PHILANTHROPY 101
A Sermon by Rev. James D. Brown
Market Square Presbyterian Church
October 21, 2007
Scripture: Deuteronomy 24:10-15 and Luke 18:18-25
Our text from Luke had to catch your attention. Let’s jump right in. A certain ruler—probably a religious leader, based on what follows—zeros in on Jesus. Good teacher, he asks…..What we make of these two words hinges on the inflection we give them. It can be a straightforward greeting: Good teacher….Or it can be all about the kind of flattery that gets you nowhere: Goooood teacher. My goooood man…..
Whatever the case, the ruler’s question has to do with where he is to find the ultimate meaning and validation for his life. It’s your question. It’s my question. “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Note the verb. Not, “What must I believe? but what must I do? Already the plot thickens.
All the ruler gets for his effort at this point is a rebuke by Jesus, one that sets in motion a three-part answer to his question. “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.” At first blush this is troubling. Is not Jesus as good as God? It seems that Jesus wants to raise the sights of the ruler just as high as they can go—to the ground and source of all that is. In our Reformed tradition, John Calvin stresses over and over the absolute sovereignty of God. Jesus affirms this with the simple affirmation that only God is good.
God’s goodness is revealed in God’s commandments. God lends a hand by putting boundaries in place for us, boundaries and guideposts that we desperately need. This is the second act in our trilogy. “You know the commandments: ‘You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; Honor your father and mother.’”
Here our ruler emerges as a bit of a goody two shoes. “I have kept all these since my youth.” This doesn’t square, does it? If only God is good, this ruler can’t be all that perfect, can he? The trap has been set, and he has sauntered in.
Now we are in the final act. I can picture Jesus nodding his head and tilting it just a bit, then looking the ruler right in the eye: “There is still one thing lacking. Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” This text is so laden with imperatives that it had to take the wind out of the ruler’s sails. It certainly takes our breath away. Sell…..distribute…..come….
follow me.
It’s here, for the first time in Luke’s rendition of this drama, that we learn that the ruler is rich. The text never says he’s young—Matthew’s version contains that note. Luke’s ruler may be young or old. We don’t know, but we do know now that he’s very rich and suddenly very sad.
Here the story comes to a full stop. We don’t what the rich ruler did next, or where his heart led him. I mention his heart, because earlier in Luke’s gospel there is a teaching by Jesus that today’s story illustrates in such a gripping way. In chapter 12 Jesus is just as clear as he can be about life’s priorities:
“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.”
Today’s lesson does not say that possessions are evil, that persons of wealth cannot inherit the kingdom of God. Today’s lesson does say that our resources can become idols, that our fixation on what we have can lead to habits of the heart that make it very difficult for God’s kingdom to become real in our daily lives.
It’s clear to me that every time we take the story of the rich ruler to heart, the next thing we know we are walking in his shoes and feeling a little sad. This is good for us. Jesus now has our attention.
A few weeks back as I started wrestling with this text, out of the blue the word philanthropy came to mind. I don’t know why. It must have had to do with something I’d read or heard. Whatever the case, I was suddenly taken by the thought that God’s philanthropy is the basis for our philanthropy. And dearly beloved, I believe that it is our philanthropy that can save us from the sadness that enveloped the rich ruler.
Let me say what I mean. Philanthropy comes from two Greek words: philein, which means to love, and anthropos, which refers to man or humankind—the human family of men and women. A philanthropist loves the human family.
The Bible portrays God as such a Being. God’s love has a leveling effect on human society. Jesus speaks for God when he admonishes the rich ruler to share what he has with the poor and needy. Who could forget the teachings in Deuteronomy 24 that we heard today about never sleeping in the garment a debtor might give you as security on a loan. “You shall give the pledge back by sunset, so that your neighbor may sleep in the coat and bless you….” And if someone living from hand to mouth works for you, pay them their wages every day, “because their livelihood depends on them.”
This is the God Jesus represents in all his teachings, this benevolent God who is tenderhearted toward all, and especially toward those who are weak and poor, who in some grand and mysterious way are the apple of God’s eye. In short, God’s very nature is that of a philanthropist who loves the human family with the steadfastness of a father, the tender mercy of a mother.
Once this truth grips us, then it’s abundantly clear that it is our calling to be philanthropists as well. To be right with God includes the practice of philanthropy. This is a vocation we do well to ponder, for all too often we shut the word out of our minds, leaving it to the super-rich like Warren Buffett to practice the grace of liberality while we just muddle along. It might do us good to say that Market Square Church is made up of 550 philanthropists! I’ll bet not many of you woke up this morning thinking that in church today you would be taking on the mantle of a philanthropist did you? But that is just what we are called to be!
Earlier I suggested that any time we take the lesson of the rich ruler to heart, we end up walking in his shoes. We do. Merely saying we are philanthropists does not take us off the hook, does it? In fact, Jesus says that we have about as good a chance of entering the kingdom of God as a camel has of going through the eye of a needle. Thanks a lot!
Let me say just a quick word about this saying, and then move on the say a few words about what the lesson might mean for us as a congregation. A camel was the biggest animal in the Palestine of Jesus’ day. The eye of a needle is mighty small. The illustration is so outlandish that commentators from the first century on have tried to re-write it.
The Greek word for camel is very similar to a Greek word for a rope, so some concluded that Jesus was using the hyperbole of a rope, not a giant animal. But there are no real grounds for such an interpretation. Another approach has been to say that the “eye of a needle” refers to a narrow city gate that camels bearing cargo went through. Sometimes loads were taken off and camels literally squeezed through on their knees, akin to tractor trailers having air let out of their tires to make it under the railroad overpass on 2nd Street.
This misses the point, too. Jesus uses an outlandish illustration to make his point that our tendency toward the idolatry of possessions is staggering. Luke, in the very next verse after our today’s lesson, tells us that those who first heard this saying exclaimed to Jesus, “Then who can be saved?” To which Jesus replied, “What is impossible for mortals is possible for God.” In other words, our salvation from idolatry depends on a huge dose of God’s grace to set us free to open our hands and hearts to others as God’s philanthropists.
I’ve thought a great deal about this disquieting passage as it relates to me personally, as I’m sure you are doing this very minute. But I’ve also thought about what it means for us as a congregation of followers of Jesus. Let me say just a few words about this as Consecration Sunday approaches.
We are a very rich congregation. Each year we receive and spend about a million dollars for staff and programs and maintaining our facilities. In recent years we have also spent over a million dollars refurbishing our physical plant through our Doorway to Our Future campaign. The lighting for today’s service is one of the many improvements made possible by your generosity.
On top of this, we have an endowment of $7 million dollars, a significant portion of which came from the sale a number of years ago of WMSP, the radio station owned and operated by the Church for a good number of years. Each year we use 5% of the value of our endowment for our overall church budget and 1% for major upkeep to the building. Our Investment Committee carefully manages the endowment with the goal of ensuring that it can support our life and mission on a long-term basis.
We are a rich congregation. Having said this I want you to know that over the next few weeks you will be hearing a challenge to increase our pledged income to the church by 10%, which is what it will take for us to meet rising costs for staffing and overhead like utilities, as well as sustaining our mission on Market Square and around the world.
Some of you will ask, rightly, about the church asking for such an increase in giving in the light of Jesus’ words to the rich ruler. Should we be spending so much to maintain our Church home here on Market Square? Is this the right thing for God’s philanthropists to be doing? These are important questions for each of us to ponder, are they not?
I want to leave two images with you, and ask that you mull them over as Consecration Sunday approaches. The first has to do with the baptismal font. Elizabeth Atticks had long believed that we needed a font to complement our Lord’s Table, so that every Sunday we might feast our eyes on these stunning symbols of God’s amazing grace.
A few years back Elizabeth stepped forward and offered the funds for such a font. In good Presbyterian fashion, it took us quite a while to have it designed and completed. I’m sure you all agree that the care given to this project was in order. At the same time, Elizabeth worried that she would be long gone before we finished, and she told me so.
This week when I opened the church file that contained the plans for her memorial service I came across a letter she had sent the church, dated January 7, 2006.
To whom it may concern:
A committee of Market Square Presbyterian Church is in the
process of securing a Baptismal Font to be presented by me to the
Church in memory of Nedra Schilling. If I should die or become
incompetent before this memorial is completed, I declare that the
funds for payment of such memorial shall be made from my estate
so there is no question about this project being completed.
Signed, Elizabeth G. Atticks
Would Jesus approve of such a gift? I hope so. Don’t you? Engrafting the Dannys of this world into the company of philanthropists who follow Jesus is what we are about.
The final image is one that I anticipate savoring in about an hour. Carol Williams, another of our devoted philanthropists, on in years and recovering from a recent stroke, let us know that she intends to be part of the CROP walk on City Island today. She’ll be in her wheelchair, living out her commitment to the poor and needy of this world. Now there’s a story I’m sure Jesus loves to hear us tell. For on our day of reckoning, however that comes, our philanthropy will matter. Such is our challenge and our hope.