To Spend Thyself Nor Count The Cost

“So let the love of Jesus come and set thy soul ablaze

to give and give, and give again what God hath given thee;

to spend thyself nor count the cost; to serve right gloriously

the God who gave all words that are, and all that are to be.”[i]

The context of Paul’s letter to Philemon is slavery.

That offensive context makes it hard for us

to even read the letter,  

much less find something helpful in it.

Thankfully, Paul is trying to set one slave free.

That helps.

But he doesn’t say what we want him to say.

Paul doesn’t say slavery is wrong.

As a Jew, the descendant of slaves,

he knows slavery was wrong.

As a Christian, who had written “for freedom Christ

         has set us free,”

he knows slavery was wrong.

But he doesn’t say that.

He says in passing, he could as an apostle order Philemon

         to do the right thing.

But he does something else.

He says, “I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love.”

There is a lot of love going on here.

Paul loves Christ, Philemon, and the slave Onesimus.

Paul believes Philemon loves Christ and himself.

He invites Philemon to stretch his love a little further,

         to stretch if far enough to include someone

outside his normal circle of concern – a slave.

But love is costly.

Love is action, not just feeling.

Stretching his love is going to cost Philemon something.

But it’s also going to bless Philemon beyond anything

         he can imagine.

So what’s the cost?

Philemon has already given the use of his house

         for the Church in Colossae.

He has already contributed substantially

to fund Paul’s missionary ventures.

Now Paul is asking him to contribute Onesimus.

To us, Onesimus is a person.

But if we dare put ourselves in Philemon’s shoes,

         if we look at the world through the first century

                  moral lenses that Philemon wore,

                  Onesimus was an asset.

He was wealth.

Onesimus was about $10,000 to $12,000.

It took a lot of gall to ask for that kind of a gift.

But Paul asks it. He asks it out of love.

Love for Onesimus. Love for Christ.

And yes, love for Philemon. How is that?

How does hitting someone up for a major gift

         express love?

Let me tell you a story.

Methodist pastor J. Cliff Clifford

took his wife fishing on their honeymoon.

Pastor Cliff and his bride were in a boat on an Arkansas lake.

He liked fishing and he was also showing off for his new wife.

So he tied a 3-hook lure to his line and cast it into the water.

After awhile, he hooked a huge bass that put up a fight.

Cliff was determined to catch that bass.

He was going to possess it, to dominate it, own it,

show it off as a prize.

His whole will was focused on getting that fish.

Finally, he jerked the rod so that the big fish flopped

         into the boat.

It landed on his lap and in an instant,

         one hook was stuck firmly in the fish’s jaw

         and the other hook stuck just as firmly in Cliff’s thigh.

Every time the fish flopped, blood spurted.

For Pastor Clifford, it was a moment of conversion.

Until that point in the story, he had desperately wanted

to possess that bass.

But, when he was hooked himself and the blood was spurting,

the very thing he had sought  

to possess now possessed him

–     and all he wanted was to get rid of it.

Eventually, he painfully tore the fish lose and threw it back.

That’s how it is with wealth.

Having wealth would be just fine it that’s what happened.

The problem is, the wealth has us.

What we set out to possess, possesses us.

Our possessions hold us back from God

         and from our brothers and sisters.

That’s why Jesus says in today’s gospel lesson

         that anyone who want to be his disciple

         must let go of all his possessions, not 10%, all.

Philemon’s stuckness in wealth

         even made him keep a Christian brother in bondage.

George Washington had a similar problem.

He wanted to emancipate his slaves.

Partly he wanted to emancipate them because it was right.

But mostly, it was that the economics of agriculture

had changed so his slaves

were now costing him more than he could afford.

But Martha and the family just would not hear

         of his giving up the family’s slaves.

So, like Pastor Cliff, George was stuck.

It kind of makes you wonder who was possessing whom.

So George took the sneaky way out and freed the slaves

         in his will.

Our attachment to our so-called possessions

         is a spiritual trap and we are all stuck in it.

The more we have, the more stuck we get.

Rich Americans give away just over 2% of their income.

Poor people give away just over 4%.

The poor are twice as generous as the rich,

         because the grip of financial need

                  is not so tight as financial attachment.

In this letter, Paul genuinely wants something good for Onesimus,

         his freedom.

He wants something good for Christ, another missionary.

But he also wants something good for Philemon.

Paul knows the problem isn’t greed.

Fear is the glue that sticks us to our possessions.

He wants Philemon to know the peace that comes

         when faith triumphs over fear.

Paul wants spiritual freedom for Philemon

         as much as he wants legal freedom for Onesimus.

In that freedom, Paul imagines Philemon and Onesimus

         enjoying a new relationship, brother to brother,

         not master to slave.

Make no mistake, our attachment to wealth

         shapes, constrains, and impairs

                  our relationships with people.

So Paul makes the ask.

He does not lay a moral duty on Philemon.

He doesn’t tell him what he should do.

Instead he appeals on the basis of love.

He prays that Philemon will “perceive all the good we may do

         for Christ.”

So I wonder: what do you perceive

that this church doing for Christ?

What might this church do for Christ?

I am assuming that Jesus has saved you from the pit

just like he’s saved me.

I don’t just mean some bad fate after we die.

Jesus has saved me with miracle, grace, and inspiration,

         with hope and courage that were not my own,

again and again, from having my life fall apart.

I am sure as I am standing here, he’s done the same for you

         and he will do it again.

So, with that in mind,

        what do you suppose gladdens the heart of Jesus?

Do you think he might care about the baptisms of children

         regardless of their ethnicity?

Do the gifts you send to Gibson Middle School

         matter to him?

Does your music lift his spirit?

When a lonely person is welcomed, visited, and befriended,

         does Jesus smile?

What does this church do that gladdens the heart of Christ?

What might it do?

And if you saw your gifts doing God’s merciful will in the world,

         might that set you free from a little of what possesses you?
Might the love of Jesus entice you to live a little more

         by faith and less by fear?

If you were in Philemon’s shoes,

if Paul wrote to you asking for a gift of $12,000

         to gladden the heart of Jesus through the ministry

                  of this congregation, what would you do?

                                                                                 Amen.

---

[i] Morning Song. Hymnal 9

A MEDITATION ON TIME

[This is from a few years ago. But we still have time with us. So it seemed worth sharing.]

Lyrics of the classic rock group Chicago, asked:

“Does anybody really know what time it is?”

Time is the context of everything that happens.

So how we relate to time, how we experience time itself,

         colors our view of life.

Chicago said we are disconnected

         from time and that’s why we run

         from place to place not knowing where we are going.

In 1994, Hootie and the Blowfish

revisited the subject.

They regarded time as a corrosive, corrupting

         agent of death and loss, something to be defied,

         so they sang, “I don’t believe in time.”

 Angst over time appears in pop culture

         from Paul Simon to rapper Flava Flave;

and literary masters from Shakespeare to T. S. Eliot

         have shared their struggle.

People are not at ease with time.

That is why they spend so much energy and money killing it.

You can witness the brutal murder of time

at video poker machines,

                  in front of televisions,

or with a little chemical help at  bars.

Nothing wrong with any of that in itself.

The problem is that time is making people nervous,

         so they are killing it – even though their lives

                  are made out of time,

         so to kill time is a form of slow suicide.

Back in my Buddhist days, I made a careful study of time.

I watched it pass with as much precision as I could muster,

         watched each moment, breath by breath.

I got to know what a moment looks like.

And that is why I find Paul so fascinating.

Paul had a unique perspective on time.

He believed we live in a kind of temporal paradox

         called “the already, not yet.”

In today’s lesson, he says to the Romans,

         “you know what time it is;

it is the time for you to wake from sleep.”

Paul sensed in the “already/not yet” paradox of each moment

a spiritual urgency that rang like an alarm clock.

If we can get Paul’s sense of time,

         it may help us wake up.

So please bear with me

         as we go through a little course in Time 101.

The Greek word for ordinary time is chronos.

Ordinary time consists of moments set between past and future.

There are really only present moments.

As Jack Kornfield said,

         “Everything that ever happened to me,

         happened in a present moment.”

The only thing truly real is the actual situation at hand, the now.

The past is an idea in our memory.

The future is an idea in our fantasy.

But the present moment is crisply and precisely real.

We can see it, touch it, taste it. It is and it is here, now.

There is only the relentless now, then now, then now again.

But each moment contains within it memory.

The remembrance of things past is part of the present experience.

Likewise the future we anticipate is part of the present experience.

Each moment is exquisitely real in itself,

         but it is always on the brink between past and future.

Each moment is like that point in the river

         at the precise top of the cataract,

where the water first plunges downward.

Paul found each moment to be fraught

with the grace already accomplished.

Grace creates each moment, and allows us to live in it.

Each moment is an accomplished miracle.

That is the “already” part.

But the grace is incomplete.

We are on the brink of hope’s fulfillment.

We live in the light of God’s promise

         to redeem us, complete us, and perfect us,

         to unite us fully and finally to himself in light.

That is the “not yet” part.

So ordinary time, chronos, is flowing along horizontally

         in the “already” of remembered grace

         and the “not yet” hope for grace to be fulfilled.

It is flowing along horizontally, when God’s time breaks in.

God’s time is a vertical shaft, a lightning bolt from above,

         a mountain thrust up by seismic shifts from below.

God’s time is called kairos in the Greek.

It means eternity.

But eternity isn’t just extending ordinary time indefinitely.

It is a whole different order of reality

         from our mundane experience.

It is the depth and wonder of things.

Lutheran theologian Paul Tillich called the intersection

of ordinary time and eternity “the eternal now.”

The Kingdom comes in each and every moment.

God happens in each and every moment.

The 17^th Century Jesuit Spiritual Master, Jean-Pierre de Causade

         wrote about “the sacrament of the present moment.”

He meant God is in such moments.

Ram Das wrote a modern spiritual classic in the 60’s.

It was called “Be Here Now.”

Maybe God read it because that’s what God does.

God is here now.

The point is for us to wake up and notice.

That’s what Paul invites us to do.

A moment is a point defined as the intersection

         of ordinary time and God’s time.

That is one of the often forgotten meanings of our Christian symbol,

         the cross, the cruciform nature of time – history and eternity

                  crossing paths at a 90 degree angle.

It happens now and now and now again.

So Paul keeps shouting “wake up and notice.”

But how? How shall we stop killing time and

         start living time by encountering God in each moment.

There is a general answer and there is a specific answer.

The general answer is agape – that amazing form of love

         uniquely prescribed, praised, and proclaimed

                  in the New Testament.

Agape is the unconditional love

         that delights in reality just for being real.

Agape is an equal opportunity enjoyer.

It doesn’t discriminate. It just savors.

But you may fairly ask how we got to that point?

Or as another popular song asked,

“What’s love got to do with it?”

The key is in the 1^st Epistle of John,

         which says “God is agape.”

This remarkable kind of joy and wonder

         is the very soul of God.

It is the impetus that keeps God

         generating these moments.

When we practice agape too, we join God.

We share the sacrament of the present moment with God.

But that general answer is way too abstract.

Moments are not abstractions.

They are absolutely real.

Abstractions like love can actually separate us

         from the concrete situation.

So a general answer to the question “how do we wake up to God

will not serve.

We need the specific answer.

The bad news is: I don’t know what it is.

The good news is that you do.

My part is to give you a clue.

The way to encounter God

is not by thinking about the idea of God.

It is by looking at the reality at hand,

         the reality of your own life,

         in a spirit of compassionate, joyful, appreciation

-- then do the right thing.

It doesn’t take a rule book of abstractions.

Paul says, “one who has loved another has fulfilled the law.”

He calls that “putting on Jesus.”

That isn’t exactly imitating Jesus except in one respect.

Just look at your reality the way Jesus looked at his reality,      

         with compassionate joy, then do the right thing.

We are each invited to practice this awakened life

         in our individual situations.

And we are called to practice this awakened life

         together as the body of Christ in the world.

So I have to ask: what time is it in your life?

The polar ice caps are melting.

There is an epidemic of meth addiction.

Half the world has given up on Jesus

         and the other half has built a warmongering, bigoted

         idol, named it Jesus, and is worshiping him.

In the midst of this mess, grace abounds.

God persists in happening over and over,

         in moment after moment.

You know your situation better than I do.

You will know it even better if you look at it

         with agape’s eyes.

Then you will know what to do.

“You know what time it is.

         It is time to wake up” to God.

RULERS, DOERS, AND GOSPEL LEADERS -- A PRACTICAL SPIRITUALITY FOR THE KINGDOM MISSION

Luke 14: 1, 7-14

Today’s Gospel lesson tells us something

            about leadership and humility.

Jesus’ advice on where to sit at a banquet

            is one of the most misunderstood sayings in the New Testament

            and that misinterpretation has caused no end of trouble,

                        especially in the Church.

It sounds like Jesus is advising us to use false modesty

            as a backdoor way to gain prestige.

Don’t put yourself forward if you don’t want to risk being put down.

How much better to deliberately sit below your station

            so you will be invited up higher;

            and thereby win public acclaim not only for your prestige

                        but  also for your modesty.

The first thing to know is that this is a Jewish joke

            – but we take it seriously.

Maybe a British joke will make the point better.

I am not a fan of Prince Charles

            but sometimes he gets it right.

He was once given an award of some sort.

He said how grateful and honored he was by this award

            as well as all the other awards he had received.

But he regretted that he had never gotten an award for humility.

Actually, he said, he had once been given a medal for humility,

            but when he put on, they took it away from him.

Our Gospel lesson is usually read as a sneaky way

            to get a medal for humility.

They wouldn’t do this in the business world

            where serious money is at stake.

They wouldn’t do it in sports where kids on the bench

            jump up and down saying “put me in coach.”

But in places like the Church where status is more subtle

            and is achieved in far more duplicitous ways,

            we have to slip our pride in the back door.

People are readier to have root canals than they are

            to put themselves forward to lead in ministry and mission.

No one wants to admit to considering himself “worthy” to lead.

We are all too humble to do the job Christ has given us.

Back when Agnes Sanford was the great teacher of healing ministries

            in the Episcopal Church, after one of her workshops,

            a man told her he felt called to a ministry of healing,          

                        but he knew he was not worthy.

Agnes replied, “Then get worthy.”

But what about our Gospel lesson?

Is Jesus actually advising us to adopt a posture of false humility,

            slinking into our unworthiness, wringing our hands like Uriah Heep?

Is Our Lord prescribing manipulative self-abasement

            as a devious way to climb the social ladder?

I don’t think so.

Yes, he says “whoever humbles himself will be exalted;

            and whoever exalts himself will be humbled.”

But it doesn’t really matter

            whether we humble ourselves or exalt ourselves.

In Luke’s Gospel the lowly are always getting exalted;

            and the exalted are always being brought low.

But then the formerly exalted become the lowly,

            who are due to get exalted again.

Meanwhile the formerly lowly have gotten exalted

            so they are the ones heading for a fall.

The picture of life we get from Luke’s Gospel is a see-saw.

In the words of the Frank Sinatra classic,

            “That’s life. That’s what all the people say.

            You’re riding high in April, shot down in May.

            But I know I’m gonna change that tune

            When I’m back on top in June.

            I said, ‘That’s life.’”

It’s true isn’t it? That is what happens.

But Jesus does not agree with Frank Sinatra on one point.

All that riding high and getting shot down are not life.

They are not what life’s actually about.

Life is about how we treat each other on the way up

            and how we treat each other on the way down.

The gospel happens as truth and justice, as healing and mercy,

            as relationships sparking between such unlikely friends

                        as Jews and Samaritans

            – of such things, the Kingdom of God is constituted.

Those who climb any ladder, whether it is the ladder

            of government, military,  business, or church

                        achieve a perilous perch.

The higher we get, the farther we have to fall.

But refusing to step up a rung to do the job

            is an act of either spiritual cowardice or moral sloth.

We have to be ready to rise and ready to fall for sake of the gospel.

Status is not the thing to focus on.

Rank is irrelevant. Authority is irrelevant. Prestige is irrelevant.

What matters is the mission – a mission that happens

            not just in the church but also in the home, in the community,

                        in the workplace.

Our lesson from Hebrews describes the mission        

            as hospitality to strangers, mercy to prisoners and the suffering.

The mission is sharing God’s love with a broken world

            in tangible ways.

What matters is the mission and the mission needs leaders.

But this kind of mission calls for a different kind of leader.

Jesus said, “The one who would be first among you

                                    must be the one who serves.”

Throughout Luke’s Gospel, Jesus teaches

            a different kind of leadership —servant leadership.

It isn’t about being a boss, a ruler saying “Do this. Don’t do that.”

Rulers are the ones who take the head of the table

            in an attempt to gain rank.

But it isn’t about being a doer either.

It isn’t about the lone ranger servant who acts alone.

Doers are the sneaky ones who try to gain rank

            by sitting at the foot of the table.

Of course it is easier to do something ourselves

            than to get someone else to do it.

And there are advantages to doing it ourselves.

When we do ministry on our own,

            people come to depend on us

            and there is a kind of power in that.

What’s more, if I do it myself, it gets done my way.

But if I recruit someone else to do it,

            they are apt to do it their way

                        – which may be right or wrong –

                                    but it isn’t my way.

Pride wants its own way.

But the gospel leader, the Christian leader, the servant leader

            is not a ruler or a solo doer.

The servant leader get his hands dirty serving the mission

                        then invites, encourages, and inspires

                        others to take the mission on.

Do you see the sacrifice, the humility it takes to be a servant leader?

It takes empowering someone else so that they don’t depend on us

            – which is a loss to our status right there -- 

            and it takes trusting them to do the job their way.

Can you imagine what it was like for Jesus at the Ascension

            to hand over the gospel mission to a bunch of goof balls

                        like the apostles?

After the apostles planted churches all over the civilized world

            they had to pass the job on to the first generation of bishops

             – none of whom had even met the historical Jesus.

Jesus rose above pride when he handed the mission over

            to the Apostles.

The apostles rose above pride when they handed the mission

            over to the bishops.

The bishops rose above pride when they ordained the priests

            and entrusted congregations to their leadership.

And so it goes.

We rise above pride when dare to not just do the job,

            but to invite, encourage, and inspire

                        someone else to share it with us

            – even take it over from us.

That’s how we build up the kingdom of God from the ashes of our pride.