Have I ever told you about my dog “Jack?” Well,
to be exact, Jack officially belongs to our daughter Katherine. When she was
in college, she found him wandering about her apartment complex in Charlotte. Someone had abused Jack as a puppy. The trauma of that abuse has followed him throughout his life. With
Katherine’s job changes, in time Jack moved with us to Chapel Hill, then Mississippi, and now to West Virginia. We think of Jack as our “grand-dog.”
Jack is a nervous little dog. He craves a quiet and regular routine. Any unexpected outside sounds, even the chiming of our clock in the dining room sets
Jack to barking. Jack further is a hoarder. Even
though we fill his food bowl several times each day, Jack is fearful that he will not get his next meal. Therefore, he always leaves a small amount of food in his bowl, lest we forget to feed him. Further, when Jack eats, he takes each bite of his food to another room to eat it, lest some bigger dog
take it away from him.
Jack is a hoarder. Nellie too was a hoarder. She is a colleague’s grandmother. Nellie always had been
a striking woman, possessing a fashionable wardrobe and the perfect hat for every occasion. In
the 1950’s and 1960’s, when the threat of nuclear war being on peoples’ mind—she turned her basement
into a bomb-shelter, and stockpiled cans of non-perishable foods, including tomatoes, tuna and her favorite brand of bean
salad. During the sugar shortage of a few years back—she filled her cupboards
with sugars of every kind. When the energy crisis came back in the early 1970’s—she
obsessed over keeping her Buick’s gas tank filled at least ¾ full. Every
other day she would wait in long lines to get a few gallons of gasoline.
To any in her family who questioned her waiting in line for gasoline, she said
that she had to get the gas “before the hoarders do!” Today, Nellie
is advanced in years. All of Nellie hats, Buick’s, latest fashions, and
canned goods are gone. Everything she owns fits neatly into the wardrobe of her
room at the nursing home. In that nursing home, there are kind and strong people
care for her needs, and three times a day lift her from her bed to her wheelchair. Her
world seems very different from the way it used to be. But ask her how she is
doing, she will say that she has everything that she needs—people that care about her, a warm bed, and the inexhaustible
grace of God. It is enough. It is enough. (“The Christian Century—Reflections
on the Lectionary”, Elizabeth Myer Boulton, July 27, 2010)
Perhaps like Jack worrying about whether we will feed him another meal—or like Nellie used to be worrying about
transitory things—we too anxiously cling to transitory things for our security. We cling to the latest clothes or cars;
the newest electronic gadgets; the pantry filled with cans of tuna and bean salad; and whatever else is the latest fad that
advertisers tell us will complete our lives. We wait in lines to make our purchases,
we stretch our credit cards to the limits, and we worry whether it will be enough. We
worry and therefore we hoard our possessions.
In the Book of Exodus, the Hebrew slaves in Egypt were worrying.
About 430 years earlier, they had come to Egypt as welcomed aliens. However, in time, Pharaoh had enslaved them. As a
result, they only could expect a life of hard labor and an early death. In their
misery, they had cried to God. God heard their cries for help, and God had sent
Moses to lead them to freedom. However, Pharaoh would not listen. Plagues came. Yet Pharaoh’s heart was hardened against
them, and he only increased their misery.
Finally, God grew tired of Pharaoh’s stubbornness. God told the Hebrews
to “get ready”—get ready for God to act in their behalf. God
was going to declare war on Pharaoh. That night was going to be a night like
none before. For that night, God was going to bring terror into the lives of
the Egyptians. That night, God was going to pass throughout the land of
Egypt and strike down the first-born of all the Egyptians. Every
Egyptian first-born, from Pharaoh’s first-born child, to the first-born of the slave in Pharaoh’s house, to the
first-born of the prisoner, to the first-born of all the livestock—God would slay all of them.
At the same time, the Hebrew’s were to get ready. They were to kill
a lamb without blemish and to paint the doorframe of their homes with the lamb’s blood. They
then were to roast the lamb and eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. They
were to eat it all and to leave nothing for tomorrow’s meal. Anything left,
they were to burn. They were not to hoard their food, for God would see that
they had provisions tomorrow. They further were to eat it as people ready to
travel, fully dressed, and with their walking staff in their hands.
As promised that night the Lord struck the Egyptians—that night, God slain every Egyptian first-born. That night, a great cry went up from the Egyptians, for there was not a home that was untouched by death.
However, because the Hebrew people were ready, the Lord passed over their homes.
Then in the morning, Pharaoh summoned Aaron and Moses and told them to take their
flocks of sheep and herds of cattle and to leave his land. That night of terror,
the Hebrews would remember as the first “Passover,” when the Lord passed over the homes of the Hebrews while striking
the first-born of the Egyptians.
Roughly, 1300 years later, Jesus told his disciples to “get ready” for God to act for them.
He told
them not to let anything hinder them from being “ready” for God to act. They
were to sell their possession and to give the money to the temple for alms. “Get ready,” Jesus declared. For Jesus knew that God did not create the
world and then sit back to see what would happen. Rather, Jesus knew that God is attentive to the needs of the smallest and
most insignificant seeming creatures—sparrows, raven, and even the wildflowers growing in the field. God’s attentiveness extends to his disciples and even to the most mundane elements of their lives.
Get ready, said Jesus. Get ready
so that you might be able to recognize and receive God’s daily blessings in your lives.
“But, let’s get practical preacher,” some might say. “Selling
our possessions and giving them to the poor? That’s not realistic in today’s
world?” On the other hand, is it not realistic? Note that Jesus did not say for his disciples to sell all their possessions. He wanted them to be good stewards with the resources that God has given them. The difficult thing for us as Christians today is to distinguish between being good stewards with our possessions,
and at the same time, to resist the urge to hoard our possessions. “But, we only want enough,” we say.
However, how much is “enough?” Perhaps
Jesus even knew the Roman proverb which went like this, “Money is like sea-water, the more one drinks, the thirstier
one becomes.” In the end, Jesus
was concerned that we get our priorities right in life—that our “nest-eggs” not become the focus of our
lives. For if, we constantly are focusing on our “nest-eggs,” then
we will fail to recognize God’s many other blessings in our lives. Everything
we possess is transitory—we are to use them for God’s priorities in the world. It
is no accident that there are no trailer hitches attached to hearses. Ultimately, we will have to leave all of our possessions
behind.
Several years ago when I was serving as the Associate Pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Huntington, I experienced a lesson in generosity. It was on a Sunday morning. However, it was not just any Sunday morning—it was “Stewardship Sunday”
when people in faith would make their pledges to God’s work for the coming year.
Earlier in the service, I had noticed a homeless man coming into the church. We
frequently had homeless persons visiting the church, and we knew most of them. However,
I did not know this man. He entered the sanctuary, walked down to on the front
pews, and sat down. A young mother sitting on that pew showed him how to find
the hymns in the hymnbook. The man was poorly dressed and looked as if he had
slept the night before in his clothing. Not knowing him, I kept an eye on him
as I was preaching that day. I was concerned that he might somehow disturb the
service.
As the people began coming forward to place their pledge-cards on the communion table, I saw this homeless man get up
and start coming forward. He was coming toward me as I stood by the table! I just knew that he was going to ask me for some money, and I began rehearsing in my
mind what I would tell him. He reached me, then his hand went into the right
pocket of his worn jeans, and he pulled out a one-dollar bill. He asked me, “Can
I give this to God?” Suddenly relieved, and somewhat ashamed of my attitude
toward him, I simply said, “Yes, thank you very much.” He placed
his worn one-dollar bill on the communion table and returned to his seat. After the service concluded, he slipped out the
front door. I never saw him again.
That day the homeless man had not held anything back from God. Perhaps
that one-dollar bill was all he had in the world. Perhaps, he literally gave
all he had. At the very least—he gave out of his poverty, not out of his
abundance. That Sunday morning, he knew better than I did what Jesus meant when
he said, “Sell your possessions and give alms. Make purses for yourselves
that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.”
