Our Money Story: Remember

This morning we begin the first of three weeks looking at the Lord’s Prayer. We also begin four weeks thinking together about stewardship. Now, you may say that connecting these two things  makes no sense whatsoever. How in the world does money connect with prayer? 

Well, if you’re at all like me, this makes perfect sense. Because for many of us, I would imagine, at some time in our lives we have spoken a desperate prayer to God, asking for money. Maybe it was at the end of the month, when the money from our paycheck was no more. Wondering how we might make it to the end of the month. Put food on the table for our families. Pay our electricity bill to keep the lights on. I dare say that the connection of money and prayer makes perfect sense.

So, today, we read the Lord’s Prayer, not as we generally know it, from Matthew. But, from Luke. A shorter, more condensed prayer. To the point. Just like the direct conversation about money we will be having over these next weeks. 

For us to think and to speak directly of money is to automatically invite tension into this space. We quickly want to avoid the conversation. Yet, money and possessions are one of the most common topics in scripture. Jesus talked about money more than faith. Or prayer. So, our money story is a spiritual story. Over these next weeks, you will be invited to explore your money story. To compare it to God’s money story. And to consider making your own stewardship practices a fuller expression of God’s story. And of who you are. And what you believe. 

So, we begin today, reading three short verses that we will be using for each of these weeks. Today, I am reading from the Common English Bible translation. 

Jesus told them, “When you pray, say:
‘Father, uphold the holiness of your name.
Bring in your kingdom.
Give us the bread we need for today.
Forgive us our sins,
    for we also forgive everyone who has wronged us.
And don’t lead us into temptation.’” --Luke 11:2-4 (CEB)

We begin today by considering the first verse. “Father, uphold the holiness of your name. Bring in your kingdom.”

In our book club this month, we read a lovely book written for middle school children - One Crazy Summer, by Rita Garcia-Williams. It’s the story of 11-year-old Delphine and her two younger sisters. And of their experience in the summer of 1968 traveling from Brooklyn to Oakland, California, to spend a month with a mother they barely know. When they arrive in Oakland, they learn that their mother has taken on a new first name. They’ve only heard about her as Cecile. Yet, she has changed her first name to more fully reflect who she is. Nzila. A poet’s name, she says. “A poet who blows the dust off surfaces to make clear and true paths.”

This is not something appreciated by 11-year-old Delphine. Just a few pages later, Delphine notes that a “name is important. It isn’t something you drop in the litter basket or on the ground. Your name is how people know you. The very mention of your name makes a picture spring to mind, whether it’s a picture of clashing fists or a mighty mountain that can’t be knocked down. Your name is who you are and how you’re known even when you do something great or something dumb.”

Your name is who you are and how you’re known. Isn’t that why Jesus begins his prayer the way he does? With a name that tells us who he is and how he knows God? Father. Parent. In the Aramaic, Abba? This is how Jesus addresses God and how he invites his disciples to address God. Up to this point, it was unusual to name God in this way. The Hebrew scriptures sometimes compared God to a father, but it is rare that they referred to God as Father. Jesus uses this title to reshape the disciples’ thinking about who this God is. Shifting their understanding from the angry God that the Jewish people had come to know. And instead expanding their understanding and relationship with God as one of parent and child. Giving them permission to call God, Father. And to claim their protected position as God’s own children.

Now, for some of us, to call God, Father, can be difficult. Especially if we have not had good relationships with our fathers. Or have had negative experiences with patriarchy. Yet, it’s important for us to understand that as we are created in the image of God, so God is in the image of human beings, possessing both male and female attributes. Parental attributes. Loving, compassionate, nurturing. Yet firm, establishing necessary boundaries for their children and in their relationships with their children. To call God, Father, or Abba, is to simply view God as parent.

But, as young Delphine notes in the book we read, one’s name is not just who one is, but also how one is known. However we address God as parent, we are invited to regard God’s name as holy. As God is holy. The Hebrews believed that the name of God was so sacred, that they used the word Jehovah. A word that in Hebrew could be pronounced without any consonants. Like a breath moving through their lips. Yehovah. A name spoken with whispered awe. Awe appropriate for such a powerful and deeply loving heavenly Father. A Father whose reign is not just limited to the heavens. But, a powerful and loving Father who seeks to pour out God’s heavenly reign into this world. “Bring in your kingdom,” Jesus teaches the disciples to pray. Bring in your kingdom of peace and justice. Your kingdom of love. Bring it to this world, this earth, this planet, this ecology, to these animals, to these people, even to the industry of our world. So that you, Father, might be fully experienced here. Just as in heaven. This is the prayer Jesus teaches the disciples. And what Jesus was living out on earth, offering and living into an economy, as Walter Brueggemann writes, “that was sure to collide with established economic patterns and with those who presided over and benefited from these patterns.” Jesus’ term for this alternative economy was “kingdom of God.” A social practice. And a set of social relationships there were consistent with the God of the covenant. The God of Israel. To mention this “kingdom of God,” was to call on Jesus’ disciples to remember who this God - this Father - was. [1]

It’s the same God we remember every time we celebrate communion and hear the Great Thanksgiving - the words that precede our receiving the bread and wine, the body and blood. In this thanksgiving, we remember how God moved over the waters. How God led Israel with a pillar of fire from bondage to liberation. We remember that still, small voice and then the prophets, proclaiming a new way - a new Messiah. We remember Mary and Joseph and the angels. The blind man and the leper. And the crowds that Jesus healed. Him walking on water. The little children running to him. We remember the justice he preached. The hosannas and palm branches. The love that changed the world. We remember this each and every week so that we do not forget who this God is. And so that we remember who we are. And, what our money story is to be.

So much of our beliefs and our behaviors are rooted in stories. Narratives that are personal, familial, societal, cultural, and religious. We subconsciously absorb and construct many money stories. Perhaps our money stories are about scarcity. Coming from or living in stories of fear and shame. Of never having enough. Perhaps they are stories that the church is dying and no longer relevant. Or the stories that our actions in this world won’t have any impact. 

How might we begin to unpack and reconstruct these stories to make them a better reflection of who we know God to be? Who we remember God to be. The God of scripture. The God who meets Israel in the wilderness with manna. Who, even in the midst of desperate and fearful prayers, provides. Abundantly. An extravagantly loving God. Never content with just a heavenly kingdom. But who pours out that love into a Spirit-breathed creation. To bring life and freedom. This is the God we remember.

May we, over these weeks, begin to tease apart our own complicated money stories. To rewrite them if necessary. So that they more fully reflect what we believe. Who God is. And who we remember and know this God to be. Our Father, Lord of heaven and earth. Amen.

Preached August 23, 2020, online at Grace & Glory Lutheran Church, Goshen, KY.

12th Sunday after Pentecost

Readings: Luke 11:2-4; Psalm 103:1-5

[1] Brueggemann, Walter. Money and Possessions. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2016). 23.

God's Greatest Promise: Known At the Table

On the first day of Unleavened Bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Where do you want us to make the preparations for you to eat the Passover?” He said, “Go into the city to a certain man, and say to him, ‘The Teacher says, My time is near; I will keep the Passover at your house with my disciples.’” So the disciples did as Jesus had directed them, and they prepared the Passover meal.

When it was evening, he took his place with the twelve; and while they were eating, he said, “Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me.” And they became greatly distressed and began to say to him one after another, “Surely not I, Lord?” He answered, “The one who has dipped his hand into the bowl with me will betray me. The Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that one by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that one not to have been born.” Judas, who betrayed him, said, “Surely not I, Rabbi?” He replied, “You have said so.”

While they were eating, Jesus took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you, I will never again drink of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.” Matthew 26:17-30 (NRSV)

Grace and peace to you from God, our Creator, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

I don’t know about your families, but in mine, the best place to hear things was at our dinner table. Whether it was at the end of a day, catching up on what was going on in our lives. Whether it was in our weekly Sunday dinner at the home of either my grandparents or my great aunt and uncle. Whether it was lingering at the table after a meal at our family reunion. It was at the table where we heard the news. Where we listened to the stories of our family. Where we learned who we were.

I’m sure it was not that different with Jesus and his disciples that Passover evening. After all, they’d been living closely with each other for three years. They’d traveled together throughout the rural areas of Galilee and, then, Judea. Learning from each other. Watching Jesus interact with people. Healing them. Granting forgiveness. Feeding thousands. They’d eaten many meals together. They’d also eaten the Passover meal together. Twice.

I wonder, though, if this meal didn’t feel a little different for them. This was the first time they were celebrating the Passover meal in Jerusalem. They came to Jesus and asked him where they should make preparations for this meal. I wonder how surprised they must have been when Jesus told them that everything was already prepared. And that, as they followed Jesus’ instruction, everything simply fell into place. 

I wonder, too, how distressing it must have felt to all the disciples when they heard Jesus’ prediction of how one of them would betray them. (The word in Greek really means “hand him over.”) Did they know then that it would be Judas who would hand Jesus over to the authorities? Did they know also know then that, by the end of the Passover celebration, all of them would have denied their relationship with Jesus?

I wonder if they knew the significance of that meal. When Jesus took the loaf of bread into his hands and blessed it, were they reminded of the thousands that had been fed that day with just a few loaves of bread and a few fish? Did it remind them of God’s promise to care for them, to give them their daily bread? To give them everything they needed to live?

When Jesus gave it to them (the Greek uses the same word here as that used to describe Judas’ betrayal - to “hand over”). When Jesus handed over the bread and wine to them, did they also know that Jesus was handing over his body? And his blood? 

And, then, when Jesus used the word “covenant,” were they reminded of the blood covenant that God had made with Israel at the base of Mount Sinai? How Moses had taken sacrificial blood and sprinkled it on the people as a reminder of their mutual covenant with God? A covenant that they broke time and time again? A covenant that was never broken by God? Did the disciples understand that, in this meal, Jesus was initiating a new covenant? A new promise that would be not only for Israel, but for the Gentiles? The ethnos, in Greek? For all the nations?

As they sat around the table that Passover night, reliving a tradition maintained over centuries, a tradition that was intended to remind them of God’s action in freeing them from bondage, did they fully know what was soon to happen and how it would change everything? I wonder.

Sisters and brothers, tonight, we, too, sit around a table, some 2,000 years after that first meal. We, however, have the benefit of hindsight. We know the ending to the story. How even though we, just like those first disciples, have betrayed Jesus in one way or another in our lives, how we have “handed him over” in much the same way. Yet, how, in this meal, Jesus hands over to us his body. And his blood. In this bread and wine. Given for you. For me. For all people. 

It is here, around the table, where we learn who we are as God’s children. What depth of love God must have for us that God would hand God’s only son over? For us? 

One can only wonder. Amen.

Preached April 18, 2019, at Grace & Glory Lutheran Church, Goshen, KY.
Maundy Thursday
Readings: Matthew 26:17-30, Psalm 116:12-15.