Eat My Sheep

Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda
11.25.07; Rev. David Williams

Scripture Lesson: Jeremiah 23:1-6
watch it here: part 1; part 2

In October or November of every year, as we Presbyterians dig our way into the joyous budget season, an e-mail pops into the inbox of pastors and treasurers at each of the over 100 Presbyterian churches in our presbytery. The powers that be are sending us a number, a number that every church needs, the number that sets up the base salary of every Presbyterian minister in the Washington metropolitan area for the upcoming year.

Being Presbyterians, of course, we don’t just pick that number out of the air. That number is based on a highly complex series of equations that includes national level data on ministerial wages, information on the regional housing market, and cost of living projections for the area, which are then multiplied by the percentage of games the Redskins have won this year. Let me tell you, it’s been a very, very disappointing season.

At the end of the day, the base salary of a Presbyterian minister in the DC area ends up being pretty much equivalent to the average salary paid to a Metrobus driver. Most pastors think this is fine. It’s as it should be. Pastors shouldn’t be raking in the big bucks.

Or…should we?

Apparently, there’s a contingent of pastors out there who think that the ministry isn’t for the meek and the lowly. It’s for those who are willing to set a standard of success for their gathered flock. Among many pastors of larger churches, particularly pastors of big churches with massive media ministries, the argument is that a pastor should be paid what he or she is worth. If you’ve gathered a flock in the thousands or the tens of thousands, if you’re watched by millions on T.V., you’re basically like the CEO of a successful corporation. If you’re the CEO of a major subsidiary of AmeriChrist, Inc., then by cracky, you need to be living like a CEO.

In fact, it’s gotten so intense that earlier this month, Senator Charles Grassley launched an investigation of several big name television ministries. Why, you may ask? Well, for some reason, the Senator was miffed by a few things he’d heard.

Like, for instance, when Kenneth Copeland Ministries celebrated their 40th anniversary, they apparently thought it might be nice to give a little present to Ken. I mean, c’mon, it was just a little two-million dollar token of their esteem. Presents are apparently very popular among the pastoral elite. Another ministry, Paula White Ministries, is in trouble for giving Bishop T.D. Jakes a Bentley for his birthday. A Bentley? He got a Bentley for his birthday? Schwing low, schweet chariot! I hope Rev. An takes note of that...my birthday is next month! I never realized that when the Apostle Paul talked about spiritual gifts, he meant luxury automobiles.

Paula White Ministries is also under investigation for, among other things, charging the costs of cosmetic surgery to the ministry. That’s hardly fair, though, is it? How can Paula White Ministries bring people to Jesus if Paula White doesn’t look like she’s 21 again?

All of the pastors in question seem to have a taste for travel in private jets. One of them, Joyce Meyer, also bought a $23 thousand dollar marble toilet for her headquarters. Hey…people have needs. Don’t go hatin’. And anyway, if you’re the shepherd of a big enough flock, where in the Bible does it say you can’t live like that?

Well…gee…where to begin? I suspect that the prophet Jeremiah would have something to contribute on that subject. Jeremiah was a notoriously grumpy prophet, who lived and preached six hundred years before Christ, during the time of the fall of Jerusalem in the face of the might of the Babylonian Empire. Most of his teaching and proclamation was aimed directly at the wealthy and the powerful of Judah, those in the royal court and the priests of the temple.

Today’s passage was a challenge to the “shepherds” of Israel. By shepherds, Jeremiah was referring to those in power, those charged with guiding the lives of the people. According to the passage we’ve just heard, the folks in positions of power have misled the people, and have caused the flock to be scattered. In their place, God is going to find other leaders, ones who will help bring the flock back together.

But as we listen to this little passage, we have to ask ourselves: what…specifically…have the current batch of shepherds done? The metaphor of herdsmen and their flocks is great, but it doesn’t tell us very much about what the leadership had done or failed to do.

For that, we have to look to the broader context of Jeremiah, to the passages that come before and after this little chunklet of verses.

Before today’s passage, in Jeremiah 22:13-17, the prophet lays into the royal household of Judah. Why? Because those leaders enriched themselves at the expense of their people. They built themselves huge houses made of only the finest materials, taking from those in need and giving to themselves. Justice and righteousness were put second. Their personal prosperity was put first.

After today’s passage, in Jeremiah 23:16-17, Jeremiah goes after the false prophets of his age. What was the message that those prophets were bearing? It was a message of well-being. It was a message of prosperity. Everything is going to be just fine. It shall be well with you. Just keep giving to the temple. No calamity shall come upon you.

In both instances, what was proclaimed and what was lived was a prosperity based in falsehood. Leaders used their power to amass great wealth for themselves. Leaders convinced people that all they needed to do to be doing well in the world was to give and give and give to the temple....which, conveniently enough, meant that the priests and prophets would do well.

But those kinds of shepherds aren’t the sort of folks that God entrusted with his flocks, and the modern purveyors of the Gospel of prosperity are perilously close to meeting that dark standard.

In last Sunday’s Washington Post, finance columnist Michelle Singletary, whose advice is usually sound and wise, took a little issue with Grassley’s challenge to these ministers. She made the CEO argument, saying that if these pastors are running a large organization that has revenue equivalent to that of a big for profit enterprise, they should be compensated accordingly. If that means they’re living large, well, that’s their right. “They haven’t taken a vow of poverty,” she said.

On one level, that may be true. But the standards to which Christian leaders should aspire aren’t the standards of the for profit world. They aren’t even the standards of the nonprofit world. Those who are called to leadership in the body of Christ shouldn’t starve, sure. But neither should they live in a way that doesn’t reflect the community they serve. The heart of the Gospel message that Christ brought to us is not that we are called to serve ourselves and our own needs. The self-serving approach to the world and to how we live and work may play well with the ethics of our culture...but those aren’t the values that define the Christian life.

As Presbyterians, our task as members of the church and leaders of the church is to hold one another accountable to the servant ethic that Christ himself embodied. It’s why we’re so open about how we pay our pastors, and why we strongly...strongly...encourage all of our members to be engaged in and aware of how our congregations act as stewards over our resources. Each of us, in our own way, is called to be a shepherd over the flock. That means stepping away from the me-first value that defines the consumer culture around us. Why?

Because a shepherd that looks out for number one isn’t one who cares for the sheep. At the end of the Gospel of John, the great command given to Peter isn’t eat my sheep.

It’s feed my sheep.

There is a difference.

After the Wilderness

United Korean Presbyterian Church/Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda
11.18.07; Rev. John An and Rev. David Williams

Scripture Lesson John 7:10-18
Delivered in English and Korean; Watch it here: Part 1; Part 2

Did you listen to the beginning of that passage from John’s Gospel?

Well, did you?

If you did, you should have two questions.

First, how exactly did Jesus go about in secret?

Did he wear a disguise?

Maybe a big hat and dark glasses?

We don’t know the answer to that one

Although it might make for an interesting sermon if we did.

Fortunately, there’s a second question.

What’s the festival that Jesus is going to?

It’s not a carnival.

It’s not a revival meeting.

What is it?

Just a few verses earlier, what does John’s Gospel sayIt says this was the “Festival of Booths.”

Booths?

What are booths?

Are they talking about phone booths?

Maybe they’re talking about office cubicles.

But back in ancient Judea

They didn’t subject people to such terrible working conditions.

So that can’t be it.

What is the Festival of Booths?

It’s a Harvest Festival.

It’s like Thanksgiving for the Hebrew people.

Why is it called booths?

It’s not because you get as big as a phone booth afterwards

During that celebration

Hebrew people built little tents.

They were…and are…called Sukkoth.

That’s why the name of that Jewish holiday today is Sukkoth.

Why did they build those tents?

To remind them of their time wandering in the wilderness.

As they gave thanks for the bounty of their land

The riches of the land of promise that God had given them

They remembered the times that had been harder.

They remembered when they fled from Pharoah

They remembered when they’d journeyed in the desert

They remembered when they’d known hunger.

They remembered when they’d known thirst.

That memory gave them a powerful foundation.

It was the foundation of their thankfulness

For the bounty in the land of God’s promise.

As we enter into this Thanksgiving week

We are often reminded to be thankful.

But what are we thankful for?

Are we thankful for what God has given us?

We should be.

We need to be thankful for the meals on our tables.

We need to be grateful for the blessings of family and friends.

We need to be filled with gratitude for the blessings of freedom

Freedom to worship

Freedom to speak our minds,

Freedom to live without fear of oppression.

But we have to think for a moment.

In John 7:18, Jesus warns us.

He warns us about those who seek their own glory.

Are we thankful for the goodness of God’s creation

Or are we thankful that we’re fat and happy?

Are we thankful because God is good

Or are we thankful because we are doing well?

Is it our own glory that causes us to celebrate

Or is it the glory of the one who made us?

We have to try to remember to be thankful

In a way that is not selfish.

We have to remember what God’s intent is for his children.

From the prophet Isaiah this morning

We hear what God seeks for all of us.

In that glorious vision

Of a new heaven

And a new earth

God shows us the great bounty he desires to give

Not just to us

But to all of his people

God desires a day when weeping is no more

God desires a day when suffering have ceased

God desires that we leave the wilderness of oppression

And live in a land of peace

“They shall not hurt or destroy on all my Holy Mountain.”

As we give thanks today

As we give thanks this week

We have to remember to give thanks not just for ourselves

We have to let our thanks flow

But not from our own sense of pleasure.

We have to let our thanks rise

But not from our pride.

We should give thanks, instead, with a servant’s heart.

Let us give thanks to God who calls us to serve those who struggle.

To relieve the suffering of the thousands rendered homeless

By the cyclone that devastated Bangladesh.

Let us give thanks to God who calls us to serve those who weep

In the Chinese internment camps for North Korean refugees.

Let us give thanks to God who calls us to serve those whose hearts hunger

By sharing with them the grace of Christ

and the goodness of His Gospel

If we act to serve them

Those actions will stand like tents in our lives

Booths of righteousness

Sukkot of justice

Reminding us of our own wilderness struggle

And allowing us to be truly thankful

Unselfishly, joyously thankful

For all that God has given us.

What We Owe

Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda
11.11.07; Rev. David Williams

Scripture Lesson: Luke 20:20-26

Last Tuesday morning started out busy. The kids were running a little behind schedule, my wife had a meeting downtown, and the day began in even more of a whirlwind than usual. I had to get the kids fed, clothing choices vetoed...no, you can’t wear shorts. It’s November. No, even boys don’t wear underwear three days in a row. Then it was off to a variety of church duties and calls and errands. It was a typically busy day, with one major difference.

It was election day this last Tuesday, both across that wide wide river in the far off land of Virginia and in Baltimore. This was not a presidential election, not an election for the United States Senate or the House. It was a state and local race...County supervisors and school board members, sheriffs and state Senators and Representative. It’s small scale, rubber-meets-the-road democracy, where much of the nitty gritty of our community life gets done. In the last two weeks, the medians and roadsides flowered with hundreds upon hundreds of wire and plastic signs, proclaiming the names of those who were competing to lead us.

For all the sound and fury and star power of our billion-dollar national election industry, state and local elections are where the choices get made about how we’re going to run our schools. About how we’re going to keep our communities policed. About where our priorities lie.

As I sidled off my motorcycle and walked into the little white Episcopal church on a hill that serves as my neighborhood polling place, it became obvious that our priorities lie elsewhere. There was the usual diligent cadre of retiree volunteers. There were two party volunteers parked out front, handing out voting guides. There were the voting machines, their touchscreens glowing softly behind their privacy shields.

But there was no line. In fact, there wasn’t a single other citizen in there to vote. Not one. I breezed right in. I breezed right out. Wow! That was so convenient! That was so...wrong.

After conferring with my wife, I learned that it wasn’t quite as effortless and empty in the morning, but there was still only a very short line. It was less crowded than a candy store the day after Halloween. How many people bothered to vote? Wednesday morning, I went online, to the Virginia State Board of Elections website. I looked through all of the statistics. Now, America’s supposed to be one of the great cradles of democracy. Virginia was one of the 13 colonies to first ratify the constitution of the United States of America. But this last Tuesday, only one in three Virginians bothered to vote. Thirty four percent. 34 percent isn’t just a a failing grade. It’s the kind of F you get when you take your Political Science 342 final exam after first downing a fifth of bourbon. How’sh thish poshible? I thot I dish sho well....

Now, there are lots of reasons why. Maybe you’re too busy. Maybe you didn’t have time to decide. Maybe you don’t really like the political position of either of the parties. Maybe aliens from the planet M’tang took you from your bed on Tuesday morning, and despite your protests weren’t done with their experiments until after the polls closed. But are those really reasons? Or are they just...excuses? But elections aren’t important, you might say. They don’t really change anything. It’s all just those fat-cats lining their own pockets. Again, those aren’t really reasons not to be engaged. Excuses, yes. Reasons, no.

Well, you might say, fishing a bit, Jesus never told me I needed to vote. Oooh! You’re on to something! Jesus never voted at all! Find me the word vote in the Bible! Ah-hah!

Today, we heard what Jesus said about how we should respond to government. The leadership in Judah had their eye on him as a troublemaker and a rabblerouser. In fact, they were so eager to get this guy off the streets that they tried to set up a sting operation to trap him. It was going to be tough. He was popular, and they were going to have to be crafty about it.

So rather than arrest him themselves, they tried to get him in trouble. Their agents asked him about whether Jews should pay taxes to Rome. It was a cunning trap. On the one hand, if you answered yes, it meant that you were willing to use Roman money on which was inscribed assertions of the emperor’s divinity. It meant that you were assenting to him as a god, and betraying the God of Israel. It also meant you were supporting the hated occupiers of the Holy Land. So you couldn’t answer yes, or you were a traitor to the Jewish people.

On the other hand, if you answered no, it meant that you were a dangerous revolutionary, a threat to the Empire. The Roman authorities didn’t look kindly on people who refused to pay their taxes. So you couldn’t answer no, or you were a threat to Rome.

Jesus was not so easily taken in. He didn’t say yes. He didn’t say no. He just told everyone to look at the coin, and see who was on it. It was the emperor, of course. So give him what belongs to him, and give God what belongs to God. It was a perfect answer, both yes and no, neither yes nor no, and the trap they had set for him snapped closed on empty air.

But as we hear his answer, we have to ask ourselves: what it is that we owe the emperor today? What do we owe? What do we owe to the emperor when we the people are the emperor? Not just our giving. This is a democracy, and what a democracy needs from it’s citizens in order to thrive is participation. What our democracy needs from us is for us to pay attention, for us to be engaged. When we fail to do that, we fail to give to Caesar what Christ told us is his due. We need to hear that passage in that way in our lives as citizens of our counties, of our states, of our nation.

We also need to take that learning about what makes a nation run, and know that it speaks to what we as Christians owe to God and to our gathering here in God’s name.

Give to the emperor what is the emperor’s, Christ said, and give to God what is God’s. If we as citizens of this great democracy need to give it our engagement and our participation for it to thrive, do we owe less to God? Do we owe less to this little cluster of Christ’s people?

Today we’re blessing the gifts and offerings that we’ve all been asked to commit to this church in the coming year. Those pledges of support are what make it possible for us to plan and prepare for all of the activities we need to undertake in the coming months. But in addition to committing ourselves to giving this church the financial support it needs to thrive, we also need to commit ourselves to participate and engage in the life of the church, to be aware of how it works, and to contribute our time and our energy to building it up.

Many of us are are already doing just that. Through music and study and teaching, through mission and fellowship, through making sure that the bills get paid and the building is maintained, so many of you are committing your time and your engagement to the church. But all of you will have gotten...along with your financial pledge form...a sheet that shows you all of the different ways that God could use your gifts in the service of the church. If you know you have something in you that you to contribute to our life together, something that could build it up, then use it. Let that gift light up the church.

If this new thing we’re trying to do for God is to flourish and grow, we owe it to Him to give him what he’s due.

Not Gambling With Your Future

Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda
11.04.07; Rev. David Williams

Scripture Lesson: Luke 19:1-10

So who was this Zacchaeus guy? Back when I was a Sunday-school going kid, the story of Zacchaeus seemed to surface all of the time. As a child, you have an image in your mind of this little rich guy, a tiny little gnome of a man with his fine linen robes and a beard fragrant with scented oil and his Gucci sandals. He’s scampering around behind the throngs gathered to see Jesus, running back and forth frantically like a seven year old who’s downed half a case of Red Bull. But he can’t see a thing, so he hikes up his skirts and clambers up a tree. There, Jesus sees him, perched up there, looking ridiculous and completely undignified.

Kids love anything in which adults look silly, and Zacchaeus certainly looks silly here...although if Jesus had then hit him in the face with a pie and given him a wedgie, it’d have been even better. But when you grow up, and you learn what Zacchaeus really did for a living, this story starts seeming a little less silly.

He was a tax collector, and that doesn’t mean anything like what we would visualize today. When we think of a tax collector, we see in our mind’s eye a mid-level Internal Revenue Service employee. They spend most of their day in a dismal cubicle in a large windowless room with a hundred other IRS employees, managing the inflow of revenue from the citizens of our republic. As much as no-one enjoys paying taxes, the folks who collect our revenue get paid modest salaries, and are as honest and hardworking as the rest of us.

That was not the case back in the first century. To build it’s roads and it’s public works and to pay it’s well trained legions, the Romans needed cash. To gather that revenue, they relied on local networks of entrepreneurs to collect taxes. Those tax collectors were expected to operate as subcontractors, and were given wide latitude in how they gathered the revenue. All Rome expected was that those contractors would pass along the correct amount of money from each citizen or resident. Rome also told the tax collectors that if they wanted to have any income, that would need to be on top of the tax..and they were free to set that rate themselves. So Roman tax collectors only took what they absolutely needed...right? Suuuure they did.

Tax collectors made sure they did very well for themselves, tacking on as high a percentage as they possibly could. You couldn’t say no to them, either. IRS audits may be unpleasant, but if you refused to pay your Roman taxes the penalties were...well, let’s just say they made Guantanamo Bay look like a vacation on the French Riviera.

So tax collectors took whatever they could, and as much as they could. They were universally despised in Judah as traitors and profiteers...but they did really, really well for themselves. Rome didn’t care. Why should it? So what if the poor suffered? So what if it wasn’t really fair or just? As long as the revenue was raised, it didn’t matter how you raised it.

Now, I’m a Virginian. My home state has plenty of it’s own “issues.” But as I look across the river at Maryland, I find myself baffled at how a version that same peculiar Imperial mindset seems to have wormed it’s way into every single administration, be they Republican or Democrat. Revenues need to be raised to pay good teachers and competent law enforcement professionals, to build roads and schools and libraries.

For some reason, though, Americans respond to politicians who honestly tell them what it costs to have all of those things by throwing them out of office. We’d rather elect a shambling zombie with a taste for brains than someone who raises taxes. In Virginia, in fact, I think we’ve done just that at least twice in recent memory.

So instead of committing political hara-kiri, Maryland leaders keep coming back to the same magical solution to all of the state’s funding woes. Slot machines! They’ll miraculously fix everything! It’ll renew the horse-racing industry, which, as we know, is the primary engine driving any vibrant 21st century economy. It’ll fund our schools! It’ll pay our cops! It’ll magically fix all of our problems...and we’ll have soooo much fun doing it!

Of course, anyone who’s spent more than 35 seconds inside a casino knows that slot machines are not necessarily the most soul-enriching way to spend your time. You put in your money...and then you press the button. And you press the button. And you press the button. And you press the button. And you put in more money. And you press the button. And you press the button. Wow. That’s. So. Exciting. Whee.

But for many people, gambling is exciting. The prospect of those winnings, the anticipation of beating the odds, those things get our brains all fired up and excited, pumping out opiates and making us forget the outside world for a while. Some folks can handle that buzz....but many cannot. It can become an addiction. For people on a limited income, or people who are struggling financially, or people who are trying to start out in life, gambling can become a destructive and consuming obsession.

Sure, it’s a tax. It’s a tax on the poor. It’s a tax on the addicted. It shatters families. It tears apart relationships. But for the modern day tax collectors-for-hire of the “gaming industry,” that doesn’t matter. They get a huge bite off the top. What does it matter what broader impacts it has? The money’s getting raised, isn’t it?

For some reason, there’s been a consistent resistance on the part of churches to this approach to revenue. We resist it, but in state after state, our opposition has been rolled back. The desire for that easy money is simply too strong.

But it’s an important desire to resist. Because that’s just not how funds should be raised in a democracy that cares about it’s citizens. It’s also not how we should go about raising revenue in God’s Kingdom.

We’re in the middle of revenue-raising season ourselves. Our congregation, this little church in Bethesda, is in the midst of encouraging all of you to give to our stewardship campaign for 2008. That means it’s money-raising time...and as much as I hate doing it, we need to talk about it.

Every one of you should have gotten a letter this last week asking you to prayerfully consider giving to support the ministries of this church. It also asked you to consider how you can apply the gifts that God has given you to the life of the church in the coming year. And, no, you don’t need to give away half of your income like Zacchaeus did. But you do need to think realistically about our life together in this church, and how you can really support it.

A great deal has changed here in the last four years. Back in the 1990s, this church was blessed with a modest endowment, which has enabled us to make some necessary upgrades to the building and keep our doors open. But that endowment is tied to the markets, and every single year we’ve cut into the principal of that endowment to keep the heat on and to make sure your pastor has a nice shiny new Beemer parked out front. Well..not so much that second one.

The fact is that we’ve used less of that endowment every single year. Where it once was over 90% of budget, it is now just a tick under 80%. This year, we reduced our reliance on those funds for the first time in a decade. If we can increase our giving for 2008 by the same percentage we did in 2007, then we’ll need that crutch even less. That still means, though, that we’ve got a long way to go before we’re self-sufficient.

If we believed in gambling, we’d take a look at that endowment and give very little. Everything will be fine. The stock market will just keep on going up forever. We don’t have to contribute a thing. But the truth of the matter is far different. If there’s a mild downturn in the market...and if our giving doesn’t continue to grow...we could easily be flat broke in five or six years. That’s the reality of it. The fantasy that we can just keep going forever as we are is a gambler’s delusion. Really building anything...as we are striving to build this church...does not come easy.

It takes time. It takes commitment. It takes effort. It takes prayer. If we are to be good stewards over our life together, we have to understand that it’s never wise to gamble with the future of anything you care about.