A
sermon preached at Kowloon Union Church on Sunday 29 September 2019, Sixteenth
Sunday after Pentecost, by the Rev. Dr. Judy Chan. The scripture readings that day were Amos 6:1a, 4-7, I Timothy 6: 6-19,
Luke 16:19-31.
Good
morning.
Today’s
Gospel reading from Luke is again one of Jesus’ favorite topics – money. If you
were here last week, you heard Timothy’s very good sermon on money so you might
be thinking what’s left to say? I have to give Timothy credit for explaining a
very difficult passage – the Parable of the Dishonest Manager. I was glad I
wasn’t preaching last week. But I am preaching today and the lectionary reading
is the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. I might have the opposite problem
that Timothy had. His parable was hard to understand in many ways. My parable
seems not so hard to understand in any way. But in any case, if Jesus felt the
need to say more about money, who are we not to pay attention? So, please pay
attention and I’ll try my best.
The
Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus has two unique features. One, the setting –
it’s the only parable of Jesus that has a scene in the afterlife. Two, it’s the
only parable that gives a character a name. In this case – Lazarus, a short
form of the Hebrew name Eleazar. It means “God helps”. Very appropriate!
The
drama has two acts – the 1st act: what happens to the two men in
this life; the 2nd act what happens after they die. In this life,
the rich man is very, very rich. We know so by his extravagant lifestyle.
Lazarus, on the other hand, is very, very poor. We know so because he has to be
laid at the rich man’s gate to beg besides being covered with sores. He’s dying
to get a scrap of food from the rich man’s table. His only companions are a
pack of dogs at the gate, who lick his wounds in sympathy.
Eventually
both men die. Lazarus doesn’t get a funeral. But the Bible says he was taken by
angelic pallbearers to rest in the bosom of Abraham. Then the rich man dies. He
has a proper burial. But to his surprise, when he arrives on the other side,
he’s the one in torment – burning up and dying of thirst. Then he looks across
the great chasm. Who does he see? Lazarus right next to the great patriarch
Abraham. What a reversal of fortunes!
But
this no-longer rich man won’t give up his privilege so easily. “Father
Abraham,” he calls out. “Have mercy on me. Send good old Lazarus over here to
give me a drop of water to cool my burning tongue!” Wow, even in Hades, the
rich man still acted like he had servants. But it’s no use. “Sorry, child,”
says Abraham. “In Act 1, you got all the good things and Lazarus got all the
bad things. This is Act 2, you have to swap places. Anyway, even if he wanted
to come over to give you a drop of water, it’s impossible. This separation
between you and Lazarus is permanent.”
You’d
think the rich man would be silenced after this news. But he keeps bargaining.
“OK, then, Father. If he can’t do anything for me, send Lazarus back to my
father’s home. I’ve got 5 brothers. They probably remember good old Lazarus.
Let him warn my brothers what’s happened so they won’t end up here too.”
Now
on the surface, this might be a reasonable request, wouldn’t it? Of course, it
involves sending Lazarus as his errand boy again. But there were other stories
in ancient times when such a request was made and granted. Someone was sent
back to warn the living about the dead. And it worked. They changed from bad to
good and lived happily ever after.
So,
I’m sure Jesus’ listeners thought this was where their story was going…but
surprise! Abraham refuses. Why?
Because,
he says, your brothers already have everything they need to know. It’s in the
Bible they read every day. Doesn’t God say again and again in Scripture: show compassion to the needy? It’s in
Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Micah,
Zechariah, Malachi. What else do they need? The problem isn’t lack of
information. The problem is lack of obedience.
Well,
you’d think that rebuke would settle it. But no…the rich man tries one more
time.
“Oh,
Father Abraham, I hear you. But the Bible’s not enough for my brothers. They
need something extra to get through their thick skulls. I promise you if
someone comes back from the dead to warn them, they’ll repent.”
“Nonsense!”
says Abraham.” A miracle’s no use to this kind of people. If your brothers
won’t listen to Moses and the prophets, someone rising from the dead isn’t
going to convince them either. Believe me, it’s happened before and it’ll
happen again. Without the eyes of faith, the resurrection doesn’t mean a
thing.” End of discussion.
When
we hear this parable today, it seems things haven’t changed much in the past
2000 years, have they? There are still the super-rich in this world. There are
still the ultra-poor. And there are still those for whom the resurrection
doesn’t mean a thing. So, the message remains the same. We have to take care of the poor and
marginalized, because God is on their side. If those who ‘have’ refuse to share
with those who ‘don’t have’, be prepared to trade places in eternity.
So,
where does that leave us this morning? As a church and individually?
As
a church, I have to say, I think KUC’s got the message. For one, we’re not a
wealthy church and we don’t try to become one. Two, we generously share what we
do have: our money, our building, our pastors, our love, our time, our
expertise and our reputation. We serve both those outside KUC as well as those
in need in our church family. Of course, we’re not perfect, some may think we
don’t do enough; others think we do too much. But either way, we’ve got the
message loud and clear – God says take care of the needy. And we obey.
On
a personal level, however, I think there is more that could be said. Each of us
here today is also accountable to God for how we spend our money, what we do
with our possessions, what kind of lifestyle we live. Not everyone has the same
resources and financial situation, but everyone can do something for someone
else besides themselves. God doesn’t ask us to give what we don’t have, but
what we do have God expects us to share.
There’s
a story about a Sunday School class of young boys and girls. The teacher said,
“There’s a missionary coming next week to our church. How many of you if you
had a $1000 would give it all to God’s mission? Every child raised their hand.
How many of you if you had $100 would give it all to God’s mission? Every child
again raised their hand. How many if you had $1 would give it all to God’s
mission? Every child raised their hand, except little Johnny. The teacher was puzzled.
“Johnny, why didn’t you raise your hand?” Johnny squirmed in his seat and
quietly said, “Because I have $1 in my pocket.”
Another
story. A mother gave her daughter $2 as allowance for the week. She said you
can spend $1 on whatever you like, but the other dollar is for the offering. It
belongs to God. Susie happily went to the candy store before church to buy her
favorite treat. On the way, she tripped. One dollar fell out of her hand and
rolled down the drainage hole on the street. “Oh, dear,” said Susie. “There
goes your dollar, God!”
We
may smile at the way children think, but are we that different? Generosity in
theory is fine but giving in practice is somewhat harder.
One
more dollar story – this time about adults. I heard of a minister who preached
on the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. At the end of the sermon, he
decided to take it one step further. He gave each person sitting in the
congregation a US$1 bill. He said use it the following week to help someone
like Lazarus. Any way you want, just come back next week and tell us what you
did. The response from the congregation was fantastic. The assignment set their
imagination on fire, and the next week they were so excited to share what they
had done. Many told the pastor that was the best sermon he ever preached.
Now,
don’t get your hopes up. I’m not giving away any money today. But I think the
key to the success of that pastor’s sermon was giving them money to put in
their wallet, rather than asking them to take money out. Why? So they would say
to themselves, this isn’t my money. Someone gave it to me to help someone else.
So that’s what I have to do.
Isn’t
that really the truth about all the money in our wallet? And the things in our
house? And our job and family and this earth? We don’t own any of it. It all
belongs to God. And God gave it to us to take care of our basic needs and make
sure everyone else has their basic needs met too. So that’s what we have to do.
There’s a famous saying attributed to Gandhi: "The world has enough for everyone's needs, but not enough for everyone's greed."
In
the epistle reading from I Timothy Chapter 6, St. Paul urges us to be rich in
good works, generous and ready to share. That’s how we build up our treasure
for the future. Aim for what he calls “the life that really is life”. That
starts of course with the basic necessities like food, clothing and shelter.
But that’s not where it ends. There are also things we desperately need that
even money can’t buy, things that are priceless because they’re not for sale.
A
wise person once wrote:
You can buy a soft bed with money but
not a good night’s sleep.
You can buy an expensive watch with
money but not time.
You can buy companions with money, but
not true friends.
You can buy a comfortable life with
money, but not inner peace.
You can buy religion with money, but
not salvation.
You can buy your own paradise with money but not the Kingdom of Heaven.
“Why do we love the things we can
get for ourselves better than the things God wants to give us?” It all belongs to God in the first place. And if we forget that, we
will very likely, like the rich man, find ourselves in last place.
Let me close by telling you one more
story to bring this home. It’s a folktale though I’m not sure of the origin. It
perhaps comes from Asia. The version I share comes from Fr. Anthony de Mello,
the well-known Indian Jesuit priest and spiritual writer.
An
old woman died and was taken to the Judgement Seat by the angels. While
examining her records however, the judge couldn’t find a single act of kindness
performed by her except for a carrot she had once given to a starving beggar.
Such,
however, is the power of a single deed of love. It was decreed that she be
taken up to heaven on the strength of that one carrot. The carrot was brought
to court and given to her. The moment she caught hold of it, it began to rise
as if pulled by some invisible string lifting her up towards the sky.
A
beggar appeared. He clutched on to the hem of her garment and was lifted along
with her; a third person caught hold of the beggar’s foot and was lifted too.
Soon there was a long line of persons being lifted up to heaven by that one
carrot. And, strange as it may seem, the woman didn’t feel the weight of all
those people who held on to her; in fact, since she was looking heavenward, she
didn’t notice any burden at all.
Higher
and higher they rose until they were almost near the pearly gates. That’s when
the woman looked back to catch a last glimpse of the earth and saw this whole
train of people behind her. She was furious! She angrily waved her hand at
them, shouting: “Off! Off, all of you! I paid for this carrot. It’s mine!” As
she tried to push them off, she let go of the carrot for a moment, and down,
down she fell with all those poor souls.
Fr.
Anthony concludes: There is only one
cause for every evil on earth: The words - “This belongs to me!”
# posted by Kowloon Union Church : Sunday, September 29, 2019
A sermon preached at Kowloon Union Church on Sunday 22 September
2019, Fifteenth
Sunday after Pentecost, by Timothy Chan. The scripture readings that day were Amos 8:4–7, Psalm 79, Luke
16:1–13.
Good morning
everyone, the scriptures we have read this morning are concerning a sensitive
topic in church, Money. In the book of Amos, the Lord condemns economic
inequality and human trafficking! Then we read about the parable in Luke that
Jesus seems to approve and praise the shrewdness of the dishonest manager. Is
this parable a lesson on wealth management? Or is Jesus teaching us the right
way to approach life? Either way, I believe God is calling us back to the
basic. Let’s pray before we look closer into the parable.
Gracious God, we thank you
for entrusting us and the church many resources, including money. Teach us the
right way to use all these as we live and help us to understand that the
ultimate concern in our life is to serve you. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
I will divide my
sermon into two part. In the first part, I will be reflecting how we should see
money based on the scriptures we read this morning. In the second part, I will
be suggesting some ideas on how we
should apply this parable into our Christian faith.
Let’s start with the
Old Testament reading, the book of Amos 8:4-7 illustrates how the Israelites
did business and how they trample on the needy and exploit the poor. It all
begins with an uneven wealth distribution where a handful of people controlling
most of the resource and also the market. In the scripture, they were saying to
each other, let’s do business after the Sabbath and the New Moon. These two
events are important to the Jewish people religiously and culturally. But the
businessmen were actually complaining, “When will it be over? Because I cannot
do business in these days!” These people do not care about observing the
Sabbath and New Moon. For them, these are just two days affecting their
business.
Not only they
disregard God and religious tradition, the scriptures said they trample on the
poor and needy. They made deceitful trade and false balance, and when the poor
do not have enough money to pay, they would sell them into slavery! According
to the scholars, the rich people at the time were the loan sharks, and they
rely on interests and confiscation of other’s property to accumulate their
wealth and power. That’s why they target the poor and devour their property and
sell them as slave. God is condemning these people because they put money and
their own benefit higher than God, and they mistreated and exploited other
human being for more income.
So the problem is
not money itself, but how people would disregard God and humanity to attain it.
However, is there any money which is righteous in nature? To some extends, we
are still living in a world with serious economic inequality and human
exploitation. If it is a system, then all money would be unrighteous. So when
we are reading this parable in Luke, Jesus is referring the unrighteous
wealth as earthly, temporary and perishable, comparing to the true
riches, which are heavenly, eternal and imperishable. And he is telling his
disciples to learn from this dishonest manager.
Let’s look at the
parable carefully, the rich man mentioned in the scripture might be one of loan
sharks, relying on interests and debts to accumulate his wealth. Then there is
a dishonest manager who manages the account.
He was in trouble because someone reports to the rich man that the
manager wasting his money, and he was fired by his boss. Before officially
leaving his position, he calls his master's debtors one by one to reduce their
debt. By giving a favour to them, the manager hopes that they would welcome him
when he loses his job. Very smart indeed, even his master is commending his shrewdness.
Jesus is telling
his disciples that in verse 8 and 9. “For the sons of this world are more
shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light. And I tell
you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when
it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.” Jesus is somehow
encouraging his disciples to be smarter in dealing with money, and yes, not to
be afraid to utilize the unrighteous wealth. I think Jesus is aware that we
cannot live outside of this system and it is inevitable for us to deal with
earthly wealth.
In the story, the
manager is praised because he is using his master’s money, dishonestly, to make
a better future for himself. The dishonest manager does not see money as an end
goal, he cares for his life more than how much money he can keep. This is
exactly the difference between the book of Amos and this parable. In the Book
of Amos, those businessmen only care about the money, and they don’t care about
people’s life. In this parable, the main concern of this manager is his
well-being, money is never his concern. So, the manager is actually using that
unjust/earthly money to create a new purpose. Jesus is telling this parable to
his disciples, hoping that they can learn to use money for an eternal purpose.
In verse 11, Jesus
says “11 If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous
wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?” There are people thinking we
Christians, or the people who serves God shouldn’t be talking too much about
money, offering, church investment, and wealth management, because we believe
that God will provide what we need. We
are taught that we should focus on the riches in heaven, not the earthly one.
And Hey Jesus said, if we are not faithful in the earthly and unrighteous
wealth, we will not be entrusted the true and heavenly riches. So what to do?
Do we need to start investment class in the church now? No, I think the key
word in this passage is “faithful”. So it comes to the second part of my sermon, of how
are we going to apply this teaching in our life and in our church.
Being faithful is the key of how we should manage our
life, including money. In another
parable, Jesus talked about faithful servants who invest the money and make
profit and scold the other servant lazy for doing nothing to the money.
Therefore, we come to understand that being faithful is to utilize the
potential God has given to each one of us. If we are given a gift to sing, but
we don’t, then we might not be faithful. If we are given so much love, but we
are not sharing, we might not be faithful. If the church is given so much
talents and gifts, but we are not using it and not taking care of the people
God has given to us, then we are not being faithful! If we want to be a
faithful servant or a faithful community, we must go back to basic.
First of all, we need to know how much potential we
have. The first basic is self-understanding. If you do not know of your
talent and gift, it is difficult for you to fulfill your potential. On the
other hand, we might be content with what we have, and we are very used to the
comfort zone we are in. Then we become complacent. We might be satisfied with
the current situation, and stop ourselves from reaching our potential. To
understand our potential is a journey of uncertainty, sometime we have to
experience failures to know our limit. There are also times that we need to
work hard to have a breakthrough in our life. After all, being faithful is to
try our best. Only if we try, we would know what we are capable of. We are all
created by God in God’s own image. The best way to understand our own potential
is to ask our creator. The journey of understanding ourselves is also a journey
to understand God, and we are able to have a glimpse of his plan for us. Only
if we understand ourselves through the love of God, we would truly be faithful
to the purpose God has given to each one of us.
The second basic thing we need to learn is to pay
attention to the small detail. When
I first became a Christian, I have liked this verse. Verse 10 “One who is
faithful in a very little is also faithful in much”. It became my serving
spirit. I started to pay attention to small detail, things that people don’t
see, and do things that people in the church do not like to do. For example,
arranging the seats in the church. I remember in my church, we used to have
paper rulers of 14.5 inches help to arranging the seats. My church is much
bigger than KUC, we have around 600 seats in the church. and that 14.5 inches
ruler is the distance between the two chairs. I remember, after every prayer
meeting, I will be helping to measure if all chairs in the church are placed
exactly 14.5 inches away from each other. It sounds crazy in KUC where we are
more casual with how the pews are arranged, but it helps me a lot, I started to
see things that people used to miss and by doing the least thing in the church,
I had the opportunity to know more about the church and how things work. Only
if you are faithful to small things, people would find you trustworthy and
reliable. From little things, people can tell what kind of a person you are. I
am still learning to pay attention to small detail, like how I talk and how I
live my life when there is no one seeing me. These are the fundamentals in our
life, and I believe if we have a good foundation, we would grow higher and
firmer.
Finally, the third basic thing is our motive. The motive of us managing wealth, or time, or our
life is to serve God and His people. In verse 13 it says, “No servant can serve
two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be
devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” As I
explain earlier, the dishonest manager was praised because he has transformed
the purpose of the unrighteous wealth. If we are serving money, then the goal
is to accumulate more of it. There can be no end. This is what it means by
worshipping money, which is to put money as the end goal. But if we are serving
God, everything, including money, would then become one of the means to serve,
for a greater and eternal purpose. It is about placing money in the right
position in our life, not too high, but not too low. When we are clear of our
motive, to recognize God as the ultimate concern in our life, we can use and
manage wealth for eternal values. Therefore, thinking about things related to
money can sometimes be very spiritual if you have a right motive. But of
course, at the end of the day, God knows our motives, for he is the one who
searches our heart and know our every thought.
Friends, sometimes we are so overwhelmed by the
things happening around us, where we have lost our focus. We may have put our
attention on the earthly/temporary/perishable things but forget about the
heavenly/imperishable things. But the parable today reminds that they are
related. The way we approach our earthly life is like a test for us. Are we
faithful to what are entrusted to us? Look at our society today, look at our
earth today, are we doing a good job being a faithful servant? We all have a
role to play, but do we know have this self-understanding to know what we can
do? and are we aware of the small things around us? There may be a lot we can
do already. Finally, we are doing all these for God, to witness his love and justice
in the world we are living in. May God help each one of us and KUC to be a
faithful servant and a faithful community. Amen.
# posted by Kowloon Union Church : Sunday, September 22, 2019
