I’m so filled with ideas about this sermon I don’t know where to turn. It is All Saints Sunday. It is Stewardship Commitment Sunday (at least on the Presbyterian calendar). It is a first Sunday, which means my sermon needs to be a little shorter so we aren’t here forever!
And the Focus Scripture for the day is no help at all…Jesus having another run-in with the religious authorities of his day. Nothing to do with all saints, or stewardship, or us—right? And then I thought, “not so fast.” Greg Carey (on the Working Preacher website) boils this passage down to Jesus talking about “content versus conduct.” In other words, what you say and what you do. And that applies to all of us—the followers of Jesus, the household of God, the church—“the communion of saints” as the Reformers would claim.
What we say and what we do.
A very wealthy man in a community was not known for his generosity to the church. The church was involved in a big financial program, so the fundraising committee decided that they had to pay him a visit. As they met with him, they said that, in view of his considerable resources, they were sure that he would like to make a substantial contribution to their program.
"I see," he said. "So you have it all figured out, have you? In the course of your investigation have you discovered that I have a widowed mother who has no other means of support than me?" "No," they responded, they did not know that. "Did you know that I have a sister who was left by a drunken husband with five children and no means to provide for them?" "No," they said, they did not know that either. "Well, sir, did you know also that I have a brother who was crippled due to an automobile accident and can never work another day to support his wife and family?" Embarrassingly, they responded, "No, we did not know that either." "Well," he thundered, "I've never given any of them a cent, so why should I give anything to you?"
What we say and what we do.
Jesus was offended because the people who said they were the most religious, the most tied to God, didn’t seem to think about anybody but themselves! They made sure they wore their sanctimoniousness on their sleeves, quite literally. And that doesn’t score points with God, Jesus said. God’s “greatest” are less concerned with show and more concerned with service. God’s “greatest” choose to be last in line instead of first in line. God’s “greatest” are humble.
James Hudson Taylor, a founder of the China Inland Mission, was scheduled to speak at a Large Presbyterian church in Melbourne, Australia. The moderator of the service introduced the missionary in eloquent and glowing terms. He told the large congregation all that Taylor had accomplished in China in the late 1800’s, helping to bring 800 missionaries to that land, establishing 125 schools, and hearing 18,000 Chinese become Christian. He then presented him as "our illustrious guest." Taylor stood quietly for a moment, and then opened his message by saying, "Dear friends, I am the little servant of an illustrious Master." W. Wiersbe, Wycliffe Handbook of Preaching and Preachers, p. 243.
What we say and What we do should be mirror images of each other. What we say and What we do are our footprint in the world. What we say and What we do is not trivial. And what should we say? What should we do? I return to Jesus’ Summary of the Law: “Love God, Love others even as you learn to love yourself.”
God’s greatest, which can include each of us, all of us, have to work to make Jesus’ simple words the bedrock of our lives. We have to give up seeing our world in vertical terms—who’s up and who’s down. We have to give up admiring the scribes and the Pharisees of our own time. We must recognize the horizontal nature of being human.
"Alex Haley, the author of Roots, has a picture in his office, showing a turtle sitting atop a fence. He says The picture is there to remind him of a lesson he learned long ago: 'If you see a turtle on a fence post, you know he had some help.' Sandy Reynolds.
We are like that turtle. We need to remember we are:
side by side,
all in the boat together,
a communion of saints,
walking the walk,
talking the talk,
following Jesus the best we can, together.
May it be so, Alleluia, Amen.
