Poolesville Presbyterian Church
Rev. Dr. David Williams; 11.08.2015
Scripture Lesson: Mark 12
LISTEN TO SERMON AUDIO HERE:
There are some things that are harder to hear than others, some truths that we’re going to struggle with more as we stand in encounter with them.
One of those truths, if I am honest with myself, is the strange interplay between Christian faith and wealth, between the demands of material gain and the demands that Jesus places on those who say, hey, I’m going to follow you.
I’ve encountered that over the last few weeks, as I’ve struggled and heaved my way through a book. It’ll be the fortieth book I’ve read this year, part of the diet of words and ideas that makes for a healthy and well-nourished soul, but it’s one of the harder books I’ve pushed through this year.
I’ll crank through ten or twenty pages, and then I’ll set it down, because I just can’t digest any more of it. Or I’ll curl up on the sofa to start in for an evening read, and wake up thirty minutes later asleep with the book on my chest. But I didn’t give up, because it’s a book filled with important reminders for Jesus people.
The book is entitled “The Fourth Crusade,” by a British historian named Jonathan Phillips, and it’s not that it’s a badly written or researched book. It’s that the subject matter is just, well, painful. It tells the story of a particularly unpleasant chapter in the history of Christianity. It was the heart of the medieval period, and Christian Europe was up in arms over the rise of Islam. In particular, Europeans were outraged to the point of hysteria at the idea that Jerusalem should be in the hands of Muslims.
And so army after Christian army was mobilized, and for the better part of a century wars of religion burned across the middle east, as Christians followed that great teaching of Jesus, kill all the unbelievers. I think it’s in the Sermon on the Mount. Wait a minute. [leafs through Bible] No, no, I can’t quite place my finger on it.
As bloody and ugly as the first three crusades were, the fourth was, well, it was unique.
The organizers of the fourth crusade wanted to build a huge battle fleet, and so signed binding contracts with the Venetians to build them the greatest armada in history. Only, well, they kind of overestimated their capacity to raise funds. With the fleet constructed, they realized that they couldn’t pay for it. They were on the verge of bankruptcy, and the whole endeavor was about to collapse. So before wandering off to do some killing of non Christians, they decided to pay a little fundraising visit. They sailed the whole fleet to the Byzantine Empire, and in particular the colossally wealthy capital of that empire, Constantinople.
The Byzantine Empire was, of course, Christian, which as far as the Crusaders were concerned, meant that they should be willing to part with some cash money to help with the whole killing thing.
The Byzantines weren’t eager to do so, and as the crusaders had an army that needed to be fed and watered, one thing lead to another. Constantinople, one of the largest cities in the world, an ancient center of Christian culture and learning, was sacked and burned, as the crusaders looted churches and pillaged cathedrals for Jesus. It was a roaring success, immensely profitable. The Venetians got paid off, with money to spare.
And here we are in the middle of stewardship season, and I’m thinking to myself, huh. The Episcopalians have a pretty nice building. Ahem.
What this dark chapter in Christian history teaches, honestly, is that there is a danger that arises when we mingle church, wealth, and power, a message that is also driven home by the teaching from Jesus in Mark’s Gospel this morning.
Mark’s story of Jesus has just given us an expression of the radical focus on God and the love of neighbor, as Jesus lays out the Great Love Commandment back Mark 12:28-34. We are shown love as both the essence of the law and the living center of Christian faith.
Then, in today’s verses, we get a compare and contrast. On the one hand, the successful scribe, the one with the nice robes and the fancy fancy duds. On the other hand, the one who struggles to get by, the widow with nothing.
Jesus highlights them both, one, the wealthy one, the scribe who uses their wealth not for the greater good but to reinforce their place of power in the culture. The other, the widow, who gives out of piety, out of duty, out of faith, and wildly
Clearly, historical Christianity has not quite always managed to pull that off. But if we are honest, that’s the challenge that always faces organizations, groups, and societies. The preservation of the system comes to be the primary focus of everything, to such a degree that the system often forgets why it exists in the first place.
Like those Crusaders, who were so disappointed to have gotten so focused on raising money that they slaughtered other Christians to do it. One can imagine their disappointment on the Day of Judgement. “Oh, Jesus, if only we’d done it right! We really meant to kill unbelievers instead.”
To which Jesus, undoubtedly, would sit there dumbfounded.
But there are other ways to direct our resources and our personal energies.
That, quite frankly, is what stewardship is all about, and as our nation looks forward, so do we as a community.
As Poolesville Presbyterian Church begins to turn its attention to 2016, the resources we commit to that journey have a tremendous amount to do with what will actually happen here this next year. So, assuming you’re earnestly thinking about it, here are a few things to throw into the mix.
As you’re looking at what you may be able to give this year, realize that this isn’t money that’s being poured into something self-serving. This little community does not have, as our focus, our own power. If faith is faith, it is the most radically defining element of our existence, and this community is how we together live out and develop that faith.
In that very real sense, your time and treasure here means putting your energies and hopes into something that is both tangible and unifying. This place is our common house, a place of gathering that belongs to all of us, but in that belonging goes further. It permits us to open up our space to community, to be a blessing to the world around us. Our space on Wednesdays and Fridays is filled with mothers and their children at play. Some evenings, it is filled with souls doing the hard work of recovery. Other times, it is a place for planning, as those gathered to raise money to fight against cancer meet.
It’s a place of abundance, as abundant as the garden that poured out tomatoes and potatoes and berries and peppers, so many that those we’d invited to gather here with us often didn’t know what to do with them all. That’s what we do here, and that’s worth something.
It is easy, easy to be anxious about what we have. It’s easy to look at shortfalls, and to fold up, or to lose sight of the reason for our life here together.
Those are real, solid tangible things, and they all contribute in their own simple way to making that Great Commandment the center of our lives.
Stewardship is an outward facing thing, like faith, hope, and love are outward facing things. It is a matter of abundance, of a gathering in and pouring out.
Let it be so, for you and for me, AMEN.
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