It is somewhat ironic that in our gospel reading Jesus opens with
the words, ‘Do not be afraid, little flock,’ and then goes straight into
the words that we are perhaps more afraid of than anything else Jesus
ever said, ‘Sell your possessions, and give away money to the poor.’

Afraid of it? Well I am. I’m afraid of it because I don’t do that
much of it. I’m afraid of it because I’m scared that maybe we are
supposed to take it literally, that maybe we are supposed to give away
all we own. All of it. Afraid that maybe every CD I buy, or each meal in
a restaurant or the new clothes dryer, is a sign of my lack of faith in
God, of my unwillingness to give it all away and trust God to supply
what I need for life.

I can wriggle out of my discomfort to some extent, especially in
this case. Clearly it says it is God’s good pleasure to give you the
kingdom, therefore sell and give. It doesn’t say sell and give in order
that you might receive the kingdom. And while that’s true that doesn’t
entirely dampen down the uneasiness. Where your treasure is, there your
heart will be also.

If I start trying to explain my way around these kind of verses,
I’ve got a lot of explaining to do. About one sixth of all the things
the Bible records Jesus as having said are about our relationship to
money and material possessions. He speaks more about this than he does
about love, about prayer or about forgiveness. Especially in the Gospel
of Luke and we’re following Luke’s gospel for most of the rest of the
year.

Why does Jesus speak so much about this issue, about money and
material possessions? He gives the answer right here, because where your
treasure is, there your heart will be also. And perhaps there is nothing
else that can seduce us away from the things that really matter faster
than money. Well there may be, it probably just depends a bit on who you
are, but if I added sex and power we’d probably just about have the
field sewn up. I’m told that Mark Twain once wrote that some people
worship heroes, some worship power, some worship God, and over these
ideals they dispute endlessly, but they all worship money.

Now we could wrestle here with how we might go about being more
faithful with our money, or how to learn to live more simply and give
more generously, and that would be a perfectly appropriate thing to do
with this passage, but I think there is another question that underlies
our fear of Jesus talking about money, and if we don’t address that
question, we’ll probably be wasting our time pooling our thoughts on the
straight money question.

You see I reckon that underneath this is a question about the place
that Christian faith occupies in our lives. In fact the very wording I
just used is probably symptomatic of the issue. What place in our lives?
Does Christianity just occupy a defined place in our lives and if so
what is it doing making claims on other areas of our lives? Like our
money for example. Or do our lives occupy a place in the reign of Christ
and everything is up for grabs.

You will often encounter people visiting a church like ours, or any
other church for that matter, as part of their search for the right
church for them. Now I have no objection to this – I think it is
important to find a church that is right for you – but I think all too
often we actually have a similar approach to Christian faith as a whole.
We look around for a version that sits comfortably with us. We don’t
hand ourselves over to Jesus Christ and say, ‘Whatever, wherever,
whenever.’ We want meaning, we want purpose, we want spiritual growth,
we want fullness of life, but we want it to fit in comfortably with our
chosen careers and lifestyles and interests. We want a Christianity that
will be the cream on the cake, not something that will trash the cake
and rebake from scratch. Or for those of you who are now speaking
computer language, we want a Christianity that is a user-friendly,
platform compatible add-on, not a Christianity that overrides the
operating system and installs a radically different version.

This of course is no surprise. We live in a culture that trains us
early to approach everything that way. ‘What does this have to offer
that I could benefit from? What is available here that would make a
welcome addition to my life?’ For every possible desire there is a
vendor offering it to those who seek it. Do I need a little relief for
my stiff neck? There’s a masseuse or a physiotherapist. Do I need to get
lost in a good story? There’s the cinema offering the latest movie at 7
pm. Do I need to unravel my complicated feelings about my relationship
with my mother? There’s a psychologist offering an appointment on
Tuesday. Do I need a break, some time out? There’s the travel agent with
a rock bottom price for a week on Hayman Island. Do I need a lover to
share my life with? There’s an introduction agency with a joining
special. Do I need to appease my hunger for spirit or strengthen my
sense of connection with the mysteries of life? There’s a church where I
can pick up this week’s worship and sermon session at 10:30.

The church becomes one more vendor supplying another product in
response to consumer demand and Christian faith and spirituality becomes
one more product out there in the market place. Pick some up when ever
you feel the need. Evangelism of course becomes the advertising and
marketing strategy for the product or the particular supplier,
encouraging people to pick some up a bit more often.

And why should it be any different we might ask. Why should the
church and Christian faith be exempted from competing in the market
place like everything else? I’m actually not suggesting that it should
be exempted from competing like everything else but that we should wake
up and realize what it is competing for. To revert to computer language
for a moment it is not competing against the other add-on modules, it is
competing against the operating platforms. If you are buying a home
computer you first have to choose whether to have a Windows platform or
a Macintosh platform. Whichever way you choose, that basic decision will
then limit what programs you can run with it. You can’t run Word for
Windows on a Mac.

If you want to install Christianity on the hard disk of your life,
you will have to uninstall the previous operating system. You can’t run
it on top of Consumer 98 or Windows Money Sex & Power. Contrary to much
publicity you can’t even run it on top of Traditional Family Values 55.
Christianity is not an add-on or even general application. It is an
integrated operating system, incompatible with other operating systems,
and it dictates what else can be run with it.

The thing is, as those of you who use computers a lot will know,
sometimes an incompatibility doesn’t show up straight away. Sometimes it
just starts corrupting things and causing seemingly random malfunctions
until eventually the whole system crashes. So it is with attempting to
retain incompatible applications with your new Christianity operating
system.

Career Path 2.0 might have been running smoothly with your old
operating system, and at first it may seem to have no problems with
Christianity. The Growing Share Portfolio Add-on and Casino 1.2 might
initially seem to be OK too. But after a while if you’re noticing things
starting to react strangely and malfunction you may have to do a careful
search, a prayerful search in fact, for the computability problem. If
nothing in your life has ever caused a significant compatibility problem
with your Christianity, then can I suggest in all seriousness that you
haven’t installed Christianity at all, you’ve just got its icon sitting
benignly on your desktop while you continue to run the old system.

Let me illustrate again completely differently for those of you who
aren’t into computers. As you know I recently became a dad, and as those
of you who know me well are aware I went through a lot of anxiety
firstly about whether I wanted to be a dad, and then once that decision
became irrelevant, about whether I would cope with being a dad. And one
of the main reasons for that anxiety was that I knew that I couldn’t
just treat my child as a one more addition to my life. In becoming a dad
I knew that I had to be willing to reassess the appropriateness of
everything else in my life, I had to let go of my life as I knew it and
wait to see what things were compatible with my new life as a dad. Now
there is no doubt that there are plenty of parents who treat their
children as additions to their lives and change little else. You’ve
probably met plenty of them and heard things like, ‘We’ve got the house,
our careers are established and progressing well, it’s time to have
children.’ The children are just expected to fit in around their parents
lifestyle choices. And of course the psychologists and the parole
officers are kept busy by those children for years to come. They are
just treated as items to be ticked off on a list of goals. ‘By the time
I’m forty I want a townhouse, a beach house at Rye, a partnership in the
firm, a blue chip share portfolio, a classy professional wife, two
children, and a BMW sports.’ And they set about ticking off the goals
and collecting the trophies.

And I don’t know about you, but my observation is that the people
who’ve managed to accumulate all those trophies don’t seem to me to be
any less anxious or any more at peace in their hearts than the people
who are having to decide what to go without this week – toilet paper or
butter. They’re anxious about different things most of the time, but
just as anxious. And every now and then something pulls the rug out and
calls them to put things back in perspective. I read an interview with
Ringo Starr, the drummer from the Beatles, the other day. He spoke about
how when his daughter was diagnosed as having a brain tumour he suddenly
realized that in the face of some things all the fame and fortune is not
worth a thing.

‘Do not be afraid, little flock, it is your Father’s good pleasure
to give you the Kingdom.’ The good news of new life in Jesus Christ is
still a free gift. Meaning, purpose, hope, peace, fullness of life – all
are a free gift from the God who loves you and longs to bless you more
richly than you could ever imagine. It is a free gift to everyone who
will accept it. But you see I could hand out free copies of of Windows
98 too, and unless you installed it on your computer it’s a pretty
useless gift. I suppose you could use it as a beer coaster or something.
I could hand out free Bibles and only those who read them will benefit.
Those who use them as pot plant stands will never comprehend the
significance of the free gift.

When we come to this table in a moment you will be offered a free
gift – a piece of broken bread. Nothing much for sure. But if you will
allow yourself to hear the words ‘Take, eat, this is my body,’ and
recognize the presence of Jesus Christ you will be at a moment of
decision. You can take and eat, accept the broken Christ who gives
himself to you and say, ‘I am no longer my own, but yours. Put me to
what you will, rank me with whom you will; Put me to doing, put me to
suffering; let me be employed for you or laid aside for you; exalted for
you or brought low for you; let me be full, let me be empty; let me have
all things, let me have nothing; I freely and wholeheartedly yield all
things to your pleasure and disposal.’

Or you can just eat the bread and walk away, perhaps enjoy the
ritual, the sense of mystery, the links with an ancient tradition.
Perhaps even be stirred by the prayers and the song and sense of sharing
a special moment with others. Perhaps even value your friendships with
those you come to the table with and appreciate the sense of belonging
and community. But just walk away, close the spiritual compartment of
your life for another week and go on living the other bits of your life
unaffected by it all.

‘Do not be afraid, little flock, it is your Father’s good pleasure
to give you the Kingdom.’ You can file a few Christian values and
experiences in a little spiritual compartment of your life, or you can
open up everything and receive the free gift of the Kingdom. The choice
is yours. ‘Take, eat, this is my body.’

Nathan Nettleton
Pastor, South Yarra Community Baptist
Church
Melbourne, Australia