Give Thanks

Texts: Matthew 6:25-34; Isaiah 55
November 19, 2006
I want to talk about heresy this morning. It’s a nice, light topic for the Sunday before a holiday, don’t you thing?
Being something of an unorthodox – perhaps even heterodox theologian – myself, it may seem surprising that I want to talk about heresy. Then again, may not.
You see, I’m not much interested in the theological expressions that typically get labeled heresies – those expressions about such things as virgin births and scriptural authority and the Trinity and other teachings found in historic Christian creeds and confessions. Oh, sure, I can engage in some good theological arguments over them, but it usually feels like sport, not like something of ultimate concern.
The heresy I want to talk about this morning is not so much a way of thinking, but rather a way of living guided by a particular way of thinking that shapes us as Americans.
I’ll begin by way of a story. About six or seven years ago, one of my best friends and college roommates was struggling in the depths of a serious undiagnosed, untreated mental or emotional condition. On of the signal symptoms was an intense suspicion of anyone who did not see the world exactly as he did – which, given the shape he was in, amounted to just about everyone else in the world. He had burned through most of his friends, and I was about the last one who would even take his phone calls, and I was at wit’s end.
My friend is Jewish, so one of the places I turned for help and advice was a rabbi. The rabbi is a kind and generous man who listened with sympathy as I described the situation. He affirmed the things we were doing, and then said, “God helps those who help themselves.”
We’d certainly arrived at and past the point where the community resources available to help my friend were only going to work if he would take the step of using them, so the rabbi’s words sounded true and rang with the authority of scripture.
Like three-fourths of Americans, I believed that they were words of scripture. I figured they were from Proverbs, and that the rabbi was probably more familiar than I with Hebrew scriptures that we call the Old Testament.
It was only a couple of years later, that I came to understand that the rabbi, rather than speaking Biblical truth, was actually giving voice to the most common American heresy. I was in my own dark place – having been fired from a church in Pittsburgh, unemployed, the five of us staying with my mother-in-law (I love my mother-in-law, but it does not get much darker). I was trying to help myself – applying for jobs, interviewing, praying, making contacts.
In fact, and this may be too much information, I was in the shower in a motel in Lansing, Michigan, when I began to see the light. Cheryl and I were getting ready to hit the road back to her mom’s house having completed an interview with a fascinating little Presbyterian church in Lansing. We both felt that it might just be the place, and they had extended a provisional call.
It was now up to me to decide. And then the phone rang.
Out of the blue, the phone rang in our motel room. It was the Rev. John Lentz, senior pastor of Forest Hill Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. Through a circuitous and rather unlikely series of connections, I had been invited to apply for the position of interim associate pastor there. It was not something I was particularly interested in.
But when I returned the call, something in the conversation struck me, and we decided to detour through Cleveland on the way back to Cheryl’s mom’s.
As most of you who are familiar with my history know, I wound up taking the job in Cleveland – the lowest paying, least long-term stability of any of the three positions that I had offers or strong indications of offers at that point.
I took it believing that I might have something to offer the church at Forest Hill, but I learned quickly that this was not about me at all. It was about them. It was about their opportunity to minister to me. It was not about God helping me when I helped myself at all. Rather, it was about God reaching out through that community to help me when I was least capable of helping myself.
You see, the God everywhere attested to in scripture is not a God known primarily for helping those who help themselves, but is instead a God who helps precisely the ones who cannot help themselves – the enslaved Israelites, the exiles in Babylon, those living under the thumb of the Roman Empire. The God attested to in scripture is the God of Isaiah 55, who invites us to eat and drink from the table of grace whether or not we can pay for it, the God whose thoughts are not our thoughts, whose ways are not our ways – especially not our ways of consumerism, careerism, individualism.
This is not the god of American popular imagination who celebrates the success of rugged individuals who pull themselves up by their own bootstraps; this is the God who comforts those who have no boots to begin with. This is not the god who blesses the powerful and mighty; this is the God who reaches into the dark corners of the world to bring light and love. This is not the god who gives the rich good things to eat; this is the God who brings the bread of life to the hungry.
This is the God who clothes the lilies of the field in extravagance even though they neither toil nor spin. This is the God who blesses creation with an abundance sufficient to the day for both the birds of the air and for we creatures who dwell a little lower than the angels.
This is the God of infinite grace who gives beyond measure a love and mercy and abundance that we did not and could not earn no matter how much or how little we may be capable of helping ourselves. This is good news! For the God of love does not wait until we are able to help ourselves, but rather – through the hands and feet and hearts and minds of the beloved – reaches into our lives in their darkest moments to bring light and more light. We can, of course, choose to dwell in deepest darkness, but in this season of abundance, why would we?
To this God of light, on this Sunday before Thanksgiving, let us return thanks upon thanks for grace upon grace. Amen.
Rev. Dr. David Ensign

Stewardship of the Heart

Matt. 6:19-22

Nov. 12, 2006

The sermon title this morning is “Stewardship of the Heart,” and to be good stewards of our hearts it is good to acknowledge when they are hurting. I know many of our hearts are hurting this morning as a result of the passage of the marriage amendment last Tuesday. But as I said last Sunday, no result of a ballot measure – for better or for worse – is going to herald the coming of the kingdom. The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Now sometimes it seems longer than others, and this is one of those times. But I assure you of this: our fundamental equality does not rise or fall on the result of any election, because each and every one of us is created equally in the image of a loving God.

Let our hearts be reassured by that unshakeable conviction, and let us tend to each other’s hearts with compassion.

Indeed, the care of the heart is the heart of the matter this morning, and Jesus knew something critical about that care.

Now my doctor believes that she knows something critical about the care of my heart, and I’m quite sure that she’s right about it, so I’ve been eating a lot of oatmeal lately. Trying to keep the cholesterol under control. Trying to keep the heart healthy.

“What are the numbers?” the doctor wants to know.

“Where is your treasure?” That’s what Jesus wants to know. Where is your treasure? Because Jesus knows your heart will be there, and that is, after all, the heart of the matter. All that Jesus cares about, in the end, is the condition of our hearts. So it’s important that we listen, especially when our hearts feel a bit bruised.

Of course, Jesus’ question is a whole lot more difficult to answer than the doctor’s inquiry. It’s a particularly difficult question to answer if we don’t first step back and ask ourselves, “what is our treasure?” So, what is it that we treasure? Money? Riches? Wealth? Fortune? Jewels? Gold? Those are just a few of the common and baser synonyms for treasure. Most of us claim that they are not what we really treasure. What do we really treasure? Most of us claim family and friends, meaningful work, good food and drink.

Heck, I made those claims to myself as I was writing this last week – on one of the three computers in my half-million dollar home in South Arlington, where I was comfortably hanging out in my $100 running shoes, keeping in contact with the world on my cell phone and preparing to drive up here in our new(-to-us) Honda with my $350 Trek bicycle on the back (so I could get in a nice ride on the wonderful bike trails that this incredibly affluent county provides) … but, no, surely I don’t treasure material things.

After all, as one of our children’s friends famously said of me some years ago, I’m a soul man! A minister of the word and sacrament. Taken up with holy things and spiritual matters. Surely, I don’t treasure material things.

Hm, let’s see … new Palm pilot – not that it’s important to me or anything; portable DVD player; digital camera; cell phones; flash drive; CDs; car keys.

The mirror of reality reflects disturbing pictures sometimes. Personally, that’s why I don’t look in it too often – unless I’m wearing my cashmere jacket, which just looks so fine that I can’t take my eyes off it!

Hm … where my treasure is, there will be my heart.

So, let’s talk a bit about money, shall we. Let’s squirm together – even more than if we were talking about sex. It’s funny – our American attitudes toward money, and how uncomfortable we all get when we talk about it. We may talk a good line about measuring life by yardsticks other than money, but our palpable discomfort in talking about it suggests that the relationship if far more complicated than we’d like to admit to ourselves.

But the great challenge and opportunity of stewardship time in a church lie precisely in the complicated relationship between our money and our hearts. So, for the health of our hearts, let’s see if we can be honest with ourselves, with one another, and with God when it comes to our money.

I start with a significant advantage in this effort, because all of you who pay any attention to the church budget know exactly how much I am paid – a tad less than $60,000 for 2006. It’s posted on the session bulletin board at the end of the main hall – about as public as it can be.

Now, to give that figure some context, let’s set it within a global pay scale. If we laid out global income on a line stretching the length of the sanctuary and put the poorest of the poor up front closest to the cross – you can choose your own symbolism there – and put the richest of the rich way back there by the last pew, then I’d be a good and proper Presbyterians sitting in the very back row – in the richest one percent of the global population. I’m not lonely back here, though. The median per-capita income in Virginia puts most all of us in the richest five percent.

Ah, but, of course, the money doesn’t really mean that much to me – or so I say to comfort myself and reassure myself of the health of my heart.

But do I live that way? What do I do with that money? Where do I spend it? What do I use if for? Where my treasure is, there also is my heart. In other words, check out my check book if you want to check on my heart.

One of the core convictions of Christian faith is simply that our hearts are most healthy when we are living close to Jesus. As Augustine suggested, “our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Christ.”

If we want our hearts to be healthy and whole, we need them to find rest there where he is. And where is that?

As I wrote on my blog last week, this question of healthy hearts is, in fact the heart of an authentic theology of incarnation. While classical Reformed understandings of the incarnation focus on the challenge of holding God and the human person, Jesus, in creative and saving relationship, incarnation is actually an unfolding reality in the world.
That forces us to think about location: if the love of God is incarnate in the world through the living Christ of faith, then where does this Jesus stand? More to the point: where do we stand?

Taking the gospels seriously -- especially Matthew 25 -- makes it clear that Jesus stands with the outcasts and oppressed, the poor and the sick, those seeking peace and justice. If we want to stand with him, if we feel any desire to know him and be known by him, we have to go where he is. If we want our hearts healed by his love and grace, our hearts must be where he is.

So the question becomes: is our treasure there?

It’s not so much a question of putting our money where our mouths are as it is of acknowledging that our hearts are where our money is – no matter where our mouths are.

That is to say, a stewardship of the heart is about walking the walk and is not so concerned with talking the talk.

So this month – stewardship season at CPC – do a heart checkup. It’s a bit more complicated than a cholesterol check – although it doesn’t involve needles or blood! It can, however, involve some straightforward numbers.

Are you striving for a Biblical tithe – at least 10 percent of your income going to those places where we know Jesus is – there with the hungry, the poor, the outcast, the marginalized, those working for peace and justice?

In our household, it works out to some $9,000 to give away to the church and to other worthy programs, projects and political causes that advance the work of justice and peace. We’re not there yet, but each year we get closer and the effort drives our lives closer and closer to conformity with our core values.

You see, in the end, a stewardship of the heart is a mere matter of seeing where your treasure actually is, and judging whether or not it’s where you really want it to be. For where your treasure is, there also will be your heart.

As Studs Terkel observed, “action engenders hope.” No action creates more hope than the act of giving. It moves mountains; it heals hearts.

I am utterly convinced that the more of our treasure we give to help others, the healthier our hearts become, and the freer our lives become. So as you consider your finances this fall, and the gift you bring to Christ’s work at Clarendon, liberate your hearts and put your treasure there where Jesus is already at work in the world tending to broken hearts in an often broken world. Amen.

Rev. Dr. David Ensign

Toward a Politics of Justice

A Politics of Justice

Matthew 7:1-5

November 5, 2006

It is, in case you somehow missed it, the Sunday before election day. So, as we used to say in Chicago, remember to vote early and vote often!

I’m just kidding! Of course, in a political season, one has to be very careful about jokes, as John Kerry taught us all last week. When your clerk of session works for the county election board, election jokes are of questionable wisdom, for sure.

So, did you hear this oldie about Florida Democrats and Republicans? How can you tell the difference between the two? The Republicans can’t count, and the Democrats can’t read.

OK, moving right along.

Seriously, elections are serious business and it is important, as well as decent and orderly, for each of us to participate in the process and follow the leading of our hearts as we make decisions about candidates and issues.

It is more important to understand that the coming of the kingdom does not depend upon the results of any ballot question or election – God is not a Republican … or a Democrat. Likewise, elections are but a small part of our responsibility to the body politic and our responsibility, as people of faith, for building a politics of justice.

In campaign seasons we hear a lot of high-minded talk about significant public issues. Weighty words such as justice get tossed around quite a bit. But somehow, the discourse always seems to revolve more around “just us” than it does “justice.”

You know, “it’s just us married straight folks who merit the legal protection and social standing of marriage.” And “it’s just us affluent folks who deserve decent housing in places such as Northern Virginia.” And “it’s just us folks with health insurance who merit decent health care.” And “it’s just us Americans who get to wage preemptive war.”

When questions of justice are framed as decisions that may be contrary to the interests of “just us,” then our politics devolves into the sound and fury of swear and counter-swear seldom signifying a clear “yes” or “no.”

And what of the Biblical image of justice? Walter Brueggemann provocatively suggests that justice in scripture amounts to this: sorting out what belongs to whom and returning it. So, what of sorting out and returning?

If marriage belongs to those who long to commit their lives to one another, then the Biblical image of justice demands that we craft an institution to bless and sustain that commitment no matter the sexual orientation of the partners. If housing and health care belong to folks who are homeless and hungry, then the Biblical image of justice demands that we craft policies and institutions to house and to heal no matter the economic means of the hungry and homeless. If peace belongs to us all, then the Biblical image of justice demands that we seek peace and pursue it, no matter the perceived risk to national interests.

In the powerful words of The Confession of 1967, “The church, in its own life, is called to practice the forgiveness of enemies and to commend to the nations as practical politics the search for cooperation and peace. This search requires that the nations pursue fresh and responsible relations across every line of conflict, even at risk to national security, to reduce areas of strife and to broaden international understanding.”

When it comes to how we treat one another – whether in broadly public or intimately private matters – Jesus demands clarity. It is not enough to offer up eloquent promises sworn in the name of a grand theme or even in the name of God. Instead, Jesus demands a simple clarity of purpose and, as the entirety of the Sermon on the Mount makes clear, a clarity of action as well.

In other words, it does us no good to talk about the sanctity of marriage in public and to swear on the alter of family values to uphold the institution, while neglecting our own loved ones and damaging or destroying our own intimate relationships through our own faults and failures, our own deceits and deceptions, our own brokenness and sin. This is equally true for Republicans or Democrats, for conservatives or progressives, for straights and gays, for women and for men.

As the Confession of ’67 reminds us so clearly, “Anarchy in sexual relationships is a symptom of alienation from God, neighbors, and self.”

If we are not living into the reality of reconciliation, of overcoming that alienation and meaninglessness, then our relationships will break and remain broken – whether they be heterosexual relationships or same-sex relationships.

Even beyond the confusion of sexuality and the question of marriage – this is true of every human relationship, relationships between parent and child, relationships between friends, relationships between colleagues. If we are not living deeply compassionate lives, full of grace and mercy and open to God’s reconciling love, then we can preach family values all we want but still find ourselves leading lonely and broken lives shaped by broken and debased values.

In the same way, it does no good to swear on the altar of nonviolence and publicly decry the present war, while, at the same time, treating colleagues or family members violently in word or maneuver or action.

As Gandhi famously said, “we must be the change we wish to see in the world.” Our “yes” must be “yes,” and our “no” must be “no” with an unmistakable constancy. If we want marriage to be compassionate and loving, we must be compassionate and loving. If we want a world of peace, we must live peacefully in every aspect of our own lives.

A politics of justice must be built on a foundation on such constancy of purpose and of action. Moreover, such a politics must be understood broadly as the ordering of our common life.

Politics is not the narrow pursuit of self interest nor the partisan pursuit of power. Politics cannot be reduced to elections. Instead, politics is the constant working out of our common interests and it demands of us a broad and generous spirit that seeks always the intersections of our deepest self interests.

That’s why Jesus can speak of reconciling with opponents, loving enemies, walking second miles. For our deepest self interests are always common interests. The personal is, always already, political.

So come Tuesday, vote your deepest self interest as it is shaped and informed by your deepest values; and come Wednesday, no matter the outcomes of the races you care about, live each moment out of those same deep values.

Together we can build a politics of justice by living lives that are about more than just us. Amen.

Rev. Dr. David Ensign