November 14, 2004:
Paying Our Dues or Balancing the Budget?
Eileen Parfrey, Springwater Pres.
Luke 19:1-10, 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13, Isaiah 12

A wise woman told me, "God comes to us disguised as our lives," which messed with this season's emphasis on apocalypse for me. Sometimes it's way too easy to think our lives are the catastrophes we associate with the end of the world, so it's not good news to imagine God coming disguised as our lives. It is a cruel trick of calendar that apocalypse readings coincide with our elections. Just how cruel the trick appears depends on whether or not my team won. But the real meaning of apocalypse isn't cataclysm, it's revelation of what's really there. It may be the end of the world, but it's an ending which is the fulfillment of God's plan for creation. The appropriate faith response to apocalypse isn't certainty about what the events will be. The faith response is patience and endurance and keeping on. What the apostle Paul told the Thessalonian church in today's reading.

Paul tells the 1st century church to stop distracting each other from living while they wait for Jesus to return, to stop using religion as an excuse to avoid doing their fair share, to stop undermining the mission of the church by freeloading. Remember, Paul is talking to believers. He is not talking about poor people who legitimately need a helping hand. What he says reminds me of the Caregiver's Conference last weekend. One of the keynoters at the beginning of the conference asked caregivers in the audience to talk about what makes caregiving hard. When she asked us to say what might be hard about being a care receiver was when I heard Paul's letter to the Thessalonians. People thought care receivers might feel embarrassment or resentment that things weren't the way they did them, they might grieve the loss of privacy and independence. But what really hit home was the understanding that always receiving and never giving robs a person of dignity. If you can't or aren't allowed to contribute, the audience realized, you are robbed of an essential human dignity. In fact, giving is one of the ways we humans are in the image and likeness of God. We worship a giving God, a generous God, and when we ourselves are generous, we are reflecting the image of our God.

This is why, when we enter into this stewardship campaign time of year, we don't talk about "paying the church's bills." The stewardship campaign will hopefully result in the ability to carry on the mission of the church by the timely payment of bills. But the call to stewardship is a call to discipleship, to following Jesus. The good news this time of year is that the church offers us a chance to commit to reflecting our Creator as Jesus did, by being givers.

But I digress. I was telling you about Paul chewing out the church for using "pie in the sky" as an excuse to sponge off productive brethren and sistern. Paul was acutely aware that when Christians look like mooches to outsiders, their witness to the gospel gets shaky. But besides a finely honed sensitivity to the credibility of faith, Paul knew that continual dependency keeps a person childlike emotionally and spiritually, and we are supposed to grow as children of God. Which is why we read the story of Zaccheus today. Zac makes an extravagant commitment to repay his fraudulent tax collection practices. Why did he do that? The crowd had been so offended by Jesus calling this scumbag by name and inviting himself to partake of his hospitality. Perhaps Zaccheus was trying to prove to the crowd that he deserved to be what Jesus calls him-a "Son of Abraham." Maybe out of sheer gratitude for being allowed back in the family, Zac increases the Torah requirements for restitution. Maybe he was showing off his family likeness. Every family has common characteristics. Zac wasn't going for the nose or that funny laugh, the tendency to drive too fast or to eat pickled herring. Zac went straight to his strongest resemblance to Dad's side of the family-generosity, justice, righteousness. He was acting as every God-loving child was taught to act.

Speaking of nice Jewish boys, I met one of my neighbors at the Caregiver's Conference. She and her family are part of the synagogue that rents worship space from St Mark Presbyterian in Portland. I gave her a ride home after the conference, and she gave me a copy of her son's bar mitzvah speech. Jordan (her son) has autism, and his mother is justifiably proud of his accomplishments. As I read the speech, it occurred to me that the words, "bar mitzvah" mean "son of good deeds" or "son of healing of the world." It came as no surprise that, as part of Jordan's religious coming-of-age speech, he reveals the acts of righteousness he is committed to performing as part of his enfranchisement into the community of faith. Like Zaccheus paying back the people he hurt, Jordan does mitzvahs or good deeds, as part of officially becoming a child of Abraham. Jordan speaks about tzadik, God's righteousness, and his own participation, as a person of faith, in God's healing of the world.

Jordan's bar mitzvah resembles the confirmation of our young people last year. Like him, our young people continue to commit themselves to mitzvahs or good deeds. They do this because they get to. When this congregation provides them with opportunities to help others and work alongside us in the mission of this church, we are doing the family business. Like Jordan, like Zaccheus, like us when we do good deeds and work for the healing of the world, our young people show the family characteristics. We show we are like our Creator's side of the family. Feeding hungry people, providing Bibles for faith seekers, giving workers a hot meal in the midst of the hectic tree harvest, giving school supplies to kids who need them, stewarding our land by planting, teaching Sunday School, welcoming visitors, making snacks for Vacation Church School or after worship-all of this says, "I'm in the family business. I am a child of God, and this is how I am like God-I pursue justice, I work for righteousness."

This is the time of year that seems to get more talk about stewardship, but we all know that every Sunday is "stewardship Sunday." Each week when we come together, we pledge ourselves, we pledge our money, and we pledge our time to the family business-the coming kingdom of God, the awaited apocalypse. These are sacred promises we make to each other. I will make sure we have materials and teachers for Sunday School, I will hold babies downstairs so their parents can worship without worrying that someone will make a fuss and disturb others, I will pray for the mission of the church, I will prayerfully discern God's hopes for us as I serve on session, I will make hot dishes and send birthday cards, I will make sure this building stands for the coming generations. These are also sacred promises we make to God, because we are children of God, because we get to show our resemblance to God. When Paul rags on the church in Thessalonica, it's because he wants each member to experience the essential dignity that comes from contributing to life together. He wants each person to have pride of ownership in the mission of the church. This is apocalypse talk. We put things in this kind of perspective in order to encourage each other during the long wait until Jesus comes again. We survive that long wait-but in doing so, we need to exercise our family resemblance in discipleship by providing for the mission of this, our family business.