First United Methodist Church
Birmingham, Michigan
Scripture: Matthew 6:19-23
September 9, 2001
A cherished colleague writes:
I went to see a lady in our church who was facing surgery. She had never been in the hospital before, and the surgery was major. I walked in there. She was a nervous wreck. Then she started crying. She wanted me to pray with her, which I did. By her bed was a stack of books and magazines: True Love, Mirror, Hollywood Today, stuff about Elizabeth Taylor, Madonna, Britney Spears, folk like that. She had a stack of them there and she was a wreck. Which was when it occurred to me: “There’s not a calorie in that whole stack to help her through her experience. She has no place to dip down into a reservoir and come up with something….a word, a phrase, a thought, an idea, a memory, a person. Just empty.”
How marvelous is the life of the person who, like a wise homemaker, when the berries and fruits and vegetables are ripe, puts them away in jars and stores them in the cellar. Then when the ground is icy and barren and nothing seems alive, she goes down into the cellar and, in a matter of moments, it’s July and August at her family’s table. How blessed is that person.
I do not know what kinds of reading material you would take to the hospital to see you through surgery and its aftermath. Nor will I make judgments from here on out. So if you want to read salacious confessions, pulp fiction, or even prurient pornography, I’ll not comment. Nor will I expect to see bedside tables loaded with copies of War and Peace, The Prayers of Peter Marshall or Jaroslav Pelican’s five-volume series on The History of Christian Doctrine. Read what you want to read. Just don’t expect nourishment from escapist fare, given that nobody ever equated fast food with soul food….eaten or read.
Nor do I know what you have stored away against life’s icy blasts. When I was a boy, my mother’s best domestic skill was her ability to put up fruits and vegetables in mason jars and store them in the fruit cellar. Since my father was diabetic, there were fruits canned in water as well as fruits canned in heavy syrup. Peaches and pears, inevitably. Applesauce, automatically. Cherries, customarily. Tomatoes, occasionally. And every now and then, a few jars of beans (yellow, green, whatever). My mother’s unspoken motto was: “When harvest comes, we eat what we can. And what we can’t, we can.”
My mother didn’t grow any of the food she canned. But her mother did. Which only suggests that certain skills are squandered in stages. Today, I live with a woman who is a better cook than either my mother or my mother’s mother. Yet we have no fruit cellar, no mason jars, and nothing preserved against the icy blasts of winter….unless (of course) it’s already nestled in the icy blasts of the freezer.
I don’t know if any of you “put things up” anymore. Judging from the number of mason jars we get at the rummage sale, I suspect those of you who did once, don’t now. I don’t even get the little jars of homemade preserves like I used to….although Lindsay Hinz and Cathy Chartier (a couple of our youngish mothers) still reward this preacher with amazing things at Christmas time, while Dick Dills bottles a homemade salsa that is to die for. By the way, if anybody sees Dick, tell him I’m out.
As for nuts, I’d rather eat them than put up with them. But I certainly wouldn’t bury them. Although I know squirrels that do. I’ve always wondered how squirrels remembered, until I saw that wonderful commercial on television. If I am getting it right, it shows the inside of a squirrel’s home, deep in some tree. All over the walls are little yellow post-it notes, each one with a reminder:
To the right of the rose bush.
Six inches under the downspout.
By the northwest corner of the garage.
All around the perimeter of the compost pile.
And what is the advertiser selling? Post-it notes, of course. Even the animal kingdom needs them.
But back to more serious matters. Winter is coming. Outside. Maybe in. So what are you doing about it? Probably not much. The way today’s houses are built, there’s no need to change the windows anymore. And the way today’s cars are built, there’s no need to change the cooling systems anymore. And how many of you are still storing chains in your garage? Or studded tires?
In a land which seldom sees winter quite as we see winter, Jesus talked about what to “lay up” and what not to. “Treasures in heaven,” he favored. “Treasures on earth,” he frowned on. Reading that text any number of times, I always figured I knew what the “treasures on earth” were. But I remain less certain about their heavenly counterparts.
But a quick slice of biblical history offers illumination. Concerning “treasures on earth,” Jesus isn’t urging a spartan lifestyle. Neither is he saying that we should buy stuff that is shoddy rather than solid. Cheap is cheap. Flimsy is flimsy. Don’t go there. Stick with stuff that will last. But do not assume that even the durable stuff….the good stuff….will last eternally or satisfy completely. It won’t. So don’t put your hopes in it. And don’t bet your future on it.
So what kind of stuff might that be, Jesus? “Well, I’ll give you three clues,” he said. Then he talked about stuff that “moth might consume, rust might corrupt, or thieves might break through and steal.”
The “moth” part is easy. What do moths consume? Clothes. That’s what moths consume. And, with a special nod to the Middle East, fine carpets (Persians and Orientals).
The “rust” part is less easy. Literally, it means “that which can be eroded away” (like fenders on Michigan highways). But in Jesus’ day, it probably meant “rot” more than it meant “rust” (as in grain that could spoil, or corn that could be eaten by rats).
And as concerns “in-breaking thieves,” one needs only remember that Palestinian houses were made of hard baked clay, meaning that anybody with a pick, a shovel, and an underdeveloped conscience could break through to anything you owned and make it his own.
“So what about treasures in heaven, Jesus….the ones you said we should store?” Well, that’s not so clear. But the scholars can help us here. To a good Jew, the phrase “treasure in heaven” would have meant two things.
1. Acts of kindness (particularly those shown to the less fortunate).
2. The development of sound character.
I suppose one could scan other words of Jesus, the better to lengthen the list. But here, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is offering Torah commentary. He is speaking to Jews…. reinterpreting their history….fleshing out a deeper understanding of their Law. So, at this point, I think it fair to equate “treasures in heaven” with kindness and character. These things will sustain you, said Jesus. These things will speak volumes about you. These things will see you through.
I suppose they are also a starting point for the church. I am under no illusions about what brings people to a place like this. A lot of people who come here haven’t made up their mind about doctrine….haven’t made up their mind about sacraments….and haven’t made up their mind about what Bonhoeffer once called “the cost of discipleship” and whether they are willing to pay it. Yet they say: “In return for our showing up, teach us virtues of a kind that the world doesn’t value. Then teach us character that the world is inevitably going to test.”
And we can start there. The fact of the matter is, we can start anywhere. Because it will only be a matter of time before those same people start saying to us:
Help us store something in the cellar of our souls so that, when the icy blasts come, we will not have to rush out at two in the morning in search of a 24-hour faith store, but will know that the shelves which lie within have been well stocked with words, songs, memories, stories, people and promises which will not spoil….and which, when other wells are dry and other bins are empty, will sustain.
I think that’s why a lot of you come here….return here….find your way back here after drifting away….and want your kids to partake of the fare that is being served up here….hoping that you (and they) will absorb something that will empower, even if it lacks the ability to inoculate. Life is tough. And nothing we do can soften it. But much that we do can strengthen you to tackle it.
But you need to stay with it. Constancy counts for more than you think it does. Learning our stuff….living our stuff….it’s a way of life (not a quick fix). Which is a good thing to remember on the Sunday when everything here starts up again. Is it always easy? No. Is it always fun? No. Is it always clear that lessons are being learned….lives are being changed….hearts are being touched….consciences are being formed….shelves are being stocked….and tracks are being laid down….so that you can know for certain that this Christian formation business is working? No. It may take awhile. Sure, the proof will be in the pudding. But not every pudding flavors up early. Some are only tastable over time.
As I once pointed out in a sermon, Jesus blew off his parents at age 12 by remarking that he needed to be where his Father wanted him to be more than where his parents wanted him to be….expected he would be….and probably told him he had darned well better be (if he knew what was good for him). But it wasn’t until 18 years later that Jesus surfaced from the waters of baptism, dried the droplets from his ears, and said: “Ready, now. Willing, now. Able, now.” So what was he doing for those 18 years? Darned if I know. And I doubt that you do, either. The one clue I have….the only clue I have….is that four times in the recounting of his all-too-short ministry, we read that “he went to the synagogue….as was his custom.” So when your kid looks up from Sunday morning cartoons and in that “smart-mouth kind of way” says, “Did Jesus go to church?”, I think you can feel more than a little confident in saying: “Yes.”
This summer I listened to two wonderful young men, Jeremy Africa and Taek Kim, talk about their journeys toward ministry. I heard them talk about their ancestors in the faith….grandparents and parents who said: “This is who we are. This is what we do. This is where we go on Sundays. This is why we go there instead of someplace else. We’re always interested in what you think, son. But for the time being (as far as this subject is concerned), you need to know that what we think counts for a little bit more than what you think.” In fact, I heard Jeremy admit that, for a couple of years, the only thing he really knew about church was which pew was the most comfortable to sleep in. But those days were far from wasted in his development. Stuff was happening. Shelves were being stocked. Tracks were being laid.
The other day I received the following e-mail.
Hey, Rev. Ritter, it’s Stephanie. I know it has been quite some time since we have spoken, but I have just recently felt the call to become a minister. Quite frankly, I don’t know much about what I have to do in order to become ordained, other than going to seminary. Do you have any advice on what I should do? I look up to you and respect you in so many ways you don’t even realize, and your opinion on this subject matters to me a great deal. Please e-mail me back any information you have to offer.
What’s fascinating about that is when I last served as her pastor, Stephanie was six years old.
For the sake of the Lord….and for the sake of the Lord’s work….I hope that a few of you who are sitting (or sleeping) in the pew are storing up sustenance against the frosty winter of ministry. But I suspect that every one of you is, consciously or unconsciously, storing up sustenance against the icy blasts of life itself.
My friend was called back to Oklahoma by a voice on the telephone that didn’t feel a need to identify itself. All the caller said….or felt she needed to say….was: “Ray died.” But let him finish the story:
Ray was a friend of mine in a church where I had served, even though it had been years and years ago. She wanted me to come for the funeral….said that Ray had wanted me to come for the funeral….so I said I would. And I did.
On the day of the funeral, I talked to Mary and the others. We went from church to graveyard and then back again. The women of the church had spread a nice meal. We sat around and talked until the peripheral people began to drift away, and it was only family. Which included Kathryn. She was the oldest daughter. When I served that church, she was 13 years old. I remember her as the worst 13 year old I had ever seen. I mean, she was noisy, in and out, up and down, never staying in the room, never paying attention, always pushing, shoving and breaking things. When I left there, I said: “If there’s one person that hasn’t heard a thing I’ve said in the time I was here, it would be Kathryn.”
Today, she is an executive with the telephone company and has premature gray sprinkled in her hair. We were sitting at the table and I said: “I’m sorry it’s such a tough time.” She and her dad were real close.
She said: “It is tough. When Mother called and said that Dad had died, I was scrambling for something. Then I remembered a sermon you had preached on the meaning of the Lord’s Supper.”
I said: “You’re kidding, Kathryn,” and then settled back as she continued her recollection of what I had said, almost word for word, ever so many years ago.
Who knows? Who knows?
