What follows is a manuscript for a sermon “in progress”, and does not necessarily represent the finished product.
Text: Mark 10:17-31 Title: Three Things You Need to Know about One Thing – October 14, 2012
“Americans deserve more jobs and more take home pay.”[1] That’s the tag line on a site supporting the economic policies of Governor Mitt Romney.
Ezra Klein’s Blog in the August 20 edition of The Washington Post states that the failure of President Obama’s economic policy centers around the fact that Mr. Obama focused on fixing the economic system when the real problem was household debt.[2] Binyamin Applebaum of the NY Times agrees, as indicated by an August 19 piece he wrote for that paper.[3]
Bill McKibben fills his talks and books in recent years with statistics. In his book: eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, McKibben not only talks about statistics, but he puts monetary value on the lists of numbers. One of the interesting lists has to do with actuarial tables – Insurance. “By some measures,” writes McKibben, “insurance is the world’s largest industry.”
We have experienced in our own small state of Vermont what happens to us when catastrophic storms hit in close enough succession such that we don’t have time to fully recover before another is upon us. How long will an insurance company offer coverage to a homeowner, a business, a municipality under those circumstances? Right now, says McKibben, “…the five northernmost coastal counties of Texas alone [have] insurers on the hook for $890 billion worth of risk.” (Financial exposure.) I mean, that’s even more than Alex Rodriguez made playing for the Yankees in 2012.[4]
But here is where I am going with this – something else Bill McKibben writes: “If it seems that I am callously reducing the danger we face to dollars and cents, that’s correct. Money,” he says, “money in our system equals information. It’s how we measure risk as well as possibility.” Then he writes this: “It’s the only gauge (emphasis mine) we have for understanding our collective future. If you have a lot of money,” he writes, “you have a lot of options, and if you don’t have much, your options narrow.[5]
I think the first century disciples of Jesus would completely agree with McKibben, even as many of the 21st century disciples do. They would be inclined to assess a political candidate purely on the basis of whether they would be economically better off with one or the other. Today’s gospel reading suggests that was at least one of the criteria when it came to their assessment of a potential ‘messiah’.
Perhaps you heard about David Siegel, founder and CEO of Westgate Resorts, a national timeshare company and one of the largest resort developers in the world. Based out of Florida, Westgate Resorts currently employs over 10,000 people around the United States. On Monday, October 8, Mr. Siegel sent an email out to all his employees. There is a link to the full email on our Worship Blog. It reads in part:
As your employer, I can’t tell you whom to vote for … In fact, I encourage you to vote for whomever you think will serve your interests the best. [But] if any new taxes are levied on me, or my company, as our current President plans, I will have no choice but to reduce the size of this company. This means fewer jobs, less benefits and certainly less opportunity for everyone.
So, when you make your decision to vote, ask yourself, which candidate understands the economics of business ownership and who doesn’t? Whose policies will endanger your job? Answer those questions and you should know who might be the one capable of protecting and saving your job.[6]
We measure life in terms of risk, and risk in terms of financial exposure. In fact, that’s how the disciples measured ‘blessing’. The richer you are, they thought, the more options you have and the closer to heaven you must be. That’s why they are completely baffled when Jesus says: How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God.
In the disciple’s mind, the rich were already there. David Siegel measures his wealth in the hundreds of millions. One might say he is in heaven and he is bound and determined to stay there.
Let’s look at the gospel story from three perspectives.
First, contrary to the disciple’s assumptions, the rich man knows at some level that he is lacking something important, in spite of his money. There is one thing about money that only the wealthy can know – and that is: what money can not provide. For all the money Mr. Siegel has, he is still not secure, and the evidence of his insecurity shows itself in the threatening tone of his email to his employees. I think the rich man in the gospel story has some level of piety and decency in him. He is a keeper of religious law, and humble enough to bow in front of Jesus and admit to a lack in his life. For a man of means, this must not have been an easy thing to do. What Jesus will teach him – and teach us through him – is the way in which wealth can be an obstacle to discipleship. It always occurs to us that we don’t have enough money; it seldom – if ever – occurs to us that we have too much.
There is a certain cognitive dissonance here. The man is rich, but in some significant way needy; and he can’t rid his life of the thing that is dragging him down. Don’t you wish we could know what this rich man was hoping Jesus would say to him? I wonder if he was hoping Jesus would be the kind of ‘messiah’ that would offer some guarantee that he would continue to grow even more wealthy beyond measure.
So, the first perspective is that of the rich man who is unable to accept Jesus’ wisdom.
The second perspective is that of the disciples. While the rich are immersed in money, the poor are often immersed in the myths about money. Lacking direct experience, those of lesser means imagine themselves as rich people and, if they could just be rich enough they themselves would be blessed. The issue for the disciples is not so much what Jesus said to the rich man, but what Jesus has just done to their own economic aspirations. The rich guy is who they want to be.
Here is some more cognitive dissonance. Poor people – most of those early disciples we believe to have been rather marginal when it came to financial security – poor people are following a homeless guy in the hopes of making it big. There is something about Jesus that brings hope to life for them. They had not yet learned that Jesus’ message was actualized in his lifestyle with the same consistency and potency it was proclaimed in his teaching. It is telling, isn’t it, that there is no record of any of the disciples of Jesus taking leave of the Nazarean to follow the wealthy man.
Third perspective – what the rich man wanted, Jesus could provide – the rich man just had to give up his riches.
Bill McKibben writes: “Every politician who ever lived has said, ‘Our best days are ahead of us.’ McKibben says we are going to have to recalibrate our understanding of “best” in these days of warming, floods, droughts, melting ice caps and rising sea levels. All the talk in politics these days has to do with how to “grow” our economy again. The problem – put in terms vastly oversimplified – is the commodity that fuels “growth” as we define it is the same commodity that is warming our atmosphere, increasing poverty, and forever changing the world as we know it.
Listen to this … McKibben says two things are necessary. First, we have to “Mature”. That means, we have to stop thinking in terms of going faster, getting bigger, acquiring more – we have to stop thinking like ‘teenagers’ – and that’s not a slam against adolescence. It is just to acknowledge the fact that no one remains a teenager for more than 7 years – and our American culture has been behaving this way for well over 200 years! Adults eventually slow down, need less, get smaller.
The second thing McKibben says is this: We are going to have to figure out what we must jettison.[7]
My goodness – there’s the gospel! There’s the “Jesus message”! It is so essentially counter-cultural as to be deemed not only grossly impractical but completely irrelevant. Over two thousand years ago Jesus told a man living in the fast lane that he had to slow down! If he was ever to find the life he yearned for, he was going to have jettison the stuff that fueled his super-sonic lifestyle.
I don’t doubt the truth of McKibben’s word when he says: [Money is] the only gauge we have for understanding our collective future. I think that is absolutely true when it comes to our politics. But we have another “collective future” and a different rubric for measuring it. It is the spiritual future – intimately linked to our politic, but completely different in kind. We have a “collective spiritual future”, and I can’t help but assume that is the future the rich man yearned for. It’s not that we don’t need money; it’s just that our finances must not occupy the throne of our heart.
We’ve left everything to follow you, says Peter. And notice Jesus doesn’t start with the stuff of “wealth” as he responds to his hyperactive, overachieving fisherman friend. It’s not riches, businesses, financial security – those are not things possessed in abundance by these disciples.
You’ve left home, brothers and sisters, moms and dads, and children to follow me. And yes, some few may have left fields. It’s almost as if Jesus is saying to them – Having left all these things, why would you presume that monetary wealth would provide what none of those things has? Why would you now chase after money?
The David Siegels of the world live with a certain amount of insecurity, even as that rich man in the gospel. It’s time we understand that followers of Jesus are not called to a life of security. We are called to a life of faith. This is not an abdication of responsibility, nor is it a denial of material blessing. Rather, it is the conviction that the vision Jesus has for our world is worth giving everything for, worth leaving everything for. It seems absurd to focus our affection on what has been given to us rather than on the One who has given to us.
[1] Mitt Romney on line site – http://www.mittromney.com/jobs
[2] See Klein’s piece – The Best Case Against the Obama Administration. Washington Post, August 20, 2012. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/08/20/the-best-case-against-the-obama-administration/
[3] See Applebaum’s piece – Cautions Moves on Foreclosures Haunts Obama. NY Times, August 19, 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/20/business/economy/slow-response-to-housing-crisis-now-weighs-on-obama.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
[4] Rodriguez earned $29 million in 2012.
[5] Bill McKibben, earth: Making A Life on a Tough New Planet. Times Books, Henry Holt and Company, LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. © 2010. Pages 66-69.
[6] The full email can be read here – http://gawker.com/5950189/the-ceo-who-built-himself-americas-largest-house-just-threatened-to-fire-his-employees-if-obamas-elected?utm_campaign=socialflow_gawker_twitter&utm_source=gawker_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow
[7] Most of this information is found on pages 100 ff in McKibben’s eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. Times Books, Henry Holt and Company, LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. © 2010.
Excellent sermon, Mark. The book our youngest child picked for bedtime story last night ties right into your message – have you ever read The Quiltmaker’s Gift?