Fool for the Money

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Luke 12:13-21

Someone in the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.’ But he said to him, ‘Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?’ And he said to them, ‘Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.’ Then he told them a parable: ‘The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, “What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?” Then he said, “I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.’

There once was a woman who lived a spiteful life. She was just plain mean—a woman who had little care for anyone but herself. All her life she treated people spitefully. Those she saw beneath her she denigrated and treated shamefully. Those whom she believed to be above her she criticized and treated disdainfully, thinking that they were just snobs. And then she died.

She found herself in a large room without walls, and at the center was a man sitting at a desk. It was St. Peter. As she approached him, he welcomed her, pulled out a scroll, which was the scroll of her life, and read. As he read, he kept muttering: “Tsk, tsk. Oh my! Hmmmm. You really weren’t a very nice person, were you? Did you ever do anything caring for anyone in your whole life?” The woman thought for a while and said, “I gave a carrot to a beggar once.”

St. Peter said, “Well, then, the power of love in that small carrot will carry you to heaven.” Out of his pocket he pulled a golden carrot and gave it to her. As she held it in her hand, it began to float heavenward. Grasping the carrot, it slowly lifted her off the ground. Amazed by the power of the carrot, her eyes were transfixed on it as it lifted her. A man walking by saw her rising to heaven, and he grabbed the hem of her skirt. Soon, he was being lifted to heaven. Then another man grabbed the first man’s foot, and he too was rising. Soon, twenty people were rising to heaven on the power of the love in that one carrot.

After a while, the woman looked down and saw all the people rising to heaven with her. Brushing the first man’s hand off her hem, she yelled, “Off! All of you, off! This is my carrot!” Obsessed with getting rid of all the people, she let go of the carrot. And all came crashing down to earth. It’s amazing what one act of love can do. It’s equally amazing what a life of selfishness and greed can do.

So, when you die, how will you be judged by God, St. Peter, the angels, or whomever else is there to judge? When we die, what do you think matters most to God about our lives? Do you think that God cares most that we have a good heart? If your answer is yes, then what tangible evidence in our lives would show that our heart was good? What could we point to as evidence of our good heart that God would say, “Yes, you have been a good and faithful servant?” You see, it’s not enough just to have a good heart. We also have to have good actions.

Do you think that God cares most that we believed in God? Listening to people who’ve walked away from the church, I hear them say, “I expect to go to heaven. I believe in God.” Do you think that when we come face to face with God, and God asks, “What did you do with your life?” that our saying, “Well, I believed in you” is sufficient? To me that’s like our asking our son or daughter, “Were you good in school today,” and she or he replies, “Well, I believe in you.” Is that the kind of response God wants?

Do you think that God cares most about us doing good deeds? What if we did good deeds for the wrong reasons? What if we cared about others, but did so only so that when we could get to heaven when we die? Is God content with that?

Substitute yourself for the rich fool. How will God judge you?

Our passage for today is so central to what Jesus taught, yet it’s a lesson that modern Americans have a hard time with. We have a hard time with any teachings that seems to mix money with spirituality. We resist it, wanting to be spiritual while avoiding soiling our spirituality with crass talk about money. The problem is that Jesus talks about money a lot, and especially about what the relationship between money and faith is.

For instance, if you were going to guess how much of Jesus’ teachings deal with money and what we do with it, what would your guess be? Would it surprise you to know that he spends almost 40% of his time teaching about money? Let me share with you a couple of Jesus’ critical teachings. He says, “He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. Then he called his disciples and said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.” The whole idea of his teaching here is stated so succinctly by one of the phrases of our capital campaign: not equal gifts, but equal sacrifices. Jesus is saying that it’s not so important how much we give, but how much we are willing to sacrifice for God.

Jesus also says in his Sermon on the Mount, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” He is very clearly saying that what we spend our money on, and what we give our money to, demonstrates the extent to which our heart is in Christ.

I always think about these passages whenever I hear people say that we are a Christian nation. If we are, I’m not sure we’re all that Christian. Why? Because I’m not sure how well our Capitalist culture fits with Jesus’ teachings. Now, before you sic Alan Greenspan and Dick Cheney on me for being un-American, hear me out.

I wanted to look at the connection between Capitalism and Christianity, so my first question was, what are the pillars of Capitalism? Well, I began my inquiry by looking the term “Capitalism” up on one of my favorite websites, Wikipedia. After reading fifteen pages of material on Capitalism, I distilled it down to this definition: Capitalism is an economic system in which wealth, and the means of wealth, are privately owned for the purpose of generating profits through free trade, which allows for the accumulation of wealth and security.

So, what’s wrong with this idea? Nothing, if you only look at the positive side. The positive side is that capitalism allows for the production of so much that has benefitted all of humanity. It is a system that allows for great creativity, ingenuity, and the creation of things that make human life wonderful. Through it we get knowledge, technology, healthier food, greater medicine, and so much more that I, personally, love… like iPods. Whatever flaws Capitalism has, there is no other economic system that comes close to what Capitalism offers.

So, what’s wrong with it? A lot, if you look at Capitalism’s negatives. Unfortunately, Capitalism is also a system that gives rise to monumental selfishness, self-indulgence, greed, indifference toward the poor, and becoming like the woman in our story, who cared more about herself than about anyone else. I’m not here to lambast Capitalism so much as I want to make the point that as Christians we are called to more than Capitalism. I believe we can be Capitalistic Christians, but only if we balance our Capitalism with the pillars of Christianity. What are they? I believe that there are many, many pillars, but among them are faith, hope, love, kindness, generosity, and contentment. And I believe that it is the last one that leads to all the others. Let me finish with a story that captures this idea.

There was a man who spent his life complaining to God, and begging God for everything. Finally, God got sick of the man and told him, “Okay, I’ve had enough. I’m going to give you three wishes. After that, no more!” “Really?” the man replied. “I can get anything I want?” “Absolutely, but after that no more,” said God.

The man thought long and hard, and finally said to God, “Well, I’m embarrassed to admit this, but my wife has gotten to be a bit of an old hag. I mean, she nags me all the time and isn’t quite the looker she used to be. Do you think you can get rid of my wife?” God said, “No problem – wife’s gone.” With that, she died. The man felt a bit guilty for feeling so relieved at the death of his wife, but then he thought about how he could now find a much younger wife.

Over the next few days at the funeral home and the funeral, the man began to have second thoughts. So many people came up to him and extolled virtues of his dead wife that he began to realize what a good woman she was after all. “She did take care of me,” he said. “In fact, I miss her terribly.” He went back to God and said, “God, I hate to ask you this, but could I have my wife back again? She really wasn’t so bad after all.” “Absolutely,” God said. “Wish number two fulfilled. Only one more.”

The man didn’t know what to ask for his final wish. He consulted some friends. One said to him, “Ask for wealth. With money, you can do anything.” “What good is money without immortality,” said another. “Ask for immortality.” “What good is immortality without health,” said another. “Ask for good health.”

The man couldn’t decide. One year, two years, five years, ten years passed. Finally, God said to him, “Aren’t you ever going to ask for your final wish?” The man said, “God, I don’t know what to ask for. Could you tell me what to ask for?” God laughed and said, “Ask to be content with and appreciate everything in life. If you do this, everything else will take care of itself.” The man did this, and was happy for the rest of his life (from Anthony de Mello, Walking on Water).

When we learn to be content with what we have, and to appreciate it and be thankful, it is amazing how much we begin to sense God all around us. We see life as full of blessings instead of woes. We see life as full of God instead of misery. We see life as full or possibility instead of impediments. We see life as an opportunity to take what we have and share it with others.

So, let me end with a question. How is God going to judge you when you die?
As a rich fool, or as a foolish giver?

Amen.

What Is Your Foundation? What Is Your Fruit?

Luke 6:43-49


No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit; for each tree is known by its own fruit. Figs are not gathered from thorns, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil; for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.
Why do you call me “Lord, Lord”, and do not do what I tell you? I will show you what someone is like who comes to me, hears my words, and acts on them. That one is like a man building a house, who dug deeply and laid the foundation on rock; when a flood arose, the river burst against that house but could not shake it, because it had been well built. But the one who hears and does not act is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the river burst against it, immediately it fell, and great was the ruin of that house.’

I’ve been in a reflective mood this past week. I think it was a combination of things that got me reflecting. It started with reading our passage for this morning. It continued as I watched the farmer next door to my house plow the field. My reflections continued after listening to the confirmation class read their statements of faith. Finally, I kept thinking about how all this relates to our capital campaign.

Let me start with the passage. When I read our passage for this morning, it seemed to go right to the heart of so much that plagues our world, our country, and our community. I look around and realize that so many people in our country and community live lives built on weak foundations, which leads them to produce bad fruit. I’ll get more into that idea a bit later. Our passage really drives home the point that if we are to live good lives that produce good fruit, we have to start with a good foundation. I look around our country today and wonder how good our collective foundations are, and how good the fruit we produce actually is.

This got me thinking about the farmer next door. Most of you probably don’t know where I live, but I live south of Zelienople next to a field that a farmer grows corn and, I think, oats. Last week he planted the corn, and this morning I got to see the short, green sprouts popping just above the dirt. What got me thinking as I watched him plow was how much time he spends preparing that field to produce corn and oats. He doesn’t just plow in the spring. It’s an all-year venture, and we know this personally because each time he prepares the foundation of the field, our property is permeated with the smell of manure.

All year round he comes by with a manure-spreader and spreads the manure from his dairy farm. When we first moved into our house, we were convinced that he timed his manure-spreading for when we had friends or family over ☺. Now we know that he spreads manure on one of his many fields at least once a week. He spreads it in hot weather, cold weather, dry weather, wet weather. It’s kind of a bummer when he spreads it on the snow because it changes the white blanket on the field to brown. Still, seeing it, I always imagine that spreading it on snow probably helps it get into the field better because when the snow melts it infuses the manure into the ground. The point is that the farmer prepares a foundation for his field all-year long. And he doesn’t let anything get in the way of it. The results are the fruits he yields in the corn and oats he grows. That foundation creates the conditions where healthy plants can grow and yield nourishing corn and oats. If he did little for the foundation, he would get little from the field.

How profound is that? It’s a metaphor for life, reminding us that the fruits we produce in our lives depend entirely upon the foundations we set. If we are committed to fertilizing our lives in good times and bad, up times and down, when we are busy and when we aren’t, then the fruit of our lives is good. But when we do nothing, why should it surprise us when the fruits of our lives turn bad.

I couldn’t help but apply this to our confirmation class that gave their statements of faith to the session the past two weeks. I realized that through this class we were preparing a foundation for these new adults, the confirmands, all year long. In fact, their participation in the confirmation class was a testimony to the foundations their parents had been setting throughout their lives. So many said that because their parents got them to church every Sunday, faith was a natural part of their lives. What they were saying was testimony to the importance of the battles all parents have with their children on Sunday mornings to get them to church. Every Sunday battle to get the kids to church lays a foundation for the future of their faith.

When these teens took part in the confirmation class, all 19 of them, we really pushed them to make a commitment and to make this class part of their foundation. For instance, we really pressed upon them that their commitment to the confirmation class and their faith had to be at least as important, if not more so, than their commitment to sports and school. We pushed them to let coaches and teachers know that because of their commitment to the class, they might miss some activities. The teachers also changed the class a bit to really get the teens to study the subjects in a way that asks, “How do you apply this to your lives?” We saw the fruits of the foundation set by the teachers and the parents in the statements of faith. They were incredible.

I wish I could go over each statement, but I don’t have enough time. What I can do is give you snippets. For instance, we had incredible statements articulated through songs, poems, power point presentations, and self-made dvds. We had one teen who created a shadow box that had in it his soccer uniform, a cross necklace, scripture and inspirational quotes, and pictures from his life. We had another who took a soccer ball and wrote on it his five favorite passages, and then he got the whole confirmation class to sign it. One of the most profound statements came from one teen who said, “When I started this class, I didn’t want to take it. I only joined the confirmation class because my father made me. He told me that when he went through is own confirmation class, he had an experience of God, and he wanted me to have the opportunity to have the same experience. So I took the class. And now that I’m done, I’m not joining the class because my dad is making me. I’m joining the class because I have experienced God in it, and I want to be part of this church where I can experience God.” Another confirmand was asked a question about the impact of his faith on his life. He said that it helped him last month when a group of peers pressured him to take drugs and he just walked away. There is the impact of a good foundation in terms of producing good fruit.

These statements of faith got me reflecting on our capital campaign. I began to realize that not only this capital campaign, but our two previous ones, were all about laying a foundation for the future harvest of fruits. As one person said to me recently, the sad thing about being a human church is that we never really quite get to see just how big of an impact we make on people’s lives. Our campaigns have always been about making an impact.

I’ve been here thirteen years, and I know that our efforts haven’t just been about making a difference in the present. They are about making a difference for the future. Actually, this laying of a foundation started even before I came here. In the several years prior to my coming, the church did some very unsexy, but important building improvements. They put a new roof on the sanctuary, which is actually a huge thing. They also renovated the kitchen and the fellowship hall, which had become very run down.

Despite those improvements, when I came to Calvin Presbyterian Church I almost didn’t because of the challenges it presented. During the period when I interviewed with the pastor nominating committee, I fell in love with the committee and the town, but I hadn’t actually seen the church. My interview took place in another church in the South Hills where I was teaching a class. I had a subsequent interview over lunch at one of the member’s house. When I came and saw the church for the first time, and looked at the condition it was in, I almost didn’t come. I remember driving away teary-eyed from the church and saying to my wife, “I don’t think I can go there. I’ll end up doing capital campaigns my whole time there, and I don’t want to do any capital campaigns.” You may not know this about me, but my least favorite part of ministry are these campaigns. But I also knew then, and know now, how important they are. Without them, churches can slowly decline to the point of dying.

Our first campaign was in 1998, and out of it we renovated the sanctuary, bought faith house, gave $33,000 to mission, and started an endowment fund. The sanctuary renovation was sorely needed. When I came here the sanctuary had dark maroon and badly wrinkled carpet. Instead of the extension on the left-hand side of the sanctuary where about 40 people sit on Sundays, we had an accordion door that opened into fellowship hall. When it was opened for extra seating on Christmas and Easter, it sucked the sound out of the sanctuary. The organ was in the center, and Bruce played it with his back to us, facing DeWayne, who played a small piano that was back-to-back with the organ. The lights in the sanctuary were a brownish yellow that gave the sanctuary a slightly brown tinge.

The renovations we did were both for the present and the future. We created a traditional look in our sanctuary, but did our best to put in the elements that would be present in any contemporary sanctuary, such as a sophisticated sound system, upgraded instruments, and bright lighting that could also be used for our plays. We built the Friendship Room extension onto the sanctuary that gave us more seating, but could also be closed off with sound panels, making it a much-needed meeting room. We did not have nearly as many in attendance on Sundays that we get now, and so, for the first three years after building it, those doors were almost always closed. Then, as we began to grow, we would open them more often. Now we’ve grown to the point at which they haven’t been closed in almost four or five years. Even back then we were building a foundation for the future of the church. We recognized that this church was going to have a big influence on people’s lives well into the future, and we had to have a sanctuary that accommodated it.

Our expansion and renovation in 2006 was similarly not just about the present. It was also about the future. I remember many expansion committee meetings in which the discussion were about how to do the construction in a quality way that would cause members in 2056 to say, “Wow, look at the quality of what they did back in 2006.” This future-focus was really embodied in something that was said to me by Bill Frank, chair of the expansion committee, as we were putting together plans for the offices. I looked at the specs for my office and said to Bill, “You know, all the wainscoating and woodwork are too nice for me. I don’t need anything that fancy.” Bill said, “I appreciate that, Graham, but this isn’t for you. This is for the pastor who succeeds you. We want the future pastor to like the office so much that she or he will want to come here.” That’s a future-focus, and that’s laying a foundation for the production of good fruit in the future.

Our present campaign is also about laying a foundation for the future. We are trying to eliminate debt so that we can move forward into the future debt-free, able to respond to any challenges that the future might hold. We have 22 years left on our mortgage, in which we pay approximately $80,000 per year. We can absorb that into our general budget, but it limits everything else we can do in the church. And what if a crisis hits in the future? What if something happens to me, or Bruce, or Toni, or Connie, or Steve. What if something happens in the community? That yearly mortgage payment can quickly become like a millstone, dragging down our ministry and negating the positive impact our new building has our lives and our community. This campaign is about freeing the church to respond to God’s call no matter what.

Ultimately, our campaigns, our ministry, and our mission are really about how we help people set a foundation for their lives in order to produce good fruit. And what we do is even more important today than it was fifty years ago. The culture has changed, and we have to respond to those changes. Do you know what the fastest growing religious group in this country today is? It is those who declare that they have no religious affiliation, and see themselves as either spiritual but not religious, or as agnostic or atheist. Here are the facts: fewer and fewer people are setting a spiritual foundation for their lives by making church part of that foundation. And don ‘t be fooled by those who say they are spiritual but not religious. By not being religious they are admitting that they do very little to practice their spirituality. Spirituality isn’t just about “feeling” spiritual. It’s about actively doing things that nurture spiritual maturity, such as prayer, study, reflection, service, worship, and living in community with those who also care about these things. This is what was so important about our confirmation class. To be spiritual means setting a foundation that nurtures the spirit. That’s what these teens did, and you can see it reflected in their statements of faith. It means making a commitment to God with others. It also means setting a foundation.

And here’s the fruit of that foundation. Do you know what the impact of church is on people’s lives? There have been a lot of studies in the past twenty years on church participation and its impact on life. Despite agnostics and atheists who will tell you that religion has a negative impact, they are 180º wrong. Here’s what research shows. If you go to church, you tend to be healthier and happier than those who don’t. You report more marital satisfaction than those who don’t. Now, you might be tempted to say that the reason is due to the fact that healthier and happier people go to church (as if that was a bad thing), but you’d still be wrong. Lots of studies have been done to control for factors such as this. What they show is that smokers who attend church are healthier than smokers who don’t. Overweight people who attend church are healthier than those who don’t. Church attenders with heart disease live longer than those who don’t attend church. There are literally hundreds of studies out there showing all this, which National Institutes of Health researcher, Dr. David Larson, chronicled years ago. In effect, what this says is that church lays a healthy foundation even for those who aren’t particularly healthy.

Why does all this matter? It matters because I’m calling all of us to root ourselves in our passage for this morning. What kind of foundations are we setting for our lives? What kind of fruits are we producing?

Amen.

God Is Love

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1 John 4:7-20

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.
By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world. God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.
God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us. Those who say, ‘I love God’, and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.

Before you start reading this sermon I want you do to something for me. If you have a CD of the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour, put on the song “All You Need Is Love” and listen to it. If you don’t have it, then go to your computer and google “All You Need Is Love.” If you can’t do that, then find some way to sit down and listen to the song. Think about the words of the song, and what they are telling you. Go ahead. Do it. Don’t be cynical, thinking that you don’t need to. Go and listen to the song, then come back to this sermon….

Listen to the Song

So, if all you need is love, why isn’t love more dominant in the world? Back when this song came out in 1967, there was such hope for the power of love. It was the “summer of love,” when the youth of the world thought that love was everywhere. So many thought that love would transform the world, but the summer of 1967 was followed by the summer of 1968, when Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were shot, the Vietnam War escalated after the Tet Offensive, the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia, and violence erupted at the 1968 Democratic Convention. It’s as if the world could only handle so much love before it exploded back into violence. Since then, the world has descended into a period of pandemic violence. Guns, bombs, and arms have proliferated around the world. Violence in this country has increased, and although it has decreased compared to 1990s levels, it is clearly way over what the rates were before the 1960s.

Why doesn’t the world love more? What’s our problem? When I look around the world I don’t see much love. I see a lot of fear, a lot of violence, a lot of people acting out of selfishness and self-interest, and people thinking that the answer to the world’s problems is to “get them before they get me.” But I don’t see much love.

What all this really tells me is that despite the fact that the majority of the world’s people are religious, and that they proclaim their faith passionately, perhaps their openness to God is questionable. Why do I say this? Simply because of our passage. Remember what John said: “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” If the test of knowing God is our ability to love, and our love is tested by our actions, then many religious people fail the test because we often promote agendas that have little love. I’m not trying to let the non-religious off the hook. I certainly don’t look around and see a greater preponderance of love among the non-religious. I see less among them than among the religious. It’s one thing to be religious. It’s another to be religious and to be open to God, and therefore to love.

What the Beatles sang may be true, that all we need is love, but what John wrote is even truer. If we are going to love, we have to start with our relationship with God because God is love. And the less God is in our lives, the less love is in our lives.

I don’t think it takes much mental energy to prove my point. Take a look at the world around us. Notice which people have the most love. What I’ve noticed is that the people who generally have the most love are also the people with the most God. Now, don’t think that I’m being biased or foolish here. I know that not all Christians are loving. There are many, many Christians who seem to lack a sense of love. But the question isn’t whether being religious somehow kills love. The question is the degree of love these people would have without religion and faith. Related to this, I’ve also noticed that there seems to be a definite lack of God among messed up people. I’ve spent most of my life as a counselor working with people who struggle in life. I’ve met very few messed up people who are deeply faithful, but I’ve met a lot of messed up people who have no faith, no religion, and little or no belief in God. Think about the people you know who are chronically messed up. How important a role does God play in their lives? Think about how much they care about God, and then reflect on how much love plays a role in their lives. A lack of love tends to reveal an overabundance of self-focus, and an overabundance of self-focus tends to reveal a lack of God-focus.

The people I know who are the most loving also tend to be the most God-ful. Let me give you an example of what I mean by telling you about one of my heroes, a man named Father Arseny. In his life he showed how both God and love could be alive, even in the Siberian gulags of the Soviet Union under Stalin. I spoke about Father Arseny back in December on the Sunday after Christmas, but since so few were in worship on that day, I thought I’d talk about him again this morning. I came across his name after giving a talk to about 250 Methodist pastors in North Carolina. During my talk I spoke about how God seems to work through coincidence (or providence), and how many people of faith experience God in this way. While sitting outside with several pastors during our lunch break, one of them said to me, “What you are saying reminds me of Father Arseny.”

I asked him who Father Arseny was. He said, “He’s an Orthodox priest who survived a Soviet Siberian gulag for 20 or more years. During that time he had an amazing faith and cared for others in the camp, transforming their lives and opening them to God.” As I often do when people suggest books to me, I wrote down the information and, when I got home, ordered the book. It took me a while to work through my stack of other books, but once I read this book I realized that this man may have been one of the truly great Christians of the 20th century. And he was a man others dismissed.

Father Arseny was originally an art scholar who became an Orthodox priest. He ended up being sentenced to the gulag after writing several articles about the importance of faith even among communists. In Stalinist Russia, where atheism was the official religion and Christians were persecuted aggressively, to write pro-Christian articles in public papers and magazines was to speak out politically against the government. During Stalin’s reign, Christians were considered to be the worst of all political agitators because belief in God was a threat to the supreme rule of Stalin. As a result, about 44,000 priests were killed during his reign, and over 150,000 monks and nuns. By the time Stalin died, only 200 priests remained alive serving in churches. Remember that statistic the next time someone says that Christianity is responsible for more deaths than anything else. Under Stalin’s atheistic reign, over 25 million people were killed, and millions of them for being Christian. A significant number of them died in the gulags.

The gulags were designed to kill people slowly and with a lot of pain. In the winter, the temperature generally hovered around -15 or -20, and dipping at times to -30. During the summer, the water from the frozen ground was released, making it extremely humid, creating an Eden for mosquitoes, which spread disease. Either way, the majority of people sent to the camps did not return.

The camps were filled with both political prisoners (often highly educated scholars, artists, and reporters) and common criminals (thieves, murderers, psychopath). Both had nothing but disdain for people who were religious. The atheistic political prisoners hated Christians because they saw religious people as being willfully stupid and superstitious. The criminals hated them because they hated anyone with a sense of morality. The result was that both groups treated Father Arseny with contempt and brutality. Yet Father Arseny always responded with love, even when they abused and beat him. And I don’t mean that he responded with a weak-kneed love, but with a genuine love. He was a man who cared about people, and often his love brought about miracles.

Father Arseny was easily dismissed by others, especially by those who were smart, powerful, or just wanted to fit in. But being dismissed by others never seemed to bother him. All he cared about was serving God. After he died in 1973, stories about him were collected from those who knew him either in the gulag or elsewhere. That’s what makes this book so fascinating. They tell the stories of Father Arseny from the perspective of those who were transformed by him.

I want to share one particular story with you this morning that was written by two people who were cared for by Father Arseny: Ivan Alexandrovich Sazikov and Alexander Pavlovich Avsenkov. Both were living in a barrack with Father Arseny, and both became deathly ill. There was no room for them in the medical building of the gulag, so they remained in the barrack, where they got no medical attention. Father Arseny took it upon himself to care for them. Arseny was responsible in the barracks for keeping the stoves lit while the men worked outside, breaking ice and chopping down trees for firewood, which were the only source of heat. Even at full-blast the stoves only heated the barracks to about 55 degrees.

Arseny carefully cared for them while both remained mostly delirious and oblivious to the care they were receiving. At one point Arseny decided to bring the stoves up full-blast, realizing that the two men were close to death and needed heat. When a guard came in and felt the heat, he beat Arseny for wasting state-owned wood. But Arseny continued to fill the stove with more and more wood.

One day, when Sazikov started to get better, he saw Arseny hovering over him, praying for Christ to heal him. Instead of thanking Arseny, Sazikov said to him, “What do you want from me with your God! What do you hope to get from me? You hope I will die so you can take my belongings. I have nothing, so don’t even try!” Father Arseny’s response? He carefully covered the man and tenderly gave him more to drink.

Another time, when Arseny was praying over Sazikov, Sazikov said to him, “Your praying, eh, priest? You pray to get forgiveness of your sins and this is why you help us! You’re afraid of God! Why’s that? Have you ever seen Him?” Arseny calmly said, “How could I not have seen him? He is here among us and unites you and me!... I see his presence. I see that your soul is black with sin, but there is room in it for light. Light will come to you, Sazikov, light and your Saint. Saint Seraphim of Sarov will not abandon you.” Sazikov screamed at him, yelling, “I’ll kill you, you silly priest, I’ll kill you—I don’t know how you know things. I hate the way you think.” The interesting thing, though, is that through Arseny’s love, Sazikov slowly became transformed, eventually becoming a Christian and remaining dear friends with Arseny for the rest of his life.

The other patient, Avsenkov, was more receptive to Arseny, but he was also stunned by Arseny’s love. He also became transformed by God through Father Arseny, especially after the following conversation. He said to Arseny, “You have a soul, I can see that, but I am a true Communist, while you serve your God; you are a priest. We have different points of view. In theory, I should be fighting you.” Avsenkov was a committed Communist. In fact, he was in the gulag for political reasons. He had been a judge in Moscow, defending the Communist regime of Stalin against all potential threats. He had sentenced thousands to the gulags. He ended up in the gulag himself only because a rising star wanted him out of the way so that he, himself, could become a powerful judge. False charges were fabricated against Avsenkov in order to take over his position, and so Avsenkov was sentenced to the gulags himself. Yet he remained a committed Communist.

Arseny responded, “Hey, dear friend. Why would you want to fight? You fought as much as you could and where did your ideology get you? It took you to this camp, which swallowed you! As far as I am concerned I had my faith in Christ out there in freedom and I have it here within myself. God is the same everywhere and helps everyone! I trust and believe that He will help you too!” He continued, “We have known each other for a long time. God brought us together a long time ago, and planned our meeting in this camp.”

Avsenkov replied, “What are you saying? How could I have known you?” Arseny calmly and lovingly said, “Oh yes, you know me, Alexander Pavlovich. In 1933 when Communism was trying to eradicate religion, hundreds of thousands of believers were exiled, hundreds of churches were closed and this is when, for the first time, I was sent away to camp on your instructions. In 1939, I was in your jurisdiction again. I wrote an article. As soon as it was published, you arrested me again and convicted me to be shot. But, thank you—you commuted the sentence to exile in camp. Since then I have been living in various camps and all along I’ve been expecting to see you. So finally we meet!” How would you respond to the judge who unjustly sentenced you to a gulag?

This is an amazing testimony to love, and how God is love. By loving Avsenkov, Arseny not only forgave him, but he opened Avsenkov to God’s presence everywhere. Like Sazikov, Avsenkov became a Christian and devoted his life to God and love.

You don’t have to be great to love. Father Arseny was not great in any worldly way. He was simply a man who knew that we need to love. To be like him you don’t have to be great. You just have to want to share God and love

Do you know what made Arseny so remarkable? He understood that the only thing that stands between us and love is us. He understood that God is love, and that each time he loved he was bearing Christ to another. He understood something that the Beatles didn’t. It may be true that all we need is love, but to live in that love we need God.

Amen.

Love Is a Sacrifice

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1 John 3:11-22

For this is the message you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. We must not be like Cain who was from the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous. Do not be astonished, brothers and sisters, that the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another. Whoever does not love abides in death. All who hate a brother or sister are murderers, and you know that murderers do not have eternal life abiding in them. We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?
Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God; and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him.

I had an experience several years ago that really caused me to stop and think. I don’t quite remember where I was, but I know that I was on vacation somewhere, walking with my daughters who were about 5 or 6 at the time. We were crossing a street after doing the “look-back-and-forth” bit. Suddenly, as we were crossing, a car came barreling toward us, and it was apparent that he didn’t see the stop sign in front of him, nor us. Without a thought, I immediately started walking rapidly toward his car with my arms outstretched as it sped toward me. Suddenly he stopped about three feet from me, waving his hands and mouthing, “Sorry!” If he hadn’t see me, I would have been hit by the car. There was a serious chance I could have been hurt or killed. What got me thinking was that in that moment—for that one moment—I had absolutely no self-concern. My kids were threatened, and something just took over my thinking. My concern was only for protecting them.

Do you know how rare a moment like this is, a moment in which we have absolutely no thoughts of self? In that moment I no longer existed. All that mattered was protecting Erin and Shea. I thought a lot about this moment afterwards because it was a moment of complete loss of self-concern. I guess that’s what happens when you really love someone. You become willing to sacrifice yourself, even if it is only for a moment.

Self-sacrifice isn’t something that comes easy to us Americans. We’ve always had a strange tension in this country between self-sacrifice and selfishness. We talk about sacrificing for our country and all that, but in many ways we are much more selfish than we are self-sacrificing.

The well-known sociologist, Robert Bellah, wrote about how much we struggle with selfishness and self-concern in his groundbreaking book, Habits of the Heart. He noted that there is a strong individualistic streak among Americans, one that goes back in our history to our roots in the Colonial period. He says that Americans tend to see themselves as individuals first, Americans second. Our primary identity is as individuals, even before we see ourselves as part of a family, a community, an ethnicity, or a nation. He says that as a result of our individualism, we tend to praise and idolize the individual over the community.

Do you want to see what he means? Take a look at the most popular television program in the country right now? What is it? American Idol. Think about the point of the show. It is to rise above all the others to become the lone, individual idol, admired and adored by everyone. Look at our movies. So often our films are about the individual rising up against all odds to overcome tragedy, difficulty, or evil. Although we love team sports, we idolize the individual players. This emphasis on the individual in all parts of life makes it very hard for us to also embrace self-sacrifice.

Where does this individualism come from? I think you can trace it right to the colonization of America. David Hackett Fischer, in his book, Albion’s Seed, talks the four primary migrations of colonists into America, and how they shaped American values. The first major migration was the Puritan migration into New England. They were a very community-oriented people. They believed that the individual, in order to serve God, should be willing to sacrifice him- or herself for the community and for God. Meanwhile, the Cavalier migration into the south had a different take on this. The Cavaliers were second and third sons of nobles from Southern England. They were privileged and believed in a hierarchy. They believed in a community, but community revolving around those at the top of the hierarchy comprised of nobles, then merchants, then servants, then slaves. All served the individual at the top. So they believed in community, but community focused on the top (can you see how American Idol almost reflects this belief?)

Meanwhile, there was another migration into Pennsylvania of Quakers, who, like the Puritans, were very community-oriented. They believed in sacrifice of self for God and others. They believed that a strong community created a holy place to live. Finally, there were the Scots-Irish, who settled first in our area of Western Pennsylvania, and then settled down the spine of the Appalachian Mountains. They were the most individualistic of the lot. They originally came from the borderlands between Scotland and England, and were used to being attacked by the Scots and then the English. To survive they became very individualistic, believing only in the value of familial blood. When they migrated to America, they became the most individualistic of group of all, creating weak communities, preferring to live alone or with a small cadre of like-minded people. They did not believe much in self-sacrifice for others. What they did believe in was heading into the woods armed with a Bible and an axe, creating their own life and religion.

I believe that there’s a lesson in American religious colonization regarding self-sacrifice, individualism, and community. The most religious of the colonies, the Puritans and the Quakers, were always the most self-sacrificing. And they were the most prosperous. They understood that real Christianity is both communal and sacrificial, and it translated into the economic success of their communities. In contrast, the least successful areas of the country were those settled by the Scots-Irish, and even today they are the most impoverished areas of our country.

Basically, the American experience underscores our passage, which says that there is no greater love that binds people together than a love in which we are willing to lay down our lives for others. The willingness to put aside “my” concerns for “our” concerns makes all the difference in the world. Jesus taught this idea. Think about Jesus’ teachings and life. He taught that we should deny ourselves, pick up our crosses and follow him. He taught that we should share what we have with others. He taught that we should give to others sacrificially. And he lived it. He gave up his life on the cross for others.

You can also learn the lesson of self-sacrifice outside Christianity. You can find it in music. Think about the best music you know. It requires that the artist put aside her or his desire to be the star in order to work in harmony with others. Malcom Gladwell, in his book, Outliers, makes this exact point about the Beatles and what made them so great. He says that it’s not just raw talent that made them great. Instead, it was their two-year experience, playing at the “Top Ten Club” in Hamburg, Germany, for eight hours a day, seven days a week. They played and played and played together, all the while creating a harmony of thought, mind, and performance. By the time they returned to England, they were a completely different group. They had learned to sacrifice their egos for the music, which is saying a lot since they all had big egos, especially John and Paul. It was their willing to sacrifice self for the group that made the difference. What other group had that much time together to craft their music?

You can find the same kind of self-sacrifice in the life of a woman named Margaret. If you travel to the business district of New Orleans, you can find a statue of Margaret that was erected in 1888. It’s an odd statue, not like most statues you find in a city. Most statues in a city are of military, political, or financial men posed dramatically, showing their great deeds. This statue of Margaret is different. It has Margaret, an older, heavy-set woman in a crocheted sweater, hair in a bun, sitting on a chair with her arm around a small child standing next to her. The inscription on the base simply says, “Margaret.”

The statue is of Margaret Haughery, a woman who died in New Orleans in 1882. By the time she died, she had made a huge impact on the city. No one would have expected her to be remembered in marble when she was born in Ireland in 1814. At age six she migrated to America with her parents, settling in Maryland. Two years later, both parents died of influenza, leaving her an orphan. After a time in an orphanage, a Welsh couple adopted her. At age twenty-one she married and moved to New Orleans with her new husband. About a year or two later, both her husband and her infant child died of illness, leaving Margaret in poverty.

Eventually, she got a job washing and ironing clothes in a Catholic orphanage. It was there that she sensed her calling. One day she went to the head nun and committed her life to helping the orphanage financially. Saving as much as she could, she donated much of her salary back to the orphanage. With what she had saved she managed to purchase two cows and a small, wooden pushcart. She would rise very early in the morning and deliver milk to wealthy people and restaurants, often begging for leftover food so that she could give that to the orphans.

As her side business grew, she purchased more cows and hired people to deliver the milk. Out of her revenues she kept little for herself. She saved much of it, and gave much of the rest to the orphanage. As her business increased, she eventually sold it, and with the proceeds, both donated huge sums to the orphanage, helping them get completely out of debt. Then she bought a bakery. As the bakery business took off, she gave more money not only to the Catholic orphanage she had worked in years before, but also to Protestant and Jewish orphanages.

When she died in 1882, she left $30,000 to be shared with orphanages all over the city. By my best guess, that would be over $1 million in today’s dollars. All from a woman who could barely read or write, but who was willing to sacrifice herself for the benefit of others.

One of the keys to living a mature faith is that we have to be willing to sacrifice our interests for the good of others. That’s one of the reasons I really like one of the prominent phrases used by our fundraising consultants, RSI. They often say that we should give “not equal gifts, but equal sacrifices.” They understand that sacrifice opens life to the sacred. There are lots of ways we are called as Christians to sacrifice.

• We are called to give time, money, and compassion to others.
• How we vote is a sacrifice. When you vote, do you only vote your own interests, or do you vote the interests of others?
• Are you only concerned with your rights, or are you concerned with the rights of others?
• What causes beyond yourself are you committed to? To the church? To charity? To causes?

We are given a simple, but profound message in our passage for today: “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.” How are you laying your life down for others? And how is that leading you to live in God’s love?
Amen.