Chris Taylor’s Sermon – 11/8/09
The Greatest Gifts
Psalm 127
Mark 12:38-44
This past Tuesday I went down to the Emergency Room at Presbyterian; not as pastor, unfortunately, but as patient. I was very impressed with the care there, and particularly pleased with the speed with which they came up with a diagnosis: epiploic appendigitis. That was good news for me; this wasn’t something that would require surgery – just pain killers and rest.
I took my cell phone with me so that I could stay in touch. In retrospect, I’m not sure that was the wisest thing to do. I was given a fair amount of morphine at the hospital and then prescriptions for some heavy painkillers when I went home. What I’m getting at here is that if you happen to be one of those who got an e-mail from me this last Tuesday or Wednesday, just quietly delete it. Let’s keep it between us. I remember lying on the gurney thinking this morphine was no big deal, but Bonnie tells me otherwise. She said I was smiling way too much.
Which brings us, in its own strange way, to our first lesson this morning; “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain…” The psalm is grounded on the assumption that God is at work in our world and in our lives – what we call God’s “providence” – building houses, guarding cities, providing sustenance and peace. The call here is to place our trust in God and seek His will.
Our psalm fleshes out our understanding of providence. Part of its beauty, and part of what makes it so unique, is the way in which it brings together two seemingly mutually exclusive elements. Who is it that actually builds the house? Is it God or the one who labors? The psalm, of course, tells us that it is both. The house won’t be built without the efforts of the laborer, yet at the same time the home built without reference to God is clearly at some peril.
We’ve seen an example of this inter-relationship in the financial pages of our newspapers the last couple of weeks. Many of you have read about the charges filed against Raj Rajaratnam and thirteen others in the Galleon insider-trading case. What we know is that Rajaratnam founded Galleon in 1997, and in just twelve years built up a magnificent “house” – a hedge fund that controlled some four billion dollars in assets. That never would have happened without his labors. But if, in fact, the charges prove true then it is safe to say that he also brought down that house precisely because he failed to reference God. He chose not to be accountable in his labors to anything or anyone beyond his own self-interest.
This same principle works from the other side, as well. What would have happened when my side was hurting if I had simply chosen to stay home and pray, “Lord, please take care of this”? The underlying issue never would have been diagnosed, and I would have ended up living with that pain for several more days at the very least.
God’s providence isn’t about God acting alone or us acting alone. What we see in this psalm is God and the one who labors acting together, in relationship with each other. What we see is God moving through us to impact both our lives and this world.
We might wish that God would simply snap his fingers and deliver us from our addiction, or our depression, or our struggles at school. But that’s not the way God ordinarily works. We have our own part to play in the process. We might cry out at all the suffering and all the injustice in this world and wonder why an active God would allow it to continue. But the God we encounter here is a God still waiting to work through us.
“Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain…” Is God involved in this world? Absolutely! God is at work building the house so we need to keep our eyes focused on him. Yet at the same time the house won’t get built without the efforts of those who are willing to step forward in faith.
As we turn to our second text, we encounter this same truth through yet another lens. Jesus is teaching in the great temple of Jerusalem, and he is drawing lessons from what he and his followers observe happening around them.
Mark 12:38-44
There is a message about the church in these verses: the church at its worst and the church at its best. The text lifts up the tension in which we live.
Notice in verse 40 the reference to “devouring widows’ houses”. It is part of Jesus’ condemnation of these religious leaders. And what happens immediately after that? We see in verse 42 a poor widow placing everything she has into the temple treasury. What kind of institution would not only accept this gift (in Jesus’ words, “all she had to live on”) and at the same time do nothing to help her?
As if to underscore the point, Jesus goes on the opening verses of the next chapter to tell his followers that this same temple that she is supporting will soon be destroyed – a prediction that came to pass within the lifetime of some of those who stood with him. At one level, the widow’s gift in other words, is simply a waste.
This is the church at its worst; the church as institution. Egotism and avarice hiding behind the vestments of religious practice; the preservation of the institution supplanting the mission for which it was originally created. In pointing out that this widow’s gift was everything she had to live on, Jesus is condemning the institution which has, in fact, devoured her home.
God and the institution which bears God’s name are not one in the same. Don’t confuse the two. Precisely because it is of this world, the church will always be imperfect, will always make mistakes, will always get the Gospel wrong at some point along the way. It less than glorious history reflects that imperfection – from the Crusades to the Inquisition, from its support of apartheid and slavery to its subordination of women. God is so much bigger than the church. Our faith is so much greater…
But before you say, “Ah, then we don’t need the church!” go back and remember the message of that first text: God building not alone, not independently, but God building through those who labor in obedience to God’s will.
For all its imperfections, for all its flaws, the church remains that vessel which God has chosen; the vehicle through which God, even now, continues to have an impact on this world.
I came to faith because of the commitment, forty years ago, of Fourth Presbyterian Church to minister to the youth of its community. Many of you came to faith because of this congregation’s commitment to Christian Education: because of its commitment week after week for more than fifty years now to give some its best resources to the children of this area. Summer’s Best Two Weeks was born here. Adults who grew up in this area still have memories of roller-skating with hundreds of others in our Fellowship Hall.
Think of the impact that just this one church has had. It’s response to the steel-workers back in the early eighties when they showed up at our doors: the role we played in developing a medical insurance program for children of the unemployed; the nearly $400,000 that was donated in the decade that followed which provided insurance for some 20,000 children in the greater Pittsburgh area. There is Contact Pittsburgh; Sojourner House; Helping Hands, Healing Hearts – each of them born right here. And the countless other ministries and missions this church has supported.
Just this last month a congregation in Kirkuk, Iraq was informed that the Presbyterian Women of our denomination have pledged up to $400,000 to support its efforts to minister to the children of that devastated region. They received that grant because of our congregation’s longstanding commitment to support their ministry, and because two of our members took the initiative to write the grant proposal and serve as its advocates.
Jesus had no illusions about the community of faith. He saw it at its worst. But he also saw it, very clearly, as that instrument that God has chosen. And at its best, there is nothing like the church in all the world.
Who in their right mind would offer everything they have to God? And offer it not directly to God but through this flawed and imperfect institution which is the church?
The answer, of course, is someone who loves the Lord with all their heart, and all their mind, and all their strength. Someone who is deeply, passionately, profoundly, in love with God. That’s what made that widow’s gift so meaningful. That is what transformed those tiny, copper coins into the very stuff of gold.
Are we an institution? Yes, of course we are, and that means we are subject to the same mistakes, the same flaws as any other institution. We are human. But we can’t stop there because the truth is that at the same time we are so much more than just an institution. We are the vehicle that God has chosen. We are that community where God has promised to be present. We are those laborers through whom God is very much at work.
When you and I make the choice week after week to present our offerings as a part of our worship, we are doing far more than simply supporting an institution. We are becoming a part of something extraordinary; a part of what God is doing right here. When we present our offerings we are joining that widow, and joining countless others down through the centuries who have given of themselves to further the work of God’s good and beautiful and life-changing Kingdom.