Being Shrewd about People & Things

A well-dressed man walks into a New York City bank and asks to speak with a loan officer.  He says he is travelling to Europe on business for two weeks and needs to borrow $5,000.  The officer tells him that the bank will need some kind of security for the loan.  “No problem,” the man says as he hands over the keys to a Bentley parked in front of the bank.  Everything checks out and the bank agrees to the loan.  An employee drives the car into the bank’s underground garage and parks it there for safekeeping.  Two weeks later, the man returns to repay the loan along with interest, which comes to $15.41.  The banker says, “We appreciate your business, but I am a little puzzled: why would someone of your obvious means want to borrow such a small amount of money for such a short period of time?”   The man looks the banker in the eyes and says, “Where else in Manhattan can I park my car for two weeks for just fifteen dollars and change?”

Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines ‘shrewd’ as “having or showing an ability to understand things and to make good judgments: mentally sharp or clever” and adds, “marked by clever discerning awareness and hardheaded acumen.”  Closely related to the word ‘shrew’, being ‘shrewd’ carries with it something of a negative connotation.  It hints that someone got over on another person or group in a way that, while legal, may not exactly be ethical, moral, or kind. 

Many bibles title the gospel reading we just heard “The Parable of the Shrewd Manager.”  Commentaries explore in great length why this servant’s questionable behavior is praised first by the rich man in the story, but ultimately by Jesus himself.  I admit some parables are more easily understood than others, but each parable is meant to convey a singular truth, often in a startling way.  All the other extemporaneous details, if focused on too closely, detract and distract us from the simple point.

Reflecting on this parable back in the 13^th century, the great theologian Thomas Aquinas wrote that the heart of sin is to love things and use people, when we ought to love people and use things.  The shrewd manager caught pilfering his master’s property figures this out and does whatever he can with whatever he has to build better relationships with the people in his life.  The parable – convoluted though it may be – teaches a fundamental truth: God created people to be loved and things we have we have to help us do it.  Sin comes about when we get it turned around.  And, apparently, it is human nature to do just that.

I came across the following testimonial earlier in the week:

My friend bought a much larger house than he should have.  His cars were always the latest model.  The restaurants he ate at were high end.  The lucrative sounding investments he made were entrusted to people who loved money more than honesty and eventually it all came crashing down.

My friend’s life of creature comforts and successful appearances crumbled.  He went broke and depression led him to take his life, leaving teenagers without their dad.

It’s easy to get fooled into thinking that money and things bring happiness, but they don’t.

I think Jesus is so down on possessions because he figures the less you have the less likely it is you will love those things more than the people in your life.  But this does not seem like a practical approach to life in 21^st century America.  Ours is a world of conveniences and comforts.  We are not likely to divest ourselves of all but the bare necessities, especially if we are doing so in a desperate attempt to get our priorities in order.  In this life we are going to have things – lots of things, in fact.  The challenge is to love others more than we love our things. 

One person who got it right was Randy Pausch, a computer science professor and author of The Last Lecture, which is an account of a college course he taught after he had been diagnosed with untreatable pancreatic cancer.   Pausch tells a story about a time he bought a brand new car, drove it off the lot, and went straight to pick up his sister and her two children.  When he got to their house, his sitter – the children’s mother – sternly lectured them to be careful in ‘Uncle Randy’s’ spotless new car.  She didn’t want them to damage or dirty it in any way.  The kids were on pins and needles, clearly uncomfortable.  So Pausch took out a soft drink can, opened it up, and poured the contents on the driver’s seat.   “There,” he said, “Now my car isn’t new anymore.”  What motivated him to do such a crazy thing?  He wanted to demonstrate to his sister that he valued her kids, not his car.  He loved them.  The car was just something he used to drive them from point A to point B.

Here are two practical things you might do to help you use things in order to love the people that matter in your life.  The first is this: value things that remind you of the people you love.  Whatever things you value in life, let them tie you to the people with whom you associate it. 

Those of you who have been in my house know that I made the curious decision to decorate my entire home using the colors in my parents’ wedding china.  The china graces my dining room and I bring it out for dinner on special events like Christmas and Thanksgiving.  I value the china because I love my mother and father.  It connects me to them and to my sisters through memories of meals we shared.  The china has monetary value, to be sure, but its real worth to me cannot be measured in dollars.  Its real worth comes through its association with those I love.  Without that association the china would be just more stuff I carry around.  I am sure you have possessions that convey the presence of those who have touched your lives.  Use those things to stay connected to those you love. 

Last Sunday we heard Jesus tell a parable about a woman who, upon losing a coin, cleans the entire house until she finds it.  And when she finds it she calls together her friends to rejoice.  That coin would have been one of a set of perhaps ten given to her on her wedding day.  Its value laid not in its worth, but in its connections.  Jesus understood this kind of attachment and told a story to celebrate it.  So let the things you have remind you of the people you love.

And here is the second thing you can do: use the things you have to serve the people you love.  You can use your car to give a ride to a friend who can’t drive.  You can use your kitchen and cookware to make a meal for someone who is recovering from illness or surgery.  You can invest some money in a micro-loan project like Kiva, which allows you to choose people from all over the world who are looking to borrow a little bit of money in order to make their dream of a better life come true.  Prayerfully consider how you might shift from hoarding what you have to helping others through what you have.  It is not a one-time step you take and have down, but rather a disposition of the heart and soul lived out as a life-long journey.

Shrewd: “having or showing an ability to understand things and to make good judgments: mentally sharp or clever.”  Be shrewd with what you have using it in ways to build love and relationships with others.  Nothing you have in life matters more than the people in your life.  It is a shrewd person who figures this out.

Affinity

“This man welcomes sinners and eats meals with them.”

The this man is Jesus.  The people criticizing him are Pharisees and Scribes.  They were devoted to living their lives by an exacting code of religious laws relating morality and ritual purity.  Just as with the American tax code, there was just too much in these laws for the average person to know and understand.  That is where Scribes came in.  It was their job to know the codes and to them the Pharisees often turned for advice and guidance.  The sinners they are complaining about basically are folks who didn’t understand the law, couldn’t understand it, or didn’t follow it to with the fidelity of Pharisees and Scribes. 

Beyond the way they were separated from average folks by their religious practices, Pharisees and Scribes were well-educated, well-off, and moved in the upper echelon of society’s social circles.  These differences were centuries old and at some point became codified by the dogma and teaching of the Temple and synagogue.  As differences became more and more pronounced commonalities were lost.  That Jesus could associate with this other group mystified and annoyed the religious elite.  That a person so obviously blessed by God welcomed them into his company brought great joy to the ‘sinners.’

We humans have an affinity for people who are like us.  It has always been this way and probably always will.  The challenge is for various individuals and groups to maintain enough connection that each can see in the other a shared humanity and a common dignity.  The danger is that diverse people and groups become so separated that one or both cannot begin to fathom the other having any redeeming value.  When the Pharisees and Scribes murmur that Jesus welcomes sinners and eats with them it is evident that they have crossed over into that dangerous territory.

It is not at all hard to do.  It becomes easier and easier to push the other away; to distance ourselves from those who differ from us.  It takes great effort and no small amount of determination to bridge that divide.

Several years ago I read a book by Richard Lischer called Open Secrets: A Spiritual Journey through a Country Church.  It is Lischer’s account of his first call as a pastor to a small, rural Lutheran church in central Illinois.  The book details how his expectations of ordained ministry differed from reality and it highlights the culture shock he experienced by entering into a farming community that was “as tightly sealed as a jar of home-canned pickles.”  Here is Lischer’s description of a time early after his arrival when a group of men from the parish point out on a map where various members live:

As Lenard gave me the rundown on each of our households, he confirmed a suspicion that had been growing in me…: Approximately 75 percent of my members bore the same last name, Semanns.

“That would be Milford’s place.  Him and Clara moved there when his father quit farming.  You want to see a man plow a straight furrow, you watch old Ben.”  Lenard and Gus exchanged knowing looks.  Then they shared the same look with Ben Jordon and Ronnie Semanns, who passed it between them like a secrete handshake.  “You want to see the crookedest furrow in the county, then I believe you’d have to visit Martin’s place in the spring.”  The four laughed uproariously…

[I said] “You know Semanns is the right name for farmers, isn’t it… you know, since it means ‘seed’ in Latin.”  The four look at me without expression.

The young pastor and parishioners could be more different from each other, but not by much.  Lischer grew in a large, affluent suburb, attended a cathedral-size parish, went to college, graduated from seminary, and earned a Ph.D.  He was an articulate intellectual who had traveled the world.  Many in the small church had never left the county in which they were born.  They were plain-speaking people of the earth who were good with their hands.  The relationship between new pastor and parish had many of the same dynamics present in what separated the Pharisees and Scribes from the ‘sinners.’

To help those elitists break through their blindness Jesus tells a parable of a shepherd who goes out to look for a lost sheep.  The implication is that he is God’s shepherd and the ‘sinners’ are the lost sheep.  It is interesting that Jesus chose to tell a story about shepherd.  While this image is used often in the Old Testament as a metaphor either for God or for religious leaders, by Jesus’ day shepherding as an occupation had acquired a less than flattering reputation.  Shepherds were viewed by most as being “shiftless, thieving, trespassing hirelings.”  Shepherds were lumped in with such low-life characters as camel drivers, sailors, gamblers, and tax collectors. 

Through his parable Jesus is forcing the religious leaders to consider the dignity and humanity of a person they would normally dismiss out of hand.  If he were telling the story today, say, to a banker, Jesus might talk about an auto mechanic and to an auto mechanic he might talk about a banker.  Jesus challenged the Pharisees and Scribes and he challenges us to open our eyes to see in the other the image of God, the child of God’s own heart.  It is much easier to see that in people who are like us, but much more rewarding to find it those who are not.

Richard Lischer’s experience comes back to me often as I read the poetry of R.S. Thomas.  You may recall I mentioned he was an Anglican priest who passed away in the year 2000.  He carried out most of his ministry in a small town in the Welsh countryside.  Many of his poems describe the ways he is different culturally from his parishioners.  Thomas struggles to find the commonalities, but as he finds them they make his way into his poetry.  Here one of his works titled Affinity:

Consider this man in the field beneath,

Gaitered with mud, lost in his own breath,

Without joy, without sorrow,

Without children, without wife,

Stumbling insensitively from furrow to furrow,

A vague somnambulist; but hold your tears,

For his name also is written in the Book of Life.



Ransack your brainbox, pull out the drawers

That rot in your heart’s dust, and what have you to give

To enrich his spirit or the way he lives?

From the standpoint of education or caste or creed

Is there anything to show that your essential need

Is less than his, who has the world for church,

And stands bare-headed in the woods’ wide porch

Morning and evening to hear God’s choir

Scatter their praises?  Don’t be taken in

By stinking garments or an aimless grin;

He also is human, and the same small star,

That lights you homeward, has inflamed his mind

With the old hunger, born of his kind.

Over the three years that Richard Lischer served his initial appointment he discovered an affinity with all those Semanns family members and finding bonds across the divide enriched his life, his faith, and his ministry in countless ways.  He writes this about the last Sunday he was with them:

When I was a boy and later a seminarian, I would have sworn that each person makes the race [of faith] alone, like a long-distance runner who has separated from the pack and runs at his own pace.  Religion was the most refined form of privacy available to me.

But now, as I looked out upon this cloud of upturned faces… I was embraced by a wholeness I never before experienced.  It seemed to me that I was looking at the church as God sees it, not as a series of individual quirks and opinions, but as a single heart of love and sorrow.

For the first few weeks when I started to volunteer at our Food Pantry I had a difficult time being comfortable in the presence of the rabble that constitute our clients.  They were just so different from me and from the people whose company I keep.  I marveled at how the others – especially Nancy Bangley and Nancy Meakin – were able to be open and available to each person.  Gradually, little by little, I loosened up. 

One evening I was helping a gentleman who looked to be a little order than me.  He had dots of white paint all over his skin and cloths.  “Have you been painting today?”  I asked him.  “Yes,” he said, “I have been fixing up my elderly neighbor’s porch because she can’t do it and can’t afford to pay to do it.  So I am helping her out.”  Until that moment I am ashamed to say it did not occur to me that a person coming to our Food Pantry might actually be doing something to help someone else, but in an instance I gained a sense of affinity with this one gentleman.  He was kind and generous, as I try to be.  He enjoyed working with his hands, as I do.  And, apparently, like me, he has trouble keeping paint on a brush and off himself.  That one encounter opened for me a door and on the other side of the door I began to see the humanity and dignity of the clients we serve.  It is a moment of grace for which I am deeply grateful.

No ifs, ands, or buts about it, we who try to follow Jesus as our Lord must follow his example of crossing whatever may divide us from those who differ from us – be it culture or caste – in order to find in each other what God sees in all of us – a child of God’s own heart.  As I said, it wonderful when we find this in people who are like us, but even more rewarding when we find it in those who are not.

Counting the Cost

Bill Bryson is one of my favorite writers because he can make anything both interesting and funny.  I am just about finished with his book At Home: A Short History of Private Life.  Loosely wrapped around the design and purchase of a ‘charming’ house in the English countryside, At Home gives Bryson a pallet on which to explore the minutia of just about any subject you can imagine related to home life: refrigeration, the light bulb, inept English architects… you name it.  His exploration of the development of indoor plumbing brought me uncomfortably close to a time when muckraking was not a journalistic enterprise, but an actual job for a person who descended into London’s sewer system to ensure that ‘stuff’ kept moving (I think I have said enough about that).

Take something as commonplace as a mattress.  Back in Shakespeare’s day, a descent bed could cost as much as half a year’s salary.  According to Bryson, Goodholme’s Cyclopedia, a popular nineteenth century publication, divided mattress types into ten levels of comfort.  The best was down, then feathers, wool, wool-flock, hair, cotton, wood-shavings, sea-moss, sawdust, and finally straw.  A feather mattress began to smell after a few months, and so families who could afford it kept a flock of geese for plucking so that several times during the year the mattress could be restuffed with fresh bedding.  Many of the other mattress materials came with their own set of problems.  They were havens for bedbugs, fleas, moths, mice, and rats.  Sharing a bed with any of these fellows would not add to the prospect of a good night’s sleep.

I read a chapter of Bryon’s book each night before going to sleep.  Time and again, I have put it down on my nightstand, turned off the light, and thanked God that I live in America in the twenty-first century.  There has never been a better time to be alive nor has there ever been a more satisfying place to make a life.  Reading Bryon’s book reminds me that life even a hundred years ago would not have suited my temperament in the slightest.  That reality goes up by factors of ten the farther back in history you go.  All things considered, we are pretty well off.

I might add to this that there is no better time or place to be a Christian.  We can debate if it was better or not to be a Christian in the 1950’s when churches were overflowing and everybody in town – and I mean every body – was expected to go to church.  That era has passed, some would say thankfully.  Now, those of us who participate in the life of church do so willingly, rather than to conform to social norms. 

We are blessed to be able to worship in this place this morning without incurring the scorn of family members, the pressure of the state, or the fear of bodily harm.  The same cannot be said of our brothers and sisters in Christ in Egypt or Syria or the Southern Sudan.  In fact, there are many places in our world today where the practice of a particular faith can cost you your job, your freedom, and even your life.  I read this morning that an Anglican Archbishop in Nigeria was kidnapped overnight and out thoughts and prayers are with him.

In this morning’s Gospel reading we heard Jesus tell a large crowd of followers that they must consider the cost of discipleship before signing on.  For some of those folks the cost included estrangement or banishment from their families.  For others it led to social ridicule.  Some had to endure imprisonment, others beatings, and a fair number faced martyrdom.  All of these were commonplace and came over and above the challenge of actually practicing what Jesus preached:

·  Turn the other cheek.

·  If you have two coats, give one to a person who has none. 

·  If your hand causes you to sin cut it off.

·  Pray for your enemies and forgive those who do you wrong.

Yes, we find it difficult to do what Jesus taught us to do, but at least we living in a society where we are free to try. 

Over seventy Coptic Christian churches have been attacked or destroyed during the most recent uprising in Egypt.  Countless others have been kept safe because moderate Muslims have formed human shields around Christian churches.  In return, many Copts have offered the same protection to Mosques deemed too liberal by radical elements in the society.  The stakes are incredibly high, but Coptic Christians and Muslims, aware of the cost, have deemed it worth the sacrifice in order to stand up and to stand together.  As a fifty-year-old Egyptian housewife told one reporter, “I know it might not be safe, yet it’s either we live together, or we die together.”  None of us here this morning has to face anything like that in order to practice our faith, or merely to live our lives. 

Still, to be a participant in this faith community comes at a cost.  Unlike a huge mega church, where you can slip in the door, take a seat in a spacious auditorium, and be feed spiritually all the while remaining anonymous, what St. Paul’s has to offer amounts to nothing more than what all of you give and how God blesses it.  Being a participant in our common life will cost you time… the time it takes to serve on the Altar Guild or to sing in the choir or to serve on the Vestry or to teach a class.  You will be asked to contribute canned goods for the Food Pantry, side dishes at a Pot-Luck, and a casserole for Loaves and Fishes.  We have tables to set up and weeds to pull out.  There are no worker fairies living in the Undercroft (I know.  I have been down there). 

As I look around this place this morning I recognize that everyone is doing at least one thing to make this place work.  In an era when they say church membership is consumer driven, when people want to know what a church has to offer and what they can get out of it, St. Paul’s swims against the current.  What we get out of being a part of this church is directly tied to what we put in.  The more we give the more we get.

There is another cost to being a participant in our common life – financial.  If you go to a mega church, when they pass the bucket around – yes, I said bucket, not basket – you can drop in a dollar or two and no one will know the difference.  Sure, there may be a great emphasis placed on giving money “to do God’s work”, but the ministry isn’t going grind to a halt if you drop in a five spot as opposed to a twenty.

Financial stewardship here at St. Paul’s looks very different.  We struggle to fund a bare-bones budget that pays for a priest and several part-time staff while also tending to such non-glamorous necessities as utilities and insurance.  The Vestry presents the budget to the congregation at each year’s annual meeting.  You know what it costs to run this place and you know that your contributions play a significant part in the financial side of things.  In addition, we make regular appeals for the Food Pantry as well as special projects like drums and Godly Play lesson sets. 

I don’t try to goad or guilt anyone into doing “God’s work”, rather I emphasize the value of leading a generous life.  The biblical measure of generosity is the tithe – giving to God 10% of what you have.  Is this 10% of total income, gross income, or disposable income?  Does it include other charitable donations and the support of other community institutions, or just the church?  These practical questions are good ones to ask.  If you ask me, the answer I will give you is that it is good to lead a generous life.  I am grateful to be a point where I can be more generous today than yesterday.  I hope that tomorrow I can be even more generous than I am today.  In the end, leading a generous life is not a cost of being a Christian, it is one of the blessings.

So here is something for which to be grateful: none of us has to go home this afternoon, gather the geese, and pluck away in order to refeather a mattress.  When we lie down to sleep we are not getting poked by random pieces of straw nor do we have to wonder if a critter has burrowed into sawdust under the covers.  All things considered, we live a pretty sweet life.  No ifs, ands, or buts about it, I wouldn’t trade my life for that of a typical person in any other place or time.

And here is something else for which to be grateful: when we gather outside after the service for a cookout celebration the single biggest threat to a good time will be flies.  Hostile militants are not threatening to burn down our building.  No one is coming after us with guns or clubs or fists.  When a faith community faces this kind of threat either it closes its doors or it becomes deeply inspired with a marked sense of vitality and resolve.  I guess it has something to do with if you are in, you have to be all in. 

I would not want what threatens our brothers and sisters in far too many places around the globe.  Still, I recognize that they don’t have to face what most threatens us – complacency.  When you have it easy it becomes easy to kick back and relax, to assume that someone else will do what needs to be done, to let your generosity slip to a pittance of what it could be.  As we begin the program year of the church I invite you to consider what is costs you to be a part of God’s work in and through this place.  I invite you to work, pray, and give so that our ministry and witness will be strong and vital.