It's not About What's In Your Wallet ( And it is)

How many of you remember the VISA credit card commercial “What’s in your wallet?” My favorites involved the marauding Vikings on holiday, but they all ended with a bellowing question- “What’s in YOUR wallet?” I think of it whenever I hear this gospel lesson. Because what’s in our wallets is close to us, and important to us. As the Pharisees are being tested by Jesus as much as they thought they were testing him. But what exactly is Jesus really getting at when he tells them to hand him a coin and then tells them to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s but give to God what is God’s?

The short answer is “I don’t know for sure.” But I do think we have Caesars in our lives too.  And by that I mean whatever occupies us and controls us.

The Pharisees and God’s people lived in an occupied land. They were taken over by the Romans who brought their laws, their army and their money. Literally the answer to what’s in their wallet is money that had a picture of Caesar on it and proclaimed he was the Son of God. So much for the people who say they will have no other gods before the Lord. Claiming allegiance to the Lord was seemingly an impossible dilemma. They were allowed to worship their God as long as they also worshipped Caesar. And it seems they are caught and yet, they have no trouble even in the temple of handing Jesus that coin. The one they tell others they can’t have in the temple and must exchange for temple money for a price. They have a lot of those Caesar coins and they’re not sharing. And they have no trouble going to the occupying leaders about Jesus. Their words about God and their actions have gotten pretty disconnected. Frankly, they’ve spent an awful lot of time cozying up to the very thing that threatens them.

We are not occupied in the same way, but we are also living in a system that demands much it seems. However we answer the question of what occupies us affects our decision making, how we see the world, and tells where we place our hope. Often it is in our wallet. Even though our money boldly says “In God We Trust” on it.

But I wonder if anyone has looked at those words when you’re buying something, or before you spend money. Does anyone stop and look at those words “ In God We Trust” and ask if this decision lives that out? Anyone? Me neither.

With credit cards and electronic purchases becoming the norm kids today perhaps no longer will even see those words. They won’t even cross our minds.

We’re all far more likely to pay attention to the words of the brands we are loyal to. Now advertisers have gone beyond trying to convince us of a brand- it’s about creating a whole community. There are Nike people. And I-phone people. There are Weis shoppers and Redners shoppers. There are whole systems based upon these loyalties- there are even loyalty cards. And while some offer us a deal here and there, they are mainly just tracking what we buy to get us to buy more of what it seems we can’t do without. I keep waiting for my loyalty to Turkey Hill really give me the better gas discount. They tell me to keep spending. Getting us to cozy up to their system and treat the connections as real. To be the thing we want most. But they’re not real connections.

What’s in our wallet says a lot. It says not only what we are loyal to, but I think it says where we place our hope. That’s why retail therapy is a thing. For those of you who don’t know, that’s shopping at a favorite place to feel better. The next product is bound to make a difference until maybe we do realize that VISA really does own us. There’s even a spoof on the Viking commercial where the person realizes how much they owe and the Vikings come back and smash it all.

The truth in this is that there is an obvious tension in life between how to live a life of faith in the world and how to live in the culture of our world. How to live without letting the culture own us.

And I wonder if maybe the real question Jesus was asking the Pharisees and us is, whether we think the pull of the culture is so strong we don’t even try?

Maybe we begin to think it’s too much to ask how faith shapes our decisions in life about spending and saving and giving. That’s a place of no hope in the end. Yet Jesus says give to Caesar what is Caesar’s but give to God what is God’s.  Which may be a way of reminding us how our coins and our cards do not define us.

Because God does. We belong to God.

Jesus invites and even demands us to engage these words we say about God and ourselves- to speak of our Lord in terms of a real living relationship. And a source of hope. Because while God wants all of us, the good news is that God first says- you are mine. It’s a promise not a threat.

Words that are intended to reassure us that we are more than our money and don’t have to live in fear of having it all.

Perhaps now more than ever these are words of community and comfort and direction we need to hear. That our hope is not limited to what we can buy. That we can live in faith that God loves us, provides for us and saves us and we can believe there is a future and hope. Now more than ever as we look at our world and feel powerless we can be a community that continues to gather together around what is real- God’s love and promise today and forever in Christ’s work of the cross. That’s our hope. And it’s real.

In a few weeks, we will be gathering for our annual meeting, and voting upon a plan for how we will carry out ministry in the coming year. The time honored term is called a budget. And it often feels that our thoughts about bills and coins are the only way we see this process. But I want to suggest we view it as a statement of trust in God and as a statement of hope.

That the choices we make in our commitment will be based upon our trust in God so that we can support it financially. And that the choice we make in shaping ministry will be based upon what we believe God is calling us to do, not only what we feel used to doing.

Because we’re liberated by God from the weight of whatever feels like it occupies us. We are liberated! And our primary response is to say thank you! Thank God! And trust God’s providing as we carry out the gospel for others. So they can feel liberated and thankful too.

And this is who we CAN be because God claims us, loves us and empowers us to respond.

 

Let us pray- Lord God, sometimes we are unsure about how we can respond to your calling. Help us to surrender ourselves, and be thankful because we are yours, and to trust that you love us and provide for us, so that we can break free from what holds us back and share of ourselves for the sake of your world.

In Jesus’ name. Amen

 PS- here's the Vikings!

 

What the heck do you do with Luke on an Anniversary Sunday?

Today during the children’s message we talked about what an anniversary was. There were lots of guesses. An anniversary was a day when the guy surprises the girl and the girl surprises the guy. It means cake, and it’s about something people did. It’s something people who are married do. Then we talked about how anniversaries are about a big event- it could be getting married. Or for our church it’s kind of like a birthday. But anniversaries are about doing something together. I had the kids hold hands and asked what would happen if the person at each end decided to run toward the wall closest to them. Well, there would be fighting or the chain would break. And we learned that to stay together takes work. And then I asked them to turn around. And at first one person in the middle just twisted around and everyone else got jumbled. I encouraged the person on the end to lead them to turn the whole chain around. And we learned about working together. And then we looked at the cross. Because the big event that brings us together is about Jesus. Jesus’ love is why we are here, and it’s what helps us work together. And Jesus is why we get to celebrate.

Here at Holy Spirit, a long time ago, people gathered responding to a need for a Sunday School chapel in this part of the city. But they quickly realized they really wanted a church. It was kind of radical asking to be freed from the church that started us. But it seemed critical. In critical moments we get clarity. 102 years ago, there was that clarity. At other times however, we can deceive ourselves into thinking things happening elsewhere don’t matter or have nothing to do with us. This congregation had a long tradition of strong dynamic leaders who grew an off shoot Sunday School chapel into a vibrant congregation in this city. It took a lot of labor and saving and having some of the right people at the right time. But basically like all of the other congregations of the city, we kind of functioned unto ourselves. One way I know this is that none of our fellow churches knew a lot about us really. When I first came and would ask beyond these doors about Holy Spirit, most people here in the city would say they really didn’t know. Not bad, just unknown. Collectively we were complacent as churches. Today we hear about a manager who has gotten complacent. Used to doing things his way.  

In the parable, it’s only when the kind of complacency the manager had fallen into is disturbed that he gets an eye opener. Until now he’s probably been really focused on his own needs to the exclusion of the needs of his neighbors. But then he realizes he actually really needs other people. And even then he still comes off as a little suspicious. I suspect changes of heart often come across that way. He spends a phenomenal amount of energy in a new direction. But others aren’t really totally sure what to make of it. Yet while his motives may be mixed, there is blessing in what he does. People who owe a lot of money are given breathing room, and the boss who was feeling a money crunch gets some relief and people are connected in ways they had not really been relating before.

What does that have to do with our anniversary?  Anniversaries are about a past, and a present and hope for the future.

As we’ve gotten to know each other, and I’ve heard your rich history, I’ve learned of the quilts that were sent, and the pretzels for the military, and caring for neighborhood orphans. When I asked you to replenish the benevolence fund recently, there was $1800 in two weeks! All ways of caring, past and present.

At the same time, there were wise people who wanted to make sure that this parish was always cared for-always had a pastor. And a seminary education fund was born, and funded. A fund whose original intent I suspect was somewhat self serving- wanting to guarantee this place always had a pastor, we prepared to fund his education. And later wanting to know our own were cared for if they went to seminary. We took care of our own. An amazing amount of forethought, and may I dare say, at the same time, a fund that was really about serving ourselves. Holy Spirit has been blessed to not only have pastors but to fund education for two Lutheran pastors.

But I said we get clarity when there is a critical moment. What is the critical moment?

Well, last year our bishop brought to all of us the fact not enough is being given to  fund the ministry we’ve been called to share- asking us to see more than our own congregations, and to stop doing things complacently. And it would be easy to say that’s not about us. But our leaders gathered to think about how to do more. Out of that conversation and looking at all of our assets closely, we began talking about the seminary education fund. Sitting there with $90,000 in it. And truth be told the first thing people wanted to know was whether we really needed to keep it for its intended purpose. Couldn’t we use it for our other needs? Because here we are and there it sits. Just growing and being unused. How should it be managed?

But, there’s another critical moment. The fact that in the next 10 years 50% of the ELCA pastors will retire. Half. Take the number of leaders and make it half. And unlike being forgiven half a debt, creating a deficit by 50%- only half the number of churches with pastors is a loss. And dare I say it, God could ask what the heck we’ve all been doing. Going around without ever thinking about the future and even what it takes to be a pastor. Used to be congregations and synods paid for the dormitory and tuition, and future pastors would pay a few hundred dollars a semester to live in a dorm, have their meals and laundry taken care of and be sent out to churches to learn. Somehow we never saw that that changed. Except here where we did our part for our own. And one could say let those other parishes pay for their own. It’s not our debt. But that’s not really the truth. We are church together.

Today it costs no less than $100,000 to cover books, tuition, fees, meals, transportation and supplies. And at the Philadelphia Seminary you can’t even get a meal on campus anymore. How do future pastors, young or old, pay for all of that? If you go full time you can’t work. Students with families end up with kids on food stamps. Seminaries have branches of the local food bank feeding future pastors. I think God wonders what the heck is going on.

So here we are. We realized that if we had a fund that could pay for educating pastors, it could pay for educating other pastors studying who were from this synod- about 18 right now. Maybe even cut their debt in half. We had a transformation and did an unexpected thing. $25,000 to endow a fund in our synod. And suddenly a whole bunch of people knew who we were. At synod assembly this year we offered another $25,000 as a matching grant.

 And the money keeps coming, and with it, those relationships. The ones we weren’t tending.

This is the kind of shrewd Jesus is talking about. Being shrewd with what you’ve been given in a way that furthers the relationships and care of the kingdom. Clarity and new direction. Deeper relationships and a future.

It started with us wanting to know if we could use that money for ourselves. But being transformed by God. And inviting others to share in a new totally radical thing.  That is worth celebrating!

But I want to invite you one step farther- God wants you in this story. Today. You see, it’s one thing to be gracious with money of another day. It is something else to let God speak about our money today. Between now and the end of November, I want each of you- yes, each of you, to join this work. In addition to whatever else you give, give something. Yes, something more. Sacrificial giving. Put it in an envelope and mark it Seminary. Think of all the saints and leaders who have gone before here, and let’s surprise ourselves by celebrating and honoring God’s work past and present in all of us and giving for God’s future.   

And may God the giver of all good things continue to bless the world in and through us as we journey into the future together. AMEN