Sermon manuscript for Green Lake Church of Seventh-day Adventists
for Sabbath, January 30, 2016
Texts: Leviticus 27:30-34 and Matthew 25:14-30
I think it would be
difficult to find a more “unspiritual” thing than a Frito bag.
The very sound the bag makes when you handle it—the sharp, crinkly
sound—is a bit annoying and speaks of trash, cheap, unhealthy. I
once preached a sermon on the evils of food that comes in crinkly
bags. The bag is not recyclable or compostable. I don't even think it
burns. It's just a cheap container for corn chips.
But over the past
thirty-five years, Frito bags have been transfigured. They are the
containers of a sacramental food. Now, just as a communion cup
suggests the Lord's Supper, so a Frito bag suggests a sacred meal.
Frito bags have been transfigured from trash into spiritual treasure.
I'm doing a series
of sermons on spiritual disciplines—religiously-inspired habits
that help nourish our souls, help be more aware of the presence and
favor of God, habits that help shape our lives, habits that help us
embed holiness in the core of our being.
The impulse to
goodness is a gift. God has created within us a desire to do good, to
make beauty, to heal and help, to create and build. All of these
gifts call for nurture. If we have a gift of music, we nurture that
gift through taking lessons and spending hours practicing. If we have
a gift of movement, we nourish that gift by working out in a gym or
running or spending hours shooting hoops. Every gift invites
investment in habits that will bring that gift to its richest
flowering.
It's the same with
spirituality. We can engage in habits that will strengthen our
impulses toward compassion, self-control, integrity and kindness. One
reason we come to church is that the social connections and worship
encourage us in the right path.
Typical lists of
spiritual disciplines or holy habits include things like meditation
and prayer, Bible reading and listening to and a singing
inspirational music. Even fasting. But Frito bags? I've never seen
Frito bags on one of those lists. But for me, Frito bags have been
transformed into a sacrament. (A sacrament is an earthly vehicle of
God's presence and favor.)
How did Frito bags
get transfigured in sacramental treasures?
For thirty years, it
has been a tradition on Friday nights at our house to have
“Haystacks.” As many of you know, “Haystacks” is a
traditional Adventist version of a taco salad. Beans, chips, salad
greens and tomatoes. Now that the kids are out of the house there is
more variation in our Friday night menu because Karin is not as crazy
about haystacks as I am. Still, the default menu for Friday night is
haystacks. When we have haystacks, I can easily recall visions from
earlier days when the kids were little. In my minds eye, I see my
youngest daughter when she was two or three years old, white blond
curls around her big eyes. I see my son, making too much noise, too
much mess. I see my oldest daughter getting out the china and the
fancy silver ware. Because on Friday night, the menu might seem
inelegant, but dinner was special. Now, I have other faces to add to
these Friday night memories. For a couple of months at the end of
this past year, my son and his wife and their two children were with
us. So now when I play the Friday night memory video, I see the face
of my granddaughter, a mischievous grin on her face as she
delightedly shovels beans into her mouth with her hand. Then asks for
more chips! Always more chips.
And chips come in
crinkly bags.
Over the decades I
have experimented with the haystack recipe. Black beans instead of
pinto beans. Cauliflower in addition to the typical salad greens.
Rice in addition to beans. I've tried various kinds of salsa. But one
item has remained constant, chips. Always chips. And the premier
Haystack chip is Fritos.
The tradition of
chips is so deeply rooted that if I open a bag of chips on Tuesday,
I'm likely to think about the family gathered around the table on
Friday night.
Our family
tradition—our discipline, our habit—has transformed a crinkly bag
of chips into a constant reminder of precious people and wonderful
occasions around our table.
Another unlikely
sacrament—a hundred dollar bill.
It's common for
people to talk about money as a bad thing. We can even misquote the
Bible: Money is the root of all evil. Or quote what it actually says,
“The love of money is the root of all evil.” Or in other
translations, “all kinds of evils.” 1 Timothy 6:10
I suppose an
inordinate obsession with money can lead to all kinds of evil.
However, I think of money as the life-blood of goodness. Money
provides us with warm, dry kitchens to cook in. Money puts shoes on
our kids. Money allows us to send presents to our friends who live a
continent away. Allows us to fly to Australia. Enables us to respond
to emergencies thousands of miles away. Money flows in all kinds of
goodness.
We can engage in
disciplines that will give us a deep sense of the holiness, the
goodness of money. The practice of these disciplines gives us a sense
of partnership with God in doing good in the world. They heighten our
enjoyment of our wealth—however meager it might be from an
accounting perspective.
In the Hebrew
culture there were a number or practices designed to turn ordinary
commerce into an agency of spiritual life. One was a practice called
“first fruits.” At the time of harvest, before beginning work, a
farmer would take a sample of the first of the harvest and present it
as an offering to God.
In this act of
offering, the farmers were celebrating God as the ultimate source of
their bounty. Of course, the farmers had worked hard. The entire
family—men, women and children—all put muscle and sweat and maybe
tedium into producing the harvest. Grape vines needed pruning.
Vegetable gardens needed planting and watering and weeding. Grain
fields required plowing and cutting and gathering and threshing.
Farming, especially in the days before machinery, was labor intensive
. . . to say the least.
The harvest bounty
did not fall into their laps. They worked for it. Still, they offered
first fruits as their recognition of the divine gifts of soil and
rain and sun. The magic of life itself. The life mysteriously hiding
in seeds and pouring up through the roots of the vines and trees.
Even their knowledge what and how and when, times of planting methods
of cultivation—this, too, was gift. And in their first fruit
offering they reminded themselves of the gifts. And it made them
glad.
Another practice of
the Hebrews was something called tithing. Tithe” is an old English
word that simply means one tenth. Faithful farmers devoted one tenth
of their crops to the support of the temple and the priesthood.
We see the
seriousness of this practice in the words of our Old Testament
reading today.
And all the tithe of the land, whether of the seed, or the fruit of
the tree, is the LORD'S. It is holy unto the LORD. If a man wishes to
redeem any of his tithes, he shall add to it twenty percent.
Concerning the tithe of the herd or flock—any kind of animal that
is passed under a rod for counting—the tenth shall be holy unto the
LORD. The farmer is not to check to see whether the animal is good or
bad. He is not to exchange one animal for another. Leviticus 27:30-32
Ten percent belonged
to God. This was simply a given. It was to become a habitual part of
their lives.
This idea has been
picked by Christians and applied to income. The Adventist Church
officially encourages its members to devote ten percent of their
income to God. When we do this, over time we come to think of
ourselves as financial partners with God. Our money is God's money.
God's money is our money.
When I have talked
with church people over the decades about this idea of tithing, about
devoting ten percent of our income to God, I hear most two kinds of
comments.
Some people explain
that they cannot afford to tithe. Usually, the reason they cannot
afford to tithe is because they don't have enough money. They need
every last dollar they manage to scrape together just to pay rent,
the VISA bill and buy shoes for their kids.
A very
understandable situation.
The other set of
comments I hear goes something like this: “I can't afford not to. I
give ten percent or fifteen or twenty percent, and the blessing I get
from my giving is irreplaceable. I couldn't manage without giving.”
People who
regularly, habitually, systematically give money as part of their
religious practice acquire a special relationship with money. Money
becomes a vehicle of partnership with God. Money itself is felt to be
holy. It's not just the money these folks give to church or to
charities or to needy people directly. Money itself, the paper stuff
in our wallets, the plastic, all of it is holy.
So paying the VISA
bill becomes a spiritual exercise. When we are paying our bills, we
are directing some of earth's bounty, some of God's gift, to cover
the expenditures we made last month for food and gasoline and flowers
and birthday gifts.
This is the fruit of
regular, habitual tithing. We learn to see money as an abstract form
of hard work and ingenuity. Money is a visual expression of the
cooperation between the gift of God and our own hardwork and even
good luck. Money is transfigured into spirit.
A penny, a hundred
dollar bill, a check for 50,000 dollars – as we manage money, we
have a sense that we are touching a stream of divine blessing. Money
becomes the life of God flowing through our hands.
Our financial
capacities are vastly different. Here in this beautiful house, some
of us have a great abundance of money. Some of us don't know how
we're going to pay next month's tuition or rent. We don't where we
will find the money for a medical bill or legal bill.
To those of you with
meager incomes and limited opportunities to change that, I wish to
impose no obligation or burden.
But if you are a
typical American with a decent job that gives you enough income to
acquire credit cards and debt, I invite you to experiment with the
discipline of tithing. Consider ten percent of your income as holy.
Give that ten percent to God. If you have never done anything like
this before, start with one percent or two percent. And some of you I
know give twenty percent or thirty percent.
Wherever you are
financially, I invite you to consider tasting the exquisite pleasure
of transforming dollar bills into sacraments, ATM cards into vehicles
of partnership and communion with God.
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