Word of Unburdening-Spending

During Lent, we are looking at some of the things that "burden" us and obscure the promise of Christ from our lives. We are looking at food, spending, waste, media, and possessions. Our worships during Lent will have a greater focus on silence and reflection, with a short meditation inviting you into contemplation. The worship center invites you to explore what it is in your life that “clutters out Christ.”

John 2:13-22
There was good economic news this week. According to two dozen economists surveyed by the Associated Press, the US economy is improving faster than previously predicted. “The economists foresee stronger growth and more hiring than they did two months ago, and predict an unemployment rate at around eight percent by Election Day.”

I heard this report on the news one morning this week. And really, it didn’t phase me very much. It just seems like we get jockeyed around daily with daily changing economic forecasts: one day, things are looking up, the next we’re plummeting back down into crisis. Honestly, it all sort of just slips by me. But the report ended with something that always jerks me back to attention. It said that it’s unlikely this improvement has little to do with what is going on in Washington. Rather “economists give most of the credit to consumers, who are spending more and saving less.”

This always seems wrong to me, though I know it makes sense in a macro-economics sort of way in a capitalist economy. But it is always hard for me to swallow. Especially when the rate of foreclosures is at an all time high. Especially when, according to the US Census, 15% of the US population is living in poverty.

So am I right in thinking that one of the biggest threats to the US economy is not Europe’s financial woes, or our dependency on foreign oil, or the growing dominance of China in the marketplace. But actually the greatest threat to the US economy…are people who don’t spend their money?

Now I know that’s simplistic, and not exactly true, but I have heard this over and over--what we need to do to get this economy moving is to spend, spend, spend. Remember when you got that stimulus check a few years ago and people were pleading for you not to save it, to go out and blow on something…anything?

And yes, you don’t need to tell me that I’m not an economist, I know that full well, so why should I be questioning this? I guess it is because I am a Christian. And, yes, I am a consumer. And to be a responsible Christian consumer, I need know… that fully one-third of the things Jesus talked about was about money and how we spend it, use it, lend it, abuse it.. He seemed to be obsessed with it. And he wasn’t obsessed with it in the way we are obsessed with it.

In fact, probably most of those things he has to say would cause us to stiffen and bristle and say, “well, that’s not really me he’s talking about” and “well, yes but that’s not practical.” And he probably would ask “and how many of the things I say and do are practical?”

It’s true, when it comes to economics in general, and our own private spending in particular for the most part, Jesus talks a lot more than we see him act. But when he does act it is a pretty interesting story. We don’t see what he buys, and from where he buys it, or how much. The most dramatic story about Jesus and money involves him overturning tables in the temple. Raging in the marketplace and the place of worship.

In fact, this story is one of the few stories that show up in all four of the gospels. It was impressive enough, central enough to Jesus’ life that all the gospel writers included it.

Now to be clear, many of these “tables” were there with the blessing of the temple. They weren’t just selling trinkets, or “temple souvenirs”. They were selling animals and other goods to be sacrificed and used in the holy festival of Passover. This is not an unknown or frowned upon custom.

Some have said what was going on in this story wasn’t that people were selling things, but how the selling and buying was happening. Often, as we can imagine even in this time, many of the merchants would be price-gouging goods, making it difficult for the needy and poro to obtain these things to observe the festival properly. It wasn’t that they were selling that made Jesus angry, it’s that they were exploiting the poor, and making a mockery of faith.

Jesus can’t believe that people have taken the holy temple, and turned it into a “den of robbers”, as described in Matthew. Jesus is turning the tables in anger because God’s dwelling place was turned into an arena for exploitation. And I imagine Jesus would be grieved to see us relating to this world, this sacred dwelling place, in a similar way. In our economy, human beings are first and foremost consumers, simply players in a market. We have forgotten that we should be relating to this world as children…children of God. Somehow our economic system has stripped us of that primary identity.

Isak Dineson famously said "All suffering is bearable if seen as part of a story." Sharon Astyk reflected on this quote on scienceblogs.com. She says the following: “The emptiness that people feel when they live a life primarily as consumers is no accident - the problem is that the story we're engaged in isn't very interesting. A story where your primary role is to create a market, to consume and come back for more is incredibly dull.

And Astyk ponders, “Is it any wonder, if you live your life like a baby bird with your mouth open that what gets dropped into it every time is a worm? People will attempt to reshape your worm and convince you that it is extra yummy this time, but it is still a worm. And the story of consumers is still boring.”

“[A]nd it is no accident” she says “that despite the fact that bazillions of dollars are spent telling us we are just consumers, and that's all the story we could ever need, people by the thousands and sometimes even millions are frustrated and looking for a better story…The good news is that there are better stories out there for the claiming and the living. The good news is that we can do better than worms.”
We can do better than worms."

Spending is what gives us credit as a citizen in a capitalist economy. But we are not just consumers. We are not just citizens. We are children of God who have been taught a different story. One where concern for others comes before our acquisition of stuff. One where sacrifice was shown in service to others not in slavery to rising interest rates and collection agencies. One where compassion trumps comfort and money and cloaks and extra miles were to be given graciously.

To start living that story will need some tables turned upside down. And Jesus isn’t here to do it for us. So we need to start with our own.
And to begin that turning, we enter into a time of confession, laying out some of the tables we have setup in God’s holy temple. Please turn to the insert, the

Testimony/Reflection on Spending, given by Kim Cockroft our worship leader

Right away I think of this story: my first truly sacrificial gift, and how it was given in ignorance that ripened into bitter regret.

I was about six, old enough to know how rare and wonderful a silver dollar was. My granddad gave these gleaming discs to us on our birthdays, and they were precious things. My sister never spent hers’, and I once bribed her out of one, but that’s a different story.

We were at our grandparent’s church—a place of plush carpet and gleaming wooden pews softened by long red cushions. When the offering was taken, I fumbled in my pockets for a quarter—then, as now, I felt a compunction to place something in the offering, even if it was from a panicky impulse not to be embarrassed in front of the solemn offering men in their suits, looking like Mafia envoys. As the velvet plum-colored pouch, split in half by slick walnut handles, passed me, I slipped in a quarter—a small offering, perhaps, even for a child like me who received allowances, but enough to get by, I thought, much better than a dime, say, or a handful of pennies, pathetic as they slide from the palm. In any case, I’d be guilt-free at least until communion, when my mother would cry and I’d struggle to come up with a list of sins to confess silently to God so I’d not drink unbearable punishment on myself. At least offering was over with.

But my sister passed the pouch to my father, as it disappeared out of reach down the aisle, I realized what I had done. Oh, no! My silver dollar. Given to me by the warm, old hands of my grey-haired grandfather. Given to me in love and in trust. I’d put it in a pouch with other meaningless coins, and it would be counted and dropped into the church coffers by more men in suits. Nobody would know how precious it was to me—nobody.

I pulled my mother’s ear down to my mouth and whispered, “I gave away my silver dollar. Into the offering!”

She sensed the desperation in my voice, I knew it. Would she help me retrieve it? God didn’t care what denominations the money came in, after all! Couldn’t I just give four quarters, the same amount of money but not the monumental treasure that my Granddad’s silver dollar was? I only got one once a year, and not even that often, since we lived overseas. Granddaddy had to go to the bank especially and exchange regular paper money for the silver dollars he’d place in his grandkid’s palm. Surely God would understand that this gift was too precious?

My mother leaned over in the church-way she had, where she could whisper in our ear without moving her eyes from the front of the church. “Never regret giving anything to God,” my mother whispered back.

What? Why did parents never understand?

I spent the rest of church—the scripture readings, the long sermon, right through the last hymn—in agony over my loss. I pictured how it had happened over and over again. I’d felt in my pockets, yanked out a silver coin, and tossed it in the offering pouch. I saw it disappear down the aisle again and again, and I thought about what my mother had said—never regret, never regret, never regret.

I still think about this moment. I don’t know if the loss of my silver dollar, which was of utmost significance to me at six, was a defining moment in my life, but the memory still defines me today, when I struggle to give away what’s precious. The giving, done in a moment of spirited generosity, perhaps, is not as hard as the trusting—the trusting that the one to whom I give can appreciate the gift enough, will be careful with what I have given—my money, my time, my children, my love.

God will take it all—and in my clearer moments, I realize it was never mine in the first place. I realize that there is no such thing as possession in the Great Story—that all things are entrusted, but not given away for keeps. God is not trustworthy in the way I want God to be. I want to receive a gift and hunker down in my favorite chair, savoring it without fear that a thing I love so much will be taken from me. But there are no such promises, and love rarely makes such promise. I can’t tell my children that their lives will be easy. I wish I could, and believe it, but I can’t.

One thing—no, two at least--that have not been given to me with any conditions. Love and grace. Love and grace—they are the sky, the stars, the ground, the ocean, the very air I breathe. No one can take these from me, and these I can give freely, freely, forever.

It’s the silver dollars I’m still struggling to find in my pockets, and knowing what I give, slip them into the offering basket. Today my silver dollar is my sense of security, control, and my knowledge of the future. Surely something else would do just as well. Surely it can’t be expected of me. Perhaps it’s not quite clear how much it means to me. And yet, I fumble about in the darkness of my pockets, untangle it from my grasping fingers, and let it go.

And as I watch it disappear down the aisle, as I watch other hands dropping coins—gifts that I cannot begin to understand or know—I feel panic, fear, grief—and then a growing sense that all is okay, not perhaps in the particulars, the lists of worries I love to obsess about—but in the large sense. I ask regret to leave me. All will be well. And all will be well. All manner of things will be well