Great Generosity

This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on Sunday September 20, 2009, the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time.

Proverbs 31:10-31
Psalm 1
James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a
Mark 9:30-37

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

In a college football crazed state, there should be a lot of people who know the name Joe Paterno.[1] This being SEC country, some may not be familiar with this Big 10 conference coaching legend, and if that’s true shame on you. Coach Paterno, nicknamed “Joe Pa,” has spent his professional life at Penn State coaching Nittany Lion football teams to 386 victories counting yesterday’s win over Temple, the most among active major college coaches.

So, he's famous as an NCAA Football coach, but perhaps even greater than his coaching numbers are his statistics as a philanthropist. Since 1998, Joe and Sue Paterno have given more than $4 million to the university. Their generosity funds scholarships, faculty positions, construction of an interfaith spiritual center and a sports hall of fame on the University Park campus. Donald W. Reynolds used his money to improve Razorback Stadium in Fayetteville. Joe Pa used his to double the size of the main Penn State library.

Paterno earns just under $600,000 per year in base salary as Penn State’s head football coach, with more through endorsements and media partnerships. In an era when most major college football coaches would just assume tattoo their salaries to their foreheads for the world to see what studs they are; Coach Paterno’s salary was unknown until journalists scoured hill and dale, filing “Freedom of Information Act” requests, and going to court. And while yes, the Paterno’s won’t know poverty in their lifetimes, the most successful coach in college football makes a mere pittance compared to Arkansas’ Bobby Patrino whose base salary is $2.85 million per year and is miniscule compared to the University of Alabama’s Nick Saban and his $4 million per year contract, making him one of the highest paid coaches in the history of Football.

A little over a year ago, Coach Saban made the cover of Forbes Magazine as “Sports’ Most Powerful Coach.” Paterno just graduates 78% of his players, second only to Northwestern in the Big 10 Conference and significantly greater than the NCAA’s biggest football powers who combined graduate 65% of players.

Paterno regards his success with characteristic humility and perspective: “I make more money than I should make. They let me work, so, thanks.” Sue Paterno said, “Money has never been important to us. What is important to us is what the future of the world will be.”[2]

In a world where men are measured by the size of their bank accounts and their employment contracts, Joe Pa chooses to measure himself by more than the two National Championships his teams have won. He measures his success by giving to the University that he has made his home. He measures his success by graduating students from major American university. He measures his success by those who benefit from the fruit of the financial legacy he donates to the university. He and his family measure success by looking to the future of the world.

And the disciples were arguing about who is greatest; so Jesus tells them what it takes. Whoever wants to be first must be last and servant of all. Welcome to divine logic. The world says people who are powerful, people who are great, have servants; they don’t become servants. This doesn’t set so well with people in either the first or the twenty–first century.

Jesus makes his point by taking a little child, bringing a child to their circle, holding this young one in his arms he says, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

Even in these words, Jesus sets aside his divinity; he sets his God-ness aside telling the disciples that whoever welcomes him does not welcome him. Like an emissary, like an ambassador, Jesus holds himself not in his own name, in his own status, but as the representative of the one who sent him. As we read last week, Peter has all ready told those with ears to hear that Jesus is the Messiah, the anointed one of the Lord of heaven. In the passages between this one and the passage we read this week, Peter, James, and John had seen Jesus transfigured, chatting up Moses and Elijah, or more like they were chatting him up. And the one who welcomes a child welcomes the one who sent him.

If this seems confusing to us, imagine what it seemed like to the disciples. They had their ideas about what power is, and what power does. They were merchants and fishermen, a tax collector and a political radical, an accountant with bad intentions and the rest. They knew about power. They had seen it come down from Rome and they had seen it come from the Temple. They had seen it come from centurions and they had seen it come from scribes. They had seen power run downhill and run over them. They could never imagine that the one who wants to be first must be last and servant of all. This is surely contrary to their personal experience.

We’ve heard this before, so it might seem more righteous to us than it did to them. Unfortunately, familiarity breeds contempt, especially with scripture. When it does, things get lost. Quickly, this scene can dissolve into everybody singing “Jesus Loves the Little Children.” A lovely image set to a wonderful hymn of the church, but it leaves Jesus neutered. The wild and radical king of the universe, the Messiah, the one who will not only end the reign of Rome in Palestine but the realm of Satan in creation is reduced to a cute scene painted on the walls of Sunday School rooms. This reduction is no where near complete. This reduction is far less than the work of God who walked the Earth.

What gets lost is that the children are powerless. What happens happens to them, not by them. Children are innocent. Children are vulnerable. Children are the weakest of the weak. Imagine if Jesus had taken someone who was homeless and said “whoever welcomes one such child of God welcomes the one who sent me.”

Imagine Jesus walking into Loaves and Fishes and saying “whoever welcomes these children of God welcomes the one who sent me.”

Imagine every time I get a phone call from someone needing help, or someone who drops by needing assistance and hearing Jesus say “whoever welcomes…” Well, you know where I’m going. And please believe me; this is the thought that goes through my mind every time the phone rings.

But there are more ways than financial to welcome the weak and the powerless. One of the ways that a powerless man represents us all is found on the Voyager space vehicle. There are many ways to tell and retell this story, but one of the best ways I have ever heard it told was by Bradley Whitford in his role as Josh Lyman on “The West Wing.”

Voyager, in case it’s ever encountered by extraterrestrials, is carrying photos of life on earth, greetings in fifty-five languages, and a collection of music from Gregorian chant to Chuck Berry, including “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground” by 1920’s bluesman Blind Willie Johnson, whose stepmother blinded him at seven by throwing lye in his eyes after his father beat her for being with another man. He died penniless of pneumonia after sleeping bundled in wet newspapers in the ruins of his house that burned down, but his music just left the solar system.[3]

Sent off into space, sent across the cosmos for whomever or whatever will receive it, along with the greatest cultural treasures of our planet goes Blind Willie Johnson. Born before the turn of the last century, a black man from Texas, blinded by his mother, sings the blues. In his time he was powerless, he was not welcomed. Now his music represents us all to God’s creatures from other corners of God’s creation.

Please don’t think me indelicate for using the phrase “black man,” but at the turn of the century America didn’t have African-Americans. Sadly, the phrase “black man” may well have been as delicate as it got. Other terms and expressions that are far worse were used in that time. In its way, this change makes Jesus’ point too. A race of people who have been enslaved and oppressed now represents us all outside the galaxy we know.

The alcoholic is another group shunned by what is known as “polite society.” This tidbit comes from the South Bend Christian Reformed Church Web Site, “It’s fascinating that Twelve Step programs like AA begin exactly where Jesus begins, poverty of spirit. Step one: I admit I am powerless over my addiction and my life has become unmanageable. Step two: I have come to believe that only a higher power can restore me.”[4]

The drunk are shunned, seen as weak, unable to hold their liquor. But those who are recovering from addiction know better than anyone that they are powerless. They may not be innocent, but they sure know they are powerless; and they know they are vulnerable.

Continuing, “That’s poverty of spirit. I can’t do it. I am helpless before my sins, my failures, my needs. It seems to me that being a Christian means you realize that that’s where you begin every day of your life, needing God’s grace. It’s hard for us to admit that about ourselves—that we can’t do it.”

Those who know their addiction and seek recovery seek wholeness and health. Through AA and similar recovery groups, they find that in life and in death, we belong to God. They also find that nothing in life or in death can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

One of the things people do to interpret parables and other biblical stories is to assign the characters in the story to the heroes of the faith. So I guess in the story I just shared, Nick Saban and Bobby Patrino would be two of the disciples, maybe even the “Sons of Thunder,” James and John. Coach Paterno could be Peter, the rock. I guess that means that Jesus… well, Jesus would be Jesus. In any story, any parable, only Jesus will ever be Jesus. That’s the point, too.

In the words of Sojourners Magazine creator and editor Jim Wallis, “Who speaks for God? God speaks for God. And it is the voiceless and powerless for whom the voice of God has always been authentically raised. It is up to us to make sure that our vision bears some resemblance to the vision the prophets of God proclaim throughout the Scriptures. Then the people on the street corners will have a better idea of who the children of God really are.”[5]

No matter how good we are, no matter what we can do; or more no matter what we think we have done; to paraphrase the a parish Priest in the movie “Rudy,” God is God and we aren’t.

As James’ epistle reminds us, we are to submit ourselves to God, for when we draw near to God, God draws near to us. Or to paraphrase this, when we welcome the weak, the oppressed, the powerless, the innocent; when we welcome all of God’s children in his name, we draw closer to God.

Mary wrapped Jesus in swaddling clothes: a symbol, not of poverty, as some have tried to make it, but of maternal care and tenderness. What are we wrapping people we meet in? Are we swaddling them in compassion, tenderness, generosity and devotion? Are we wrapping them in the Word of the loving, eternal, Triune God? Are we welcoming them as Mary welcomes her son, as Jesus welcomes the child? Welcoming the weak and the poor in the name of the Lord, this is the measure of the great generosity we are called to share with the world.

[1] Joe Paterno facts come from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Paterno, retrieved September 19, 2009.

[2] Larry James, On 'Spending' A Life Well, Heartlight Magazine, November 27, 1999, ">www.heartlight.org/feature/sf_980318_spending.html. from http://homileticsonline.com/subscriber/illustration_search.asp?keywords=generosity, retrieved September 19, 2009.

[3] The West Wing, The Warfare of Genghis Kahn, http://www.tv.com/the-west-wing/the-warfare-of-genghis-khan/episode/289368/summary.html?tag=header_area;tv_header, retrieved September 20, 2009

[4] Ibid, HomileticsOnline.com, Leonard J. Vander Zee, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” September 21, 2003, South Bend Christian Reformed Church Web Site, Sbcrc.org.

[5] Ibid, HomileticsOnline.com, Jim Wallis, Who Speaks for God? (New York: Delacorte Press, 1996), 39-40.