Sermon for October 8, 2006IT’S ALL MINE ISN’T IT??By Rev. Dr. Harvey c. Martz |
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Scripture: Deuteronomy 8:11-18 Good News Bible
I read one of the most inspiring stories I have read in the New York Times Sunday magazine a couple of weeks ago. It is a story about a young man named Michael Oher and his journey from a childhood of extreme poverty and neglect to now playing football as a freshman for the University of Mississippi as left tackle with the distinct promise of a career in professional football later on as one of the most highly paid offensive linemen: left tackle. Michael’s difficult journey included having a father who was shot and killed and tossed off a bridge when Michael was a young child. His mother was a crack cocaine addict. Michael came to the attention of the principal of Briarcrest Christian School in Memphis in 2002 when Michael was sixteen and was applying to the school after being in and out of other Memphis schools and ranking in the 6th lowest percentile of students. His life experience was so narrow that he might as well have spent his first sixteen years hold up in a closet. He had no social skills. His IQ tested at about 80. The school principal saw potential in Michael and they admitted him on a probationary status. Then some people from the community learned about Michael and became part of an extraordinary support network that eventually helped Michael achieve good enough grades to get admitted to Ole Miss and to experience a transformation. He was able to go from grades of zero in his first year of high school to a GPA of 2.65 because of several people including coaches and teachers, but the most influential people were a married couple named Sean and Leigh Ann Tuohy. Sean was a successful business man in Memphis who had also come from poverty, had played basketball at Ole Miss and now owns a chain of 60 restaurants. He is an authentic Christian and he and Leigh Ann see the resources they have as an opportunity to make a difference and to be a blessing for others. He delights, the article says, in helping people move up in the world. He had helped other disadvantaged students at the school where Michael was enrolled and when he learned of Michael and learned that Michael had no money for lunch in the school cafeteria, he went the next day to the school accounting office and arranged to pay for a standing account for Michael at the lunch checkout counter. At thanksgiving break, Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy learned that Michael had no warm clothes-he had been walking to school in snow in shorts and a t-shirt. Leigh Anne took over and took Michael to shop for clothes, and eventually the Tuohy family became the adoptive family for this 344 pound high school sophomore and moved him in to live with them. When Leigh Anne bought the futon for Michael to sleep on and told him this was now his bed, he stared at it for a bit and said, “This is the first time I ever had my own bed.” The rest of the journey from there to his freshman year at the University involved other advocates and tutors and friends who believed in Michael and saw his potential and helped him believe in himself and helped him score very differently on a subsequent IQ test – his score increased by about 30 points. He ended his high school career with a GPA of 2.65. Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy are still in close contact with Michael now that he is in his freshman year of college but they are also involved in seeking out the next disadvantaged student they will sponsor and help. They have learned the truth of the words from Genesis 12 on the high wall in our hallway: God says, I will bless you so that you can be a blessing. God does not bless us so we can think we are the center of the world or so we can become self absorbed. God blesses us so we can use our resources to bless others. Here is how Leigh Anne Tuohy said it: 'God gives people money to see how you are going to handle it.' Some people use their talent and their blessings just for themselves. Others use their talents and their blessings to help others reach their God given potential. After all, God says, it is I who have given you the ability to prosper and to thrive. Your intelligence, your skills, your ability to earn are all gifts from God. And the money you earn is a trust from God for a while – to see what you will do with it. The passage from the book of Deuteronomy says this. Moses is speaking to the Israelites as they are about to enter the Promised Land. They have left slavery in Egypt 40 years earlier and have been chastened in the wilderness. They are about to take over the rich and fertile land God wants to give to them. But there is a danger ahead of them. The danger is that they will think they have prospered all by themselves and forget God and become smug and complacent and selfish. So God says through Moses, Make certain you do not forget the Lord your God. When you have all you want to eat and have built good houses to live in and when all your cattle and sheep, your silver and gold and all your other possessions have increased be sure you do not become proud and forget the Lord your God who rescued you from Egypt and brought you through the dangers of the desert and saw you through the hardships so he could bless you with good things. Never think that you have made yourselves wealthy by your own power and strength. It is the Lord God who gives you the power to become rich. We are able to prosper because God has given us the gifts and the ability to prosper and because most of us happened to be born with the advantage of just showing up in the US with advantages that would not be present if we were born in other places in the world. God gives us money to see what we will do with it – to see if we will become selfish and self absorbed or if we will use our blessings to be a blessing for others and to make a difference. I think that is one of the reasons that Jesus spent so much time talking about generosity and the dangers of greed and selfishness. He knew that we can be seduced by what we have and what we earn and own. He knew that money can become our god, our idol, and that we will find our lives ultimately empty if we worship anything other than God. So more than half of Jesus parables have to do with the use and misuse of wealth and money. Why? He had no church budget to support!! He just knew that money makes a good tool but a very poor master, and that if we do not manage and control our money–including sharing a portion for God—that we will be managed and controlled by it. And he warns against people who use their money only for themselves—the farmer who prospers and builds larger barns and then dies; and he praises those who share and give sacrificially—the poor widow who drops two pennies in the temple treasury box. He says she gave more than the others because what she gave was sacrificial and what the others gave was out of their leftovers. Jesus spends much time on stewardship and we have included some of his teachings in your bulletin insert. Jesus talks more about stewardship and money than about prayer! We take the month of October to remind us of what Jesus says about the blessings of generosity and the high risks of selfishness and then on Consecration Sunday, October 29, we bring our commitment cards to God’s altar table to affirm that God is the center of our lives and that God is the source of our blessings. For many people this act of being good stewards, being good managers of our prosperity is the next step of faith. Most of our members increase their giving each year in moving toward the tithe—10%--or beyond the tithe. And many of you will not be able to take the next spiritual step of faith until your giving to God moves beyond tokenism and a dollar or five dollars a week. We are not a dollar or five dollars a week church. We believe in the Biblical standards of sacrificial giving and tithing and encourage each other to move each year toward and beyond that tithe. CS Lewis has some very disturbing sentences on the front of your bulletin. He says that our giving to others should not leave us comfortable. If we have all the luxuries others have, we need to examine our hearts because we are probably not practicing sacrificial giving. It is a disturbing quote and I encourage you to read it and pray about it. And I ask you to pray this month about what the next step of faith is for you. Perhaps the next step of faith is volunteering to teach a group of our tenth graders at the 9:40 hour. Or perhaps the next step of faith is to tithe this year and trust Jesus’ promise that when we put God at the center of life, that all the things we worry about will fall into place. All of this discussion is about what we really worship and what we value most and what our priorities are. Jesus asks us to not let anything but God have first place in our lives and to let our money management show that God is in first place. It is about priorities and about not majoring in minors. I close with the story from Church of the Servant in Oklahoma City that some of you remember from last year. Senior pastor Norman Neaves had just begun the first of his three sermons in October on generosity and stewardship and after the 11:00 service a woman came to him and said “Norman, I just love coming to church during the fall!” Norman was a little puzzled and said, “You mean because the weather is changing and the trees are changing and it is such a beautiful season?” She said, “No, I mean because of our October emphasis on generosity and being responsible stewards of our money.” Norman was surprised and said, “Some people are uncomfortable with our congregation’s openness about generosity and being faithful disciples, but you like to hear about tithing and being good stewards of our gifts?” She said, “Yes, because all this reminds me as a Christian of what my priorities really are.” Jesus would say, she got it. She got it. She understood the message from Deuteronomy that when we are comfortable and prosperous, we should remember it is God who helped us get here and be sure to honor God. He would say that it is all about priorities; she understood his teaching in the Sermon On The Mount that when we put our relationship with God in the center of our lives and our thoughts, that all the things we worry so much about will fall into place. Are you willing to believe that and act on that? Is that the next step of faith for you?
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