Sermon manuscript:
We have choices when it comes to what we love and what we
pursue. We can’t love everything equally the same. There are tradeoffs. If you
love one thing, it means that you are going to love something else a little
less.
This is true when it comes to money. Usually the tradeoff
when it comes to money is relationships. You can love and pursue money—milk it,
squeeze it—but that might very well mean that a relationship suffers. In order
to get more money out of a person, you kind of have to abuse them. Or, at
least, there’s no good deal for them. A good deal for them is a bad deal for
you if your goal is to get as much money as you can.
This is why people often prefer to make deals with
strangers. You can treat strangers however you want. You probably won’t see
them again or have to deal with them again. If they end up dissatisfied, oh
well, buyer beware. A deal’s a deal, etc. If you rip off somebody you know,
then you might to be confronted by that over and over again. The other party
might be angry or disappointed. So if you want to maximize your profits it’s
best to deal with strangers so you can squeeze as much out of them as you can.
Getting as much as you can for yourself is one of those
things that is hard-wired into us. We want it. Getting the most for as little
as possible is good business sense. So that’s good. More than that: it’s the
correct thing to do, even the moral thing to do.
This is similar to another thing that is hard-wired into us:
love your friends and hate your enemies. If somebody treats you badly, then
give them hell. If they punch you, then you punch them right back and punch
them harder than they punched you.
But you know that Jesus tells us to love our enemies: “If
someone strikes you on the one cheek, then turn so that they might strike you
on the other.” Do not return evil for evil, but overcome evil with good.
Jesus overturns the morality that seems to be hard-wired in us to hate our
enemies.
The same thing is true with our dealings with money. It’s
hard-wired in us to get as much as we can for ourselves. There’s nothing wrong
with raking it in so long as it’s legal. Everyone has to fend for themselves,
and if you happen to fend better than others, then so be it. You are probably
just a superior human being. That’s a common assumption, you know. The more
money you have, the more superior of a human being you must be.
To that assumption we might respond with what Jesus says in
our Gospel reading: “What is highly regarded among people is an abomination
in God’s sight.” An abomination is something that is totally disgusting.
People highly regard power, pride, wealth, self-sufficiency. People believe
that the more money and resources they have, the better off they are. This kind
of thinking is disgusting in God’s sight. True greatness is not being rich or
famous or powerful. True greatness is following after God’s Son, our Lord,
Jesus Christ.
Isn’t greatness what everybody ultimately wants? Isn’t greatness
what the world highly regards? This is why you have to smack down your enemies
and cheat whomever you can. That’s how you get ahead. Less for others means
more for you. But this, too, Jesus turns on its head.
One time Jesus overheard his disciples arguing. He asked
them, “What were you arguing about?” But they wouldn’t answer him
because they were embarrassed. They had been arguing with one another over who
was the greatest. So Jesus called them all together and said, “If anyone
wants to be first, he will be last of all and the servant of all.” Then
Jesus took a little child and placed the child in the midst of them. Taking the
child in his arms Jesus said to them, “Whoever welcomes one of these little
children in my name welcomes me. And whoever welcomes me, welcomes not just me
but also him who sent me—the Father.”
This is so contrary to the way that we think that it is very
easy for people to scoff at Jesus as though he were the greatest of all
possible fools. Note that this is what the Pharisees did to Jesus in our Gospel
reading today after he was done talking about money. The ways of Jesus are so
contrary to how we normally think. Who is the greatest? Folks might answer:
Mohammed Ali, Bill Gates, Donald Trump, Michael Phelps. How do you get to be
the greatest? By ruthlessly, relentlessly serving yourself—cultivating your talents, honing your strengths, burning out your weaknesses.
How different is Jesus’s answer: “If anyone wants to be
first, he will be last of all and the servant of all.” Then, so that they
wouldn’t miss the point, he picked out some random kid. You should serve this random,
powerless, favorless kid. This kid can’t do anything for you. He can’t pay you.
He can’t make you rich or famous. The uncouth kid might not even have the
manners to say “Thank you.” But if you want to be great, if you want to be
first, then you must become last and the servant of all.
Who ever heard of a servant or a slave being great? That’s
the opposite of what we think of as being great. But, as Jesus said, “What
is highly regarded in people’s sight is an abomination in God’s sight.”
Being a servant or a slave is worst in our books, but think of what Jesus is
like. He did not come to lord it over everybody else, even though he is Lord of
lords and King of kings. He certainly had that right and ability. Instead he
came “not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for
many.”
Those who would be great will follow after this Greatest
One. The way that Jesus was great was with his love. Jesus loved. God is love.
Heaven is love. Hell is absent of love. Hell has plenty of greatness in it. So
many of this world’s greatest end up there. Lots of rich people go there. Lots
of powerful people go there. Those folks knew how to get ahead, and you can be
sure that they haven’t changed a bit. You can be sure that the inhabitants of
hell will guard their own interests down to the very last penny. They’ll slit
your throat while you are looking. You might very well find a lot of greatness
in hell. What you won’t find there is love.
So we need to promote love as Christians. Nobody else is
going to do it, I assure you. Everybody else thinks that love won’t work. For
example: Loving your enemies. They say loving your enemies is psychologically
damaging. Or being generous: Being generous with your buying and selling will
make you poor. Poor people are the worst. They are so miserable. Or serving
others: Serving others is the surest way to be miserable and unhappy. Sounds
like suffering to me. These contradictions of Jesus’s teachings can sound right
and quite plausible. It sounds like love, service, sacrifice, and suffering are
the problem and not the solution. Isn’t that just like the devil? Make what God
has said sound hateful, bad, sinister, no good. That’s how his speech sounded way
back when to Adam and Eve too.
Love is not the problem. Love is what saves the world. God
is love. Jesus’s life was love by which he justified sinners by taking our
place. His life continues to be love. The healing that we all need so badly is
not going to come from more money or goods. It’s not going to come from a battle
between the sexes. It’s not going to come from loosening all limits and letting
everybody go wild with whatever trips their triggers. Healing comes with
love—service, sacrifice and suffering for one another.
Think of that wild jungle that is called our schools. Kids
are so unbelievably mean to each other that the scars of being picked on can be
life-long. What if kids would love the least in their midst? That takes
courage, because standing up for the least can make you a target. How
beneficial and Christ-like would it be for young Christians to step in and not
let somebody get absolutely thrashed in their soul? And let’s not be
Pollyannaish about this. There will be a cost. Standing up and helping the
least will make the bullies come after you. They will come after you like Goliath
the giant. But if you put your trust in the Lord, you’ll be alright—even if you
end up with some bruises.
Or what if we loved more in the workplace? Workers won’t
work unless they are compelled to work. They won’t go the extra mile. Employers
don’t care about their workers. They try to pay them as little as they can get
away with. Everybody, bosses and workers, look only to their own interests as
they each in their own way are trying to be the greatest. What a difference it
would make to love your boss, and for the boss to love you. Satisfaction in the
workplace does not come from how much money you get paid. Satisfaction is from
the love that is there.
And what of love in the home? What if you set aside your
pride and made it your goal to do what is pleasing to God, serving the others
who share your home? Jesus says that we should serve a little child. How much
more, then, should you serve the one who is not a child, but with whom you are
one flesh? You know those little tricks and snide comments and backhanded ways
that you can drive each other up the wall. These barbs and punches give you
some kind of evil satisfaction, because, after all, they hit you, so you should
hit them back. What if you didn’t hit them back?
In all these most important areas of life you always have a
choice. You can serve yourself or you can serve God. You can’t serve both,
because you are always going to prefer one over the other. And the easier way
is always serving yourself rather than serving God. We do not, by nature, like
to serve or sacrifice or suffer. That is to say, we do not, by nature, love.
But you have been brought out of the realm of darkness and
into God’s marvelous light. You have learned what is truly great, what is truly
beneficial. You even know the amazing secret by which evil has been conquered.
It has been defeated by love. God is love. We love because he first loved us.
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