Proper 27/Pentecost 25/Ordinary Time 32
Preaching
Lectionary Preaching Workbook
Series VII, Cycle C
Theme For The Day
Giving our money for the work of Christ, in obedience to God's command, is a deeply spiritual act.
Old Testament Lesson
Haggai 1:15b--2:9
The Temple, Gloriously Restored
Haggai's passion is the restoration of the temple -- despite economic hard times that lead the people to be cautious in that undertaking. Does this paltry structure, now under construction, in any way compare to God's house "in its former glory" (2:3)? "Work, for I am with you, says the Lord" (v. 4). The prophet is confident that, one day, the glory of the temple will be restored: though this will be God's doing, not the people's. God "will shake all the nations, so that the treasure of the nations shall come" (v. 7). All this is God's doing: "The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, says the Lord of hosts" (v. 8).
New Testament Lesson
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
Stand Firm And Hold Fast
Paul speaks out against certain false prophets who are evidently preaching that the Day of the Lord has already arrived (v. 2). This cannot be, he says, because "the lawless one," the one who seeks to usurp the place of God, has not yet been revealed and singled out for destruction (vv. 3-4). An omitted section (vv. 6-12) provides further detail on this lawless one, and on the deceptions of Satan that will subvert many. Then, in the second portion of today's selection, the tone changes, as Paul emphasizes salvation for God's elect. God has chosen them as the "first fruits for salvation," and called them through Paul's own apostolic preaching (vv. 13-14). His exhortation to them is to "stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us" (v. 15). Verses 16-17 are a benediction, wishing "eternal comfort and good hope" for these steadfast believers.
The Gospel
Luke 20:27-38
Jesus Parries The Sadducees' Challenge
This passage provides a glimpse into a first-century rabbinical debate, as a group of Sadducees challenge Jesus with a theological dilemma. The Sadducees are a rabbinical school that does not believe in the resurrection of the dead. Their question, naturally enough, is meant to trip Jesus up, displaying the absurdity of his teachings about life after death. Referring to the institution of levirate marriage described in Deuteronomy 25:5ff. (by which a brother is expected to marry his deceased brother's wife), Jesus' opponents posit an extreme example. Suppose, they say, there were seven brothers, and each of them died in turn. Eventually, the wife of the first one will have passed from one brother to the next, until she has been married to all seven. When she finally dies and goes on to eternal life, the Sadducees want to know, then whose wife is she? Jesus responds to their hostile question by affirming the resurrection to eternal life, on the one hand, but by denying that there will be marriage in heaven, on the other. The Scribes, who are witnessing the debate, are impressed.
Preaching Possibilities
A few of the more experienced among us may remember enjoying the old Jack Benny Show, on television or radio. One of the longest-running gags had to do with Benny's legendary stinginess. In one famous sketch, a robber comes up to Benny, points a gun at him, and demands, "Your money or your life!" Benny just stands there, staring into space. Again the robber says, "You heard me -- your money or your life!" After one of the agonizing slow pauses that are his trademark, Benny replies, "I'm thinking! I'm thinking!"
We smile at that sketch because of the ludicrous idea that a person would actually have to think about the choice between dying or handing over a wallet. We all get attached to money. Money represents psychological well-being, even happiness. It's the fruit of our labors, the symbol of our very worth as persons. We laugh at comedians like Jack Benny, but in the humor is a little twinge of discomfort -- because there's a bit of the tightwad in all of us, a little of the person who's afraid to let go.
"Your money or your life?" -- that is the question of Christian stewardship. Will we choose to give God our money -- or will we choose to give much more, the gift of our very lives? It's a question of how we give, not how much. God wants not so much our money, as our lives -- everything we have and are.
When we daydream about what we'd like to give to the church, there's always a catch, isn't there, a condition? "If we win the lottery ..." we think to ourselves, "if we receive a surprise inheritance, if we come up with an invention worth millions ... why then we'll be a veritable John D. Rockefeller, dispensing dollars magnanimously to all our favorite causes!"
A reporter once asked the real John D. Rockefeller, "Mr. Rockefeller, you've made millions. How much money is enough?" Rockefeller looked the reporter straight in the eye and answered, "Just a little bit more." Many of us are waiting until we have "just a little bit more" before we take the step of faith and give substantially to the work of Christ. The words of Haggai put the challenge before us, in inescapable terms: "The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, says the Lord of hosts" (1:8). The Bible challenges us to give from the top of what we have, not from what's left over.
Living that way, setting aside God's portion before anything else and giving it off the top, is a risk. No doubt about it. But that's Christian stewardship. Stewardship is a risky business. Yet it's also a joyful business, and a faith-filled business. We Christians can take the risk, knowing that our God will stand by us as we give, confident that our God has promised to provide.
God doesn't want our money. God wants our lives. The choice God puts before us is not the robber's choice, "Your money or your life!" but a far more profound and far-reaching decision. What God wants is the gift of our very selves. Once we have made that commitment, the money, the volunteer time, the talent, and everything else will follow.
The launching of a ship is an impressive sight to behold. There it sits, on dry land, propped up by wooden beams -- "a ship out of water," in every sense of the expression. A ship out of water is a silly thing. It can't go anywhere; it's useless. But then someone smashes a champagne bottle across the bow, and somebody else knocks out the supports. With a groaning and a splintering, the ship slides down the greased ramp and enters the water with a tremendous splash. The bow sinks down deep, then it flies up high, propelled by its natural buoyancy. After a few violent, back-and-forth motions, the craft rights itself.
The ship is afloat. It's in its element. It's where it belongs. This is the work for which it is made, riding high from wave to wave, upheld by the ocean's great supporting hand.
For a Christian, beginning a life of stewardship is like launching a ship. We begin in a sort of shipyard, supported by all the materialistic props society has to offer. It takes courage to forgo the only security we have ever known, to begin the short, stomach-churning slide into the black water. It's risky. It's frightening at times. Yet if we do not undergo that journey ourselves, we will never discover the purpose for which God made us. We will trade the hazards of the open sea for the slow death of dry rot in the shipyard.
Your money or your life? It's a deeply spiritual question. It's also not an either/or question: for the truth is, God wants both.
Prayer For The Day
Yours, O Lord, is the greatness,
the power and the glory,
the victory and the majesty.
Everything in heaven and earth is yours,
and you rule over all.
Receive, O Lord, the gifts we offer:
the tangible expressions of our love and gratitude.
Transform them into a source of life for many,
and transform us into joyful witnesses,
that your reign may continue to grow
in the hearts of all.
In the name of Jesus. Amen.
To Illustrate
It is said that an old friend of Alexander the Great once came to him asking for money. The friend had fallen upon hard times; he needed some help to get back on his feet. Alexander summoned the royal treasurer, and had him bring a purse filled with many times more than the friend had asked for.
"This is far too much," the king's friend said. "I can't accept it."
"The amount you asked for is sufficient for you to receive," Alexander replied. "It is not sufficient for me to give."
***
Jesus was not a tither -- and thank God he wasn't! When it came time for him to give, Jesus gave not ten percent, but 100 percent. He gave himself on the cross, so we might be dead to sin and alive to all that is good.
***
Psychiatrist Karl Menninger once asked a wealthy patient, "What on earth are you going to do with all that money?"
The patient replied, "Just worry about it, I suppose!"
Menninger went on, "Well do you get that much pleasure out of worrying about it?"
"No," responded the patient, "but I get such terror when I think about giving it to somebody."
***
A very old woman approached a wise man named Jacob and said: "I want to ask you something. I am going to die soon. I have a great deal of money. If you are so smart, why not tell me how I can take it with me?"
"Well? Well? What can be carried to the other side?"
"Everything of value," answered Jacob as if this insight was common knowledge.
Her greed excited, the old woman shouted, "How? How?"
Jacob drew calmer. "In your memory, he answered."
"Memory?" said the woman, dumbstruck at the suggestion. "Memory can't carry wealth!"
Jacob's focus seized the woman's eye. "That's only because you have already forgotten what is of value."
-- Adapted from Jacob the Baker: Gentle Wisdom for a Complicated World by Noah ben-Shea (New York: Ballantine, 1989), pp. 54-55
***
A fable of Aesop:
Once upon a time there was a miser who used to hide his gold at the foot of a tree in his garden; but every week he used to go and dig it up and gloat over his gains. A robber, who had noticed this, went and dug up the gold and took it. When the miser next came to gloat over his treasures, he found nothing but the empty hole. He tore his hair and raised such an outcry that all the neighbors came around him, and he told them how he used to come and visit his gold.
"Did you ever take any of it out?" asked one of them.
"No," said he, "I only came to look at it."
"Then come again and look at the hole," said a neighbor. "It will do you just as much good."
The moral: Wealth unused might as well not exist.
***
The salesperson was touting the latest, best-selling fad to the proprietor of a West Virginia country store. But the shopkeeper was adamantly refusing to purchase the item for his shelves. "You must remember," the store owner explained at last, "that in this part of the country every want ain't a need."
Consumer culture gradually comes to regard luxuries as necessities. The longer this process continues, the concept of "need," or a "needs-based" economic order, becomes virtually unintelligible.
Unless we are vigilant, "want" easily changes to "need," and "need" changes to "deserve."
-- Adapted from a story told by Leonard Sweet in Faith Quakes (Nashville: Abingdon, 1994)
***
There was a man who had been listening to his pastor's requests for pledges in church, and he knew in his heart that he wanted to give, but he was in such dire straights financially that he felt it was too risky to pledge. He was afraid that he couldn't afford to give even $10 a week without risking that another bill wouldn't be fully paid. So he decided to talk to his pastor about it. After listening to the man's fears about giving, the pastor said to him, "What if you decided to give $10 each week, and I held onto it? If at any time you need it back, you can trust me to hand it over to you." The man was really happy about this; he finally felt like he could give without risking anything. He was about to thank his pastor and go out the door when the pastor asked him quietly, "Why would you trust me with that and not God?"
-- John Sumwalt, StoryShare, www.csspub.com/
Giving our money for the work of Christ, in obedience to God's command, is a deeply spiritual act.
Old Testament Lesson
Haggai 1:15b--2:9
The Temple, Gloriously Restored
Haggai's passion is the restoration of the temple -- despite economic hard times that lead the people to be cautious in that undertaking. Does this paltry structure, now under construction, in any way compare to God's house "in its former glory" (2:3)? "Work, for I am with you, says the Lord" (v. 4). The prophet is confident that, one day, the glory of the temple will be restored: though this will be God's doing, not the people's. God "will shake all the nations, so that the treasure of the nations shall come" (v. 7). All this is God's doing: "The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, says the Lord of hosts" (v. 8).
New Testament Lesson
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
Stand Firm And Hold Fast
Paul speaks out against certain false prophets who are evidently preaching that the Day of the Lord has already arrived (v. 2). This cannot be, he says, because "the lawless one," the one who seeks to usurp the place of God, has not yet been revealed and singled out for destruction (vv. 3-4). An omitted section (vv. 6-12) provides further detail on this lawless one, and on the deceptions of Satan that will subvert many. Then, in the second portion of today's selection, the tone changes, as Paul emphasizes salvation for God's elect. God has chosen them as the "first fruits for salvation," and called them through Paul's own apostolic preaching (vv. 13-14). His exhortation to them is to "stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us" (v. 15). Verses 16-17 are a benediction, wishing "eternal comfort and good hope" for these steadfast believers.
The Gospel
Luke 20:27-38
Jesus Parries The Sadducees' Challenge
This passage provides a glimpse into a first-century rabbinical debate, as a group of Sadducees challenge Jesus with a theological dilemma. The Sadducees are a rabbinical school that does not believe in the resurrection of the dead. Their question, naturally enough, is meant to trip Jesus up, displaying the absurdity of his teachings about life after death. Referring to the institution of levirate marriage described in Deuteronomy 25:5ff. (by which a brother is expected to marry his deceased brother's wife), Jesus' opponents posit an extreme example. Suppose, they say, there were seven brothers, and each of them died in turn. Eventually, the wife of the first one will have passed from one brother to the next, until she has been married to all seven. When she finally dies and goes on to eternal life, the Sadducees want to know, then whose wife is she? Jesus responds to their hostile question by affirming the resurrection to eternal life, on the one hand, but by denying that there will be marriage in heaven, on the other. The Scribes, who are witnessing the debate, are impressed.
Preaching Possibilities
A few of the more experienced among us may remember enjoying the old Jack Benny Show, on television or radio. One of the longest-running gags had to do with Benny's legendary stinginess. In one famous sketch, a robber comes up to Benny, points a gun at him, and demands, "Your money or your life!" Benny just stands there, staring into space. Again the robber says, "You heard me -- your money or your life!" After one of the agonizing slow pauses that are his trademark, Benny replies, "I'm thinking! I'm thinking!"
We smile at that sketch because of the ludicrous idea that a person would actually have to think about the choice between dying or handing over a wallet. We all get attached to money. Money represents psychological well-being, even happiness. It's the fruit of our labors, the symbol of our very worth as persons. We laugh at comedians like Jack Benny, but in the humor is a little twinge of discomfort -- because there's a bit of the tightwad in all of us, a little of the person who's afraid to let go.
"Your money or your life?" -- that is the question of Christian stewardship. Will we choose to give God our money -- or will we choose to give much more, the gift of our very lives? It's a question of how we give, not how much. God wants not so much our money, as our lives -- everything we have and are.
When we daydream about what we'd like to give to the church, there's always a catch, isn't there, a condition? "If we win the lottery ..." we think to ourselves, "if we receive a surprise inheritance, if we come up with an invention worth millions ... why then we'll be a veritable John D. Rockefeller, dispensing dollars magnanimously to all our favorite causes!"
A reporter once asked the real John D. Rockefeller, "Mr. Rockefeller, you've made millions. How much money is enough?" Rockefeller looked the reporter straight in the eye and answered, "Just a little bit more." Many of us are waiting until we have "just a little bit more" before we take the step of faith and give substantially to the work of Christ. The words of Haggai put the challenge before us, in inescapable terms: "The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, says the Lord of hosts" (1:8). The Bible challenges us to give from the top of what we have, not from what's left over.
Living that way, setting aside God's portion before anything else and giving it off the top, is a risk. No doubt about it. But that's Christian stewardship. Stewardship is a risky business. Yet it's also a joyful business, and a faith-filled business. We Christians can take the risk, knowing that our God will stand by us as we give, confident that our God has promised to provide.
God doesn't want our money. God wants our lives. The choice God puts before us is not the robber's choice, "Your money or your life!" but a far more profound and far-reaching decision. What God wants is the gift of our very selves. Once we have made that commitment, the money, the volunteer time, the talent, and everything else will follow.
The launching of a ship is an impressive sight to behold. There it sits, on dry land, propped up by wooden beams -- "a ship out of water," in every sense of the expression. A ship out of water is a silly thing. It can't go anywhere; it's useless. But then someone smashes a champagne bottle across the bow, and somebody else knocks out the supports. With a groaning and a splintering, the ship slides down the greased ramp and enters the water with a tremendous splash. The bow sinks down deep, then it flies up high, propelled by its natural buoyancy. After a few violent, back-and-forth motions, the craft rights itself.
The ship is afloat. It's in its element. It's where it belongs. This is the work for which it is made, riding high from wave to wave, upheld by the ocean's great supporting hand.
For a Christian, beginning a life of stewardship is like launching a ship. We begin in a sort of shipyard, supported by all the materialistic props society has to offer. It takes courage to forgo the only security we have ever known, to begin the short, stomach-churning slide into the black water. It's risky. It's frightening at times. Yet if we do not undergo that journey ourselves, we will never discover the purpose for which God made us. We will trade the hazards of the open sea for the slow death of dry rot in the shipyard.
Your money or your life? It's a deeply spiritual question. It's also not an either/or question: for the truth is, God wants both.
Prayer For The Day
Yours, O Lord, is the greatness,
the power and the glory,
the victory and the majesty.
Everything in heaven and earth is yours,
and you rule over all.
Receive, O Lord, the gifts we offer:
the tangible expressions of our love and gratitude.
Transform them into a source of life for many,
and transform us into joyful witnesses,
that your reign may continue to grow
in the hearts of all.
In the name of Jesus. Amen.
To Illustrate
It is said that an old friend of Alexander the Great once came to him asking for money. The friend had fallen upon hard times; he needed some help to get back on his feet. Alexander summoned the royal treasurer, and had him bring a purse filled with many times more than the friend had asked for.
"This is far too much," the king's friend said. "I can't accept it."
"The amount you asked for is sufficient for you to receive," Alexander replied. "It is not sufficient for me to give."
***
Jesus was not a tither -- and thank God he wasn't! When it came time for him to give, Jesus gave not ten percent, but 100 percent. He gave himself on the cross, so we might be dead to sin and alive to all that is good.
***
Psychiatrist Karl Menninger once asked a wealthy patient, "What on earth are you going to do with all that money?"
The patient replied, "Just worry about it, I suppose!"
Menninger went on, "Well do you get that much pleasure out of worrying about it?"
"No," responded the patient, "but I get such terror when I think about giving it to somebody."
***
A very old woman approached a wise man named Jacob and said: "I want to ask you something. I am going to die soon. I have a great deal of money. If you are so smart, why not tell me how I can take it with me?"
"Well? Well? What can be carried to the other side?"
"Everything of value," answered Jacob as if this insight was common knowledge.
Her greed excited, the old woman shouted, "How? How?"
Jacob drew calmer. "In your memory, he answered."
"Memory?" said the woman, dumbstruck at the suggestion. "Memory can't carry wealth!"
Jacob's focus seized the woman's eye. "That's only because you have already forgotten what is of value."
-- Adapted from Jacob the Baker: Gentle Wisdom for a Complicated World by Noah ben-Shea (New York: Ballantine, 1989), pp. 54-55
***
A fable of Aesop:
Once upon a time there was a miser who used to hide his gold at the foot of a tree in his garden; but every week he used to go and dig it up and gloat over his gains. A robber, who had noticed this, went and dug up the gold and took it. When the miser next came to gloat over his treasures, he found nothing but the empty hole. He tore his hair and raised such an outcry that all the neighbors came around him, and he told them how he used to come and visit his gold.
"Did you ever take any of it out?" asked one of them.
"No," said he, "I only came to look at it."
"Then come again and look at the hole," said a neighbor. "It will do you just as much good."
The moral: Wealth unused might as well not exist.
***
The salesperson was touting the latest, best-selling fad to the proprietor of a West Virginia country store. But the shopkeeper was adamantly refusing to purchase the item for his shelves. "You must remember," the store owner explained at last, "that in this part of the country every want ain't a need."
Consumer culture gradually comes to regard luxuries as necessities. The longer this process continues, the concept of "need," or a "needs-based" economic order, becomes virtually unintelligible.
Unless we are vigilant, "want" easily changes to "need," and "need" changes to "deserve."
-- Adapted from a story told by Leonard Sweet in Faith Quakes (Nashville: Abingdon, 1994)
***
There was a man who had been listening to his pastor's requests for pledges in church, and he knew in his heart that he wanted to give, but he was in such dire straights financially that he felt it was too risky to pledge. He was afraid that he couldn't afford to give even $10 a week without risking that another bill wouldn't be fully paid. So he decided to talk to his pastor about it. After listening to the man's fears about giving, the pastor said to him, "What if you decided to give $10 each week, and I held onto it? If at any time you need it back, you can trust me to hand it over to you." The man was really happy about this; he finally felt like he could give without risking anything. He was about to thank his pastor and go out the door when the pastor asked him quietly, "Why would you trust me with that and not God?"
-- John Sumwalt, StoryShare, www.csspub.com/
