Emmanuel Baptist Church 275 State St.  Albany, NY 12210 (518) 465-5161 Click here for directions
A Welcoming and Affirming Congregation

On Not Keeping Up With the Joneses

Kathleen E. Moore

10/19/2008

When I was growing up there was an elderly couple living three houses up the street from us, whose name was Jones, who had a plot in the community garden down at the end of the street.  Each day in the growing season they went down the street to tend their garden and then returned.  When we first moved to that neighborhood they were still using their old Studebaker to get down to the garden, but after awhile they would walk, usually one at a time, down to the garden.  They would be pushing a wheelbarrow, usually.  At some point we noticed that each day Mr. Jones carried rocks up the street in the wheelbarrow from the garden, and each day Mrs. Jones carried rocks down the street to the garden.  Now there was a pile of small rocks—river gravel-- maybe 2 feet high in their driveway.  No one on our street knew what the rocks were for but it seemed that Mr. Jones was gathering in these stones for some purpose.  And Mrs. Jones was casting them away.  So the pile of stones never grew and never shrank.  He gathered in, she cast away. 

The line from the Ecclesiastes 3 passage for today—“ a time to gather stones together and a time to cast away stones” always makes me think of the Joneses.  For them as a community of two, the time for gathering in and the time for casting away were the same. 

Now the Joneses were in their 80’s when we moved to that house, and I believe they were still gardening in their 90’s, their trips up and down the street becoming slower and slower, eventually without the wheelbarrow but maybe just a hoe or something.  Still he gathered in—just one stone each day—and she cast away, one stone each day.  It seemed the Joneses were locked in some kind of struggle with one another—a wordless, futile, endless disagreement about the stones in the driveway with no net benefit, a zero sum.

The Jones’ life together seems so different than the community that Paul addresses in his first letter to the Thessalonians.  I read Paul’s letter as a love letter to the people in the church at Thessalonica.  Remember, they lived in the expectation that the 2^nd coming of Christ was imminent—probably in their lifetimes—10 minutes? 10 years?  But they were living in a time of crisis and uncertainty--they faced terrible persecution, yet they persisted in working and striving together to do the work of the Gospel, spreading the good news in their entire region of Macedonia, and beyond.  They pulled together in their faith and their hope and their love, despite the very immediate crises that they faced.  Paul expresses great admiration for their faithfulness, for their hope and for their love.  They are a growing community actively involved with the gospel despite the difficulties they faced. 

Here’s something else: in other letters (2^nd Corinthians for example), Paul holds up the Thessalonians as an example of benevolence, because they participated generously in the “Great Collection” for the church in Jerusalem.  Paul expresses his gratitude to the Thessalonians for their financial support—that despite their difficulties, in spite of the uncertainty and their poverty as a community they gave generously.  It appears that they truly gave out of their sense of abundant hope and joy in the anticipation of the “parousia” or second coming. 

When I think about the Joneses and their passive-aggressive, zero sum behavior I am also struck by how different that model of community is from what I see here at Emmanuel.  Some weeks ago I was privileged to observe a bunch of people from this congregation moving kitchen thing out of the nursery and out of the Sunday school space behind this wall here in preparation for the start of our program year.  Over the course of several days the food pantry continued in its normal operations (and several Emmanuelites were volunteering there too), the worship space was prepared for homecoming, Sunday school rooms were prepared, and the kitchen got back into shape.  Just about all of this was done by volunteers, all pulling together for our missions.  Right here there is a nexus of all our ministries represented: worship, hospitality, mission to the world outside the church, and education.  I have seen the gospel being lived here, just as Paul saw it being lived in Thessalonica.  In spite of the crisis of being without a pastor and in spite of the uncertainty that attends these economic times I could sit down and write a letter like Paul’s that testifies to this church’s commitment to the gospel--your generosity in sharing your time and money, your steadfastness in being a truly Welcoming church, your hard work on behalf of this community and the wider world in need.

Now I venture to suggest that most of us in this 21^st century Christian community don’t really think about the second coming much.  The “end times” are not generally on the top of our list of motivators—although our friend Dan the other night said that there was clear evidence that we are reaching the end of the world if the Tampa Bay Rays were in the American League Championship Series.  But seriously I don’t think there is a person here right now who doesn’t recognize that we face a crisis that is accompanied by a huge amount of uncertainty.  Can we put ourselves in the shoes of the Thessalonians?  Yes I think we can.  They were a community under stress, and so are we now.

In the last few weeks we have seen unprecedented changes and losses in our economic system.  As a long-established Christian community in Albany, we may not face the kind of outright persecution that the Thessalonians faced, but we do face these other two elements: we face a crisis of huge proportions because we are tied to the global economy, which in turn is marked by enormous uncertainty about what is going to happen.  This global economic crisis doesn’t just affect the wealthy; it affects the poor, perhaps even more severely.  (Remember the global food crisis so widely reported this summer hasn’t gone away).  For one thing, many of the organizations and foundations that provide assistance to the needy rely on income from endowments—these endowments are in most cases managed not for greed or personal gain, but to sustain the missions of the organization.  The fact is that most institutions that are trying to serve people utilize an endowment to generate income beyond the annual contributions they receive. From the local colleges to the Community Foundation to Emmanuel Baptist Church--endowments are hurting, folks.

The everyman or everyperson in the familiar song Judy sang speaks of “building a dream” and how that dream seems to have been crushed by the tough economic times---the original builders or doers forgotten by those with the means to help.  It is of course a song of the Great Depression—sometimes referred to as the “Anthem of the Great Depression”.  (It was part of a 1932 musical, “New Americana”).  There is much discussion comparing the present time to that of the Great Depression:  The largest bank failures in US history…rising unemployment…the global financial system in a state of chaos…stock market on a roller-coaster ride with record-setting one-day losses and gains.  Some economists say this is nothing compared to Great Depression, while others draw a lot of parallels.  I can’t argue it strongly one way or the other (and as you know I don’t make forecasts) but I can say that these are troubling times in which to contemplate drafting a church budget.

We are starting the time of the year when we talk about “stewardship”—meaning drafting a budget for next year, sending out pledge cards, strongly encouraging people to consider their gifts of money, time, talent and talent to the church—indeed, strongly encouraging people to increase their gifts to the church.  There is no denying it--this is a hard thing to bring up in this economic climate.  I have the urge to say, “Buddy Can you Spare a Dime for the Church?”  I want to say emphatically that this church intends to continue “building the dream”.  We need to remember that God is faithful.  We need to remember, to remind one another, that we can be very skilled, very adept at pulling together.  We need to remember that this community doesn’t exist unless each one of us accepts that we all have a role to play in spreading the Good News, and each one of us is responsible to render unto God what is God’s—rendering our time, our talents, and yes our money to support this community and its message of a loving God who welcomes all and who call us to serve our neighbors.   

I think the Gospel passage today has something to say about this quandary.  In the Matthew passage Judy read we find Jesus being confronted by the Pharisees who are trying to lay a trap for him, to get him to take a position on tax resistance.  The passage has often been used both as support for and evidence against Christian tax resistance, especially war tax resistance.  That isn’t my emphasis here.  Or we could look at this passage and think, “Clever guy!  He manages to outfox the others and escapes, this time, from persecution, or worse—crucifixion.  But this is too trite.  The story is more like a Zen koan—it says something about giving everything for the people, the very people who need to hear the Good News.  And on the other side of the coin (so to speak) we have to consider that the story begs the question: What do we owe God? 

The answer to that question is of course is a no-brainer: everything!  We owe our very lives to God.  Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement, said it this way: “If we rendered unto God all the things that belong to God, there would be nothing left for Caesar

It should also be clear that Jesus didn’t offer an analysis of the relative “value proposition” of giving to Caesar or giving to God.  Giving to Caesar has certain well-defined benefits, or at least outcomes, some of which we may like, others not.  But when we render unto God it isn’t a question of “what do I get out of this?”  It’s not about value propositions, as understood in current business jargon.

I want to make clear that when we pledge to support this community—a community that works in all things to make manifest its witness to a loving God-- we are rendering unto God some part of what is God’s.  Mission, hospitality, worship and education—we are about all of those things.  And we are not about a zero-sum approach, where one area of mission competes with another. 

There is a mission fair today, presenting us with numerous opportunities for ministry—opportunities to render unto God what is God’s.  But don’t fall prey to the notion that, as we gather in for mission we are casting out for the church, or the other way.  The church’s current expenses—salaries, heating and lighting, etc.. are every bit as much mission as benevolence.  And all these things are facing a crisis now—we have to be in it together.

We have a pretty lean budget, really.  And as I have already said we have an enormous amount of volunteer labor poured into this church—think of the kitchen, child care, the choir, and education—in Christian education alone we probably have the equivalent of two full-time teachers’ work that goes into our program! the Sunday school rooms, the renovation work, the food pantry and breakfast program, the emergency overflow shelter the list goes on and on.  As a community the evidence is that we exist to render unto God.  We exist to devote our very lives to living the gospel, just like the Thessalonians. 

We’re going to continue to build the dream, to spread the Good News of God’s love.   Let’s not keep up with the Joneses.  Let’s instead keep up with the Thessalonians.  Let’s keep on our faithful, hopeful, love-filled journey.  Let’s render unto God out of our sense of thanksgiving and abundance.  Let’s all of us gather in together and cast away together as is needed in this time.  And let’s keep building the dream, even though times are tough.  Amen