Foundry UMC DC: Sunday Sermons
Religion & Spirituality:Christianity
Fearless Living
A sermon shared by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC, October14, 2018, the twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost. “Fearless Generosity” series.
Text: Mark 10:17-31
“Fearless” is an interesting word and concept. On one hand, to be fearless could get a person into all sorts of trouble—“I think I’ll taste test every berry in the forest!” Some of those things can do you in![i] Not being appropriately fearful—that is, acknowledging real danger—is just a form of ignorance. On the other hand, to be fearless is liberation, it is courage, it is being willing to risk something significant for the sake of something else we believe more significant. Thursday, October 11th marked the 30th anniversary of national “Coming Out Day” and it was a gift to see my FaceBook feed filled with so many powerful stories of liberation, of risking really important things for the sake of fully celebrating the fullness of our God-given orientations and identities. This is a beautiful expression of what it looks like to be fearless in a healthy way.
Sadly, however, studies show that folks are feeling inordinately fearful these days. It’s not because we (as a whole) are in any more danger than at any other time (barring, perhaps, the reality of climate change). Our general fearfulness is fueled in large part by the constant stream of bad news into our consciousness and by the pace of change all around us. These things trigger anxieties and leave us feeling off-balance and out of control and powerless and very vulnerable.
In the midst of this, we’re talking about “fearless living” today. It’s been suggested that in response to the fear all around us, we tend to focus on those things that are both not really the greatest threat AND that we can do little about. But last week, Stewardship Team Co-Chair Tara Holeman Kawasaki named one of the real threats to a fulfilled life and something concrete we can do to deal with it. She said, “I give without fear as way of practicing living without fear.” In these words, Tara captures the heart of our whole “Fearless Generosity” series.
Money is one of the things we rely on and need most in order to feel secure. Do we have enough to pay our bills, to eat, to travel to see our families, to receive medical care? These are important questions and, for many, are daily stressors. Regardless of how much we may have, it is scary to think that we may not have enough. Fear of scarcity is a powerful fear. But Tara’s insight is also powerful: the spiritual practice of giving fearlessly to God’s work in the world is a concrete way to practice extending that fearlessness into the rest of our lives. Honestly, if we can be less fearful with our money, then we’ve overcome one of the biggest hurdles of all.
We see this clearly in today’s Gospel story. This is the only story that Mark tells of someone who is called to follow Jesus and refuses. Why? Well, the story suggests it has something to do with the man’s “many possessions.” He is rich. And the question he asks of Jesus is: “What must I do to inherit…?” The root of the word “inherit” in Greek means “to inherit a piece of land.” So the question has, at its root, the sense of acquiring something, of earning something, of buying something. This one is functioning within a kind of market economy mindset. I have everything else; what will it take to get this other thing that I want? What is the cost? Jesus’ response is to recite the last six commandments of the Big Ten. He doesn’t name the first four—which have to do with our relationship with God—but rather, focuses on the last six, which are all about our relationship to our neighbor. Jesus edits one of the commandments—evidently just for the benefit of this man before him. In verse 19 of our passage, instead of “you shall not covet” (desire someone else’s stuff) Jesus says, “you shall not defraud”(deceitfully gain). This rich man probably doesn’t covet much—he doesn’t really need to! At that time, wealth was largely real estate and folks gained more wealth by acquiring the land of debt-defaulting neighbors (think foreclosures); therefore, it’s reasonable to assume that those with lots of property, had gained at least some at the expense of other people’s struggle and suffering. Those who already have enough getting richer at the expense of those who are already struggling is clearly not a new phenomenon. What would it mean for the man to “not defraud” in this context?
Whatever the answer, in response to Jesus, the man insists he has followed all these commandments “since his youth.” So Jesus just asks him to put his money where his mouth is. Jesus says, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” There it is. And at this, the man is “shocked” and goes away sad because he had many possessions.
You know, this man seems like a nice enough fellow, one who knows and has tried to follow the commands of God, a generally well-meaning sort of person. But Jesus saw the one thing that held him back: a fear of letting go of his material possessions. This man lacked fearless generosity. And it meant that, while he may have continued to live comfortably, he missed the opportunity to live fearlessly. He missed the opportunity to participate in the mending, restorative work of God’s Kin-dom through giving back to those who had lost their land. And he walked away from the invitation to follow Jesus, to get in on the life and world-changing experience of sharing Jesus’ life. His fear of losing something—maybe not just property and wealth, but status and power?—resulted in the loss of some other pretty beautiful things—eternal things, things with a lot more staying power than stuff. //
In all the congregations I’ve served over more than 20 years—larger, smaller, richer, poorer—the leadership has wrestled with fear of scarcity and the challenge of how much risk they could tolerate for the sake of the Kin-dom. Here at Foundry over the past several years we have grappled with this dynamic and have taken the risk to strategically invest in new things for the sake of our vision and mission. In 2015, when it became clear that we needed to develop ministries to deepen faith and help folks connect with God and one another, we added staff positions in family and connecting ministries to guide that work. The growth experienced because of this investment—and the ongoing discernment around faithful next steps to strengthen our ministry—resulted in our splitting the “connecting” ministry area into new Discipleship and Hospitality and Care ministry departments this year…and we also added musicians to our worship and improved our online presence and live stream experience. These investments have been risky—we have drawn upon limited reserves to help cover the costs—but we have been practicing fearless giving toward these ministries with faith that those investments would bring about beautiful returns. Our investment is working; our stewardship booklet provides a snapshot of the ways our investments in social justice, family, worship and music, discipleship, and hospitality and care ministries are changing lives. Your generosity over the past several years together with the strategic investment of reserves is making amazing things happen. Our fearless giving is a way we are practicing fearless living—we’re risking something significant for the sake of something more significant.
As we look into 2019, we are committed to sending a strong contingent of Foundry folk to the special called General Conference in St. Louis to bear witness to the love of God for all people and the call to full inclusion for LGBTQ persons. We know we need to strengthen our communications both internally and externally in order to reach new people and more diverse people and are planning to add the staff person approved by the Board for this purpose. Increased investments of time and money will be directed toward our racial justice and sacred resistance work in 2019. We’re expanding our music department to offer even more amazing special musical offerings—as a way to invite new people to our community and to fulfill our call to transcendent worship. This is just a small part of the vision that God is stirring among us and it will only happen through each one of us engaging in fearless giving as a way to practice fearless living. It is never an easy thing to do—as individuals or as communities.
And in our story today, Jesus teaches it’s especially hard for those with wealth to enter the Kin-dom of God (which I understand not as “getting into heaven someday” but rather experiencing life as God intends it on earth as in heaven). To be clear, Jesus doesn’t say wealthy people can’t enter Kin-dom life. I’m privy to folks with wealth giving abundantly and joyfully to serve others and promote justice, mercy, and love. This is a powerful witness! I’ll never forget the woman—not a person you might imagine having wealth just by looking at her plain, chain-smoking self—saying to me, “I feel so fortunate that I can give so much!” I’ve had folks in high-earning jobs who struggle to participate in the hands-on ministries of the church due to their work demands say, “My generous giving is the way I get to be a full participant in our ministry.” Those gifts are game-changers for our shared ministry.
So you see, it’s not that wealthy folks can’t participate in the Kin-dom. But Jesus does say it will be hard. Because of the seductive power of wealth, because it is to easy to fall in love with money, because of the false sense of security that wealth provides, because the more money people have the easier it is to focus on serving the self and not the needs of others. And can you see how a focus on these things breeds fear? You don’t have to be super rich to fall into this trap. It becomes very easy to spend on ourselves or our family and give very little if anything to the work of God through the church. A woman in one of my former congregations shared a personal revelation: she made a priority of taking a big trip every year that always cost more than ten thousand dollars, but was giving a fraction of that amount to the church. It had never occurred to her before, this disparity. Her commitment became that she would give at least as much to the work of the Kin-dom as she gave to herself for the annual vacation.
If you find yourself feeling twitchy about my talking about money and giving money to the church, know you’re in good company. Discomfort with the conversation has been around a long time—at least since the encounter between Jesus and the man in our story today. And if you’re uncomfortable I want to invite you to pay attention to that; it’s likely to do with your experience of money in your life—if you’ve had it or struggled to get by; the discomfort is likely to do with some fear or another—I won’t even try to name all the possible fears that connect up with our experience of money and possessions (my personal list is too long to share!). Somehow, the conversation about money in church can touch us in some pretty tender places. God knows what’s going on and is with you… It is instructive to pay attention to the discomfort, anger, anxiety that may erupt in our spirit when confronted with Jesus who forces the issue. Our fears can keep us from fully experiencing the joy, meaning, and liberation that is possible. Fearless living is connected to fearless giving. Tara named it for us last week and this week’s Gospel affirms it’s true.
Tara also said, “As is written in Matthew, ‘where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.’ Giving to the work of Foundry is a way to imagine a world that is not built on fear, but one that is built on the loving uplift of [God’s] Kin-dom. We put our finances and time into that creation because we see at Foundry that God’s fearless love makes all things possible.” Today we heard a story of a person who turned away from the invitation to give fearlessly so that he might live fearlessly. My prayer is that at Foundry—both as individuals and as a congregation—we’ll have the courage to trust God enough to make a different choice for the sake of the Kin-dom.
[i] https://caloriebee.com/nutrition/10-Poisonous-Berries-That-Can-Kill-You
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