Sermon for Sunday 5 September (Labor Day), 1999

Trinity Church, Princeton, NJ

Readings: Ecclesiasticus 38:27-32; Matthew 6:19-24

Tomorrow is Labor Day: the last holiday of summer.
Gone are the long days of
baking at the beach,
cook-outs in the warm evening air,
and idly lingering over the New York Times or the Washington Post.

Gone too, are some things I won't miss quite as much: in particular those nasty little mosquitoes,
the dripping humidity, and the never-ending diet of reruns on TV.
We put away our grills and sun screen for another year,
and get ready for the onslaught of work, study and everyday life.

Yesterday I was sitting in the library waiting for some students, and being still pretty much in
summer mode, I picked up a copy of the Washington Post. And I was somewhat surprised to find
in it an article
about the great race between the TV networks
to bring out the best, the most exciting new
Jesus movie. Obviously
the entertainment industry
is still in the midst
of the summer doldrums.

Anyway, I was reading this article, and the ABC's entry in the race caught my eye -- instead of
using regular actors,
its done in 3-D clay animation.
You see,
said the network''s spokesman,
theirs is the best project because its animated, and therefore more kid- and family- friendly.
"Part of what makes it so appropriate for kids and families is that it isn't live-action; it's a
little more fanciful. . . What is more appealing for children -- a colorful, magical depiction
or something that looks like a TV movie?"
It sounds to me
like a summer Jesus.

Our readings today, the readings for Labor Day, however,
begin to push us back
to the world of work
and study
and life.
They prickle at me; they make me just
a little uncomfortable.
Part of me
wants to listen extra carefully;
part of me
wants to turn around
and run out those doors
as fast as I can.
You see, in part of me, at least, the summer part,
I thought
Jesus was supposed
to tell us about religion. I thought
he was supposed
to tell us about God.
I thought
he was supposed
to keep out
of real life, and stay in a magical world of make-believe,
a place of fluffy clouds and angels in togas with harps and hymn-singing,
or at least of sunshine and cook-outs and long hours of newspaper browsing.

Instead,
in today's gospel, in the middle of what we know
as the Sermon on the Mount,
today we find him standing on a mountain
preaching about money.

Don''t treasure for yourselves
treasures on earth. Don''t store up stores,
so that when you open the closet
everything cascades out onto your head.
You know
that one mouse in the cupboard, and all those spare packets of crackers
will be nibbled to nothing,
one moth in the closet, and your new coat from last year
and the one you had been saving from 1958,
just in case,
and all the ones from in between,
will be eaten with holes.
And you know
that every time
you step out of your house
you take the risk
that someone will break in
and steal all you value.

And unless you spend your days
-- and your nights --
sitting at home
cradling a gun in your lap
there is nothing at all
that you can do about it.
Treasure for your selves, instead,
treasure in heaven,
treasure protected
from all the effects
of this earthly world.

And you know what?
That''s where he stops.
Jesus delivers that little bombshell, and then he stops,
and moves on to something else.

So what do we do with it?
Relegate it
to the 3-D clay figures of the magical world of ABC TV?
Or perhaps take it literally, get rid of everything we own, and trust in the grace of God -- and the
generosity of the people who didn't pay such close attention?

I don''t think so.
I think
that maybe Jesus did have more to say than this,
that when he went up that mountain to teach,
he spoke for longer than the half hour or so
it would take to read the record we have
in the Gospel of Matthew.
Like the writer of John''s gospel said,
to write down every thing that Jesus did and every word that Jesus spoke
would take a lifetime of books,
and so we just have a summary,
and we have to work out the rest from there,
God trusts us, to work out the rest
from there.

Treasure on earth? Treasure in heaven?
We live in a world, particularly in this country,
shaped by the material. What car we drive, what clothes we wear, what street we live in, what
sodas we drink, all become important markers of who we are
whether
we like it or not.
The shopping frenzy of Labor Day sales
relies on us being convinced
that something we buy
has the potential to make our lives better,
something we own
may make us better people.
But isn't there more to life
than this?

Will I be better off
if I buy a new shirt, even though just last week
I looked in my closet
and found two shirts
which I had forgotten I had?

Yes, we all need clothes and food and somewhere to live,
but some of us know all too well,
some of us know
from the emptiness of our own experience,
that if these things

are what defines our value,
if these things
are all there is to us,
then we are not rich
but very poor indeed.
Poor with poverty of spirit
the poverty
of our own selves.
If I am defined by what we own,
then who am I really?
If people like me for the things they see around me,
will they ever love me
for who I am?

There is truth
in Jesus'' words,
truth that makes sense, even 2000 years later, and so I don''t think
its much of an option
to relegate them to the magical 3-D clay figures of TV.
But I don''t think the other option works either, to simply get rid of everything we own, and trust
in the grace of God.
I''m not sure
that many of us
are seriously tempted
by this option, though I used to live in a suburb where a group of people had believed that the end
of the world was about to happen. They sold up everything they had, gathered together, and
waited. And they waited, and waited, and the local churches gathered too, with food and clothing
and shelter. Of course their survival depended on God meeting their expectations, and God met
them
in the end
through others who had continued interacting with the material world.

Which goes to show
that its not either/or.
The material and the spiritual worlds
are not opposite poles
but
infiltrate each other and serve each other.
The very fact
that Jesus chose
to speak about material things
speaks against any attempt
to separate out
the religious and the material
spheres of our life.
And Jesus himself --
God came to us in human form,
fully divine as fully human.
it is in Christ
that we see
the material and the spiritual
coming together as one.

Faith and life
are braided together.

Our baptism service reminds us of this:
We ask the questions,
Will you continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in
the prayers?
Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to
the Lord.
Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?
Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?
Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every
human being?
Baptism is the ritual of full membership of the church,
incorporates us into the body of Christ. But it also sends us out into the world as God bearers,
carrying Christ with us wherever we go, whatever we do.

Sometimes
I get blisters
from the journey
with Christ
into the world.
But you know, that''s fine, so long as no one tries to sell me
a candy floss Jesus.
As far as I''m concerned,
if Christian faith is just the magical world
of 3-D clay figures, or the ad-punctuated fiction of a made-for-TV movie,
I'm not interested.

Because I'm more likely to find the God I know,
the God of our faith,
the God of Jesus,
in the janitor who offers to use his lunch-hour
to fix my car door,
the teacher who turns a lucrative job offer
at a private school
to continue working in the inner city,
the attorney who keeps space for extra clients
even though she knows
they will never pay,
the priest who moves from a comfortable suburban parish to a mission in the Dakotas
where he buries more victims of violent death in a week
than we do in a year,
the office worker who uses her vacation
to build houses with Habitat.
They are people who faithfully bear Christ to the world,
who use every resource they have, material and spiritual
to serve God.

Jesus calls us,

God calls us, to faithful praying and faithful living
as God bearers in this world.
Amen.

Raewynne J. Whiteley
5 September, 1999