute to the church. What did surprise me was that several of people who never contributed were outraged by the decision to buy a building...... some were sure it would ruin our message, our mission, our focus.......and, as if to support their predictions, they stopped attending.
I don't want to speak critically of people who are not here to defend their honor, but I say it simply to make the observation that people who do not have skin in the game can easily be deceived into believing that their opinions are of vital importance simply because they are their opinions..... not because they are going to do anything of substance one way or another or risk anything or sacrifice anything. What I am saying should be fairly obvious, if you want others to take you seriously then you should first take yourself seriously. If your opinions are not backed up by being willing to put some skin in the game then you don't really mean your opinion yourself and the rest of us are just agreeing with your own assessment of your opinion if we ignore you.
There are a whole lot of people who say that they want to serve God but way too many want to serve only in an advisory capacity. Now, let me be clear about this: I'm talking about active engagement and not just money. We have members of our community who are engaged in making this church happen and most of us are involved in very active volunteerism in many causes. Members of our church mow our lawn, clean the building, do our record keeping and business, all of which makes it possible to avoid paying for lawn care, secretarial or janitorial services. You cook and serve at Bill's Place, carry out groceries at Crosslines, give tutoring time at Rare Breed's literacy program, some of you are mentors and prison visitors and several of you have served on mission teams to Nicaragua and hurricane and tornado relief.
I know that many of you who are our internet viewers are pastors, social workers, nurses, physicians and professors and many serve in other helping professions and volunteer circumstances.
And I am not at all wanting to provoke the slightest guilt in those of you who are viewers or listeners who have not yet found your way to contribute to real action...... I'm not interested in guilt but I am inviting you to come off the bench and get on the field..... sacrifice something, risk some skin in the game.
We don't do pledge drives in this church. We don't charge for our content on YouTube or iTunes. People can view or attend for as long as they like without any commitment, donation or involvement but let's not ignore the obvious truth that if someone didn't donate, if someone didn't volunteer then this progressive church would not exist and this content would not be on line. So, ask yourself, if everyone did exactly what you do, would this church exist? Would any progressive church exist?
We have the good fortune of having a couple of donors who are able to make large contributions but what I would love to see is that even if you cannot make a large gift, I would love to see everyone make a small gift.... even if you have to get a single item pizza for dinner instead of a supreme to be able to donate $5 once a year, I would love to have the reassurance that you are voting for our continued existence.... that you more than intellectually approve of what we are trying to accomplish but that you are willing to put $5 worth of your skin in the game.
Giving is sometimes a matter of practice. You get used to assuming that someone else will pay the bills. One of the things we see in so many divorces is that people come to view their own money and someone else's money as being entirely different. My money is precious and you can't have any of it..... your money is cheap and you should share it liberally.
We do have some people who sacrifice dearly to make our church exist..... their standard of living would be much more comfortable if they were not giving what they give..... I doubt that many of them would agree that it is OK for them to pay the bills while others reserve all of their resources for themselves. Money is a fungible way of investing your personal time and energy into a cause and you have to practice acting on what you believe is important and not using everything you have to scratch your own appetitive itches.
When Jesus praised the woman in the temple who donated the only small coin she had it was not that she was either changing the fortunes of the temple nor dramatically sacrificing her own future.... since that coin would hardly have purchased a meal, she was, however, casting a vote that cost her something..... more than an opinion, more than personal beliefs, she was willing to get involved to the level that she could.
Jesus clearly didn't think much of wealth, personal possessions there are times that money seems like a silly idea to him. Fortunately for him, not all of his friends felt the same way. And as critical as we often are of some of the traditional institutions of religion, I recognize that I have a debt to the religious institutions and individuals who made it possible for me to go to Vanderbilt and Harvard.....and where will the next generation of educated leadership come from if we fail to help send other willing candidates into serious preparation for ministry?
We don't charge to attend here. The content of our internet channels is offered at no charge.... but none of this is free, in fact, it is very expensive. It is up to you to decide if it is worth it, in fact, every time you see the donate button on our web site or see the offering basket passed around this room, you get to vote on whether we should come back and do this again next week.
Unlike American idol or, in many ways, the American congress, your vote here really matters. We're trying to change the world, I hope you will not stand idly by.
