Preached by Winton Boyd on Sunday, October 18, 2009
“A gravel road south of Rutland Vermont meets Route 103. Turn west, through sugar maple hardwood forests, by stone fenced pastures and a weathered barn. About a mile up the hill, the forest canopy opens and you are at Spring Lake Ranch, the childhood home of author Michael Schut.
The rust red Main House with the dining hall, living room, game room and bedroom upstairs for residents. Expansive gardens,. The lawn, featuring a volleyball net and outdoor pig and black bear roasting spit. Beyond that lies the repair shop, the wood shop, the volleyball gym. Past the cow pastures and a small a frame chapel overlooks generous meadows.
Since 1932, Spring Lake ranch has had the mission of serving the severely mentally ill, based on the belief that healing best takes place in a setting that is supportive and respectful and does not treat people as “patients” or “cases.” Author Michael Schut’s father served on the staff for ten years, leading work crews – gardening, cider pressing, wood cutting, maple sugaring, shoveling snow, ice cutting, haying.
Working at Spring Lake Ranch was far from lucrative, but it was abundant in community wealth and sublime natural beauty. Need a babysitter? See if the family next door can watch the kids for a bit. Tired of cooking? Walk down to the main house and enjoy a meal with the staff and residents. Need a break? Open the door and walk into the woods or swim in the lake.
It was only after leaving Vermont, however, that Schut, then a young 8 year old, began to worry about money. His parents moved to Minnesota in hopes of starting a community in southeastern MN like Spring Lake ranch. Neighbors organized against it for fear of people who live with mental illness. The county denied the license and the project fell through. When they left Vermont, the family not only left without financial resources, but the left a community that offered them all an extraordinary abundance.” (Money and Faith: The search for Enough) It’s not hard to see why, the family soon began to feel a sense of scarcity and worry.
The experience underscores what Schut wrote in his essay, Money and Faith: The search for Enough, “ when we open to those pages connected with our experiences of abundance or scarcity, we often end up telling stories pregnant with some of our most poignant sorrows or deepest joy.” When we begin to plumb, poke, or peek into our relationship with money, that exploration often leads to thin places: to questions of trust, security, values, and to experiences of abundance and joy, as well as scarcity and fear.” These moments powerfully shape our sense of who God is and whether or not we feel we will be provided for in this life… (Schut)
Because of this, getting in touch with our past experiences with or without money, recognizing our own “thin places” around money, and learning to live into who we want to be in regard to money is one of the most powerful pilgrimages of faith we encounter in our lives.
On the one hand, as people in the church, we have these poignant and difficult words of Jesus – that our task as people of faith is to serve others. This passage is just one of many about money and possessions.
• 23 of the 43 parables of Jesus are about money (62%).
• One of every seven verses in Synoptic gospels is about money.
• In the whole of the Bible there are 500 references to prayer, slightly fewer references to faith and 2000 verses that deal with money and possessions.
To paraphrase Walter Bruggemann, though, many of us listen to the words of Scripture with one ear, and keep our other ear tuned to our ipod, or the radio, and popular music. While the gospels speak of God’s abundance, we live in a culture that touts the myth of scarcity. No place better to find the myths articulated than in popular music. Let’s listen to the a few of the prevailing messages from the songs of our lives.
1. First from 1960’s prophet herself, Janis Joplin – the song whose specifics are dated but whose message is not, that wealth will both ease our troubles and prove God’s love. Mercedes Benz (:10-1:15)
Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz ?
My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends.
Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends,
So Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz ?Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a color TV ?
Dialing For Dollars is trying to find me.
I wait for delivery each day until three,
So oh Lord, won’t you buy me a color TV ?Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a night on the town ?
I’m counting on you, Lord, please don’t let me down.
Prove that you love me and buy the next round,
Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a night on the town ?
2. From a more current group, the Barenaked Ladies, the dream that “If I had a Million Dollars” I could buy your love.
If I had a million dollars
(If I had a million dollars)
I’d buy you a house
(I would buy you a house)
If I had a million dollars
(If I had a million dollars)
I’d buy you furniture for your house
(Maybe a nice chesterfield or an ottoman)
And if I had a million dollars
(If I had a million dollars)
Well, I’d buy you a K-Car
(A nice reliant automobile)
If I had a million dollars I’d buy your love
3. Our tendency to shop beyond our means is even the subject of one song by Shania Twain, Ka-Ching .
We live in a greedy little world–
That teaches every little boy and girl
To earn as much as they can possibly–
Then turn around and
Spend it foolishly
We’ve created us a credit card mess
We spend the money we don’t possess
Our religion is to go and blow it all
So its shoppin every Sunday at the mallAll we ever want is more
A lot more than we had before
So take me to the nearest store[chorus:]
Can you hear it ring
It makes you wanna sing
Its such a beautiful thing–ka-ching!
Lots of diamond rings
The happiness it brings
Youll live like a king
With lots of money and things
4. And finally, a song that for many needs no introduction, but repeats an ancient belief – that marrying rich will take care of all our worries. And after all, if none other than Meryl Streep sings it, how can it not be true.
Money, money, money
Must be funny
In the rich man’s world
Money, money, money
Always sunny
In the rich man’s world
Aha-ahaaa
All the things I could do
If I had a little money
It’s a rich man’s world
Of course, some of these songs are tongue in cheek, but they are also rooted in our cultural myth of scarcity.
Is there another message, another voice? In the face of increasing cultural anxiety and nervousness, is there a message not of scarcity but trust and abundance?
If the idea of pilgrimage involves movement or travel, I’d like to suggest three principles that might help us envision how we might live more fully into the words of Jesus.
1. One principle that undergirds any pilgrimage, but especially one with money is learning to cap our needs and desires. We do this to live with both gratitude for what we have and an awareness of the needs and challenges of others.
One study suggested that more is better up to about 10,000 per person in a family. After that, the quest for more drives behavior but does not bring contentment. While we might quibble with the exact dollar amount, in our heart of hearts, we probably know that the quest for more is an insatiable quest. Contentment around money, however, is attainable as we control our needs and desires. While this is a new approach to life for some, and while it is counter cultural, it is also liberating.
2. Money serves us best when it fosters authentic and transforming relationships. This can happen at many levels. Our giving can be organized to lead to real relationships with the poor. Our family budget can focus on spending that builds family cohesion and unity rather just giving individuals within the family more toys. Maybe those activities involve buying food that requires working together to create a meal, games that invite interaction with each other rather than isolation, travel that enhances our time together rather than filling our time with noise and distraction.
The possibilities, of course, are endless. The principle, however, can be a guiding light, a plumb line, the core around which our discretionary budget is shaped.
3. As we grow in our relationship to money, however, there is almost a shift in where we find security.
The gospels invite serious questions about our security – questions that are rarely asked in our work places, our culture or even in our extended families. By inviting us to live a life of giving and serving others, the gospel narratives remind us that our security is not in what we have, but in the community we build and the God we serve. In rethinking and re-orienting our sense of security – we build on the amazing experiences of our youth – the joyful and the painful. By capping our needs and desires, focusing on relationships and being honest about the center point of our security – all of our experiences can be tools in our deepening faith, our growing journey and our heightened sense of contentment in a world gone made with anxiety around money.
It will not only lead us to spend our money more wisely, but it will also infuse our families and communities with a basis for trust that is everlasting, always dependable and able to withstand the most difficult of situations. Amen
Text
The Sheep and the Goats
31-33″When he finally arrives, blazing in beauty and all his angels with him, the Son of Man will take his place on his glorious throne. Then all the nations will be arranged before him and he will sort the people out, much as a shepherd sorts out sheep and goats, putting sheep to his right and goats to his left.
34-36″Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Enter, you who are blessed by my Father! Take what’s coming to you in this kingdom. It’s been ready for you since the world’s foundation. And here’s why:
I was hungry and you fed me,
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,
I was homeless and you gave me a room,
I was shivering and you gave me clothes,
I was sick and you stopped to visit,
I was in prison and you came to me.’
37-40″Then those ‘sheep’ are going to say, ‘Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink? And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?’ Then the King will say, ‘I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.’
