Stewardship Joke #4
Did you hear about the town’s richest man who met with the minister after the Sunday service?
He was distraught and whined to the pastor, ‘I overheard people talking about me and they called me cheap and stingy.’ He continued to complain, ‘I’ve told everyone I’m leaving half my money to the church when I die.’
The minister nodded. ‘It reminds me of the story of the pig and the cow. The cow was much loved by the farmer and the neighbors, while the pig was not popular at all. The pig could not understand this and asked his friend the cow to explain.
How come you are so well liked, cow? People say you are good because you give milk and butter and cream every day. But I give more than that. From me they get bacon and ham; they even pickle my feet! Yet, I’m not popular and you are! Why do you think that is?’
The cow looked down and the pig and answered, ‘Perhaps it’s because I am giving while I’m still alive as well as when I die.’
(Read Passage from John 11:32-44)
When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” 33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. 34 He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” 35 Jesus began to weep. 36 So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” 37 But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”
38 Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. 39 Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” 40 Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” 41 So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” 43 When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”
The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
This morning’s Scripture passages do not actually go together in the lectionary. This morning is the 24th Sunday after Pentecost and the passage from Mark is the Gospel passage assigned for this Sunday. However, it is also the first Sunday in November when we celebrate All Saint’s Day. The passage for that day is the one I just read from John’s Gospel. But both passages are very pertinent for this morning so I am going to briefly talk about each one.
The first one from Mark which was read by Corey, is found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke as well. It is the passage where he boils down the commandments and laws to just two. He quotes the She’ma- Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. This is the prayer said morning and night by our Jewish brothers and sisters. It is the first prayer taught to Jewish children. Everything else stems from this reality of the one and only God, who is our Lord.
Jesus, a Rabbi and devote Jew felt that our lives should always, first and foremost be directed toward the Lord, our God, the One and Only. Jesus then said that we should love our neighbor as ourselves as it is a by-product of the first commandment. We worship God with all our heart and soul and in doing so, we love our neighbors as ourselves. Our neighbor’s wellbeing is our wellbeing and we should care for them as we care for ourselves. These past two weeks where radical hatred led to one man putting bombs in the mail to people who held different opinions than his, where racist hatred led to people being killed while shopping, where anti-Semitism hatred led to eleven people dying while worshipping with their congregation, and where just two days ago people were killed in a yoga studio….. all these acts of hatred become a call to share our faith and love with others. We believe in a God who holds one commandment first of all. These acts of hatred spring from something that is contrary to our belief and our God. The hatred has always been there…. but the fertile soil which allows it to fester and erupt must be stopped.
We who believe in this great commandment: to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves must stop the evil in our society. We must stand for what is says. Love they neighbor. As the saying goes, Jesus put no qualifiers of that. Hating the other is contrary to our faith. All are worthy of love. We are to love God and others with our heart, soul, and mind. We are to find ways to see God in all God’s children and learn to love even those who others see as unlovable.
I originally was not going to use the second scripture passage in today’s service. But, I read it again this week and was struck by the statement that Jesus wept. And because I kept on thinking about it and pondering what it could mean to us, I also included it in the readings for the day. Jesus wept. The question is why? He entered into this home of intense grief and he knows he has the power to raise Lazarus from the dead and that he is going to do just that even though the body has already begun to decompose, and he still cries? I mean …..Why?
I believe this statement that Jesus wept is incredibly important for us to ponder on All Saints’ Day. He entered this home and was deeply moved by the pain and suffering of the family and he cried with the grieving. Jesus did not stand outside the human condition but responded to the human suffering and was at one with that family. One might think he could stand above the situation but instead he had total empathy for their feelings. Jesus wept. This is an important thing to consider on this year’s All Saint’s Day when we grieve and remember those who have died this past year.
It has been a year of tears. This past week, many of us from different faith traditions gathered at Temple Judea to be with that congregation in solidarity in their horror and grief. We sang songs, we prayed, and we cried together as one. Today we hold up those eleven people and all the others who have died. We remember the students at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, as we also remember the victims of the 294 other mass shootings just in this year. Today we hold up those in our congregation, those in our families, and those in our communities who have died. Some are listed in our worship bulletin and others we hold privately in our personal prayers. We remember those in our congregation (Alice, James, and Gail) who lived long lives and we also remember our sweet Jae who ended her life at such a young age. And we weep. We weep and we remember their lives knowing that we hold them know in our hearts.
And, as people of faith. We know that God weeps with us. The fact Jesus wept gives us the confidence to go on when our sorrow is great. Because Jesus wept, we know that even in our deepest sorrow we are never alone. You see, our God weeps as well. Our God enters into the households of those who are grieving and loves us and holds us in our pain.
As you might remember, my mother died 2 1/2 years ago during Holy Week. We were already to celebrate Passover as Jesus did with a Seder on Maundy Thursday. Instead of being with you, I flew home to Cleveland and returned on Saturday for Easter. People asked how I could return three days after my mother died and celebrate Easter here at Riviera. And the truth is, if I had called the Presbytery they would have found someone to step in and fill in for that Easter morning. But what would I have been telling you if I had done that? What would the Good News of Easter have been if I was immobilized by my grief? And the truth of it is, I felt God’s presence with me through it all. God did not abandon me in my mother dying but was with me in my pain. You see, Jesus wept. I know that God still weeps for us today and is with all of us in our sorrow and pain. We are never alone. We are never abandoned. Because Jesus wept. Amen.
