PROPER 17C - Ecclesiasticus 10:7-18; Psalm 112; Hebrews 13:1-8; Luke 14:1, 7-14 -

2 September 2007 - A sermon preached by The Rev. Peter A. Munson for St. Ambrose Episcopal Church, Boulder, Colorado

 

A Mission of Receiving and Giving

 

My son, Zach, and I went to the “Rocky Mountain Showdown” yesterday - the football game between Colorado State and the University of Colorado. It was a wonderful game, full of anxious moments for both sides. The lead went back and forth, as it tends to do when teams are equally matched. What did it cost me to see this exciting football game? Two tickets: $110. Two rides on the RTD bus: $12. A soft drink and a snack (I brought some other drinks and snacks) $10. Total cost: $132. Chance to continue a tradition with my son, enjoy his company, and see the right team win? Priceless.

 

I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Because of the things I heard from my parents when I grew up, though, and the things I know about the world, there is a part of me that stops and thinks a bit about that $132. You see, I still think $132 is a fair amount of money. And there are these little bells from my past that go off in my head, whenever money is spent. Am I worth it? Sure, I was sitting seven rows from the very top of the stadium, but I was there. There are many people in the world who could never go to a game like this, could never afford it, can’t even dream about it. For many people in the world, $132 is 66 days of living. For the poorest of the poor in our world, $132 is 132 days of living.

 

Does that mean that I am supposed to go to the Rocky Mountain Showdown and feel guilty - feel so guilty that I don’t enjoy the game? Feel so guilty that I say something that might spoil the game for my son? No. I don’t think that’s what God wants. I think it’s more like this: God wants me to think about and appreciate how blessed I am, and acknowledge the One who is behind the blessings. And yes, in addition to receiving and appreciating the blessings that come from God, God wants me to think about how the other half of the world lives. God even wants me to think about how the other 90% of the world lives. And God wants me to orient my life in such a way that I do more than just think about such people. My life has to intersect with their lives in some way that has something to do with passing on blessings, in some way that has to do with giving and being generous.

 

GOD’S STANCE TOWARD THE POOR

 

How do I know this? Is it partly because I heard as a child, “Clean your plate. There are children starving in Africa who would love to have those last bites of food, you know.”? That’s part of it. But the bigger reason I know that my life is somehow supposed to connect with the lives of the poor is because I read the Bible. Pick the Bible up and start reading almost anywhere, and what you discover is that God has the poor in mind. According to the Bible, one of the main things that God pays attention to is how the rich - those who have been blessed - treat the poor.

 

Today’s readings are an example of that. In our first reading, we hear: “Arrogance is hateful to the Lord and to mortals, and injustice is outrageous to both.”

 

Our Psalm talks about the righteous being “merciful and full of compassion”, being “generous in lending” and managing their affairs with justice. There is an awareness of the fate and fortune of others that drips from the pages of the Bible. God cares about people, and how they live - especially the poor. That is one of the main things we learn if we pick up a Bible and pay attention. God sees the unseeable people, the people that you and I would rather not see.

 

Was this true about Jesus, the One we call the Incarnation of God? He ate with people and talked with people who were shunned and unclean and despised - the “unseeables” and therefore the “unknowables” - the tax collectors and lepers and “sinners” of his day. They weren’t all poor. But some of them were. We hear him today give advice to a leader of the Pharisees, who had invited Jesus over for a meal on the sabbath.

 

“When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” (Luke 14:12-14)

 

As I said, I thoroughly enjoyed myself at the football game yesterday. But this is the thing about reading the Bible and saying, “What are you saying to me, Lord?” We get challenged, a lot of times. I don’t hear the Lord saying anything like, “You aren’t worth it, Pete. You shouldn’t be able to go and enjoy yourself at a game with your son.” No. What I hear is God saying, “You are of extreme value to me, as are all my people.” I hear the Lord saying, “Remember those who might never come to a game like this, and connect your life to theirs somehow.”

 

I hear something like this: “When you go to football game, do not invite your friends or your children or your rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you go to football game, invite the poor. Invite someone who couldn’t pay you back.”

 

God isn’t saying, “Don’t invite your son to the game. Don’t have a great time with him.” But I think God is saying to me, just as Jesus said to this leader of the Pharisees, “Who are you not inviting, that you could be inviting?”

 

A BASIC RULE IN FOOTBALL

 

I noticed something about the rules of football yesterday. When one team scores, they “kick off” to the other team. What does this mean? It means they give the ball to the other team and say, “Now it’s your turn. See if you can score and celebrate.” Even in a violent, super-competitive sport like football, there is a rule, inherent to the game, that says, “This is only fair. You get a chance to score, too.”

 

It’s not “make it-take it” basketball on the playground, where if my team scores a basket, we get the ball again, and keep it as long as we keep scoring. No. I score. I kick the ball off to you. You try to score.

 

There was one huge momentum-changing play in the game yesterday. It was early in the third quarter. CSU had just scored, and they surprised CU by executing a perfect on-sides kick - kicking the ball hard off of one of the up front CU players, and then recovering the ball and keeping it for themselves. Was it unfair? No. Part of football is strategy and out-thinking your opponent. But in this case, CU was caught off guard because they were thinking it was their turn. They were thinking the ball would just be kicked off to them in the normal way, and they would get a chance to show what they could do with it.

 

God says to you and to me, “You’ve been blessed. You’ve scored already. Don’t try to run up the score until it is 77-0! Kick the ball off to someone who hasn’t scored yet.”

 

A PART OF OUR MISSION

 

Bishop O’Neill has been talking about the mission of the Church quite a bit since he became our bishop, and rightly so. When I was on vacation, I did some thinking about that. I was thinking about our sense of mission at St. Ambrose, and I was thinking about it this way: How connected is my life to the poor? How connected are our lives, as upper middle class Americans - which makes us some of the truly rich people in the world - how connected are our lives to the poor?

 

As things happen sometimes, while I was thinking and praying about all this, and feeling convicted by God that we needed a place where we could have an ongoing mission project, where we establish relationships with people over a period of time, I got invited - right in the middle of my vacation, right in the middle of this prayer time - to a silent auction that was raising money for an orphanage in Mexico. A neighbor two blocks away from me has been very involved in supporting the work of this orphanage, which has been the vision and loving work of a Mexican couple in Chihuahua, Fidel and Mariana Rubio. Anyway, I told my friend, Tom, “I’d really like to come, but I will be climbing 14ers that weekend.” Julia and I talked and we decided she would go, and I would hear more about it from her.

 

Well, after my friends and I climbed two fourteeners on the first day of climbing, we said to ourselves, “You know. We’re pretty tired. Let’s drive home and climb that other mountain we planned to climb another day.” So we came home a day early - in time for me to go and hear Fidel and Mariana Rubio speak about how God led them to care for the orphaned children of Chihuahua. Let’s just say it was a very moving evening...

 

I plan to invite Tom to come to St. Ambrose soon, and make a presentation about Casa Hogar Misericordia, and the amazing work of love that Mariana and Fidel are doing with these children in Mexico. I believe we need to be actively engaged in a mission project like this - over time.

 

We need to build connections with those who’ve never been able to see a Broncos game or a Rockies game or a Nuggets game. We need to pass on the blessings that have been bestowed upon us, and sit down to dinner with someone who can’t afford to take us out to dinner.

 

This is something that is missing at St. Ambrose. I need these kinds of connections in my life. My children, who don’t think $132 is very much money, need these kinds of connections in their lives. And I am saying to you today, that we all need these kinds of connections in our lives. Boulder, Colorado is a fine place to live and go to college and work and play, and we need to count our blessings every day that we get to look up at those Flatirons, and see the snow-covered peaks behind them. But we cannot be so enamored of our lives that we distance ourselves from the rest of the world. I think we need an ongoing mission here, that we all can get involved in. We need different kinds of connections than the ones that we typically have. We need a place like Casa Hogar Misericordia.

 

Do we need to take care of each other, right here at St. Ambrose? You bet we do. We need to love and support each other as much as we possibly can. But if that is the extent of our world, if we only travel in a circle of people that looks and acts and talks like us, then the scope of our lives is too narrow. That isn’t my view. That is God’s view.

 

CONCLUSION

 

God is inviting us - calling us - into the mission field. It is a mission of receiving and giving. Receiving and giving thanks for all the blessings that are bestowed upon us - our families and friends, our jobs, this church community, our standard of living, the place where we live, the entertainment we can afford - all of it. We receive and give thanks for all our many blessings, and then we open up our hands and our hearts, and we give of our money, our time, our creativity, our very selves.

 

In the process of reaching out, we will be blessed all over again, by a loving God, and by the love and wisdom of the people that we have reached out to.

 

We have scored many touchdowns, you and I - due to the abundant grace of our God. It is time for us to be more generous than we ever thought that we could be, and share the ball with someone else.