If today is the day that you anticipate the dreaded “Stewardship Sermon,” I submit that these might be the worst passages of scripture to pick for such a message. Of course, that is if we presume that a Stewardship Sermon is an equivalent of the standard Fall Fundraiser drive that every non-profit and public radio station across the country is asking you to participate in – except this one is for Jesus so it has all kinds of guilt and moral authority baked into it.
No, these passages are just all wrong for that kind of message, so I just won’t be giving you one of those this year. Of course, there might be another kind of stewardship message that these passages do support. If “stewardship” has more to do with managing our resources in such a way that we glorify God through our choices, our relationships, and our desire to become partners with God in demonstrations of love and mercy, then we might be on to something here.
In Mathew 9 we see Jesus eating with sinners and tax collectors. The Pharisees saw it too, and they had questions – good, reasonable questions. The people Jesus was associating with were not only aiding in the oppression of Rome, but they were also making a living off of it. Who knows how the scene played out, but I like to think that Jesus hollered through a window, “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.”
Sure, that might have been rude to those he was eating with, but they knew what the Pharisees thought of them. They may have worn it like a brand as many who have been judged by the church do today. I love the thought that this received raucous laughter and maybe some affirmations. “That’s right! Get out of here. We’re sinning!”
Of course, the point of eating with them was not to encourage sin, but to meet them where they were and to encourage them toward another way. Matthew, at least, was called by God to follow Jesus through this experience. I think we have to be careful, though, when we talk about categories of people as “sinners”.
Even the Apostle Paul called himself a “chief among sinners” in 1 Timothy 1:15, and I imagine that kind of humility is helpful in thinking about Jesus’ intent with the tax collectors and sinners. More than that, I imagine the word mercy – God desires mercy – is pretty important. Mercy is a word we don’t think about much these days except in a kind of days gone by expression of exaggeration – hooo, mercy! What does that even mean?
Taken literally, mercy means release from a consequence. Most of our cognitive framework for it comes from the middle ages when feudal Lords – the church is one of those – held sway over a person’s life. Mercy could come in the form of a cancellation of debt or even a quick death. Over the years the church has held that language in relation to salvation, but that’s not really what we find in scripture. When Jesus said, “Go and learn what this means – I desire mercy, not sacrifice” he was speaking to keepers of the law who would have surely known Hosea 6:6 “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”
They would have known Amos 5:21-24, “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them, and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs [sorry choir]; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”
The Pharisees would have known Micah 6:8, “God has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?” and they might have even thought, even just for a minute, that Jesus treating those they scoffed with dignity was a kind of mercy.
If we stick with the idea that mercy is a release from consequence – and we separate the consequence from the cause – we can find ourselves on some holy ground that we never anticipated standing on. I found this to be true last Wednesday at a board meeting for the Feliciana Retreat Center. Our new Executive Director, James Hilliard, told us that he wanted us to start our meetings with our mission statement, “Honoring God, Building Community, and Enjoying Creation,” followed by stories of ways that we are living it out.
Then he brought in a few of the staff to talk about some recent experiences. One of them talked about having to move back to the area during COVID to live with family after a job loss. She spoke through tears about the way that serving Camp Agape and other retreat groups had transformed and saved her life. The other staff member was a little newer, and she brought up a recent group that was comprised of family members of those in the LGBTQ+ community.
One of the two confessed that she had concerns about serving them because she didn’t think it honored God. The other confessed that she had a brother who was gay and that he took his own life because of the lack of acceptance he received in the world. Both of them gushed over the love that they received from serving this group because the group invited them to study the Bible with them and to step outside of the service lines and join their fellowship.
Beloved of God, if that’s not what mercy looks like (coming and going), then I might not know what it is. If that’s not what stewardship looks like, then maybe I don’t know what that is either.
Micah 5:2-5 promises one who will come from humble beginnings who will bring mercy, and the prophet chose Bethlehem for its significance to the house and line of David. This goes with the story we’ve been following all along this year in the Narrative Lectionary. The story of God’s faithfulness is seen through a family, then through a people, and ultimately for all people! It’s not as simple as inclusion and diversity because they are en vogue, but it is as simple as diversity and inclusion because we are limited without it.
We are limited to our own concerns unless or until we hear the stories of others – and not just hear, but believe them and validate them as real and true experiences of the world. We are blinded to the injustice and the oppression of others until we know someone else’s story. Some of you all know that I have been actively engaging in the stories of others in the black community through our Presbytery’s Special Committee on Racial Reconciliation and also in an ecumenical, interracial clergy book study here in town that is using Be the Bridge by Latasha Morrison.
While it is interesting and informative and moving to hear the stories that Ms. Morrison shares about her experiences of racism – both systemic and particular – I confess that they are not new to me. More than that, I confess that I am always caught off-guard when I hear the black pastors in the room say that they wept when they read certain stories. Why haven’t I wept?
Seriously, I wept in the theater watching Black Panther last Friday night [no spoilers – it’s just an emotional roller coaster of a film]. I think we all know the answer to that question. It’s because I’ve been desensitized to the point that Latasha’s story is just another reminder of the divisions we create in the world around us. Not so for the black clergy in that group. For them, her story is their story.
What I am learning is that unless and until her story becomes a part of my story, I will continue to be more moved by the problems of a fictional character than a real one. What I am learning is that the promised one to come must come from the place of poverty within me in order to release me from the consequences of separation. What I am learning is that the sacrifice God desires is not a hundred book studies and every Presbytery committee under the sun. God simply wants me to be released from sin and separation that plays out in the brokenness we see every day.
“With what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams and thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” This is all hyperbole. It’s not the amount of the gift that indicates faith. It’s the result of the gift that demonstrates faith.
I will say this, though, in relation to your commitment to giving to First Presbyterian Church: I believe that you give because you have experienced the tender mercy of God in this place and you want others to experience it, too! Why else would you be such a faithful and generous congregation? You gave it during a time when there was no guarantee of if or when we would meet in person. You give to special offerings over and above your regular giving. Some of you give in the way that Sonny Branch has described, adding a little more each year as you work toward a particular percentage. Many of you have come to realize that giving online helps you to give more regularly, and others just give when you can, yet the greater gift is always the gift of the heart; the gift of time; the gift of right and good relationships that seek to honor God.
Whatever your pattern of giving is, the important thing is that we recognize the opportunity of being God’s people together – even as we continue to discern what our mission and vision are as God’s people. We know one thing for sure, through the tender mercy of God, we have become partners with God in the pursuit of justice, in the establishment of kindness, and in the alignment of our lives with God’s intention for all life. Sometimes that takes hard work and collaboration and dedication and thinking outside of our normal ways and means. Sometimes it’s as simple as listening to someone’s story and letting it become your own. It’s really just that simple, and just that hard, and to God be the glory for it – now and always. Amen!
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