SERMON PART I
When I was applying to be the minister of this church I wrote in the materials I sent to the Search
Committee that I would not preach what I do not have the guts or the maturity to practice. Good
words those. I wrote them nine years ago. Six days ago I sat down to prepare and write this
homily. Just before I began writing, I sat at breakfast with my wife and we discussed how to be
sure we saved enough so that we could retire without worry. Well, God certainly has a sense of
humor. . . .
A reading from the Gospel according to Luke:
‘Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell
your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing
treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is,
there your heart will be also.
‘Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to
return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes
and knocks. Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell
you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. If he
comes during the middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves.
‘But know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he
would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is
coming at an unexpected hour.’
The word of God for the people of God.
SERMON PART II
What I don’t have the guts or the maturity to practice . . .
Little flock, do not fear . . .
Last week at Community Camp one of our flock spoke of her first visit to Ethiopia. Sue
Leister said she was prepared to see poverty. What she was not prepared to see were conditions
so far below poverty that she felt sick to her soul. Where is the loving God that Jesus speaks of?
Where is the dignity of all flesh?
Also at Community Camp this past week Eric Smith, our Minister of Community Life,
spoke about a book proposal he has sent to a publisher. The thesis of the proposal is that the
cultural situation of the early church is startlingly similar to our own, and that it is worth our
attention to consider how the early church negotiated its path through the world then as we
negotiate ours today. Two of the ways the ancient Church distinguished itself, and attracted
adherents, were to care for their neighbors in their living, and to care for them in their dying. The
early church understood Jesus to be asking all disciples to bring dignity to all human life.
To bring dignity to all human life, that’s how we religious types articulate it. But is it not
how scientists and other thinkers see it. Thomas Hobbes famously named human life as “nasty,
brutish, and short.” Novelist Barbara Kingsolver, put it this way in her book The Poisonwood
Bible:
On the day of the hunt I came to know in the slick center of my bones this one thing: all animals
kill to survive, and we are animals. The lion kills the baboon; the baboon kills fat grasshoppers.
The elephant tears up living trees dragging their precious roots from the dirt they love. The
hungry antelope’s shadow passes over the startled grass. And we, even if we had no meat or even
grass to gnaw, still boil our water to kill the invisible creatures that would like to kill us first. . . .
The death of something living is the price of our own survival, and we pay it again and again.
We have no choice. It is the one solemn promise every life on earth is born and bound to keep.1
“The death of something living is the price of our own survival, and we pay it again and
again. We have no choice. It is the one solemn promise every life on earth is born and bound to
keep.” In the verses just before today’s lesson Jesus says, “Do not be anxious about your life,
what you shall eat, nor about your body, what you shall put on. For life is more than food, and
the body more than clothing” (Luke 12:22). I take as my text for this morning’s homily the
words that immediately follow those words in Jesus’ teaching, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for
it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” My, but that is a bold assertion.
Jesus’ words are an invitation—an invitation to see life and to live life as something other
than “nasty, brutish and short”. The prevailing, an even unconsciously atavistic awareness that
dominates life, even with good flaming liberals like us, is that of the constant struggle for
enough: enough food, clothing, shelter, which we live out as enough financial security. Even if
we don’t horde, we save; even if we donate, we do it carefully. Even if we think we are liberal,
we sure know how to conserve. We are aware how fragile our security is. We are aware that the
lines between wealth and sufficiency, security and poverty are thin indeed, and we want to stay
on the safe side of those lines.
Then there is Jesus and the alternative awareness he proclaims, one that invites us to consider life
not as a security, but as a gift from beyond ourselves, from beyond, even, Life itself. Think about
that: a gift from beyond life itself. The awareness of the gift that Jesus points to shifts our
perception and, quite startlingly, settles us to view life from an entirely different perspective.
Rather than individual survival we behold security in corporate sufficiency; rather than security
in acquisition we find peace in thankful giving. This does not mean that we are free from the
anxiety of the need for clothing and food, shelter and financial security. Instead, that instinctive
struggle is integrated, folded if you will, into the awareness of the gift—of life—and the gift
transforms the struggle.2 We do not and cannot excise our basic need for security and pretend
that we are all generosity. We are not one or the other; we are both. “Do not be afraid, little
flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” The struggle is weaned
away from self-sufficiency to common-sufficiency.
1
Kingsolver, Barbara; The Poinsonwood Bible; 1998; Harper Collins Publishers, Inc.; New
York; page 347.
2
Shea, John: The Restless Window; The Spiritual Wisdom of the Gospels for Christian
Preachers and Teachers; Liturgical Press; Collegeville, MN; 1992; page 220.
Weaving this consciousness into our lives is precarious; it compromises the dominating,
even if unconscious, awareness that all flesh kills to live. Jesus’ words may sound lovely while
sitting in church, but they also trigger the fear instinct that we will not have enough if we give
away too much of what we have. And yet even as if fear instinct is triggered our souls
simultaneously respond to Jesus’ spiritual truth that invites us, not beyond our fear, but rather to
fold our fear of insufficiency into the joy of giving—to integrate both the fear that holds and the
joy that gives into our full personhood. The worldly survival desire to possess what we have
procured becomes woven into the spiritual desire to give as we have received.3 Theologian John
Shea puts it this way:
This consciousness of receiving and giving reflects the eternal order of things. In the
perpetual perishing of time, physical and social possessions are eaten by moths (finitude)
or stolen by thieves (sin). But the receiving and giving of life is beyond both destruction
and plunder. If the disciples value (treasure) this, it will gradually enter the center of their
being (the heart). The heart is the spiritual core of the person that receives from God and
gives into the world. This is the spiritual development that characterizes life in the
kingdom.4
It is worth considering the importance of coming to worship every week. Yes, it is good
to gather with friends and be in community; yet a congregation is more than just a religious club.
Yes, it is good to come and consider together how we will serve; yet a congregation is more than
a social service agency. Yes, it is good to come and go to the many classes that are offered here
for our intellectual stimulation; yet the church is certainly far more than a religious school.
I propose to you that we know, each of us, that life is more than sufficient bread and joy
is deeper than possessing security. I propose to you that we come to worship in an effort to
integrate our compelling need to feel secure, with our compassionate need to share. I propose to
you that we come to worship to transform our fear of want into a trust of sufficiency. I propose to
you that we know that in worship we are transformed by God internally to reflect God’s image
externally; and that this transformation happens again and again, week after week. Sometimes
this transformation is joyous and sometimes the reshaping of our lives is wrenching. And yet,
this gift is offered to us week after week; and week after week we respond with our presence and
our open souls and our transformed lives.
In roughly ten minutes we will share a memorial meal that Jesus invited all his disciples
to participate in: a time when we receive his gift of body and life broken and spilt for us; a time
when we recommit our transformed selves to then turn beyond the walls that secure us now and
share the gift beyond the fears that contain us now. In roughly ten minutes we will again share
the bread and wine that we might pledge again our intention to BE the Body of Christ in the
world: a living, giving incarnation of God. Amen.
George Anastos
3
4
Ibid, Shea, John; page 221.
Ibid; page 221.