Rev. Bob Mutlow
Woodcliff United

16 November 2008

“On the Money”

Jesus was a storyteller par-excellence, a master of hyperbole – he could stretch a story a mile.  Today Jesus is on the money!  The English word talent comes from this Jesus story; talents came to mean all those things that make us unique and special.  When Jesus uses the word “talent” he is talking about big money, really big money.  A talent was the biggest unit of money in the Roman Empire.  This was trillionaire talk and this was a guy with huge amounts of money to be invested. Two of the financial planners in the story are the kind of financial planners that were right on the mark a year ago – you could watch your investments going up and all was well with the world.  You know you are living in a changed world when an airline pilot recently came on a flight to New York with these words, “We’re at the close of business day.  Let me give you a market update.”  It wasn’t about the weather, the landing conditions – it was about the market meltdown.  Who needs to hear that from your airline pilot?  Jesus third investor was Mr. Cautious.  We laughed at Aunt Edna who kept her money under the mattress – all of a sudden she doesn’t seem so crazy.  The story is told of a business man, a very astute guy who got so concerned about the very survival of banks in America that he took all of his cash out of the bank, bought gold and put the gold in his safety deposit box. 

John Ortberg of If You Want to Walk on Water, You’ve Got to Get Out of the Boat fame in his flip kind of way asks the question, “Do ya’ll know who the smartest person in the world about money is?  No it’s not Warren Buffet, it’s Jesus.”  As Ortberg reminds us, Jesus number one topic was the Kingdom of God - inviting us to come on side, to make God’s dream of Shalom (peace, community, justice) a reality for all humankind.  A close second was money because how we use our money is where the rubber hits the road. “Here’s the deal about your money, here is the Jesus truth: Your money is not your money so don’t worry about it.  Don’t clutch onto it.  Don’t let it create your sense of identity.  Don’t ever think that your net worth is your worth to God.  Don’t get all proud about it when it piles up.  Don’t get all anxious about it when it dwindles down, because your money is not your money.”   That’s hard, real hard for us to get our heads around.
A group of us were at Joel Osteen’s event last Sunday night at the Saddledome. You may have watched him on television in a program that is pretty low-key in terms of Christian content; it is designed to reach wide audience in a soft sell about the future that is yet to be.  The evening with Joel & Victoria Osteen and his mother plus praise band was a much more lively, in your face Christian event.  You have got to admire their enthusiasm – he had preached twice on Sunday morning, had a four-hour plane trip and led a two-hour assembly here on Sunday night.  You may have read his New York Times best seller, Become A Better You.  In the introduction he sets up his theme,  “Whether life is going well for you or collapsing right before your eyes, we all want to be better.  We want to be more effective in our lives.  We want to know God better; we want to be better spouses and parents, better lovers, better encouragers, better community leaders, better employees, and better bosses and managers.  God puts something deep down inside us that evokes a desire to be more like God.  In our inner being, we hear a voice saying, ‘You were born for better than this; you are meant to live at a higher level that you are currently. Don’t be satisfied with less.  You can be better.’” (X111)

You may have heard Joel Osteen tell his story how his father with a small group began the Lakewood Church on Mother’s Day 1959.  Joel served in the background in the church’s television ministry.  His father had often asked him to step up and preach and he refused, he felt his ministry was in television production.  At 77 his Father was taken to the hospital and he family could hardly believe it when he told his father he would preach that coming Sunday.  His father was one proud father as he watched Joel preach his first sermon through the television ministry lying in his hospital bed - father died later that week. Joel took over and much to people’s surprise, the church grew by leaps and bounds and some years ago they needed a bigger facility.  So they began looking for property – two of the prime locations fell through.  Although he was really disappointed, he had to remind himself, “Joel, God has closed this door for a reason. He has something better in store.” Not long after that, the door to the Compaq Center, a 16,000 sports arena, opened up in downtown Houston, right in the middle of one of the busiest sections of the city.  Some tried to talk him out of risking big, taking on a sports arena.  He writes, “Don’t let other people talk you out of your dreams…When you face rejection and disappointment, don’t stay there …that closed door means that God has something better in store for you…I can tell you with confidence that your best days are in front of you.” (18) 
Joel sees his ministry in the tradition of Paul writing to the Thessalonians that you heard today, “Encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing.”  As an encourager, Joel’s word for this day and every day is our “best days are still to come.”  He speaks very personally out of his own story and the people he encounters. Sometimes they are dealing with marriage issues. (His own father’s first marriage didn’t work out and that was a big deal for a Baptist Pastor in the 950’s in Texas.)  People pour out their hearts how they have put all those years into the marriage and now they’re hurt, dejected, going around defeated and convinced their best years are behind them.  He reminds us that when one door closes, if we keep a right attitude, another opens.  A lot of it depends on us – it is tempting to bury our talent, to become bitter and angry and blaming of God.  Risking about letting that go and look at the future as a new beginning and that God has something better in store.

We have been picking up on many of these themes in our “One Month to Live: 30 day challenge group.  The material focuses on three principles:

1. Live Passionately, living each day as if it were your last
2. Love Completely, showing other love that transcends and transforms
3. Learn Humbly, growing through your problems and pain.
4. Leave Boldly, creating a legacy that will impact generations.

There is a chapter reflection every day and some very specific tasks.  On Day 21 Kerry & Chris Shook uses sports imagery around the theme of “Playing with Integrity.” He is convinced that sports bring out the best and worst in us.  As one wag said, “Sports do not build character.  They reveal it.”  Probably that is most true on the golf course where it is so tempting to drop a few strokes or just slightly move the ball for a better shot.  Integrity is all about putting all our compartmentalized lives into a whole.  We clergy have a tough time with this – we have this pulpit life and our own personal stuff and it is sometimes hard to connect the dots. Many women tell me they feel very fragment with work lives, children’s schedules, keeping the home going and they have no personal time and I think that is true for many men – they feel pulled in so many directions.  So we live out of these different compartments as provider, parent, community, church, play time and it is hard to put them all together.

There was a big newspaper story about a couple who ordered a bucket a chicken and when they got to the picnic, opened it up, there was the whole day’s receipts - some $800.00 in the bucket.  The man immediately drove back to the restaurant and the manager was so relieved that he had such an honest customer he wanted to phone the newspapers.  The man leaned over and whispered, “Oh, no.  I don’t want our picture in the newspaper because this woman I am with is married to someone else.” 

In the golf movie The Legend of Bagger Vance, the mythical caddy tries to help up a washed-up golfer find his best swing, his one true authentic swing, found by playing on his natural strengths and compensating for his weaknesses.  Every one of us has one true, authentic swing in us.  But we end up spending so much energy trying to impress folks.  It robs us of our true passion and diverts us from our God-given talent.  Some end up at the end of life regretting that they didn’t live out being true to their authentic swing.  The other side of this search for passion, for truth, for integrity is to remember that in Jesus we have all been given a mulligan, a start-over because each and every day he nailed our ups and downs, our successes and our failures to the cross.

The parable of the money is less about using your money wisely that it is about risking all for the master.  Sometimes we get to thinking that the church is a safe haven, a sanctuary to protect us and insulate us from the dangers and the risks of the world.  Instead the church is the place where disciples receive the gifts of faith and forgiveness, grace and love, which gives them what they need to be daredevils in the eyes of the rest of the world.  Who but Christ’s disciples can have the audacity to offer the miracle of new life for all who want to receive it, or the gift of love and hope to a broken world because Christ first loved us.  Look at the cross if you want to get real clear about risk!

Where do we find in the Bible anywhere where it says that Jesus calls us to follow him and he would lead us into a risk-free life?  Stephen Lewis, our Canadian hero, the former United Nations special envoy on AIDS in Africa tells of a father meeting him on the elevator and being really angry – “Because of you my son is working in Africa today.”  It turns out that the son was enrolled in Law School in Toronto – the students began doing wonderful papers and research and assisting in addressing the issues surrounding AIDS - and many stepped up because they got a vision going that there was a place for them in Africa.  It is far more engaging to be in the game than standing on the sidelines.
The issue for us in the church is – have we lost the passion, the drive, and the ambition?  Are we as ambitious for the growth of our souls as we are for the progress of our careers?  Are we ambitious for a city and a society that have adequate housing, healthcare, and education for everyone? Are we ambitious enough to address domestic violence?  Tuesday November 25 has been declared The United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.”  We think of what is happening in the Congo right now in terms of rape of women as part of an act of war and our United Church is partnering with the L’Eglise du Congo.  Abuse comes in many forms as the bizarre kidnapping of a 19-year-old woman and 68-year-old man in Calgary this past week demonstrates.  The facts in Alberta alone are frightening:

• 4 out of every 10 murders in Alberta in 2005 were domestic-related homicides
• Alberta shelters received over 100,000 crisis calls from April 2006 – March 2007, marking a 15% increase over the previous year
• In Calgary police responded to 12,276 domestic violence calls up 500 calls.

Are we ambitious for a world where no one need go hungry? Do we see ourselves taking hold of World Vision’s concern for the hungry, the Mennonite Central Committee’s “Generations at Risk – AIDS Ministry, or our United Church partner church this day in the Congo? Are we ambitious enough, to risk ourselves like this extravagant, risk-taking master for the sake of all of God’s creatures?

Paul’s words to the Thessalonians are active words; he uses imagery from the battlefield.  Those first Christians saw themselves as engaged in a holy war – not physical battle but a spiritual battle, “the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.  For faith and love are not passive but active.  We are the children of the day with this big vision and this big picture thing happening.  Whenever the news gets overwhelming in the market place or the conflict in Afghanistan or domestic violence– we are reminded to encourage one another, to remember the message that is entrusted to us.  For when all is said and done, wouldn’t you really be in the game, living for the day at hand than to be hiding our talents, refusing to risk?  The future is before us, our best days are still to come – what we are all about is building God’s dream of a new heaven and a new earth this day in this time and place.  That kind of dream calls for passion and risk and the confidence of abundance coming our way when we risk for the master.  So let’s step it up a notch – let’s get on The Money!