Homily: Yr C Proper 19, August 11 2013, St. Albans
Readings: Isaiah 1:1, 10-20; Ps 50.1-8,22-23; Heb
11:1-3,8-16; Lk 12.32-40
Fear, Faith and Treasure
Choices
It
must be summer! Because the last time
that I was up here preaching, we were still in Paul’s letter to the
Galatians. And if you can remember that
far back, we talked about the great promise that Paul made to the Galatians,
the promise that he called the gospel of grace.
Paul told the Galatians that
they were good with God, that they’ve already been made right with God through
Jesus, and that God loves them and cares for them and wants what’s best for
them, no strings attached.
In
today’s gospel, Jesus makes us the same promise. Did you notice? Maybe not, because the language is
different. Jesus, as he often does, uses “kingdom” language. But here’s the promise: “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is
your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
What
an amazing promise! God wants to give us
the kingdom. We don’t have to earn the
things of the kingdom, we don’t get them as a reward for good behaviour, no,
God wants to give them to us and even gets pleasure out of doing it, just as a
loving parent wants to and enjoys giving good things to his or her
children. Now, you may ask, “What is the
kingdom, what are the things of the kingdom?
Well, God knows that we need food to eat and clothes to wear, and that’s
part of it, but it’s about much more than that. As we sang together in our opening song, “in
your kingdom broken lives are made new.”
The kingdom is about being in good and right relationship with God and
with each other. It’s about authentic
community. It’s about learning to love
one another and seeking justice for those who need our care. It’s about eternal life and salvation yes,
but it’s also about God’s kingdom coming on earth, an end to war and violence,
a blossoming of joy and peace and freedom and all the other good things that
God wants us to have, individually and in community.
This
promise is the anchor of today’s gospel.
Everything else we hear in today’s gospel is about movement. It’s about a movement to try to get us from
here to there. It’s about Jesus wanting
to help us and give us some advice on how we can learn to lean in, to live in
to the promise.
Because
there’s always a gap in the promises of God.
Something that David Lose calls an “irreducible tension”. Because, to be perfectly honest, it’s not at
all obvious that it really is God’s pleasure to give us the kingdom. Take a look around. God’s kingdom has not yet come on earth as in
heaven. There is civil war in
Syria. There were two kids crushed to
death by a snake last week. There’s the
stuff happening in your lives and the lives of your friends and family. The promise that God wants to give us the
things of the kingdom, all that good stuff that we talked about may be
something we hope for, but it’s not something we can see clearly yet. We may see signs of it, we may get
glimpses. But there is a gap, there is a
tension. And so the promises of God must
be taken on faith. Faith is, as the
author of the letter to the Hebrews puts it, “the assurance of things hoped
for, the conviction of things not seen.”
Last
week in our gospel and in Zack’s sermon we started talking about treasure choices. We heard the story of the rich man who wanted
to build bigger and bigger barns so that he could store more and more
stuff. This week, we have Jesus urging
us to sell our possessions and give alms, and warning us that where our
treasure is, there our heart will be also.
Now on the one hand these sayings relate clearly to money and what we do
with it. But they’re also about more
than just money. This is about our
priorities. This is about where we
choose to put our time and energy and the things that result from these choices
as we live out our lives.
But
I think that Jesus realizes that before we can really talk about treasure,
about how we establish our priorities we need to talk about fear. Because fear may well be the most destructive
force on this planet, and whether we like it or not, it is often the driving
force behind our priorities and our treasure choices. Henri Nouwen, whose book we read in our most
recent book study, puts it this way:
“The
more people I come to know and the more I come to know people, the more I am
overwhelmed by the negative power of fear.
It often seems that fear has so invaded every part of our lives that we
no longer know what a life without fear would feel like. Fear pervades our bodies, individually and
communally. So many people let their
thinking, speaking and acting be motivated by fear.”
We
know that fear is pervasive. Fear’s
close cousin, anxiety, has reached epidemic proportions in Canada, so much so
that one in nine Canadians will be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder at some
point in their life. What effect does
all this fear and anxiety have on our priorities. Or to put it another way, what do our
treasure choices look like when we are afraid?
We’re
going to talk about this in a moment, but first let me give you a few examples.
Psychologists
have certainly figured out that if we have a fear of rejection or abandonment, we
may have a hard time forming close relationships. Instead of opening ourselves up to be close
to others, our efforts may go into building up defenses and creating mechanisms
to keep distance in our relationships.
Or
perhaps you’re worried about what other people think about you. And so the treasure you might choose is to
develop a great image, to dress well, to have a good public persona, and maybe
even to pursue fame, which will reassure you that other people hold you in high
opinion.
I
know a man who shortly after he got married, hit a rough spot in his relationship
with his wife. Things he did started to
irritate her, and he became so afraid of upsetting her that he started walking
on eggshells, being extremely careful not to say or do anything that might set
her off. He became so withdrawn and
passive that before long his wife had a hard time recognizing the man she had
fallen in love with.
I
have a friend who grew up in a poor household, and it affected him as a child,
and he resolved that when he was grown up, he would be wealthy. And so he pursued a career that paid him
well, and he arranged to live in tax-free havens and he learned to finagle his
expense reports so that he could make a little extra money that way.
Selina
and I were talking recently about the Stewardship Under Forty conference that
she just went to. It seems that many
people under forty, and many over forty as well, have tremendous anxiety about
their finances. And even though there
have been a slew of recent studies that have shown how generosity is good for
our health, and that we experience more happiness when we spend money on others
than when spend it on ourselves, many people are sufficiently anxious about
their own financial situation that they just aren’t able to commit to
charitable giving.
You
can probably think of many other examples of how fear and anxiety influence our
priorities in life. You may be your own best
example! So I’d like you to take a few
moments and discuss the following question:
What
do our treasures choices look like when we’re afraid?
***
Now
I know that these are not easy things to reflect on. And I also know that fear is not always bad,
that some of our fears are well-founded, and that sometimes the priorities that
come out of these fears might be appropriate.
And I’m certainly aware that getting a handle on fear and anxiety doesn’t
happen simply because someone tells you “don’t be afraid” or “stop worrying”. But I do hope that at least we can agree that
fear is a powerful thing and that has a powerful impact on our treasure
choices. Because then we can move on to
my next question for you, which is, what would our treasure choices look like
if we weren’t afraid? If we could let go
of all the things that you were just reflecting on and talking about? Or to put it another way, what would our
treasure choices look like if we really had faith in the promise that Jesus
proclaims in today’s gospel, that it really is God’s pleasure to give us the
kingdom.
Well,
our treasure choices would be different wouldn’t they? For one thing, our source of treasure
shifts. Instead of striving to generate
our own treasure, we’d realize that much of what is really valuable is given to
us by God. Our treasure becomes our
identity as children of God, our inherent worth as a child of God, loved so
much that God was even willing to die for us.
Our treasure becomes lives that are infused with meaning and purpose, and
the knowledge that we were created for a reason and that we’ve been given everything
we need to participate in the building of God’s kingdom here on earth in our
own particular way. Our priorities would
become kingdom priorities: a deep and
sustaining relationship with God, loving relationships with others and those
priorities that Isaiah points us to in the first reading this morning: learning to do good, ceasing evil, seeking
justice and caring and advocating for those who are weak and vulnerable in our
society.
Because
when we start to overcome our fears and replace them with faith, faith in the
promise of God, then our priorities shift.
We start to build up treasure in new places. We begin to see the kingdom emerging in our
midst.
But
for most of us, the movement from fear to faith does not happen overnight. It is a journey. It is a challenge. How do
we move from fear to faith?
Let
me close with words from Henri Nouwen:
“When
we begin to understand at a deep, spiritual level that we live surrounded by
love and in communion with God no matter what the external circumstances, we
can let go of the fear that lurks on the outskirts of our minds. Hardly a day passes in our lives without an
experience of inner or outer fears, anxieties, apprehensions and
preoccupations. But we do not have to
live in fear. Love is stronger than
fear.”
Amen.
