Church on Morgan
More than One Thing
[MUSIC PLAYING] From Church on Morgan, a United Methodist congregation whose desire is to be a reminder of the beauty of God and each other. This podcast is a collection of Sunday teachings inspired by the revised Common Lectionary and recorded weekly in Raleigh, North Carolina. And now a moment of silence before this episode begins. [MUSIC PLAYING] How y'all doing? This week's been a lot. I'm going to try my best to not make this about me, because it's not about me. But I'll tell you, I'm actually a human being, too, with a family that's in the process of tearing itself apart this week on text threads and phone calls and emails. And so I can only imagine that, at least for a number of us in the room, we're experiencing the same. And even a little bit fearful that that might happen right here in this room among this community, too. Some of you this morning, just to kind of level set, like here would be my sense and expectation after doing this gig for a minute. Some of you are here because you're hurting and you're longing for a bit of good news and comfort. And you're so welcome to be here. And I'm grateful that this felt like a safe place to show up. Others of you are here ready for me to make one misstatement in one direction or the other, so you have the receipt for why you chose to never come back. I see you. I welcome the challenge. But genuinely, I feel like we need on weeks like this, and really, it's just a reminder of every week to hear what God might have to say more than what any one of us might want to shout or say into these microphones. So here's the only direct commentary I will offer you, and then we're going to kind of move on. Seems to me that it's not a ridiculous thing to say that many of us, much of our country, regardless of which way they voted, were surprised by the results, specifically how clear the results were. And I'm sure that we'll spend the next four years on podcasts and cable news and the rest picking it all apart and sorting out how exactly that happened. I don't feel like that's my job to do. But what seems to be true, and at least some of the wisest voices that I've been listening to would say, is that apparently there have been and is a number of people in our country, a significant number of people in our country, who have felt afraid and unseen, honestly, by many of the people like us. And now on the other side of that, many of us feel very afraid and unseen. And so we've gathered this morning as a church to listen and hopefully respond to the God that we believe sees, sees us all in our full humanity, that we might become the kind of people who can actually see each other in their full humanity. And second thing I'll say is that I do believe the government matters. I believe the good governance matters. It matters to God. It matters to other people. It should matter to us. And yet this is a good reminder for many of us that if we would-- that to expect from government, what God says we can only hope for in the kingdom is a form of idolatry that we should be set free from. OK, so that's it. I'm going to talk about stuff you like, even less, in a few seconds. This morning's gospel reading comes from the book of Mark, chapter 12, verses 38 to 44. Here now the word of the Lord. As he taught, that's Jesus. He said, beware. Beware the scribes who like to walk around in long robes and to be greeted with respect in marketplaces and to have the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. They devour widows' houses. And for the sake of appearance, they say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation. He sat down opposite the treasury, and he watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. And then he called his disciples, and he said to them, truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance. But she, out of her poverty, has put in everything she had, all she had to live on. Friends, this is a word of God for us, the people of God. Thanks be to God. So if election season is behind us, the good news I have to bring to you this morning is that that means stewardship season is upon us. Some of you are like, what is a steward? Yeah, that's fancy language we use in the church for fundraising. As we wind down the last six, seven weeks of this year, our church alongside of countless others, as well as NPR, is going to fill the airwaves with an invitation for you to join us financially. Here's kind of the reason for that. Just demystify some of this. At church on Morgan, we are like many congregations in this country in that we will receive traditionally, historically, we have received 40% of our budget for the whole year in the last three months of the year. And so it's a critical time for us as a church. So much of our financial health, not only right now, but for next year and the future, hangs on how we do financially in the next two months. And here's just if you haven't been around church on Morgan for a minute, if you're a guest or visitor, this may mean nothing really to you. But what I will tell you is that I'm really pleased and grateful that our church is currently on track. The kind of goals that we set for ourselves to meet our budget for the year, based on historic giving patterns, like we are on track. Now, we're not way ahead, but we're also not behind. But we are on track. We don't have a huge hole we have to fill. But we also don't have a big giant bank sitting on the side. And so these months will matter, but we're in a good position to walk in them. I will also tell you that culturally as a church, I don't know if we've ever had greater clarity about who we are, why we exist, and what God's preferred future for us as a congregation might look like. I am so fired up about the opportunities that are in front of us and the future that I feel like God is inviting us to step into in this our 10th year as a congregation. And so because of that, I'll just be honest with you. I am not going to be shy asking for your money. I think it is a worthy and a good place to invest and park it in the church, right? I wanna know where else can you give to a community that creates opportunities for people to experience communion with God, at least on a weekly basis, in communion with other people, particularly people who look and think differently than you do, what other organization can you give to that is committed to the healing and flourishing of all that is developing people to be those who seek justice and peace in the world. And it does it honestly with such charm and winsomeness, right? I know a lot of you feel like the church has too much money and that we shouldn't give to the church and I get it, I hear you. But once again, I'm just showing up as me right now. I am not bashful about asking. Many of us in this congregation and I have no problem with this, like more power to you, but feel very comfortable and empowered to give to your college and your university, which by many people's accounts are increasingly becoming just hedge funds that educate fewer and fewer people in America. Place where wealth is just accumulated and invested again and again and again, while fewer and fewer are accepted and giving the opportunity of a real education. So if you feel comfortable giving to that, by all means, I think you should feel pretty fired up about giving to the church. We are so far from a hedge fund, I can't even tell you. Especially churches like church on Morgan. So I hope you will give in the next couple of months if you're able. I hope you'll step up, step into this with us. I pray this season will be maybe potentially the most faith-filled giving moment in your life. And conveniently today for me, for the church, the electionary tees up for us. What I would argue just might be the most successful, fundraising vignette in human history, right? So just go with me, you're sitting at the Angus barn, you've had a lovely dinner. The MC has told a few jokes and there's been some artists up front, but you know we're getting close to the ask. And they say before, the fundraiser steps up to ask for that. We just want to show you one quick video, right? And you know what's coming. It's going to be three to five minutes. Inspirational story that's going to move the whole room to change this night from, you know, grow the giving from this amount to this amount. This is that video. The story we read this morning is that moment. It's that vignette. Let me remind you what we see. We're told that Jesus sits down in the temple, opposite the treasury, essentially sits down, right across from the offering bucket. It's a little bit impolite and he stares. And he watches as a number of wealthy people come and give large sums of money into this offering basket. And then he watches as a widow comes forward and gives two mites or what many translations say equated to a penny. And then it was all that she had and she puts it in the offering box and then Jesus says to them, I tell you this woman who's just donated a penny has given more than all the others because they gave out of their abundance. She gave out of her poverty. And so friends, friends of means, friends at this wonderful Angus Barn dinner with me right now with beach homes and three cars and the rest. What might it look like if we too were to give sacrificially in this moment to this cause like that woman did, right? This is the video, this is the vignette. This, I've been in ministry for over 20 years. That story has built more buildings, funded more ministries, started more churches than any other story. You start to think all the way out on like 2000 years of church history. I don't think we can fathom what's been made possible on the other side of that movie. Not only have so many incredible ministries, programs and churches been sort of built on the backside of this but I genuinely believe that every time this woman's story is told somebody is set free from the small God of mammon and money and wealth is brought back into their full humanity as they let go of this false errand that they've given themselves to. I won't be bashful or shy about inviting you to be generous people and even to point some of that generosity in the direction of the church, this church. Unfortunately, that's not the only story that we see in this text. I'm kind of embarrassed to tell you this for all the years that I've been a paid professional Christian person sitting in fundraising and campaigns and watching this story and seeing it leveraged and used for such good ends. I never actually opened my Bible to see the full context of it. And in one of the small kind of wins for the lectionary, those who've come before us have said, don't you read that story without reading the few sentences that come before it? Some of you might have already been on to this. Some of you were, you've been like, man, if this is your first Sunday, I'm like, I got cringe all over with this guy. This may make it worse or better, I don't know, but. Here's what verse 38 to 40 say. Here's how we're invited into this vignette. This is the warm up for that video. As Jesus taught, he said, be aware of the scribes, be aware of religious leaders, be aware of the paid professionals in the institution of divinity, right? Who like to walk around in long robes, we've been dreaming about it. And be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and have the best seats in the synagogue. Be aware of the religious leaders because they devour widows' houses. And then he tells us a story of Jesus sitting down and watching a widow give the last two cents she had to her name. I don't need to tell you this, remind you of this, but especially in that ancient near Eastern context, right? To be a widow was to be essentially the most vulnerable and vulnerable people. No one was looking out for you. You had no real rights. You had no ability to own property. Your life was hanging by the thread of generosity of somebody who might step in but had no obligation really to do so. This is a woman who is on the margin whose voice had been ignored, who had been pushed out, who's staring down sort of the pipeline of her final days on this planet and makes this decision to contribute her last penny into the coffers that's building this massive empire that's supposed to be caring for her but in so giving to it, she pretty much signs her own death certificate. Many people say, you know, if you follow her story on like you'd expect and then the disciples came and fed her and then somebody bought her a house and then they invited her in her home. We get none of this. All we're told is that she spent the last dollar she had and she went away. Many people say and starved or died, right? Changes the tone of the story and the way that we read it. You start to wonder, wait, is this an inspirational story of generosity or is this a cautionary tale about exploitation at the hands of religious organizations? This too is a story that's being told in the world. Rightfully so. You know, people raising kind of their voice, getting, creating a platform, beginning to sort of shout back at the church and go, hey, this is not okay that there are pastors who are charged with caring for the most impoverished people on the planet and somehow find a way to do so that gets them four private jets and multiple million dollar homes and buildings that get bigger and bigger and bigger. This is wrong. It's why many of you have sent me the religion business Instagram account in the last year. Some of you know, 'cause you're following, savoring it, licking your chops, I appreciate it, right? But this is, this account started, I don't know, three or six months ago, it's already nearly 200,000 followers. They're building a seven-part documentary that's gonna come out in the spring, exposing once and for all the religion business and how shady it all is about how folks like myself and others get rich on the backs of the poor. And they are calling it out, regularly getting arrested from all of the mega churches that you're aware of when they show up and start asking questions. And so there's a lot of pastors and large churches who are very nervous about what this might mean for them and for their church. And there are many of you who've reached out to me to go, is this true about us? How does this work here at Church on Morgan? We are right to be concerned about this. But then some of us go, well then why did Jesus celebrate this moment, right? Why did he say, so be like this woman? And then you go back and you read the text a little closer and you realize, oh, he didn't. Jesus just notices. He just makes sure everybody's watching what's happening. He doesn't say that what this woman did, you two should do. He doesn't celebrate these religious leaders who gladly received the last dollar to her name. He doesn't, this is descriptive. It's not prescriptive, right? In fact, the one thing Jesus does say directly, the only thing that seems to be prescriptive is he says leaders who lead like this will get the greater condemnation. He's like, there's a special place in my kingdom for these folks. That's the one thing he's clear about. And in the next chapter or so, we'll watch Jesus walk outside of that temple and see a whole bunch of people admiring it and he'll say, you know what? Judgment's coming for this place. And it'll just be a matter of time. There won't be a single stone left on another stone when it comes to what's being built here. And the brutal irony of this story is that every time it's preached, the odds are that another vulnerable, impoverished person will be exploited through its telling all over again. So as you can imagine, these are slightly different perspectives. These people have different histories who read it in these different ways. They come from different backgrounds, they live different lives, they're different demographics. They vote for different political parties. It's happening wondering if this isn't actually a really wonderful text for us to wrestle with a little bit this morning. It makes sense out of how could it be, is it either A or is it B? One group of people read this text and they use the generosity of this woman to build this institution without any concern for her wellbeing or what it cost her. One group of people will use this moment of generosity to build their institution without any concern for what the real implications of this gift were. And there's another group, Derase Party, who will use this woman's exploitation to tear down the institution without noticing how much her faith meant to her. How central it was to her life and faith. The thing that seems to me to be common about both of these readings is that they both use this woman without actually seeing her. One of my friends this week is on the morning after the election trying to make sense out of kind of the results. Just said to me, you know, I woke up this morning and I realized like, I really have no idea what it means to be poor. I really have no idea what it means to be poor. So much of the way that we understand ourselves and each other in politics and the way we read the scriptures is built on the backs of using other human beings without actually seeing them. But Jesus here always on point, rather than using this woman, he sees her. He notices her and I think there's a more beautiful story, a more full story, a more human story that's being told about her and all of us in this text. What he sees is not necessarily a victim. He sees a woman who refused to be dehumanized. He sees a woman who knew that there are things in this life worse than death, one of them being never trusting God. And so she was gonna trust God even if it meant death for her. But the act of giving for her, the scene is an act of resistance. As someone who with eyes wide open gave everything she had to a broken system and world that would ultimately kill her but she gave herself to it anyway as this prophetic statement with her life. As in the Christian tradition what we would say is she isn't a victim, she's a martyr. She wasn't a pawn in either of these two people's schemes. She lived with this sense of clear conviction about her own sense of worth and value and identity and did it before God regardless of what others would wanna do with her. In my hope and prayer for us, Church, I'm Morgan in this election stewardship season, is that those of us who have the means that we would give generously, that we would know what it looks like to trust God, that we would be set free from our slavery to wealth and man and in greed. But I also pray that we would resist every form of exploitation that exists in this life. Every story that would rather use a person than see them, that we would be the kind of people whose eyes are wide open to the vulnerable in our midst, that we would dignify their life and witness and their voice rather than just speak for them. May it be so, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen. - Thank you for joining today. If this episode has been meaningful to you, would you take a moment to share it with a friend? To support this ministry, or learn more about our community, visit us at churchonmorgon.org (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) You
The good news of a more nuanced view. A sermon for the 25th Sunday after Pentecost on Mark 12:34-44 by Rev. Justin Morgan.