Many Colors, Many Coats

October 15, 2006

Text: Matthew 5:33-48
We are something of a strange family. I suppose every family is strange it its own way. Our way of strangeness was brought home to me a couple of weeks ago at one of the back-to-school nights when one our children’s teachers returned to us a book left behind after class earlier in the day. It was Marx’s Revolution and Counter Revolution.

As we accepted the book, delivered with a wry smile and a friendly inquiry about our child’s future political aspirations, I had to wonder, “what have I wrought?” After all, this was the child who I had snuggled and read postmodern philosophy to when he was an infant. Lots of children are raised on Dr. Seuss; not so many on Dr. Derrida.

Of course, the Marx tome came off the bookshelves in my study here at church. There are probably not a whole lot of sermons written literally or figuratively in the shadow of The Communist Manifesto. As I said, ours is something of a strange family, and I am, truth be told, something of an odd Presbyterian pastor.

Odd enough, in fact, to suggest that there might be something of a manifesto – not communist, but definitely economic – in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. I’m odd enough, even, to suggest that the economics of Jesus look no more like our current free market ideology than did the economics of Marx – which is not to suggest that Jesus was a Marxist any more than it is to suggest that Marx was a Christian.

It is to suggest, however, that the economy of grace that Jesus envisions calls forth a truly radical critique of the market values that shape contemporary American life and culture, including, inevitably, our own lives and the life of the church.

Driving across rural Maryland last weekend, I was graced – graced by the sight of turning leaves, migrating birds and autumn wildflowers. I could hear the words of Jesus, “consider the flowers of the field: they don’t work, they don’t worry, they don’t even have to get dressed, yet not even George Clooney or Jennifer Aniston – with their People Magazine “best dressed” awards – look so fine.” OK, maybe Jesus didn’t put it exactly like that, but you get my meaning.

We have been given so very, very much: a creation of splendor, enough for the day, life itself. We live in an economy of gracious abundance.

And yet … and yet we seldom live such that it feels that way.

A few weeks back, Cheryl and I prodded our boys to do some cleaning of their room. Insert your own punch line. Anyway, one of the tasks was to clean out a closet that had a collection of outwear – coats, jackets, sweatshirts and so on, many of which no longer fit anyone in our household. The idea was to sort through and keep what was still useful to us and donate away the rest. I didn’t get the whole memo on this one. So, after Martin did an excellent job of pulling all of the clothing out of the closet, I packed them all up and gave them away – assuming, wrongly as it turned out, that the sorting had been done already.

My first reaction upon learning of my mistake was an instant of minor panic as an image of shivering children ran through my mind. That was replaced almost immediately by a moment of internal scolding: “darn it, I just gave away our kids’ coats and now I’m going to have to go out and buy new ones.” That feeling lingered, and was only very gradually replaced by the clear realization that, first, my children will not be cold (after all, we live in Virginia), and, second, that although it was inadvertent and inefficient, making up for my accidental charity will probably set me back, oh, about a dozen mochas and maybe a handful of orange-chocolate chip muffins.

We live in an economy of gracious abundance. We can afford to give away more than a box of coats – even by accident. Nobody has to sue us for our outer coat; just put me and Martin in charge of cleaning a few closets. We’ll joyously and cluelessly give them all away.

Then we’ll wind up getting outer wear from the outer edge of American pop culture – a Deadhead shop in Rehobeth, where they put many colors into many coats, and sweatshirts, and t-shirts and just about anything else that can be tie-died. As I may have mentioned, we’re a strange family.

But that’s OK, it seems to me; perhaps even perfectly appropriate, because Jesus calls forth a certain strangeness in the Sermon on the Mount. Turning other cheeks, walking extra miles, giving up coats. None of this makes sense according to the dominate models of our day. It’s no way to achieve security. It’s no way to build an institution. It’s no way to set a budget.

One doesn’t turn the other cheek; one stands and fights and stays the course. One doesn’t walk an extra mile – we drive them, sure, on ever longer commutes into the isolation and insulation of suburbs and exurbs built further and further from the city and its concerns – but we don’t walk extra miles; not to participate in any subversive action (as Jesus’ suggestion could imply) nor to build deeper relationships with disagreeable others (as some interpreters understand this suggestion). Isolation and insulation are more agreeable than either confrontation or relationship.

And giving up coats? Well, perhaps in charity, but certainly not if it’s going to leave us bereft – naked to the world and at the mercy of forces we cannot control.

Giving away, turning cheeks, extra miles that cannot me measured in terms of productivity – our economy does not account for any of these gestures and thus they have no value – at least, no market value.

Nevertheless, as Einstein noted, “not everything that counts can be counted; and not everything that can be counted counts.” In the economy of the commonwealth of the beloved, value arises precisely out of what we let go of, what we give away, what we surrender.

Ultimately, of course, what Jesus asks is that we surrender ourselves; that we give up the illusions of control and power that come wrapped in the measurable markers of productivity, power, and the purse. Jesus asks us, “what good does it do to gain the world if we lose ourselves in the bargain?”

We are a strange family – and now I mean all of us, the church here at Clarendon. We are a strange family that is trying to live into the call to be a mission-driven community of faith. We are called to live according to a different set of values, not marked by a market of consumption but by the strange insistence that our lives have value only according to what we give away.

This is not the sermon I intended to preach on this open house Sunday morning as we celebrate our mission partners in the pastoral care center and the child care center. But maybe it will turn out to be appropriate anyway, as we seek a way forward: a strange family of faith called to a way of living together so very much at odds with the dominate culture. After all, a deep and abiding care for children is also very much at odds with the dominate culture – despite what we might hear from pandering politicians and those who celebrate family values even as they destroy any public support for families. Likewise, compassion for those on whom the dominate culture takes a heavy emotional toll is at odds with that culture.

In any case, that would be my hope and my prayer. Let us pray:

“God of grace and God of glory, pour out your spirit on your people, called to be these days an exile family of faith living according to values that strike the broader culture as exceedingly strange. We give thanks for the abundance with which we live; and we pray for the wisdom to perceive it even when our own fears and insecurities blind us to all but the scarcity the culture wants us to see. We life up our mission partners who care for children and help so many hear good news about their own belovedness. And we pray for your church, here at Clarendon, that we might also know and trust our own belovedness and the gracious abundance with which we live and love and minister. Let us be light and more light for a darkened world and let us be salt for a world that has lost its savor. Amen.”

-- the Rev. Dr. David Ensign