“Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven. So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. … And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
(Matthew 6:1-6 & 16-18)
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
We all have a survival instinct – and thank goodness for that! If we didn’t none of us would be here today. If we didn’t have a survival instinct we’d walk in front of buses and jump off of tall buildings and do various and sundry other dumb things because we wouldn’t care what the consequences would be. It might very well be the survival instinct of the human race that has (so far at least) prevented us from blowing the planet up with the obscene amount of nuclear weapons we have all over the world. Survival instincts are important. They kick in at a time when the most important thing is for us to think about ourselves and our own well being. That’s not a selfish thing – it’s natural; it’s a part of who we are, and without it humanity probably woudn’t exist today. Even Jesus had a survival instinct. He yearned to live. He displayed that in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before he died when he begged his Father to “take this cup from me” - in other words, to release him from facing the prospect of his death on a cross. So survival instincts are natural. But sometimes they have to be overcome because there are times when we have to put our focus on others – on the needs around us rather than on the needs within us; times when we have to think of “you” instead of “me.” We see many examples of that as well. Fire fighters and police officers and soldiers often have to overcome their own survival instincts and risk their lives for the sake of a cause or for the sake of someone else. Jesus may have wanted to live, but in the end he submitted himself to the plan of God and he went to that cross. So the survival instinct is natural, but it doesn’t have to control us or dominate our thinking. We can overcome it. In fact, if we really want to follow Jesus and be effective at sharing the gospel, then we have to. We have to make that shift in our priorities from “me” to “you.”
That’s a real challenge for the church these days. I don’t mean just us – but the church in general. Attendance and finances and just the work involved in keeping a congregation going are becoming big challenges for most churches these days. Sometimes we become a bit myopic and we start to think that these are only problems that we face and that everybody else is doing just fine. It’s a classic case of “the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.” But the truth is that churches are struggling these days. And the temptation because of that is for us to start looking inward and to focus only on taking care of ourselves; only on meeting the budget; only on keeping the doors open. The church’s existence becomes an end in itself, and the call of the church to spread a gospel of life and hope to others gets lost in the shuffle of trying to make sure we survive. I’ve always thought that from a Christian perspective there was a great irony to that. It was, after all, Jesus who said (to paraphrase) that those who try to save their lives will lose their lives, and that those who lose their lives for him would gain true life. Another way of putting it might be to say that struggling for the sake of mere survival is a losers’ game. And I”ve often found it strange that a church that professes faith in a Lord who was raised from the dead is often so terrified of death. In a book called “Searching For Sunday,” the American Christian author Rachel Held Evans wrote that “death is something empires worry about, not something gardeners worry about. It's certainly not something resurrection people worry about.” The church has become so accustomed for centuries to being “empire” - to being the dominant force in society; to possessing power – that many church people have no idea what to do now that the church is increasingly on the margins and has little power. But Evans may be right – perhaps we’re called to be gardeners. Jesus often used that kind of imagery to illustrate our purpose – planting seeds and watering them and helping them to grow. And as resurrection people, we don’t need worldly power, because resurrection is the greatest power! So we need to avoid the temptation to become consumed by our own circumstances to the exclusion of others.
Having said that, though, while we may have to move beyond our survival instinct, it’s OK for us to do self-care. Our passage from Matthew 6 today in a way was Jesus telling his disciples to do some self-care along with what we do for others. He did speak about “giving alms” - which means giving for the sake of the poor; something we do for others – but he also spoke about “practicing piety” (being concerned with how we live our lives,) praying (being concerned with how we’re connected to God) and fasting (remembering the connection between our bodies and spirits, and how both connect us to God.) Those three things you might call Christian self-care. And there are things we do for the church, as well. As Christians who practice our faith through a particular congregation, we have to care for that congregation; we have to be concerned for its well-being. There are things we do that are “for” the congregation.
So we give our time – because without people willing to make a commitment to do the things involved in the life and work of this congregation (both the administrative work and the more spiritual and mission type work work) that congregation can’t survive. Without people, we’re nothing – and we only have people if those people give some time to the church and makes the church a priority rather than an afterthought. So this congregation needs some of your time. And so we give our money - because without people willing to make the commitment to support our ministries in a material way we cannot keep doing the things we’re doing. (I know – “money” the word we’re not supposed to speak about in a sermon, but I bet the members of the Finance Committee are quietly nodding their heads and saying “preach it, pastor!”) So this congregation needs some of your money. And so we offer our prayers – because without people willing to remember and hold this congregation in their prayers we’ll be able to do nothing, because ultimately our power to live out the gospel in a society that often doesn’t want to hear the gospel and is sometimes even hostile to it comes from the Spirit of God, whose power we access through prayer. So this congregations needs some of your prayers. I’m pretty sure that Jesus would agree with the idea that offering those three things is vital for any disciple of his. But, ultimately, still – it’s not for us.
If we need those things for the church to survive then we need to ask ourselves why it’s important for the church to survive. A question that I sometimes ask is what would be lost if we didn’t exist? Who would notice if we weren’t around anymore? If you look at the Announcements section of this week’s bulletin you’ll find that just in the next seven days we’re going to be hosting a Foot Clinic, a Clothing Boutique and a service in which we’ll offer our support to Karanda Hospital in Zimbabwe, and we’re going to take a special offering today for the Benevolent Fund and we’re asking you to remember our Food Boxes if you can. That’s five things in one bulletin stretching out over the next seven day period that reach out and directly touch the lives of others. You see, once we’ve done our self-care, we don’t stay there. Even if, for a little while, we choose to focus on “me,” moved by the Spirit of God, we then change our focus to “you.” We look inward for a while to let God empower us to focus outward – because that is ultimately the call of the church: to reach out, to touch and care for and heal others; to love the unloved and to welcome into our midst the marginalized.
Tommy Douglas – a few years ago named by CBC as “The Greatest Canadian” (a former Premier of Saskatchewan and leader of the CCF/NDP and an ordained Baptist minister) – once said that
“we are all in this world together, and the only test of our character that matters is how we look after the least fortunate among us. How we look after each other, not how we look after ourselves. That’s all that really matters, I think.”
This was what Jesus did up to his dying breath on the cross. This is what Jesus asks us to do as his church for as long as we have life to do it.
No comments:
Post a Comment