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August 31, 2003
What Did Jesus Have Against Prosperity?
What Did Jesus Have Against Prosperity?
Psalm 1 / Ecclesiastes 7: 1-14
Luke 6: 25a
August 31st, 2003
We begin the new school year on a topic that seems to fly in the face of the reason we go to school. Face it, our schools and universities don’t exist only to make us “well rounded people.” We go to school to make it in the world. At great research universities the liberal arts courses are “service courses.” They are the seasoning, while the meat and potatoes of the education are the courses that help us earn a living.
A momentum is at work in all of us that leans towards securing our well-being—in a competitive world. Jesus tells us, “Think about this tendency.” We’re not too sure what the outer boundary of this well-being is. When does my “good” become excessive? At what point have I saved more than I need, invested what I should have given away?
In this troubled life it seems hard to have too much when the bottom can drop out of the economy like stepping into a hidden sinkhole. You’re walking along enjoying the fresh air and the scenery, when all of a sudden you fall. There was an unannounced hole in the sidewalk. It was a deep hole. You fell in and hurt yourself badly. It was a total surprise. This is a parable of life in this precarious world. You know it is precarious. You try to protect yourself. But it is in just this precarious world that Jesus tells me “Woe to you who are full now for you will be hungry.” Woe to you who try in this precarious world to protect yourself in every way. You can’t. He commands us, and shows us the way to “love your neighbor as yourself” instead. “Feed your neighbor till she is full.” Concentrate on this rather than your own security.
But, we reply to God, “This is impractical. Besides, my powers are limited. I can’t care for all my neighbors.” You and I see the immense need of our neighbor and say, “But I have only the energy to care for myself. If I look out for myself, I’m not a burden to my neighbor.” That’s good, isn’t it? But isn’t it true that nearly everything about my life seems more important than someone else’s life?
I’m sometimes struck at how inevitable it is that we should think of ourselves first. Our circles of interest gather around ourselves. Me. My immediate family. My friends. My country. My kind of religious people. Even in matters of faith, how self-centered we naturally are. In our church-market economy we look to find the church that gives me the greatest blessing. I will go where I get most. And we churches cater to this by trying to offer the most. We will advertise ourselves, “You can get the most here!” I wonder sometimes, how is it possible to love God and love my neighbor as myself, when even matters of faith lead me to refine my self-centeredness? What do you mean, Jesus, “The one who would find his life must lose it?”
God asks us to join His outlook summarized in John 3: 16: “God so loved the world.” Compel the scope of your interest to widen. Let it take in the world. “Lose your life if you want to find it.” “Think not on your own things, but on the needs of others.” Not “God bless America,” but “God bless the world” –– even Libya and Iraq. This is an outlook we admire in principle, but it is a hard way to follow. It is very hard to follow Jesus.
We run the risk of being the person that Jesus chided, who built bigger barns when his harvest was great—not necessarily because we’re greedy, but because we’re afraid. He stored up more grain than he could ever eat rather than finding better uses for it. Why? Because he said, “You can never be too safe, too secure, too well cared for.” This makes sense, doesn’t it?
But Jesus speaks to us, frightened as we might be: “Woe to you who are full now because you will be hungry.” Jesus tells us, “You’re going to end up getting the opposite of what you want.” It can get confusing.
We’re used to thinking of Jesus as one who saw the hungry multitude and took great care to feed them. He is God made flesh of whom we sing, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow!” Is it possible that Jesus began the meal thanking God for the food, led the crowd in thanking God for this blessing, and then afterward looked at the 5,000 people he’d just fed and thought, “Woe to you who are full now because you will be hungry?” This is simply unthinkable. Jesus didn’t begrudge the people He just fed that they were satisfied. In the place where the Gospels tell us of Jesus’ feeding the 5,000, the writers make plain that after the people ate they were satisfied.
This was very good. This is God’s way. In the gracious 104th Psalm we read of God’s generosity. “You cause grass to grow for the cattle, and plants for us to cultivate, that we may bring forth food from the earth, and wine to gladden the heart, oil to make the face shine, and bread to strengthen the body.” How then can Jesus say to us, after giving us what we need, “Woe to you who are full now because you will be hungry?”
These great questions have delicate answers. The answer to this question has to do with the state of your heart and mine. It has to do with our attitude, how we see ourselves with regard to God and other people. Virtually everything God teaches us in Scripture has to do with the state of the heart. Nearly nothing has to do with mere material things. They are good in themselves. Jesus spoke about a kind of appetite that heals the soul and its opposite that destroys the soul.
What did Jesus mean when He said, “Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry?” I wish I could report to you that there is a clear dividing line in Jesus’ teaching between a good kind of fullness and a bad kind of fullness. But we’re not given such a black and white picture. Loving God with all our minds leads us to try to figure these things out.
There are two words in the New Testament that describe satisfaction. When Jesus fed the 5,000, afterward they were satisfied. Here the word is the verb from which I believe we get our word Cortisone, cortavzw. Cortisone soothes the inflamed joint. Your shoulder aches. Your doctor prescribes and gives you a series of Cortisone shots to satisfy your need. This word is never used in a negative sense in the New Testament. It always refers to a good satisfaction.
I remember baling hay during the summer with a farmer in my congregation when I was a pastor at Brookston quite a few years ago. I think I could still do this. Maybe not. About 11: 30 AM, after stacking heavy bales in the loft of the barn for almost four hours, I was so hungry and tired that I didn’t know how I could lift one more bale. Then Clarence Davies hollered, “Lunch time!” and wearily I dragged myself down the ladder, washed up at the pump outside, and went to the table with all the other guys. There before us we found the most amazing lunch: ham, fried chicken, and roast beef and mashed potatoes with gravy, and three vegetables, hot rolls and butter, and tall glasses of iced tea. Then came a fat wedge of apple pie, homemade—with all that cinnamon and sugar caked on top. I ate and was satisfied. I can think of few pleasures more satisfying than Mary Davies’ cooking after baling hay all morning.
If Matthew were going to describe what happened for me there he would have used the word cortavzw. This is one wonderful kind of satisfaction.
This is what God does for the birds of the air, the animals of the field and the fish of the sea. Birds, mammals, and fish eat when they are hungry. And when they eat they are satisfied. And this satisfaction is a wonderful thing, a gift from God. We ate and then we got up from the table content, grateful, refreshed-–– along with every other creature God cares for.
But the word that Luke tells us Jesus used in the verse before us this morning is a different word. “Woe to you who are full now for you shall hunger.” This sounds ominous. It’s the word ejmpivplhmi. Elsewhere it usually means the same as the other word for “satisfy,” but Luke means something very different here.
Jesus here refers to a fullness that does not merely satisfy a hunger. It suggests a fullness that goes beyond satisfaction to greed. It is the satisfaction sought by the farmer who builds bigger barns when his crop increases. If we love God wholly and love our neighbor as we love ourselves, we will look at our excess in a different way than if we think of ourselves as the center of importance. If we love God and our neighbor, when we have enough, we are content. And this makes us think about our excess in a different way than if we are not content.
Paul wrote to his young friend, Timothy,
“There is great gain in godliness with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world; but if we have food and clothing, with these we shall be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and hurtful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all evils; it is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced their hearts with many pangs.”
I believe that this is what Jesus was getting at when He said, “Woe to you who are full now for you will be hungry.” He speaks to those whose desire is insatiable, and who are filling themselves continually, never reaching “enough.” They don’t know about contentment.
This yearning to be satisfied is a subtle desire. On the one hand it corresponds to wholesome appetites that are part of our nature. God delights to satisfy these appetites. On the other hand, the desire to be satisfied can breed discontent and dissatisfaction. Fear sets in that maybe we won’t have enough for tomorrow. Or instead of being thankful, we become refined in our desires. Whereas a Chevy used to please us well, now we “need” a BMW. Dissatisfaction can induce a multitude of sins. I proposed to you two weeks ago that when God gives us more than we need, He enables us to play God, to do as God does, to help satisfy the need of others.
Discontent feeds on itself. It is the root of evil. Contentment, by contrast, is the root of all good. What is particularly pernicious about discontent is that discontented people aren’t aware Jesus is speaking about them. They may be proud of their refined sensitivities. Is Jesus speaking to you but you’ve never thought about it this way?
Jesus is addressing what F.W. Robertson referred to as “the principle of the spiritual harvest.” What we sow is what we reap. If we spend our lives trying to fill up with what will pass away, we will harvest a crop of perishable goods. “He that sows to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that sows to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.”
As I pondered these things Jesus says to us who are trying to find security in a precarious world, another difficult thing Jesus said suddenly seemed to make more sense than it had before. Jesus taught us, “If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”
What an odd thing for Jesus to say. Didn’t He tell us to love our neighbor as ourselves? Aren’t members of our family our nearest neighbors? Didn’t Jesus chide the Pharisees for devoting their money to God in a legal fiction so they didn’t have to use this money to care for their needy parents? How can He talk about “hating” the ones to whom nature and the Ten Commandments lead us to devote the deepest affection?
I believe Jesus is using hyperbole to make a point. It is the same point He made when He pronounced woe on those who are full. Jesus is drawing us into a bigger view of things than comes naturally to us. Jesus is drawing us into God’s view of the world. And in order to do this, He has to strip away our natural circles of attachment—to myself first, to my family first, to my friends first, to my country first, etc. All of our instincts focus on ourselves and those who are closest to us. In order to join God in His purposes we need a broader vision than comes naturally.
It’s like what Jesus meant when He said, “If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away.” Of course, God gave us eyes for a good reason. With our eyes we can see a sunset. We read with our eyes. We see where to go. But who can deny that the eye-gate may permit entrance to matters that destroy the soul. At the last meeting of the County Corrections Board I learned of the horrendous problem of internet pornography that is undermining a lot of our young people. Little boys get on the internet, see graphic pornography, don’t understand it, but think it is cool –– and get drawn in to a horrible addiction. Is it an overstatement to say it would be better to be blind than to have your eyes lead you into the horrid world of pornography?
When Jesus said, “Woe to you who are full now for you will be hungry,” He warned us against the danger of a self-centered life. He warned against an outlook which we don’t recognize as evil in its weaker doses. We so naturally see ourselves as the center of all value that we probably won’t recognize it when we’ve been taken over by it. We’ll call it by another name: prudence, or foresight maybe. What’s going on now in the Middle East is an extreme case of self-centeredness. When your worldview reaches the point of self-centeredness that you are willing to kill yourself, out of hatred for a despised neighbor, it has come full-circle. Suicide bombers imagine that in losing their lives they are finding them. But really they are trying to gain their lives and are losing them.
One of the values of the local church is to lure us out of self-centeredness, even out of family-centeredness to care for others. Here we bring our neighbor beside us. Here we hear Jesus respond to those who said His family was looking for Him, “Whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my brother, my sister, and mother.” That’s it. The will of our heavenly Father taking over our will, and close friendship developing with others who have caught on too. “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son.” Here we see the will of God. The will of God leads you and me to reach out from ourselves. The will of God having become my will leads me to fill your plate as I fill my own. Maybe Jesus said it a bit strongly when He told us, “Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.” But maybe you get his point. There’s more to life than having your plate full with what you want. I pray we may encourage each other to go after this “more,” by providing an example to observe –– in every pew, from end to end.
Let us pray. O Lord, giver of every good thing, we thank you for all you give, and receive it happily. Help us to share your bounty bountifully. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
August 17, 2003
The Consolation of Riches
The Consolation of Riches
Psalm 119: 1-16 / Proverbs 11: 1-6
Luke 6: 24
August 17th, 2003
In the two weeks we were away, Bonnie and I had a very wonderful time welcoming a new grandson, Owen Christopher Sages, into the family. One of the pleasures of our time with our children was being able to stock up their pantry a bit. Hillary’s hands will be full with two little ones.
But as we put meals that we had cooked and frozen into their freezer, and how good we felt doing this, I thought of Jesus’ words that are our theme this morning. “But woe to you who are rich now, for you have received your consolation.” By the world’s standards we are rich. I’m not rich by comparison with Bill Gates, but I’m rich by comparison with Mweenba Mwaamga. How many grandparents in Zambia could do what we were doing? I thought there was indeed comfort in being able to care for our children. Was Jesus saying to us, “Woe to you who can put good things into your children’s freezer, for you have received in this life all the consolation you’re ever going to get from me?” Maybe a rather severe question to ask?
Remember, when we read the Bible, we are to ask what God is saying to us, to me, and not just what is God saying to you, to others. I have no doubt that on the scale of distribution of things in this world, I am among the rich. So are you.
Let me say at the outset that I believe Jesus intends us to understand two principles that are a guide to us in our prosperity. First, our abundance may lure us into materialism that deadens the soul. If what we have is the principal source of our happiness, we’ve received all we’re going to get, when we know our needs are so much greater than money can satisfy. Second, that if we have abundance ,God has taken us into partnership with Him to do as He does with His abundance—use it to care for others. If we let our souls become dead by the abundance we have, we are to be pitied; we have received all the consolation we’re going to get. If we do not use our abundance in partnership with God, making His blessings flow to others through us, we are to be pitied, because we have forfeited the true blessing of our prosperity.
Having suggested the two big lessons I believe Jesus teaches us, let’s back up and see how I arrive at this. “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.” The word “but” is here because Jesus had just said, “Blessed are you” to four kinds of people we think are hardly blessed. Blessed are the poor? Blessed are the hungry? Blessed are those who weep now? Blessed are those who are hated for Jesus’ sake? We hardly think these are blessings. “But,” Jesus then says, “Woe to those who have it the way we’d much prefer to have it. First, “Woe to those who are rich.” What topsy-turvy thinking, Jesus! He calls the unfortunate blessed and says “poor you” to the fortunate.
When Jesus pronounced “woe” on those who are rich, He didn’t speak to those who are rich through devious means necessarily. I don’t think that He is addressing here the landlord who charges exorbitant rent. He isn’t talking to the drug dealer, or to the manufacturer who has a monopoly on an essential product for life, so he squeezes out every penny the market can bear. He isn’t talking about the banker who charges high interest to the needy. It’s just “woe to you who are rich for you have received your consolation.”
Jesus leaves us feeling uncertain how we are to think of God’s blessings. On the one hand we are to sing the “Doxology” cheerfully: “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.” “Count your many blessings,” we sing. “Name them one by one. And it will surprise you what the Lord has done.” On the other hand, “Woe to you who are rich now for you have received your consolation.” Those many blessings start to take on a grayer hue.
Why the woe? That sounds so ominous. What does “woe” imply? The Greek word translated “woe” sounds like a cry of anguish. Ow! Or Ou vay! Isaiah wrote to Israel, “Woe unto the wicked. It shall be ill with him, for what his hands have done shall be done to him.” When Isaiah writes this, we think of the violent Mafia lord who dies a violent death at the hands of his opposite. Evil deeds produce evil effects, but Jesus is not talking about evil deeds here.
A few chapters later on in Luke’s gospel we read that Jesus spoke to two towns north of the Sea of Galilee, “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes.” Maybe we find a clue to what Jesus had in mind here. Apparently Jesus did wonderful works in these two Jewish cities. Tyre and Sidon were pagan cities. We’re not told in the Gospels what Jesus did in the two Jewish cities, but it seems He did so much that they should have been filled with people who trusted in Him.
But they responded to Jesus indifferently. They were sedated with the abundance of Jesus’ goodness to them. Apparently Jesus had healed the sick there plentifully. He had showered on these two towns abundant blessing. But they said, in effect, “so what?” They got used to Jesus. They saw Him coming and thought, “Here comes the one who can heal us, so let’s get our sick out where He can touch them.” But that was all. They did not trust in Jesus for anything more than His healing power. He meant nothing to them. They were thankless and presumptuous.
Jesus was warning His disciples about taking for granted God’s blessings. They little knew how the faith He ignited in them would have material effects many centuries later. The historian, Christopher Dawson, wrote an insightful book, Religion and the Rise of the West, in which he demonstrates how Christianity led to the prosperity of the Western world. The wisdom that led to developments in agriculture, law, medicine, and our terrific educational systems, was born in the Medieval Church. More recently, the Puritan work ethic has been lauded as the source of capitalism. Work hard, be thrifty, and wealth comes naturally.
But Jesus speaks to us who have enjoyed the fruits of Western development and the flowering of capitalism. There is the danger of living amid plenty and becoming so used to it that we no longer thank God. Then, when our total satisfaction is found in the things He has given us, our souls are cauterized. We sink into the lethargy of materialism. We are sedated with things. We then discover that no matter how much we have, we’re not happy. “Woe unto you that are rich, for you have received your consolation.” And it’s a bored and bitter consolation that the rich find who have forgotten the source of every blessing.
It is easy to think “life consists of the abundance of things we possess.” We gather catalogues. We shop till we drop. As Wordsworth put it, “Buying and selling we lay waste our powers.” Jesus told the parable of the camel trying to get through the eye of a needle as an illustration of how hard it is for a rich person to get into the Kingdom of Heaven because the one who has everything may want nothing more than stuff and more stuff. Woe to anyone who thinks that life consists of the abundance of things you can own.
The second reason why Jesus said “Woe to you who are rich for you have received your consolation,” seems to apply to those who only find personal consolation in their riches. They are like the rich fool who builds bigger barns when his harvests increase, never asking the question, Why did I get all this, and whose will all this stuff be when I die? Jesus is asking you for whom prosperity may come in bunches, “what are you doing with your abundance?” Woe to you if you just accumulate riches for your security. You’re getting all you’re going to get.
Jesus illustrated this point powerfully in a story we should take more to heart than we allow ourselves. Let me read it for you.
“There was a rich man, who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, full of sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried; and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes, and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus in his bosom. And he called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy upon me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in anguish in this flame.’ But Abraham said, ‘Son, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.’ And he said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.’ But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.’ And he said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if some one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if some one should rise from the dead’.”
The problem of the rich man was not that he was rich, but that he did not respond to Lazarus whose need was evident to him every day. He got used to looking the other way. He could have fed him. He could have given him clothing. He could have had servants put ointment on his sores. But he did nothing for him.
Lazarus was a bum to ignore, to get off the street, rather than a person to care for. But look who found a place in Abraham’s bosom! The woe that came to the rich man came at the end of his life when it was too late to do anything to improve his situation. He had received his full consolation, his full comfort already.
A third-century Church Father, Clement, who lived in Alexandria, one of the great centers of civilization in his day, saw that Christians too were becoming well off. He looked at Jesus’ teaching about wealth and asked “Who is the rich man that shall be saved?” It was a sermon based on the story in the Gospel of Matthew (19: 16-22). A good man who had great possessions who came to Jesus and asked him what good deed he had to do to have eternal life. Jesus said, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come, follow me.” Matthew tells us, “When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful; for he had great possessions.” So Clement asked, “Who is the rich man that shall be saved?”
It’s a longish sermon, with many important observations—including the fact that Jesus said there was something the man could do to be perfect. Deeds matter! Faith without works is dead.
But one point in particular that Clement makes grabbed me. Clement observed that in the Parable of the Sheep and Goats, Jesus welcomed those who had cared for Him in His need. When they asked when they did this, He told them, “inasmuch as you did it to the least of these, my brethren, you did it to me.” Clement told the wealthy folk in his congregation that when God gives them abundance, He makes it possible for them to become His partners. We are God’s partners if we have an abundance of money. What God does with His riches, we can do. Jesus could not speak of giving to the poor if there were none that God blessed with the ability to give. Our blessings flow to us lavishly from our heavenly Father, but for a reason greater than to give us comfort in this life. In this life we have the chance to care for Jesus hidden in the opportunities to care for the needy.
The psalm we love so well begins, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits . . . who satisfies you with good as long as you live.” When God has given us plenty, far more than we need, it is to make us His hands in re-directing this bounty to where it is needed. And when we do this, enjoying the privilege of “playing God” for the supply of other peoples’ needs, we are happy. To the Corinthians Paul wrote, “The Lord loves a cheerful giver.” The Lord loves this person who has something to give before she gives it. But it is when the person gives cheerfully what God has entrusted to her, that the love of God splashes over her.
A few weeks ago we had in our pulpit Joe Simfukwe, the principal of the Theological College of Central Africa. When I learned of the dire need of several students I had taught when I was there two summers ago, I approached our Deacons to see if they would object to us giving Principal Simfukwe a sizeable check to help meet some of this student need. I was given permission to write a good-sized check, and I felt such joy in drawing this congregation into the Lord’s supply of a great need. When these students have their needs met from an unknown source, they will thank God. Joe is sending me an account of what he gives to needy students, but they won’t know it comes from you at Faith Church. They’ll only think, “God has provided for our need.” Our plenty has become God’s supply.
The rich to whom Jesus said, “Woe to those who are rich for they have received their consolation,” are those whose riches are their consolation alone. Those who have, and who, not trusting God for the future, accumulate more and more, sharing moderately of their excess, will be receiving all the consolation they’re going to get.
My dear people, whom God has blessed so richly with material well-being, let us rejoice in playing God for others. There are many ways we can’t play God. But there is one way we can, by using the bounty He has given into our control, where He shows us need. I would be so pleased to see our giving beyond Faith Church needs be the same as what we give to maintain our congregation’s life. Because then it would be evidence for us that we had accepted the mantel God has offered us, to play God, whose benefits come to us daily.
Let us pray: O Lord, thank You for meeting all our needs and more. Give us grace to receive your benefits and channel them where there is need. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)