Church Authority

I'm preaching this coming Sabbath on Acts 3 and 4. It's the story of Peter and John healing the lame man at the Beautiful Gate, their subsequent arrest and eventual arraignment before the Sanhedrin.

I love Peter's speech to the assembly: What? Do you really think it's better to obey you than God?  I cannot help speaking what i have seen and heard.

Peter and the other believers operated out of a life-changing experience. The church officials operated out of a concern to preserve the status quo. This is the eternal struggle of the church. The conservatives want to preserve all the good stuff that is the heritage from the church's past. The crazies want to honor the new thing God is doing.

It is our heritage (history, traditions) that sets us up for receiving God's new work. The new work always threatens the structures that were erected on the basis of God's past work.

This is the lens through which I view the current conservative/liberal struggle in the Adventist Church. I am unabashedly a liberal. But I acknowledge that my liberal views are a direct outgrowth my conservative Adventist heritage. (And I do not mean my views as a reaction against that heritage.) I could not have arrived at the views I have without that conservative heritage. I refuse to belief that that heritage should be preserved unchanged over time. That would be analogous to fossilizing a living organism. Fossils are cool. Living, changing organisms are cooler.



The current president of the General Conference tirelessly advocates one book above all others, The Great Controversy. It is our prophet's panoramic survey of Christianity from day one to the end of time. In this book every hero is a heretic. Every effort by the church to defend orthodoxy is shown to be wrong-headed opposition to truth. The heretics turn out to be right. So when the church president anathematizes people whose faithfulness to God causes them to diverge from "historic" or "General Conference" Adventism, he becomes another unwitting (and unfavorable) example of the central theme of his favorite book.

The Sabbath Between

In the Christian liturgical calendar this is the day between: The day between the colossal failure of Friday and the magnificent triumph of Sunday.

It is suffused with the light of Sabbath, the affirmation of God: It is finished. It is good. These words apply to the cosmos, they apply especially to us. God the Father says to us: I am pleased with you. You have done enough. God the Mother says to us: you are beautiful, what you have made is beautiful. God the Friend says to us: My heart has found sweet rest with you.

This Sabbath between affirms all this with proof, without demonstration. It overflows with the word of God: It is finished. It is good.

Tomorrow, we will enter again into our work of making God's words visible in the world.

Donkeys of the Christ

Sermon manuscript for Green Lake Church of Seventh-day Adventists for April 12, 2014, the Sabbath before Palm Sunday.
Scripture readings:  OT: Isaiah 44:24, 27, 28; 45:11-13. NT: Mark 11:1-11

It is a very long hike, from Jericho, the City of Palms, to Jerusalem, the city of Tears. Fifteen miles and three thousand feet of elevation gain, to use language common here in the Pacific Northwest.

The way I imagine it, Jesus and hundreds of other people are up before sunrise. Palm trees stand silhouetted against the brightening sky. People blow on their hands in the morning chill. The crowd is excited and nervous. Rumors have it that the political elite in Jerusalem are planning to eliminate Jesus. There are also rumors that this Passover, in Jerusalem, Jesus will declare himself king.

Barely outside the city gates the parade is interrupted by an insistent, plaintive cry, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me. Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.” It’s Bartimaeus, a blind beggar. The crowd tries to shush him, but he keeps shouting until Jesus orders his disciples to go find him. Jesus heals the man and he joins the parade marching toward Jerusalem.

The road from Jericho to Jerusalem went up a canyon. It was long and hot. In the afternoon, the crowd crowns the hill above Jerusalem. Jesus stops and they gave over the grand view of the Holy City spread out below them. Jesus told a couple of his disciples, “Go into the village just ahead of us. Right as you enter the village, you’ll find a colt tied in the street. No one has ever ridden it.

“Untie the colt and bring it here. Oh, and if anyone asks you what you are doing, just tell them the Lord needs it and will send it back shortly.”

So the disciples headed off toward the village. They found the colt tied up just like Jesus had described. The bystanders challenged them, just as Jesus had predicted. The disciples answered the way Jesus had told them to. The bystanders let them take the donkey.

Back to the hill crest where Jesus sat surrounded by the crowd. They threw their cloaks over the donkey. Jesus climbed on and the parade poured down the hill toward Jerusalem. It was the same people who had been walking with Jesus all the way from Jericho, but the crowd was different. Trudging up the long canyon they had been pilgrims. Now they were the entourage of a king. There was electricity in the air.

They spread their cloaks in the road to make a carpet for their king. They cut branches from trees and spread them in the road. I'm sure you've seen pictures of the crowd waving palm fronds in the air. Dancing. Singing. Ecstatic. Joyous. Shouting,

Hosanna!

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the lord!

Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!

Hosanna in the highest.

The Gospel of Luke reports that the authorities tried to get Jesus to shut the parade down. Don’t you hear what the people are saying? They asked.

“Oh yes, I hear them.” Jesus answered. “And if I quiet them, the very rocks will begin shouting.”

One can suppress the truth for only so long.

The grand parade continues on toward Jerusalem. In the couple of miles between the tiny village of Bethphage and the gates of Jerusalem, the parade picks up more people. The excitement grows. Jesus rides through the city gates and keeps on moving. He rides straight to the temple. There he dismounts and sweeps into the courtyard with hundreds, perhaps thousands of people. The vast temple court is filled with people and animals. It's Passover. Half the world is there.

Jesus stops and surveys the scene. He listens to the baaing of sheep and the mooing of cows, the haggling of animal merchants, the strident voices of money changers. Jesus He knows poor people from all over the Mediterranean world have come here to worship. People from what is today Spain and Lybia, France, Egypt and Italy, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Turkey–people from everywhere come here to worship. It is the trip of a lifetime, the ultimate expression of their devotion to God and their hope. And here, Jesus sees their devout dreams sullied, cynically manipulated. Jesus sees poor pilgrims getting ripped off in the temple courtyard.

Jesus' entrance with an entourage of hundreds or thousands created a stir. And as he stands surveying the scene, the commotion quiets a bit. People stare. Abruptly, Jesus shouts, “God has said, 'My house is to be called a house of prayer for all nations, but you have made it a den of thieves.'” He immediately launches into the crowded court, tipping over tables. Shouting, “Be gone!” Coins clatter across the pavement. He opens gates on pens. Goats begin scampering through the crowd. Cows bulldoze their way across the sea of humanity. I’m sure by now he’s shouting, the disciples following his lead, waving their arms and shooing the sheep and cows and goats toward the exits. More tables are flipped. More coins clatter on the pavement. The dealers and sellers begin hollering. Panic and pandemonium spread. People and animals charging for the exits before the terrifying wrath of Jesus. It's wonderful.

12 And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves, 13 And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves. 14 And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple; and he healed them. 15 And when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying in the temple, and saying, Hosanna to the Son of David; they were sore displeased, 16 And said unto him, Hearest thou what these say? And Jesus saith unto them, Yea; have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise? (Matthew 21:12-16 KJV, accessed through BlueLetterBible.org)

Then it's quiet. Jesus' followers are astonished. Did Jesus just do what they saw him do? New sound begins to fill the place. It's the sound of kids running toward Jesus, laughing and shouting. The wrath of the Lamb does not scare them. It merely creates space for them to be free. It is another rich picture of Jesus, Christ the King.

On an entirely different note: Karin and I were hiking this week in a park near our house. It's a place she likes to ride her horse with her girlfriends. Karin told me some organization is building a couple of new trails in the park. Late in our hike we came to where a new trail took off to the right and crossed a creek. Karin enthusiastically called my attention to this new trail and especially to the nearly-completed new bridge across the creek. She told me how eager she was to explore that trail and see where it went.

I listened dutifully, but my mind had already been captured by an entirely different picture. On the far side of the bridge was a small excavator.

I told Karin I wanted one of those. If I had an excavator like that I could build all sorts of trails. I freely acknowledge that this Bobcat excavator was not the highlight of our hike. It is not the preeminent scenic wonder of O'Grady Park. But some of you, especially some of you guys, will understand why, for at least a few minutes, the wild land wonders were eclipsed by my fascination with a digging machine.

In the story of the Triumphal Entry, Jesus is the obvious center of attention. The writer is focused on Jesus. During the parade, the crowds spreading garments in the road and waving palm branches were ecstatic about Jesus. When Jesus drives the moneychangers and merchants from the temple courtyard, Jesus is the hero. Then at the end of the story, when children come flooding into the temple court, they come because Jesus is there. He is the grand, beautiful, eye-catching center of the story. But this week as I thought about this story, I found my attention riveted on the donkey.

The whole story falls apart if there is no donkey. Jesus can't walk into Jerusalem, not if this is supposed to be a regal entrance. He has to ride. There was an ancient prophecy that described the Messiah riding a donkey, so it had to be a donkey, not horse, not an ox cart, not a sedan chair. They couldn't have the parade without the donkey.

The donkey shows up, Jesus mounts up and the parade begins. The crowd goes crazy with excitement and enthusiasm. It is the happiest day of their lives. And it required a donkey.

We are donkeys of the Christ. The central conviction of Christianity is that God was and is in Christ working for the healing and happiness of the world. Our calling is to serve as the donkeys of Christ. We are charged with making Christ present.

What is the point of this beautiful building? To provide access to God. Of course, we don't imagine God is only present here, or that we have any kind of monopoly on God. But we are donkeys of the Christ in this neighborhood. This beautiful building, our elegant music, our carefully planned liturgy are vehicles for the presence of God. They are donkeys of the Christ.

I like the idea of our building and worship serving as donkeys of the Christ. It affirms our efforts, our endeavors, play a vital role in the work of God. What we do here does, indeed, provide a special service on behalf of God.

Those who give money—you are acting as agents of the kingdom of heaven, helping to put on the grand parade.

Musicians—the parade would not even get out of the parking lot without you. Many of us experience our most intense connection with God through your gifts.

Sound crew and video crew. As persons you are nearly invisible. And every worship service is utterly dependent on your skillful, generous service.

Deacons.

Associate pastors

Cooks.

Decorators.

Painters. Have you noticed the bright new look of our walls?

Sabbath School teachers.

Craft makers.

Money counters.

Money managers.

Your work makes Jesus visible and present. You are donkeys of the Christ.

But this picture of us as donkeys of the Christ is like one of those magic pictures where you see two different pictures depending on the angle. As Christ's donkeys we are indispensable agents of the kingdom of heaven. Yes. But about the time we get cocky and full of ourselves, someone might point out that no matter how grand the parade, no matter how august the personage riding the donkey at the center of the parade, the donkey is still—well—still a donkey. When we put in a lot of effort to be the very best donkeys in the world, sometimes we might forget we are still mere donkeys. The point of the parade is to make Christ present, not to show case the donkey. So let's not get cocky or conceited. We're doing good work, important work, but let's beware of the danger of forgetting that our significance arises from our participation in something larger, grander than ourselves. The parade owns us. We do not own the parade.

On that afternoon, about two millennia ago, Jesus rode on a donkey in a grand parade, declaring in the most public way his conviction that goodness would ultimately triumph. He invited the crowds watching to join him, to shout hallelujah. As they did so, as they joined the celebration, they were joining God's grand project to bend the arc of history toward justice and righteousness.

Today, at the heart of our community, our worship, our building, our religion is our buoyant and stubborn confidence that ultimately, Jesus will triumph. Goodness will rule. Our hope and our commitment deserve a glorious party.

Hallelujah.

Dual Citizenship

Sermon manuscript for Green Lake Church of Seventh-day Adventists

March 29, 2014

Jeremiah 29:4-7

Romans 13:1-7

Synopsis.

Jesus set an exalted ideal: view every human as deserving of care and sustenance, even when they are our enemies. In Jesus' vision, there are no particular societies. Nations and national identities become invisible. Other voices and other characters in the Bible, including Abraham, Joseph, Jeremiah, Daniel and Paul acknowledge the value of specific societies and social structures. We serve God best by serving particular communities and working with concrete social structures. So, today, to fully live out the ideals of the Kingdom of Heaven, we must engage in the society of earth.

Daniel in the Lions’ Den

1 Darius the Mede decided to divide the kingdom into 120 provinces, and he appointed a high officer to rule over each province. 2 The king also chose Daniel and two others as administrators to supervise the high officers and protect the king’s interests. 3 Daniel soon proved himself more capable than all the other administrators and high officers. Because of Daniel’s great ability, the king made plans to place him over the entire empire.

4 Then the other administrators and high officers began searching for some fault in the way Daniel was handling government affairs, but they couldn’t find anything to criticize or condemn. He was faithful, always responsible, and completely trustworthy. 5 So they concluded, “Our only chance of finding grounds for accusing Daniel will be in connection with the rules of his religion.”

6 So the administrators and high officers went to the king and said, “Long live King Darius! 7 We are all in agreement—we administrators, officials, high officers, advisers, and governors—that the king should make a law that will be strictly enforced. Give orders that for the next thirty days any person who prays to anyone, divine or human—except to you, Your Majesty—will be thrown into the den of lions. 8 And now, Your Majesty, issue and sign this law so it cannot be changed, an official law of the Medes and Persians that cannot be revoked.” 9 So King Darius signed the law.

10 But when Daniel learned that the law had been signed, he went home and knelt down as usual in his upstairs room, with its windows open toward Jerusalem. He prayed three times a day, just as he had always done, giving thanks to his God.

11 Then the officials went together to Daniel’s house and found him praying and asking for God’s help. 12 So they went straight to the king and reminded him about his law. “Did you not sign a law that for the next thirty days any person who prays to anyone, divine or human—except to you, Your Majesty—will be thrown into the den of lions?”

“Yes,” the king replied, “that decision stands; it is an official law of the Medes and Persians that cannot be revoked.”

13 Then they told the king, “That man Daniel, one of the captives from Judah, is ignoring you and your law. He still prays to his God three times a day.”

14 Hearing this, the king was deeply troubled, and he tried to think of a way to save Daniel. He spent the rest of the day looking for a way to get Daniel out of this predicament.

15 In the evening the men went together to the king and said, “Your Majesty, you know that according to the law of the Medes and the Persians, no law that the king signs can be changed.”

16 So at last the king gave orders for Daniel to be arrested and thrown into the den of lions. The king said to him, “May your God, whom you serve so faithfully, rescue you.”

17 A stone was brought and placed over the mouth of the den. The king sealed the stone with his own royal seal and the seals of his nobles, so that no one could rescue Daniel. 18 Then the king returned to his palace and spent the night fasting. He refused his usual entertainment and couldn’t sleep at all that night.

19 Very early the next morning, the king got up and hurried out to the lions’ den. 20 When he got there, he called out in anguish, “Daniel, servant of the living God! Was your God, whom you serve so faithfully, able to rescue you from the lions?”

21 Daniel answered, “Long live the king! 22 My God sent his angel to shut the lions’ mouths so that they would not hurt me, for I have been found innocent in his sight. And I have not wronged you, Your Majesty.”

23 The king was overjoyed and ordered that Daniel be lifted from the den. Not a scratch was found on him, for he had trusted in his God.

24 Then the king gave orders to arrest the men who had maliciously accused Daniel. He had them thrown into the lions’ den, along with their wives and children. The lions leaped on them and tore them apart before they even hit the floor of the den.

25 Then King Darius sent this message to the people of every race and nation and language throughout the world:

“Peace and prosperity to you!

26 “I decree that everyone throughout my kingdom should tremble with fear before the God of Daniel. For he is the living God, and he will endure forever. His kingdom will never be destroyed, and his rule will never end. 27 He rescues and saves his people;

he performs miraculous signs and wonders in the heavens and on earth. He has rescued Daniel from the power of the lions.”

28 So Daniel prospered during the reign of Darius and the reign of Cyrus the Persian.

New Living Bible, accessed through blueletterbible.org.

It can be complicated, living with dual citizenship. But that is our calling. We are citizens of the kingdom of heaven and citizens of the United States (or China or Nigeria or Canada or Mexico).

But let's be clear. For us dual citizenship does mean exactly equal allegiance to two kingdoms. Here in church we unabashedly declare our supreme allegiance is to the Kingdom of Heaven. That's one reason we do not have an American flag in our sanctuary. In this space—in this house, in this family—particular national identities are unimportant. My precious American birthright gives me no status. In this house of prayer for all nations, an illegal immigrant from Guatemala has equal claim upon God and upon the affection and support of the community.

Sometimes there is a conflict between the claims of the Kingdom of Heaven and the claims of a particular national identity. When that happens, the Kingdom of Heaven is the unqualified master of our souls.

When there is a law or custom that requires us to pretend that some earthly citizenship is supreme, we unhesitatingly reject it.

This story also illustrates cautions against an opposite idea held by some Christians: that heaven is all that matters. Believe and pray. That's all that matters. Just this week I was yet another article about the heart-breaking connection between a certain kind of Christianity and perpetual poverty with its accompanying phenomena of divorce, obesity, diabetes, domestic violence and general misery. True religion does offer comfort and consolation in the face of difficulties we cannot change. As I have said often enough: If you call religion and opiate of the masses, and you say that scornfully, it must be that you have never experienced severe pain. Genuine Christianity is a wonderful consolation.

And it is far more than that. It is a stirring call to cooperate with God in making the world better. The story of Daniel is a brilliant example of that. He was the best man in his world. This was recognized by the king and even by his enemies.

God calls us to be the best men and women in our worlds. In the heart of Babylon—that is the regular, old, secular world—God calls us to be indispensably good.

In serving the empires of Babylon and Persia, Daniel was following the advice God gave through the prophet Jeremiah.

[Jer 29:1-14 NLT] 1 Jeremiah wrote a letter from Jerusalem to the elders, priests, prophets, and all the people who had been exiled to Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar. 2 This was after King Jehoiachin, the queen mother, the court officials, the other officials of Judah, and all the craftsmen and artisans had been deported from Jerusalem. 3 He sent the letter with Elasah son of Shaphan and Gemariah son of Hilkiah when they went to Babylon as King Zedekiah's ambassadors to Nebuchadnezzar. This is what Jeremiah's letter said: 4 This is what the LORD of Heaven's Armies, the God of Israel, says to all the captives he has exiled to Babylon from Jerusalem: 5 "Build homes, and plan to stay. Plant gardens, and eat the food they produce. 6 Marry and have children. Then find spouses for them so that you may have many grandchildren. Multiply! Do not dwindle away! 7 And work for the peace and prosperity of the city where I sent you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, for its welfare will determine your welfare." 8 This is what the LORD of Heaven's Armies, the God of Israel, says: "Do not let your prophets and fortune-tellers who are with you in the land of Babylon trick you. Do not listen to their dreams, 9 because they are telling you lies in my name. I have not sent them," says the LORD. 10 This is what the LORD says: "You will be in Babylon for seventy years. But then I will come and do for you all the good things I have promised, and I will bring you home again. 11 For I know the plans I have for you," says the LORD. "They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. 12 In those days when you pray, I will listen. 13 If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me. 14 I will be found by you," says the LORD. "I will end your captivity and restore your fortunes. I will gather you out of the nations where I sent you and will bring you home again to your own land."

This world is our home. God wants us to settle in and prosper here. God wants us to work for the prosperity of the larger society. Because it will thus go well for us, and because a prosperous society is God's dream for the world.

2011 was not a particularly good time to become governor of California. Unemployment was in the double digits. The state budget had a $26 billion deficit. And this was on top of a state debt that had already piled up to $35 billion. People were beginning to talk about bankruptcy. The problem appeared to be unsolvable.

The new governor, Jerry Brown, went to work. He did the unheard of thing of asking the voters to raise their own taxes. And they did it. He cut state spending. And it hurt. Now, three years later, the state budget is in balance. Employment is recovering nicely. And the state is again pursuing forward-looking environmental initiatives, futuristic transportation projects and bold water projects.

Part of Jerry Brown's history was several years in a Jesuit seminary training for the priesthood. He left the seminary and went to law school. His life has been in politics, not the church, not religion. But throughout his political career he has pursued some bright ideals. He's not perfect, of course. Not all of his ideas have worked. And not all of them are good. But his recent leadership in the State of California has moved the place away from the brink of bankruptcy, but into a place for dreamers and inventors.

And that's a good thing. That is the kind of work we are called to do.

Last Sunday, Krystl Mitchell and Mark Murphy were married here at Green Lake Church. It was a beautiful service with magnificent music. At the reception there were long speeches. One of which I will remember a long time. Krystl's dad talked of his memories of his “little girl.”

He talked of walking the Burke Gilman trail with Krystl when she was just a tyke. She carefully picked up every snail and moved it off the trail so it wouldn't get hurt. In school, she made a point of befriending kids who were outsiders. No amount of peer pressure could bend her. She was determined to make things better. Then she went off to law school, still committed to making the world better. And she hasn't stopped yet. Now she is working as a prosecutor in Grays Harbor, seeking to maintain justice.

Krystl is a beautiful example of dual citizenship. She is a citizen of what we call “the real world,” the world where snails get crushed and socially awkward kids and ugly people get shunned. She is also a citizen of the kingdom of God, the kingdom where snails are precious and awkward kids and ugly people are see in their real value.

God calls us all to do our own work of saving snails, maybe building “snail fences.” To use our mind and muscle to serve.

This is our highest honor.

Money and Soul

Sermon manuscript for Green Lake Church of Seventh-day Adventists

April 5, 2014.

OT: 1 Kings 5:1-6, 10, 11.

NT: Luke 21:1-4.

Money is a powerful tool for turning our dreams into reality, for turning our values into life. The way we manage our money always expresses our fundamental values. A discerning observer could read our soul in our bank statement.

A note before I begin: Preaching tends to be a one way street: I talk and you listen. I like it when people talk back. Please feel welcome to comment or ask a question. If you have my phone number, feel free to text me. I value your input.

Imagine a warm spring day. Around us are the massive stone walls of the temple courtyard in ancient Jerusalem. Overhead, puffy white clouds float in a blue sky. The temple is throbbing with people, so many you can scarcely see the foot-worn stone pavement. Bustle and commotion. A hundred languages or more floating in the air. Turbans and robes and foot-ware reflect a hundred different cultures across North Africa, Southern Europe and the Middle East. Jesus is sitting here in the courtyard, watching. His disciples follow his eyes. They are learning to see what he sees, learning to see how he sees.

Right now, he is watching the offering box. People pour bags of coins into the slot. Little streams of gold and silver.

Contributing to the temple was both a civic and a religious responsibility. It was a marker of social status. And appropriately so. The temple was the preeminent expression of Jewish national and religious identity. Maintaining the buildings and the services of the temple took huge financial resources. It could not function apart from the patronage of the wealthy. Their gifts were appreciated. The very bench where Jesus sat watching was paid for by gold coins given by a wealthy Jewish donor.

The eyes of Jesus catch a furtive movement off to the right. He turns his head, and his disciples follow with their own eyes. They see a skeletally-thin woman with a couple of skinny kids in tow threading through the crowd. She must be a widow. No self-respecting husband would let his wife loose in this crowd. She's moving toward the offering box. Jesus and the 24 eyes of his disciples follow her progress.

Then she's there. She quickly lifts her hand and drops a coin in the box. It makes a different sound. It's not gold or silver. It's copper. A penny. She drops another, then lifts her eyes to heaven in a silent instant of prayer, then she's gone.

I don't want the story to end here. I imagine Jesus sending a couple of disciples after her to learn her story and offer financial assistance from the money bag we know they kept for just such purposes. It's easy to imagine this part of the story. It would fit with the rest that we know about Jesus. But we have to create this part of the story purely from our imaginations. The actual account in the gospel ends with her release of the coins and their clink in the offering box.

Except for this.

3 "I tell you the truth," Jesus said, "this poor widow has given more than all the rest of them. 4 For they have given a tiny part of their surplus, but she, poor as she is, has given everything she has." [Luke 21:3-6, New Living Translation, accessed through BlueLetterBible.org.]

It's a delicious story. One that deserves its own movie. It's another example of Jesus undermining the traditional identification of actual value with social status.

Women were third class citizens in that society. Widows were several steps further down the yardstick of social value. Add poverty to the mix and this woman with her pennies is genuinely a nobody, a no account.

Jesus contrasts her with the rich, publicly-devout men who were depositing loads of gold in the offering box and Jesus says, “She gave more.” “She out did them.” It was an outrageous statement then. It's still an outrageous statement. It raises profound questions.

Imagine sitting there with Jesus if you were on the Temple Finance Committee. The reason you are on the committee is your long history of generosity toward the temple. You would have to be a man, of course, in that culture. You would have been a good man, a devout man, a kindly man.

When you saw the widow drop her two pennies into the box, you would have smiled. You would have agreed it was touching, sweet. But when you saw the owner of a fleet of cargo ships based in Alexandria pour a couple of large bags of gold coins into the box, you would have immediately started dreaming. That would cover the cost of new robes for the high priest or a new drain in the sheep washing area.

Two copper pennies would be cute. Yes, for sure. But two bags of gold could do real work.

That's one view of money. It is realistic. It's concrete. It's unarguable. More money, more work. More money, more impact. It's the way the world works.

Then you hear Jesus say the widow gave more and you start thinking. How can that be?

It doesn't take you long. You realize Jesus is talking about the soul of the giver rather than the dollars that were given.

In the temple budget, the widows pennies were vanishingly trivial. In the widow's life, those pennies were as large as the world because she used them to give her entire life to God.

If you looked at the woman and her gift only through the lens of your role as a member of the Temple Finance Committee, the woman's gift, and perhaps the woman herself, would appear utterly insignificant.

Jesus was looking at the woman's money from the other end of the telescope, so to speak. Instead of measuring the woman's gift by the amount of work it could accomplish, he measured it by the purity of the spring from which it came and the richness of soul it carried.

By these measures, this widow's pennies dwarfed the bags of gold brought by ship captains, merchants, and nobility. Her offering was full of soul. She packed her entire life into those two pennies and gave them to God. And walked away light as a feather. She might be a widow. She was desperately poor. Society scorned her. But when she dropped those pennies into the box, she declared her independence from the judgment of society, even from the obvious circumstances of her life. She acted the way rich people do. She did what she wanted with her money. And what she wanted to do was to participate in the mission of God.

She bought into the kingdom of God with her whole being. Her gift became an essential, eternal element of the work of God. She could tell herself that God himself depended on her to do his work. And she was happy.

Have you ever given all of yourself to something? It is usually the sweetest moment in life. In good marriages, the man and woman find their supreme happiness in leaping into pledge of their livevs to one another. Sometimes when I'm standing here on this platform with a couple during a wedding, their ecstasy is palpable. As they say their vows—I am yours. I will be yours. I give you my best, I give you myself.--as they say these words to one another, I feel their ineffable joy.

Runners who throw themselves into intense training for a marathon find a rare euphoria. The discipline takes over their lives. And in surrendering to that discipline they find a pleasure unavailable to them another way.

It's the same with our money management. When we make giving money away central in our management of our money, money becomes a rare source of pleasure.

Our money inescapably is intertwined with our souls—with our values, our sense of place in the world, our sense of God.

Obviously, there are a lot of ordinary, mundane things we must take care of. Housing and groceries. Clothes and transportation. Tuition and books. Phone and internet service. Vacation and dates. Retirement. Taking care of these responsibilities and needs is obviously important. They are a good use of our money.

And we are tempted to think, if I just had a little more, then I wouldn't need to worry, wouldn't need to fret. But if you ever do get that little bit more, you will discover that you still need a little bit more. No matter how much you get, you always need a little bit more. That's when we need to learn from this widow woman and her pennies.

The most direct path to being pleasurably wealthy is to give. When you reach the point in your life when you can boldly give money away, that's when you will know you are rich. That's when you will enjoy being rich. And if you are so secure that you can give away all of your pennies, you will have entered the blissful paradise of the half percent (that's an even more elite group than the One Percent!)

Generosity is the most reliable entrance to joy. This is true for individuals. It is also true for communities.

At the very core of our identity as a Christian community is our commitment to make freely available to others the riches of church. Our beautiful building, our rich worship in music, Bible reading and preaching, the opportunity for social connection—we make all this freely available. Most people who enjoy church take it for granted. They make use of it and pass on.

But a few experience the deep satisfaction of sustaining this work of God. This building, the life of this community, is an expression of the soul of their money.

How is it with you and your money? I know for some of us money is very tight. Others of us have a surplus. But for all of us, money is connected with the core of our being. It carries our lives.

And to all of us comes the invitation to participate in the mission of God. Here at Green Lake Church and elsewhere in the world. We may have tens of thousands of dollars at our disposal or only pennies. Whatever the amount, know this: your giving is honored by God as true partnership. Your generosity is noted and celebrated in the kingdom of heaven.