Sermon: Great Big Stuff

First Presbyterian Church

October 13, 2024, Pentecost 20B

Mark 10:17-31

 

Great Big Stuff

 

 

In 2005 a new musical, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,  premiered on Broadway, another in a then-novel trend of musicals based on movies instead of the other way ‘round. The movie in question had starred Michael Caine and Steve Martin as competing con men; the musical debuted with John Lithgow and Norbert Leo Butz in those roles. As the novice grifter introduced to Lithgow’s high-class world, Butz gets the big song; when Lithgow, having grown tired of this penny-ante grifter, exasperatedly asks “what do you want!!??” Butz responds by gesticulating around wildly and shouting “I want this!!”, and then breaking into his big number that sums up everything he has seen and now wants for himself. It is simply titled “Great Big Stuff.”

It’s not the worst summary of one of the seemingly chronic conditions of our world; humans see, and then humans want. For example, it’s a driving premise behind an awful lot of the entertainment that passes by on our various screens, going back at least as far as reality-show predecessors like Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous or opulent prime-time dramas such as Dallas or Dynasty. (Yes, I’m dating myself, but I know many of you know what I’m talking about.) Sure, the dysfunction of the characters of those shows counts for a lot of the alleged entertainment value, but so does the “great big stuff” those characters possess. We see, and then we want. That’s been a defining characteristic of humanity in general for a very long time.

It's also worth acknowledging that the church has not been free of that inclination, in any age of its history. Just to throw out one example, you might remember the televangelist Jim Bakker (the one with two “k”s in his name) being at least as interested in accumulating wealth as in preaching. He is, however, hardly the only example of such divided loyalty, and emphatically not the last.

Of course, today’s gospel reading isn’t very hard to tie into this human predisposition. The man comes to Jesus and asks the question that sets off this encounter: “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” That phrasing is interesting in itself; to speak of “inheriting” eternal life might offer some suggestion of how the man has gained the “great wealth” (or the "great big stuff") we learn of a few verses later. Jesus’s answer is also curious. After the seemingly odd digression over being called “good,” he lists a few of the commandments and law. While many seem to get agitated about the man’s response that “all these I have kept since my youth” as sounding arrogant or prideful, given the examples Jesus gives it’s not that shocking an answer. Personally, I’ve never committed murder myself, and a lot of people can say the same, just to take one of those.

The story gets a little more interesting after that answer. It’s a bit of a jolt to read that “Jesus looked at him and loved him…”. That’s not a typical response in these encounters. At the minimum it seems that Jesus is taking this man at his word, and that this man is not one of those who will appear in coming chapters of this gospel who are trying to trick or trap Jesus with their questions. Jesus seems to believe this man is sincere in his searching, and one might also guess that Jesus knows what’s going to happen when he gives his final answer.

Let’s make sure we take in that whole answer: “You are lacking one thing: go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” Notice that the mandate here isn’t just about selling off those possessions, but also using the funds gained specifically to help those in need, and then turning to follow Jesus.

We know of course what happens next. The man goes away grieving, “because he had great wealth.” What we don’t know is what happens after that. When the man goes away, we don’t follow him; we are given Jesus’s words to his disciples about what had just happened. But we don’t know what actually happened to the man himself. 

In fact there’s a lot we don’t know about this man. Mark doesn’t even give the extra details that Matthew and Luke add, whereby we often call this person “the rich young ruler”; in Mark all he is is a man who “had great wealth,” regardless of age or social stature. We don’t know the nature of his possessions or his “stuff.” It’s entirely possible, given the Roman Empire setting in which this takes place, that among the man’s ownings are slaves tasked with overseeing his many possessions. We don’t know if there is family involved. We don’t know how far this man has come to see Jesus. 

But even more, we don’t know what the man does after he walks away grieving. For all we know, the man does exactly what Jesus tells him to do, sorrowing all the while. Maybe he’s one of those in the crowds that have accumulated around Jesus by the time he gets to Jerusalem. We tend to assume not, but we don’t know. What we do know is that he had "great big stuff", and the very idea of giving it up was shocking and grief-inducing to him.

The “shock” part shouldn’t surprise us. We are hardly the first age to assume that great wealth somehow means that God has particularly favored a person. The “prosperity gospel” might not have been invented yet, but those living under Roman rule were certainly led to believe that accumulated wealth and power and status were marks of divine favor from some deity or another. The idea of having to give up those seeming markers of divine favor likely made no sense in the eyes of this man or of anyone else listening to his exchange with Jesus. The attachment to his “stuff” was so strong, and so presumed to be so good, that Jesus’s words provoked a deep emotional reaction. 

After the man walks away, we get the rather famous line about it being easier to get a camel through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. It’s one of the more quoted and quotable lines from Mark’s gospel, but also one that is easily misinterpreted. Is it merely the fact of being rich that makes it so hard? Or is it something about the condition of having many possessions that is the problem?

In a technical sense it wouldn’t necessarily have been hard for the man to sell all his stuff, give it away to the poor, and then come follow Jesus. It might have been an involved process to be sure, but you have to guess that if the stuff was good stuff, there would be people happy to buy it. Giving it away to the poor, again, would not be hard; in Roman society there were going to be plenty of poor people around. The hardest part might be tracking down Jesus to follow him once all those financial transactions were completed.

No, it’s not necessarily a hard task to accomplish. Involved, maybe complicated, to be sure, but not hard. What’s hard, of course, is the very idea of giving up the stuff, even if (maybe especially if) it's not the "great big stuff" from that Broadway show example. We get attached to it. It has sentimental value, sometimes. It gets connected to some special event or memory in our lives or family. It feels like giving up the stuff is giving up the memory.

Hopefully this reminds us of the lesson of this passage that is trickiest for the non-rich among us: you don’t have to have many possessions to be owned, so to speak, by those possessions. 

Our stuff, even if it's not "great big stuff," becomes our security, our comfort, maybe even our identity in some cases. Maybe it seems harmless to us. We can certainly point to others who have more stuff and fancier stuff and more extravagant stuff than we do, and perhaps hide ourselves from our own attachments by doing so. But do we still run the risk of being so attached to our stuff, so owned by our possessions, that we miss the kingdom of God?

There is that last paragraph of story, where Peter (rightly, in this case) points out that these disciples really didleave behind all their stuff to follow Jesus. Peter, James, and John didn’t even wait around to sell their fishing boats to jump on board with Jesus. And Jesus does in turn tell the disciples that their forsaking has not gone unnoticed; their sacrifices won’t be forgotten in this age or in the age to come. But even then, there has to be a precautionary note added, that even in that remembering and rewarding, there will be upsetting of the order of things – “but many who are first will be last, and the last first.” If you’re doing all of this sacrificing and selling and giving things away in expectation of being big number one in the end, you’re still getting it wrong. The reward is following Jesus. The reward is entering the kingdom of God. Period. Full stop. End of discussion. Ladder-climbing and gain-seeking and currying favor to gain more importance? None of this is part of the scheme in that kingdom, in this age or the age to come.

We are left with, in the end, a fairly simple question in the wake of this gospel story, one that is nonetheless dreadfully difficult and challenging to answer: what do we “own” that, in fact, owns us? And how do we give it away and follow - really, humbly follow - Jesus? 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #35, Praise Ye the Lord, the Almighty; #720, Jesus Calls Us; #729, Lord, I Want to Be a Christian

Sermon: One Table

First Presbyterian Church

October 6, 2024, World Communion Sunday

Isaiah 25:6-9; Ephesians 2:13-22

 

One Table

 

 

You might have noticed that I've got my white stole out this morning, which is actually recommended for Sundays on which communion is observed. I don't usually do that, though. That’s because if the white vestments came out every time the sacrament should be observed in worship, we would never get to use any other vestments. There is no qualified religious authority or text that gives a good credible argument for why the sacrament should not be observed every time a congregation comes together for worship, even including such occasions as weddings and Services of Witness to the Resurrection. The first reactions against weekly communion came as anti-Catholic backlash in some Reformed areas during the Reformation, and over time that backlash morphed into the perceived “impracticality” of weekly observance, and sometimes into a desire to keep the Lord’s Supper “special,” which is to say, I guess, that nothing else about worship is “special.” But for today's occasion of World Communion Sunday, I'll use white.

The occasion of World Communion Sunday, marked today in many Protestant traditions, provides an occasion to critique those reluctances among many other things. It might be worth remembering that there is nothing else we do in worship that has quite the direct mandate as this sacrament, given most immediately by Jesus on the night before his death. The church at large was quick to make it the central feature of their gatherings, even if the teaching/preaching parts of their worship took up much more time. They sometimes got it wrong, as we see from Paul’s reprimand to the Corinthians in chapter 11 of his first letter to them, but they did it. It is, in short, a direct ministering of grace to his disciples, and to us who follow over the many centuries as part of the body of Christ.

I wonder sometimes if there’s something else at work in some churches’ reluctance to observe the sacrament more regularly. It’s a lot of work, especially when pandemic conditions have not forced these little two-sided containers of “bread” and “wine” upon us, to get together that much bread and (in most Protestant churches) grape juice for particularly larger congregation, to be sure. It’s also true that it takes time. There’s also the matter of the awkwardness of much theology about the table; is Christ really present in the bread and cup, or spiritually present (this would be the position of most churches in the Reformed tradition, like us Presbyterians), or is it all just symbolic? And there’s also the challenge of acknowledging Christ as the one who serves us all, when any idiot can look and see that I am not Christ, and nor is any other minister presiding at table this morning anywhere in the world.

But I wonder if the biggest obstacle for some churches is that this sacrament is something we share – not just among ourselves in one sanctuary, wherever we may be, but with all the church in all the world. That passage from Isaiah, with its references to "all peoples" and "all nations," reminds us that this vision doesn't merely date from Jesus's last meal with his disciples; it was the stuff of prophets' proclamations as well.

I’m not sure everybody likes that. Particularly in this country, it’s kind of a thing for churches – especially those on the presumed cutting edge of contemporary worship – to pride themselves on creating a distinct “culture,” of worship and pretty much everything else. The implied promise is that You won’t find this experience anywhere else. That attitude, honestly, can turn up in a church whether it plays the hottest new songs on the CCLI worship music charts or fills the air with the sounds of Bach and Mozart. 

The Lord’s Supper, though, is not unique, and is almost designed to thwart uniqueness. You break bread and pass it around, and you pour out the wine or juice and share it too. The bread will be different in different places, but it’s hard to be terribly different about the observance of this sacrament. We kinda have to share it, and not just with that church a few blocks away we don’t like. We share it with a worldful of churches in places we don’t like full of people we don’t like, against whom we’d much rather discriminate.

Among many other things this sacrament, and this particular occasion of observing it, does to us is this compelling to see ourselves not as some kind of “special” or “unique” outfit but elementally as part of Christ’s body, the church.

We don’t necessarily like that. I know there are probably some churches in this town where I’d be horrified to sit through a worship service, and my own past traumatic experiences make it hard to conceive of participating in much of anything with some churches. But that’s not up to me, and those churches are part of the body of Christ too. So to with churches in Haiti or Lebanon or Gaza or Afghanistan (to the degree that any churches are allowed to exist there anymore) or any number of places in the world that too many of our leaders and people demonize at every opportunity. 

And yet here this particular table stands, one of many around the world where bread and cup will be ministered on this day, with absolutely no checkpoints or gates or gatekeepers, open to anybody to whom the Lord calls. It stands as an open rebuke to the likes of the “church growth movement,” a seemingly innocuous thing in recent decades that promoted the use of things like “market segmentation” to encourage churches to seek out their members in moderately affluent, middle- to upper-class, and almost exclusively white neighborhoods – “people like us” as many churches would put it.

There are Christians at tables around the world on this day who are, to say the least, not like us. The reading from Ephesians reminds us, though, that even we ourselves were “not like us” before the working of Christ’s mercy and redemption opened the good news up beyond the Jewish origins of its earliest followers. We “Gentiles” – i.e. anyone non-Jewish – were the outsiders. You might even borrow a Jimmy Buffett song line and say that we were the people our parents warned us about. Indeed, those in churches these days who want to keep folks “out” are only “in” by the grace of God, and they really don’t like being reminded of that.

If they don’t like that, they really won’t like eternity. The feast we keep today is, again among many other things, a foreshadowing of the great feast to come. It will be a real "y'all come" feast, with God's children from all over - "all peoples" and "all nations" - joining in.

But for now, until that day in glory, we keep the feast here in this one small corner of the body of Christ, one part of a world of Christ’s followers, seeking to be faithful and to bear witness. And we share this meal with Christians all over God's good earth, whether anyone particularly likes that fact or not. 

For the whole church in the whole world, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #504, We Come as Guests Invited; #---, When Christ's own body comes to table; #---, As we go now from this table 

I didn't think this was a literal thing...