Foundry UMC DC: Sunday Sermons

Finding freedom in a hopeless place of addiction

Rev. Dean Snyder Luke 8:26-39

The most popular song around the world these past several years has been a song by the singer Rhianna. It sold seven million copies … the most records of a single song ever sold. It is entitled “We found love.” We found love in a hopeless place.

Something about these words “We found love in a hopeless place” has touched the hearts of millions of people around the world.

It is an upbeat song, however, if you watch Rhianna’s music video, the video isn’t upbeat. After a somber introduction, the video starts upbeat enough. It shows Rhianna and her boyfriend having fun together, riding bicycles, skateboarding, running in a wheat field, smiling, dancing, roller skating, kissing.

Then suddenly pills start floating across the screen. And the couple begins smoking homemade cigarettes. There are more and more pills. More and more smokes. Then arguments begin, and ultimately there is violence. In one horrible scene Rhianna empties her stomach on the sidewalk. It gets ugly.

All the while Rhianna sweetly sings: “We found love in a hopeless place.”

The video really does portray a hopeless place.

We decided this Lent we want to talk about hopeless places where we can find ourselves in our lives … hopeless places where we can feel stuck and imprisoned.

The places we’ve identified for this series are shame, addiction, depression, grief, powerlessness, and death.

During Lent we want to talk about these kinds of places that can feel hopeless and we want to turn to one another and to Scripture to discover how we might find hope and liberation in these hopeless places.

Our affirmation this Lent is that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord –not shame, not addiction, not depression, not grief, not powerlessness, not death. Nothing can separate us from God. No matter how imprisoned we feel, how hopeless, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

We want to talk this morning about addiction. Addiction can be a hopeless place.

Before we look at Scripture Pastor Dawn will talk with Chuck Lisenbee . Chuck is helping to lead a group this Lent on a book by Gerald May entitled Addiction and Grace.

[Interview]

Thank you so much, Chuck, for sharing your story.

We all have our demons. We all have our demons.

The German philosopher Paul Carus who spent his life studying world religions wrote: "There is no religion in the world but has its demons or evil monsters who represent pain, misery, and destruction."

We all have our inner pain and misery and self-destructiveness. We all have our demons. We all carry pain inside us.

And when we experience pain it makes all the sense in the world to begin to turn to whatever it is that will help us feel better, even temporarily. I know addiction is complicated and has physiological as well as emotional and spiritual components, I don’t want to oversimplify. But I suspect sometimes where our addictions begin is just wanting to feel better when we are carrying pain inside.

The problem is that the things we do or take to relieve our pain can end up enslaving us and making our pain worse.

I’d like us to spend a few minutes with the story from Luke that we listened to thisN morning… the story about the person commonly called the Gerasene demoniac. His life was clearly out of control. Clearly he was living with pain, misery and self-destructiveness.

I’d like us to quickly notice a few things about this story.

The demoniac did not want to be around other people. He did not want to be around Jesus when Jesus came to town. Part of his condition was that he would break the chains that kept him bound to others and “he would be driven by the demon into the wilds.” He would be drivenby his demon away from others into isolation.

Isolation can be the breeding ground of addiction.

Gerald May writes that those of us being drawn into addiction “experience a growing isolation from others.”

“To compensate,” he writes, “the addicted person may put on masks of competence, lightheartedness, and good humor. His [or her] charades can be effective at fooling others, but internally they only intensify feelings of inadequacy and lack of integrity.”

The more distant we become physically or emotionally from others, the more susceptible we are to addiction.

This is why recovering people so emphasize meetings. Recovery Connection has a page on their website entitled “Isolation: The Curse of the Addict.”

It says: “One of the behaviors of [those of us wrestling with addictions] is the propensity toward isolation. Most people involved in recovery understand the role of meetings, support groups, therapy and spiritual communities…”

Isolation intensifies the inner pain which intensifies the desire for relief. Many days the most important decision we may make is whether to have lunch alone or with coworkers, whether to go home alone after work or go bowling with our league, whether to stay at home or go to church, whether to spend Wednesday nights alone or with our small group.

Isolation, whether physical or emotional, makes our pain worse and makes us more susceptible to whatever we think we need to do to find relief.

The Gerasene demoniac was driven by his demon into isolation.

The next part of the story I’d like us to quickly notice is that when Jesus asked the demoniac to name his name, he answered “Legion.” And Luke adds, “For many demons had entered him.”

In the Roman military, a legion was a unit of 3,000 to 6,000 troops.

In addiction, the pain we are trying to make better can feel totally overwhelming … too large, too complicated, too heavy for us to face or even imagine dealing with.

It feels as though the pain is too big to ever be faced or dealt with or healed. It can only be numbed.

Part of the perceived reality that drives us to addiction is the perception that our problems are unsolvable.

I was talking to a therapist a while ago and he said to me that there are memories people would rather die than recall. Addiction can be a way of dying rather than face a pain that seems like legion.

These are the first two parts of the story: Isolation and a sense of pain too massive to face.

Now here is to me the most interesting part of the story and I would like to spend a few minutes on it.

When Jesus addressed the demoniac’s demons, “They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss.” (Luke 8:31)

The pain does not want to be repressed. The pain does not want to be forgotten. The pain is crying out for attention.

Listen to Luke 8, 32-34

Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding; and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned. When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country.

This is the most interesting part of the story. The question is: What was a herd of pigs doing in the Jewish town of the Gerasa?

The answer is that the Romans had conquered the city and the region 60 years earlier. The Romans liked their bacon and their pork chops. They loved pork. So when they militarily invaded and conquered the country of the Garasenes, they had imposed swine faming on a culture and a people to whom it was repugnant and offensive and humiliating. The consequence was a town of people living in violation of their deepest values. They were a town that had had violently forced upon them that which they found most dehumanizing and repugnant. The demoniac was suffering the traumatic shock that results from having forced on him that which violated his deepest self.

So for him to be healed, to find freedom, the demons, the pain, the misery, the self-hate had to come out of him and be put back into the swine to whom it really belonged.

I understand most returning veterans from war are healthy but returning veterans do have a statistically significantly higher rate of addiction issues? They may have been exposed to violence that violates their deepest sense of what it means to be human.

Many people who have been sexually abused as children live healthy lives and raise healthy children. But survivors of sexual abuse do have a statistically higher incidence of addiction? They have experienced violence that violates their deepest sense of what it means to be human.

The pain that leads to addiction can sometimes be traced back to physical, sexual and emotional violence that violates our deepest human knowledge of the way we are meant to live with one another.

And one way out of addiction to freedom is to give the pain back to the swine. Give the pigs back their demons. Give the Roman invaders back their demons.

Gerald May says we all have addictions. We all have ways of dealing with our inner pain. It is just that some addictions are more dangerous than other. Pills are more dangerous than shopping. Alcohol is more dangerous than nicotine. Nicotine is more dangerous than caffeine. Caffeine is more dangerous than exercise. But we all do or use something to make ourselves feel better.

One of the ways out of addiction, back to our right minds, is to give the corruption we’ve experienced in life back to the swine. To not own the pain of the corruption imposed upon us. Give the corruption back to where it belongs.

Addiction is complicated. I don’t want to use a biblical story to provide easy answers.

But neither do I not want to talk about it at all.

If you wrestle with addiction, find someone to talk with … a therapist … a recovering person … an AA group … an NA group. Do not let it isolate you.

Understand that the pain may feel like the pain of hundreds of thousands –it may feel like legion-- but it can be brought into the light.

And it can be given back to where it really belongs so that you and I can be free.

I am not saying it is easy. I am not saying it can be done without feeling the pain. But I am saying it is possible. I know this because of the people in this congregation who have done it. One day at a time. They have done it. You and I can too.

Finding yourself in a hopeless place of shame

Rev. Dean Snyder John 8:1-11

The most popular song around the world these past couple of years was a song by a singer named Rhianna. It sold about seven million copies. Globally it may be the best selling single of all time so far. It is entitled “We found love.”

The lyrics of the song are:

We found love in a hopeless place.

We found love in a hopeless place.

We found love in a hopeless place.

We found love in a hopeless place.

This is pretty much the lyric. But something about this repetitive theme has touched the hearts of millions upon millions of people around the world.

We decided that this Lent we want to talk about hopeless places where we can find ourselves in life … hopeless places where we can feel stuck and imprisoned.

The places we’ve identified are shame, addiction, depression, grief, powerlessness, and death.

During Lent we want to talk about these examples of places that can feel hopeless and we want to turn to Scripture and to one another to discover how we might find hope and liberation in these hopeless places.

Our affirmation this Lent is that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord –not shame, not addiction, not depression, not grief, not powerlessness, not death. Nothing can separate us from God. No matter how burdened we feel, no matter how imprisoned we feel, no matter how hopeless we feel, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. It gets better.

We want to start this morning with shame. Shame can be a hopeless place.

Before we look at Scripture Pastor Dawn will talk with Amy Tatsumi for a few minutes. Amy is a licensed professional counselor here in the District certified through the Art Therapy Credentials Board. Amy is leading a group for single women from all walks of life, for the next eight weeks on the topic “The Hustle for Worthiness.” We asked her to share for a few minutes about how shame can be a hopeless place.

[Interview]

Our thanks to Dawn and Amy for that conversation.

I want us to spend the rest of our sermon time this morning looking at the biblical story traditionally entitled: “The Women Caught in Adultery,” but which could just as likely be entitled “The Men Caught in Hypocrisy.”

Let’s begin by recognizing that this story is not an endorsement of adultery. The story assumes that adultery is wrong. It assumes adultery is sin.

Sexual ethics are complicated and we could discuss why this story assumes adultery is sin. But why this story considers adultery to be sin is not really the point the story wants to make.

By the assumptions of the story, the woman who was caught in adultery and dragged before Jesus and the crowd by a group of men … she was engaging in sin. The story assumes she had done something wrong.

However, however, notice this -- she probably did not commit adultery by herself. She alone was humiliated. I am not an expert but, if I understand how it works at all, adultery normally involves two people.

We could talk for a long time about the prejudice behind the assumption that when adultery happens the woman is the guilty party. The woman is shamed and humiliated and punished while the man gets a thumbs up at the gym and a sit-com. It is a prejudice that is not dead yet. But this injustice, wrong as it is, is not what I believe this story most wants to tell us.

This is what I want I think the story wants us to notice first. The men – the religious leaders in this story—the men caught in hypocrisy : their primary purpose was not to shame and humiliate the woman caught in adultery. They did not mind shaming her. They may have enjoyed it. It may even have titillated them. But it was not their main purpose for doing what they did.

Their main purpose was to get Jesus in trouble.

Jesus’ popularity threatened the religious leaders. People listened to him gladly and believed and trusted him more than they did the scribes and priests and Pharisee. He threatened their authority; he threatened their position; he threatened their power.

They knew Jesus well enough to know he would side with the woman.

So they shamed her to implicate him … to get him to seem to be soft on adultery ... to seem soft on the authority of Scripture … to undermine his credibility.

This is what I think the story is first of all trying to tell us. When someone tries to lay shame on you, ask what is in it for them.

Because shaming you can be a way of exercising power over you. It can be a way of keeping you in your place.

When you experience the warm flush and inner ache of shame, ask who benefits from your shame.

If the people you work for can convince you that you are not really all that smart or all that competent or all that dedicated or all that winsome or all that worthy, they may not have to pay you as much. Just saying ….

If society can make you ashamed of your gender, maybe it only needs to pay you 70 percent of what another gender makes.

If somebody puts shame on you, ask what’s in it for them.

If you feel as if you need to work twice as hard as everybody else to prove you are good enough, because there is something wrong with you -- your personality or background or origin or status or identity, ask yourself what shame you might be carrying within yourself and who is exploiting it.

Shame is a political strategy. Put shame onto immigrants, put shame onto women who want access to birth control, put shame onto the unemployed, put shame people on to people who belong to unions, put shame onto people who work for the government … shame is a means of maintaining injustice.

The reason the religious leaders shamed the woman caught in adultery was because they wanted to disempower Jesus. Shame is a political weapon.

Every time we find ourselves burdened down by feelings of shame, we should ask ourselves whether shame is being used to preserve injustice.

So that is one big thing I think this story wants to tell us. I think there is another big learning in this story.

There are lots of fascinating details in the story. Jesus writing on the ground with his finger. Jesus saying, “Let anyone without sin throw the first stone at her.” Brilliant strategy.

I’d love to have enough time this morning to talk my way through all of the details of the story.

But I think there is one other really big thing that this story is trying to tell us about shame.

In the story, after everybody had left and Jesus was alone with the woman caught in sin, Jesus says to her, “Where are your accusers. Is anyone here to condemn you?”

She answered, “No.” And then Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more. “

He says: No condemnation. Go and sin no more.

Here I think is the point of this exchange: there is a difference between sinning and being sinful.

I sin. Jane will tell you. Or ask Al and Dawn and Stanley and Kirsten. I sin, but I am not sinful. I Dean J. Snyder am created in God’s image. I am a child of God. I am baptized. I am redeemed. I am not full of sin. I sin but I am not sinful.

In fact, sin is a distortion of who I really am.

You sin, each and every one of you, but you are not sinful. No one here is sinful.

Thinking of ourselves as sinful actually gets in the way of us dealing with our sin.

If I tell a lie and I say to myself “I told a lie. I must just be a liar,” then I never ask myself why I lied. If I say to myself, “I am not a liar. I wonder why I just lied? Let me figure out what was going on with me so I can figure why I lied like that when I am not a liar.”

Shame is when you say I sinned because I am sinful. Shame is when you say I lied because I am a liar. I cheated because I am a cheater. I had a one-night stand because I am a slut. I failed because I am a failure. My relationship ended because I am unlovable. I can’t get a job because I am good for nothing.

Shame never lets us get better because it keeps us from asking the question of why we are doing things we really don’t in our true self want to do.

So Jesus says to the woman … no condemnation…no shame. Now go and figure out why you had sex with a married man because you deserve better. You deserve to be somebody’s one and only. You deserve someone who will commit his life and all of his love to just you.

This is why the forgiveness thing Jesus talked about so much is so important. When you sin, repent and get over it. Your sin is not you. Do not let your sin define you.

Let me pause here for a footnote but an important footnote. Some of the things some of us feel guilty about are not sins. Some of us who were sexually abused as children or teenagers. We feel sinful and guilty about it. If an adult used you for sex when you were a child or teenager, even if you enjoyed it, that is not your sin. Do not own it. Do not give it power in your life. You should not feel guilty about that.

If you are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered and/or queer, that is not a sin. Do not feel guilty about that. Do not be ashamed of that. Now, I suspect it is just as possible for gay folk to sin as straight folk, but being gay is not a sin. Do not feel guilty about it.

Lot’s of us suffer from false feelings of sin and guilt and shame. So examine every feeling. Don’t feel guilty about what is not really wrong.

And do not feel shameful about the things that you do that are wrong. Your sin does not define you. My sin does not define me. No condemnation.

You and I are created in the image of God. No shame. No shame. No shame.

And when we do sin, figure out what in the circumstance and within us caused us to sin, accept forgiveness and let it go. Move on. When we sin, there is always a reason and the reason is not because we are sinful.

I want to have a prayer with you. Please bow your heads.

This is a prayer you can do at home. Feel in your body wherever it is you carry your shame. For me, it is in my shoulders. It may take some time for you to feel where you carry your shame. I found mine in my shoulders. Imagine a warm light shining on wherever it is you carry your shame. It is the light of grace. It is the light of the image of God in which you are made. Sit in the light as long as you can. And say to yourself something like this. I am made in the image of God. I am baptized. I am a child of God. I am not sinful. I am redeemed. Amen.

Ash Wednesday

Deryl Davis Joel 2:1; 12-17

Today, Ash Wednesday, is the beginning of a forty-day-long journey towards Easter. We place ashes on our foreheads as a reminder of our own mortality, our need for repentance and reconciliation, and our reliance upon God’s care. It’s a time of reflection, when we consider the things that we’ve done, or left undone, in our lives over the past year. It’s not the sort of celebration the world encourages, or much likes to join in, as with Christmas or even Easter. We’re not hanging greens or festive banners. If anything, we’re going to spend some time stripping away – and that’s not something our culture, with its focus on beauty and success and accumulating things has much time for.

Traditionally, this season called Lent has been a time of preparation. In the early church, it was the period during which new believers were prepared for baptism and when those who had fallen away from the church or the faith repented and were reconciled. All went together to be baptized or to renew their baptismal vows at Easter. In many Methodist churches today, Lent is the time when young people study and prepare to publicly profess the faith in which they have been raised and nurtured.

While Lent as such does not appear in the Bible, it is modeled on the forty days that Gospel writers tell us Jesus spent in the wilderness. Forty is of course very significant: The people of Israel spent forty years in the wilderness of Sinai after Moses led them out of Egypt; Moses spent 40 days alone on Mount Sinai, where God appeared in a cloud of fire, before delivering the Ten Commandments; Elijah spent forty days and nights traveling through the wilderness to Mount Horeb, when fleeing from the soldiers of Ahab and Jezebel, and once he got there, God spoke to him, not in the wind, the fire, or the earthquake, but in a still small voice. In each case, the wilderness is a liminal place where God is experienced and transformation occurs.

Three of the Gospels – Matthew, Mark, and Luke – tell us that, after his baptism and prior to the beginning of his public ministry, Jesus went into the wilderness and was tempted. Actually, they say the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness – the same Spirit that Jesus felt descending upon him in the moment of his baptism. So, we get a stark juxtaposition between the exhilaration and exultation of baptism, when the Spirit descends and a voice from heaven declares Jesus to be “the Beloved” before crowds of people, and the solitary sojourn in the Wilderness, where we hear not of the Holy Spirit, but of Satan.

So, why did Jesus go? And if the Lenten pilgrimage we begin tonight is modeled on Jesus’ experience, why do it? Why go to the wilderness?

The Bible doesn’t really tell us why Jesus went into the wilderness, only that the Spirit led or drove him to it. We can surmise that it was a chosen period of spiritual discipline, coming after his very public baptism, in which Jesus sought uninterrupted communion with God, searched his soul, and perhaps laid plans for his coming ministry – or intended to. But that sounds very thought out, like an extended monastic retreat. Did Jesus expect Satan to meet him there? Did he expect to be tempted in ways that he was, perhaps, most vulnerable?

The wilderness is always an in-between place in the Bible. It’s never really here nor there. It lacks a kind of definite-ness, a kind of certainty. That’s why the people of Israel wander for forty years in the desert – there are no roads in the wilderness, and you can’t see where you’re going with any clarity. It is neither Jerusalem with its temple and crowded markets, nor Nazareth, with its echoing streets and humming workshops, nor the Galilean countryside with its quiet agricultural rhythms. It is a place of danger and temptation where people who feel abandoned make golden calves, as the Israelites did while Moses went up the mountain, and prophets like Elijah are so tired of speaking truth to power and being persecuted for it that they beg to die. And where Jesus, hungry, uncertain, perhaps fearful of the future, faces the temptation to trade it all in for worldly comfort and success. To end his ministry before it even begins. The wilderness is a place of profound disorientation.

And that may be the point. We don’t go through the Lenten journey to reaffirm what we already know or believe about ourselves. We don’t undertake the pilgrimage to build self-confidence or affirm our point of view about things. We go into the wilderness to get a new perspective, to perhaps encounter something unexpected and unfamiliar. To open ourselves to the possibility of transformation, and sometimes that is hard.

Jesus understood this, and in fact, in Matthew’s gospel, he confronts the crowds who had been following John the Baptist, who was now in prison, with this very question:

“What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaking in the wind? That sounds pretty silly. Someone dressed in soft robes? You know the people in soft robes live in palaces back in Jerusalem. What did you come to see, then?”

Whatever they came to see – Entertainment? Good preaching? – it evidently was not a prophet, not the forerunner of the messiah who would announce the in-breaking of the kingdom of God. They did not expect transformation.

A few summers ago, I spent a week in Sante Fe, New Mexico, which is of course a remarkably beautiful place. I was at a college just outside of town, and you could access a number of hiking trails from a ravine below the college, and they would take you up to the top of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains above Sante Fe. The hike takes several hours, and since I had every afternoon free, I’d hike up to the top of the mountain every afternoon, take in the amazing view across Sante Fe and into the far distance of the desert beyond, and then make my way down the mountain in time for dinner back at the college. It was great exercize and great for the spirit, too.

Most nights we had evening presentations, so I didn’t really get out at night, other than around campus, until the last day there. About dusk I started walking up the same trail I had known all week and wandered around the lower rim of the mountain. You could look out and see the lights of Sante Fe, make out the historic center of the city, and see multi-million dollar homes lit up on small ridges here and there. What I didn’t expect is what I saw when I looked up into the night sky. It was so filled with stars that it seemed like they were going to blot out the sky altogether. I had never seen so many stars in my life! I had looked through telescopes and read the occasional star map, but I had never seen anything like this before. I was stunned, and I knew something unusual must be going on. I raced back to the college, and at the front gate, I met the security guard, who was making light drawings with his flashlight on the ground. “What’s going on?” I asked. “What do you mean?” he replied. “Well, there’s something happening in the sky. A meteor shower or something. I’ve never seen so many stars.” He looked up a second and shook his head. “Nah. It’s always like that here,” he said. “Where are you from?”

Sometimes, we have to go to the wilderness to find a new way of seeing, a new way of being. This is not a novel idea in our country of course, where we have a long tradition coming out of the native cultures of going into the wilderness on “vision quests” or rites of initiation. We have wilderness protection societies, like the Sierra Club and The Wilderness Society, and any number of backpacker groups that you can join for an experience in the wilderness. Every year, hundreds of people hike the entire 2,000 mile Appalachian Trail from end to end. And our national literature reflects this emphasis on and respect for wilderness. Henry David Thoreau explained why he spent two years by himself on the shores of Walden Pond – a kind of suburban wilderness – like this:

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

And near the beginning of the last century, conservationist John Muir, who helped found the Sierra Club, wrote that

"Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, overcivilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wilderness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but fountains of life."

Time in the wilderness can re-orient us and bring us back to ourselves. But it may also be disquieting and even dangerous. The narratives around Jesus’ time in the wilderness are full of these dualities: City and wilderness, crowds and solitude, heaven and earth, Satan and angels, beasts and human beings, even freedom and imprisonment. The wilderness is dangerous because it presents the unexpected, and we cannot control it. Because God may use it to transform us in ways we cannot expect or sometimes apprehend.

The tribes of Israel are first lost in the wilderness, and then knit into a nation there, with a code of ethics that will forever guide their relationships with God and one another. In the wilderness, Moses will apprehend God in a burning bush, a cloud of fire, and the words of the Commandments, completing the journey from shepherd to prophet. Elijah, on the run and hiding for his life in a cave, will confront the powers of his day and set in motion the people and events that will overthrow them and establish God’s authority. Jesus, having faced temptation, will burst out of the wilderness proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God, calling disciples, and healing the sick and the lame.

The wilderness is bewildering! It should strip us of our usual attitudes and conceptions, leaving us available to be re-shaped and re-fashioned by God. We know this to be especially true in the difficult times in our lives, when a job is lost or a relationship ends and we don’t know where to turn next. But the message of Lent is that we don’t have to wait for transformation. It doesn’t depend upon something going terribly wrong . God knows there are cracks enough in each of our lives. This is a journey we willingly undertake because we know we need to be changed and that God has the power and the love to accomplish that.

Lent is a season of restoration, when we “repent” – “turn back from” – the things that have divided us, that have estranged us from one another. A time of rebuilding community, as Mark suggests Jesus experienced in the wilderness, where he is “with the wild beasts” and is ministered by angels. There is temptation to be sure, but after rejecting that, a new vision of how we live together. A view of the kingdom of God---from the wilderness.

The Ash Wednesday liturgy continues these dualities: It invites us to remember where we came from---from ashes, from nothing---but also from a garden paradise, where everything exists---people, creatures, environment---in harmony. [ Edward Hicks’ Peaceable Kingdom painting from Isaiah 65:25] - It invites us to remember our divisions, our temptations, our sins and estrangements, even as it points us toward the perfect kingdom of God. It calls us to remember our end, so that we can make a new beginning. The kingdom is now and it is still coming, because we are bringing it out of the wilderness with Jesus. We are proclaiming it with our small words and actions; our hellos and goodbyes, our simple, repeated inquiries – How are you, are you doing okay today? – our commitments to a food pantry or to affordable housing or to gun control or reconciliation in any form. We are bringing the kingdom out of the wilderness. We have seen the need for it; we have hailed it far off. We are bringing it to the places we live, to the everyday, familiar, habitual world we inhabit. It is a long journey out of the wilderness, but it’s worth it.

generosity: the journey

Rev. Dean Snyder Matthew 6:19-21, 25-33

We call this commitment Sunday so let me make sure everybody knows what we do on commitment Sunday. Commitment Sunday is when we ask you to make your financial commitment or pledge to support the mission and ministries of Foundry Church.

In every pew there are commitment cards and at the end of the service I will ask you to fill one out if you have not done so already. All the mission and ministry that happens through Foundry Church is only possible because of your financial support as well as you giving your time and energy and prayers. We are not an endowed church. If you stop giving we will not be able to pay our bills in a few months. If you decrease your giving, we cut ministries and programs and staff. If you increase your giving we do more.

Because we ask you to make a financial commitment on commitment Sunday I tend to usually talk about money on commitment Sunday. This is not hard to do because Jesus talked a lot about money.

I haven’t counted it myself but here is a report from someone who has. You’ll find it at wikianswerrs.com.

Jesus talked about money more than He did Heaven and Hell combined.

Jesus talked about money more than anything else except the Kingdom of God.

11 of 39 parables talk about money.

1 of every 7 verses in the Gospel of Luke talk about money.

Jesus talked a lot about money.

It is very hard to be a follower of Jesus without thinking about money and finances … personal, corporate, national. If you want a religious experience that does not include having to think about money, Jesus will be a hard teacher to follow. A Christian that tries not to talk about money will have to avoid paying too much attention to the teachings of Jesus.

There is a section of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, which is the major summary collection of Jesus’ teachings, which focuses on financial issues. You find it in chapter 6 of the Gospel of Matthew.

Jesus talks first about giving alms to the poor. When you do it, you should not do it for applause. You should not do it to get your name listed in the patron section of the annual report. ‘Don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,’ Jesus says.

Then Jesus talks about not storing up treasurers on earth but in heaven. One of the most important verses in my life: “Where your treasure is there you heart will be also.”

Then he says that we cannot serve God and money. You can’t serve two masters.

The Jesus goes immediately form this discussion about money to a discussion about worry.

I never quite noticed this progression before.

Jesus goes from an extended discussion about money to say, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about what you will eat or what you will drink or about your body, what you will wear.”

And he offers two examples. The birds of the air do not sow nor reap nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly parent feeds them.

The birds of the air do not have impressive resumes, they don’t have advanced degrees, they do not have political connections, yet they always have enough to eat. God has created a world in which they always have enough to eat.

Birds don’t starve to death. This doesn’t mean that the world can’t be a dangerous place for birds. We have a bird bath in our side lawn, it is not really a lawn - we get more sun, it is more a patch of mulch and bushes. We put out a bird bath and planted bushes that the internet said would attract birds. In spring I love to watch the robins and the cardinals come and drink in our bird bath and eat worms from our mulch and berries from our bushes.

Every spring a nasty neighborhood cat will leave two or three dead birds right outside our side door.

The world can be dangerous for birds but they don’t starve to death. I saw a sparrow eating a crushed potato chip on the side walk of Thomas Circle walking into church this morning. Even here in the city, there is enough for the birds to eat.

Not that the world isn’t dangerous, but there is always enough to survive. So don’t worry or at least worry about the right things.

The other example Jesus gives about worry is the lilies of the field. Why do you worry about clothing, Jesus says. Consider the lilies of the filed, they neither toil nor spin, yet even Solomon in all of his glory was not clothes with such beauty as a lily, a wild flower.

Here Jesus’ point is a little different. The point here is that if you are not inherently beautiful, shopping at Neiman Marcus isn’t going to make you beautiful.

Jesus point isn’t that we shouldn’t worry, but that we should worry about the right things, not what we will eat or wear, but we should worry about the kingdom of God. Strive first for the kingdom of God and God’s righteousness, God’s justice and everything else will take care of itself.

So what I want to suggest this morning is that there is a relationship between money and worry. And the relationship is this – worrying about money is the enemy of generosity. Worrying about money causes greed and destroys generosity. And if we could learn to trust God and the universe about money we would be much more likely to store up treasures in heaven rather than in our bank accounts and Goldman Sachs managed accounts where thieves do break in and steal.

The more we worry about and strive for the kingdom of God and God’s justice where everyone has enough to eat and everyone has a place to live and everyone has access to a decent education and everyone has decent health care, the less we will worry about our own personal financial security and the more generous we will become.

The more we ignore the unjust inequalities of our world in which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, the more insecure we will become and the more selfishly worried we will become and the more personally greedy we will become and the more stressed and unhappy we will become.

I’ve been thinking this week about a young couple I met 17 years ago. I knew them for three weeks and have not spoken to them since, although I have occasionally followed them on the internet.

I was working on the staff of the bishop of Central Pennsylvania and the Susquehanna River flooded and the bishop sent me to a small town that had been devastated by the flood to help organize the United Methodist Church’s disaster response. The town was named Trout Run and the town’s response to the flood was organized out of Trout Run United Methodist Church which fed people three times a day, seven days a week, provided cleaning supplies and space for people to cry together and laugh together and pray together.

There were teams of local people who did various efforts – worked with the children, assessed damage, visited door to door, buried drowned animals, cooked meals. There was a team of local people that spent 10 hours every day shoveling mud out of houses for three weeks, Sundays included.

Part of that shoveling team was this young couple who I spend some time getting to know.

They were originally from Boston. Both his parents were university professors. His mother, I believe, taught at Harvard. Her parents also had advanced degrees.

He had known from the time he was a boy that he wanted to be a farmer. He got tuition remission at Harvard so he was the first Harvard student in decades whose went to Harvard whose major was agriculture.

After college they worked on farms until they had a down payment for some land near Trout Run. They farmed maybe 9 or 10 acres and grew lettuce for restaurants in Williamsport, a small city a few miles away. Latter they also sold lettuce and other vegetables in a farmers market in Williamsport.

They attended Trout Run United Methodist Church faithfully. When I got to know them well enough, I asked them about their faith. They told me they didn’t know a lot about the God thing, but they believed in community.

They started out farming with a tractor. But they were committed to farming without chemicals and without irrigating which they believed were not good for the plants or the soil.

Then they became convinced that tractors were not good for the soil. They were too heavy. They compacted the soil too much. They squeezed out the air needed for the plants to access the natural nutrients in the soil and the spoils capacity to naturally retain water.

So they sold their tractor and bought horses. Horses tread lightly upon the earth and instead of producing fumes that poisons the air they produce compost that returns nutrients to the soil.

And they traded their heavy farm equipment for light equipment that two people and two horses could manage. They began farming in such a way that their farming minimally disrupted the soil.

They only grew vegetables on 2/3 of their land every year. On the other third they grew green fertilizers that would compost back into the soil and enrich it.

They adopted a very important principle for them. The principle is “Feed the soil. Not the plant.”

They were convinced that if they focused on the quality of the soil, the soil could be trusted to produce the harvest they would need to feed themselves and others and make a living.

If they got greedy for a bigger harvest than the soil could naturally produce, so that they fed it chemicals and used big machinery to produce more and more, they would ultimately deplete the soil and have less. If they got greedy for bigger and bigger harvests in any one year, they would ultimately impoverish the soil and future harvests.

I think a lot about the principle: Feed the soil, not the harvest. I think it applies to more than farming.

If we sacrifice justice within the larger society because we are worried about our own personal financial success and security, ultimately the entire society will become impoverished, including those of us who thought we were secure.

Points to consider:

• It is time to make our commitments to the General Fund for the day to day ministries of Foundry Church
• You may have already made a pledge to Mission Possible back in November for this capital project
• This will be a second pledge/estimate of giving
• If you are a visitor with us today, I encourage you to take this time to consider your treasures and if you belong to another church where you are putting your treasures there. You may even want to come to the altar this morning not to bring a pledge card but to pray for Foundry and the ministries God is calling us to.
• This week you received a letter with a pledge card/estimate of giving card in the mail. If you brought that with you, I invite you to get that out now.
• If you did not bring one with you a pledge / Estimate of Giving Cards can be found in the pew rack in front of you or an usher can provide you with one if you will raise your hand.
• You are invited to prayerfully consider what God is calling you to give for 2013 and indicate that on your card.
• In a few minutes I will invite you to come forward an place your card in one of the baskets up front
• There are also baskets in the balcony or you are welcome to come forward to the altar if you wish.
• There are some of our leadership who have already made their pledges ahead of time for a total of $265,000.
• I would like to invite those who have already made their pledge to come forward for a prayer at the altar
• I then invite those who have completed their card to bring it forward and place it in the basket
• Once you have done so you are welcome to stay for a prayer or be dismissed to join us for cake in the Fellowship Hall.

State of the Church

Rev. Dean Snyder Scripture: Luke 19:11-28