Focus

This sermon is based on the lesson of the widow's mite, found here.

Look at the scribes who wear the long robes in the marketplace—they pray magnificent long prayers and record the many tenets of our faith. Their prayers are meaningful. These are the words that must cross the chasm of the cosmos to the very ear of God. And Look! Look at the wealthy of our community, giving so much money to the treasury of our faith. They truly bless us with their gifts. Amen. Amen!

 

This is how the scene in our gospel might look if we were actually there--immersed in the culture of the time. This is the socially-approved perspective. Those who have power and status have the attention, and people pay homage to them. The people who have the focus of the people keep the focus on themselves, and so the people keep focusing on them. The camera doesn’t move.

 

Did you catch what was missing in the retelling? Jesus caught that, too. Jesus moves the camera to an area that doesn’t get a lot of attention, and says to pay attention there.

 

In today’s gospel, people are greeting, walking, devouring, praying, and giving. Scribes are praying long prayers and rich people are giving large amounts to the treasury. People greet these scribes in the streets—these scribes who pray long prayers and wear the long robes. People probably also admire these rich ones for giving so much to keep their church going.

 

What is faithful? In our socially-approved retelling of the gospel, faithfulness is a showy long-winded and fairly empty public display and shallow greetings with popular figureheads. Faithfulness is making sure you keep enough to live in luxury and then ornately depositing the excessive surplus in good causes for all to see.

 

Jesus shifts the focus, though. Jesus zooms in, underneath all the superficial wealth and words and focuses in on a different sort of attitude. He looks at a couple of practically worthless coins in this pile, and finds for us someone who is never seen, who gives from the take home, not the leftovers, and says this is where it’s at. This is faithfulness.

 

Jesus shows us the widow.

 

Read the gospel again as it’s actually recorded: 

"As [Jesus] taught, he said, "Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, ³⁹ and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! ⁴⁰ They devour widows' houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation." ⁴¹He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. ⁴² A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. ⁴³ Then he called his disciples and said to them, "Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. ⁴⁴ For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on."

 

It would seem to me that it’s about attitude. It’s not that the scribes walk in long robes and are greeted with respect and get seats of honor, it’s that they like doing these things—often at the expense of people like the widow—a person who can barely support herself.

 

It’s not that the rich people give large sums, it’s that they give out of their abundance, their leftovers, after their luxurious feasts and fancy clothes and whatever else they buy has been bought. How does that balance out?

 

Now, I have to admit, I felt really guilty as I was going through these texts. I am guilty of missing the point, of investing my time and money in myself from time to time. I am guilty.

 

I am also guilty, then, of turning this whole thing around and making it about me. Jesus is standing here, highlighting the widow, turning the camera on her, pointing out the good that is going on, and what do I do? I move the camera back on me.

 

How many times do I—or we—do that? Look at a situation where something amazing is happening and evaluate how it affects us. There’s a ton of good going on and we totally miss it because we’re focused on the big center stage show rather than the sidelines. We throw the weight where it shouldn’t be.

 

When our focus is self-centered, that is sin. Jesus came to tell us this—to remind us where we need to adjust our perspective, move the camera, widen our gaze. And then, Jesus came to forgive and let us try again. We make mistakes. We are forgiven again, and freed to try again.

 

Jesus moves the focus to where no one would think to look and points out an amazing person. The widow. If we turn her into an archetype, an example, or a source of our guilt, we start seeing only what the widow represents to us and we stop seeing her.

 

We can do what Jesus did—move the focus to those places people don’t often notice and highlight the great things happening there. Getting the focus off of ourselves, and lifting up, complimenting, supporting those who are doing well. We are freed to be—in the words of Martin Luther—a servant to all. We can serve all by highlighting all, not just those already in the spotlight.

 

In today’s gospel, hands are open—in greeting, in prayer, and in offering. One set of those hands is highlighted. The widow’s. Jesus points her out as an amazing person. We can celebrate her open faithfulness and act of charity. If we forget, we remember that we are freed to try again. Jesus renews us every minute to start fresh, change our perspective, our attitude. We can go out with open hands, too—hands open in service.

 

One of the things I loved about November 6—every voting day, in fact—was that the scales, which are so often unbalanced, are evened out, because no matter what I have—status, time, class, stuff, money, talent—I have one vote. One. No more, no less. Everyone gets that—and only that. You can’t buy more votes, there are no deeds so you can accumulate more like cars or shoes, you can’t take someone else’s from them. Everyone gets the same amount of the spotlight.

 

Maybe we start in our own lives—celebrating the things that often go unnoticed. Maybe we recognize that all we have—all of us, are God’s, and then treating everything and everyone that way. Amen.

Another Angle--Church and Society

This sermon is also based on the lectionary readings found here. As with Daniel and the Lions' Den a couple months ago, the different worship settings brought about very different sermons this week.

As we heard in the Children’s Sermon, there has been a bit of a shift in the last however-many years. Bible Studies are done online and phone calls happen with instant video chat. Birds are angry creatures that fly into bricks. Something that blows up on Facebook means it’s popular.

This video was shown at the recent ECSW workshop Faith Formation in the 21^st Century in Plover, Wisconsin. It looks at some of the statistics that reflect the shift our culture has undergone in the past few years.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0EnhXn5boM

 

Ok, who understood everything in that video? Anyone feel overwhelmed? Anyone need to see it six more times just to catch it all? There are probably a few things in there that were unexpected or shocking, but they’re all true. They’re all reality. Getting confronted with reality is sometimes shocking and unexpected, but it’s there, and we need to acknowledge that if we are to understand our world and be able to function in it.

In the Psalm for today, the writer knows what it means to see the world and feel…overwhelmed. The universe is so big, the person so small. “What are human beings that you, O God, would notice them? Mere mortals that you would think on them?” The vastness of the world is almost unbelievable. The thing is, that is still true. The world is still vast and unbelievable at times.

What do we do with that—with something like this? We can’t reject it outright—it’s just facts. Data. If we run away and pretend it doesn’t exist, we’re really just fooling ourselves because really, there is no earth where technology doesn’t exist anymore. We can’t uninvent the internet.

Who would want to? We literally have the world at our fingertips now. We can be in dialog with people across the country and world in a matter of seconds.

In our gospel lesson, Jesus points to the people who would be discarded by society on a whim—the women and the children in his time—and says “You can’t do that anymore—you’re ignoring the importance of other human beings and what they bring. You're missing out here.”

 

That’s also true for us. We can’t ignore the life experiences and the skill sets of people who have grown up with this technology or the people who know how to use it—they’re the little ones who carry the future of the church—here and elsewhere. We can't miss out on that. Again—why would we want to?

Okay, let's look at the other side of this coin…What if we embraced all this new stuff? Used it? Made ourselves accountable as Christians with it?

(There are a lot of ways to stay morally accountable when it comes to technology--think of comment threads) 

I admitted to the children in the children's sermon that there were technologies even I didn’t understand, but they could help me. However, that only works if I listen and am ready to learn—if I open myself up to the change this new information will inevitably create in me.

There were two seminary professors I had who used technology to its fullest. One of them would tell us to go on Wikipedia or Facebook or Google to help us learn. The other said something I’ll never forget. “If I came to visit you in ten years, and you were still reading just 2010 theology books, I would be disappointed.”

That professor knew that there was constantly new scholarship, new ideas, and that to stay relevant, we needed to stay current—there may have been a lot of valuable information and good theology then, but 2010 wasn’t the final word in Christianity—neither was 1990, 1950, or whatever year—pick a decade.

Last question for now—anyone excited by this video? We are in an era that connects us in more ways than we could have imagined five or ten years ago. That’s how it works. Jesus didn’t say anything about the internet, but he did say that the world would be changing. This change, do we dismiss it, hope it goes away, or do we talk about it, use it, work with it to make ourselves better individuals? Better people? Better Christians?

There is something of great potential out there—it depends on how we use it. The world is changing. There is a whole new set of opportunities to learn, make connections, and network with the world. That sounds like good news to me. Our question isn’t if, it’s how we go forward with that. We’re already doing quite a lot—now we get to ask what else is out there.