On Confusing Means With Ends

Sermon by James W. Crawford

September 28, 1997

Matthew 6:19-34

I don't know what afflicted Matthew's church at the time he assembled the Sermon on the Mount some fifty years after Jesus died. But I suspect that little congregation, probably in Antioch, knew some hard times. The Romans finally smashed Jerusalem. The Jews simply could not accept Jesus as Messiah. And the Gentiles--Greeks, Romans, Middle Easterners of all stripes--followed a wide variety of religious movements and secular interests. How could the church succeed in such a hostile environment? How gain the membership, the money, the influence to gain proper recognition in alien surroundings?.

We don't know what they did. Perhaps handouts on the street or an enticing billboard on the road to Ephesus. Who knows? Whatever they did to get people to attend, to support, to sustain their church, whatever they did, Matthew was worried. He wondered if they got it right. After all, he saw them exhausting themselves on what he considered means of survival but hardly the primary ends of life. He witnessed them pursuing the signs of worldly success, what they should eat, what they should drink, what they should put on--their gourmet menus, their faddish clothes, their homes and baubles--and he wondered if they did not really have things upside down. He was convinced they clamored after the means for survival without a purpose for living.

So Matthew shifts perception. He alters emphases. He says to this hardworking, well-heeled crowd, "Strive first--strive first--for the kingdom of God and God's righteousness and all the rest will be given you as well." Got that? "Strive first of all for the Kingdom of God and God's righteousness and all the rest will be given you as well."

What is Matthew up to? What is he doing here? He is reclaiming life's proper end. He is recasting priorities. He is defining the Christian life not so much as an enterprise in what the world might call success, but rather in the exercise of what he remembers Jesus calling "being faithful." His formula for faithfulness reverses what most of us call success. If Church shoppers come by Matthew's church, if religious seekers make their way into his congregation looking to be serviced or soothed, searching for a compatible crowd and an ethereal mood, Matthew confronts them with the Love of God--not a vague mush and candy-coated sentimentality, but a love manifested in this searing symbol of the Cross. My soul! We see it here every Sunday. We are so used to the Cross, it no longer speaks the scale and scope of love and the dimensions of our own discipleship. But there it is. And at first blanch it does not fit what most of us in these days call our spiritual needs. It does not make us feel better. It does not promise us money, or prestige, or power, or a good job, or a boyfriend or a marriage partner or friendship, or intimacy, or good health. It does not alleviate our depression, settle our financial anxieties, win the lottery, change our luck. It does tell us we have been loved without limit, that we are given everything that is really worth anything: the confidence that whatever crises we may believe we pass through, there is Someone at our sides standing and bearing with us through thick and thin--at great cost. In this ostensibly market-driven world, if you will, what we market in church, what we promise to church shoppers, divine seekers, religious consumers--whoever we are--is, first of all, the promise that in death or life, amid cancer and AIDS, in unemployment, loneliness, alcoholism, addiction, divorce, financial loss, spousal rejection, clinical depression--you name it, we've got it--we promise through it all Someone hangs in there with us; and then this: that in gratitude, in joy, in utter, staggering thanksgiving because love has been a spendthrift in our behalf, so we are spendthrifts, wasting, throwing away and spending our lives for others just as God in Jesus Christ did for us. And love being love, what we do may demand great risk and can assume great cost.

Do you see what Matthew is saying? The most important thing in this world is the spending of our lives, our fortunes, our gifts, for Christ's sake. Matthew insists the most vital thing we do with our lives is risk them for healing and hope, justice and peace, reconciliation and forgiveness. He knows, by looking at the Cross, love takes risks; it is prepared for failure, open to rejection, ready to be called stupid, or ridiculous, or naive, or unreal, and maybe even  go broke, and worst of all, for Christ's sake, be labeled unsuccessful--not a great marketing strategy. Yet--yet, in face of these risks, we pour ourselves out for the sake of Christ's healed and gracious world. Everything we do, ever dollar we accumulate, every possession we claim, every effort we invest becomes a means to the just and compassionate end of making our world a comfortable and radiant home for God . "Strive first for the kingdom of heaven and God's righteousness, and all the rest--the joy, peace, security, hope and meaning you seek otherwise, through other means-- will be given you as well."

II

Do you believe that? It is hard, I know. Everything we see in our culture these days flies right in the face of Matthew's affirmation.  Means seem to be confused with ends. What we shall eat, what we shall drink, what we shall wear, where we shall live, what we can buy--my grief!--the tools for survival become themselves substitutes for the meaning, the goals, the transcendent purposes of life itself.  We all need be wary of falling into this spiritually dangerous trap. You. Me. Our church.

This week I heard a radio advertisement saying the October issue of Money Magazine included a survey entitled "America's Age of  Anxious Affluence." The title seemed to confirm Matthew's observations about the things we strive for and their anxiety producing consequences, so I went out and bought it. As I opened the Magazine the first thing that dropped out was a postcard enabling me to subscribe with the words in bold lettering, "In Money We Trust."  And as many of you know, and others might suspect, the contents of the magazine inform us you how to "Double Your Money," "Secure Your family's Future," and "Invest in the 10 Best Funds for the Future." As for "America's anxious affluence," it tells us the highest percentage of us are worrying about money since concerns spiked during the recession of the early 90s. But it was a little opinion survey meant to quantify the reader's wealth and consumer interests that caught my attention. Among questions like "What types of investments do you currently own?" or "what do you plan to purchase in the next 12 months?" this question popped out at me: "If you unexpectedly received $10,000 to spend any way you wanted, which one of the following actions would you take? Invest the money. Pay bills. Go on a dream vacation. Purchase a big ticket item. Purchase several small ticket items."

Not one option for giving any of it--or all of it--away. Not one suggestion there may be a value more important than doubling your money or purchasing a big ticket item.

Well, Ted Turner and his billion dollar nut to the United Nations notwithstanding (I love it: "No big deal," he said, "I'm no worse off than I was last January.") Ted Turner notwithstanding, Money Magazine's exclusion of options for giving money away tends to confirm Matthew's observation that where our treasure is there will our heart be also, and that we mix our loyalties at our spiritual peril,  God and wealth making huge but conflicting claims on our lives.  And indeed, turning ourselves over to the wholly commercial and market culture can be demonic. Gabriel Marcel captures the corrupting nature of much of it. "The more I treat my own ideas, or my stables, or greenhouse, as something belonging to me, the more surely will these possessions, by their very inertia, exercise a tyrannical power over me. Acquiring and keeping are exhausting all time pursuits; possessions swallow us up. The self becomes incorporated into the thing possessed. To possess is almost inevitably to be possessed. Things possessed get in the way. "I wonder," he writes, "if we could not define the whole of the spiritual life as the sum of the activities by which we try to reduce in ourselves the part played by nondisposability. Death is the flat denial of nondisposability."

Do you get that? The quality of our spiritual life is somehow defined by the capacity to detach ourselves from so much we consider indispensable to our personhood.

And as for death being the flat denial of indisposability, we need only remember the quaint story told of Aristotle Onassis. Some gossip somewhere asked an intimate of Onassis, "Just how much did he leave?" The answer of course, "He left everything."

Do you know what it might mean if you and I were to take on Gabriel Marcel's spiritual exercise in reducing in ourselves the part played by that demon, nondisposability? In making our pledges this year we might risk some more right off the top in our gifts to the church. And  who knows, it might even make a difference on our other household financial decisions, so that, if you will, the presence and cause of Christ and his church will make an impact across the board on how we spend and save. And lest you think I am up here asking you to give more so as perhaps to raise my salary, let me say right now to all of you in this public place I ask the Council to give such a matter no consideration whatsoever, and that in any case, should they decide otherwise I will say, "Thanks very much, but no thanks."

And for our church: two things. First of all, I hope as we meet about plans and program, space and property, income and expenses, personnel and portfolio, I do hope amid the Balkanization of interests, needs and desires we resist confusing means with ends and never forget we live by the sign of the love and risk of the Cross.  And secondly, in light of what usually happens, a budget consideration: Each year our church program committees, the Outreach Committee, the Housing Committee, the Music Committee, the Religion and Arts Committee, the Operations Committee, the Ministers' Advice and Support Committee come before the Finance Committee with what they deem appropriate for responsible and compassionate program for the coming year. And every year in December we meet for a gruesome bloodletting, cutting outreach, cutting Christian education, cutting building use, cutting music, juggling salaries, balancing the budget in an annual ritual. It is done wisely, regretfully, responsibly, painfully. But this year, let us on the one hand be prudent, of course, but on the other, maybe ask ourselves, "Hey, is a balanced budget the true end of the Old South Church in Boston? Is the Lord of the ledger, finally, the one we serve? Does the budget we vote in January freeze the spirit for 12 months? What if we consider and vote a deficit budget moving in faith, trust, vision, mission, tackling new and creative projects for a world suffering beyond our doors?

And friends, believe me, I know what church deficits are all about, how scary they can be, how terrified they can make us. My own knees have been jelly because of church deficits and real estate crashes. And yes, I know how nobody wants to make up a deficit with a pledge, and how fiscal integrity and balanced budgets speak good judgment, prudence and administrative success in a world where the bottom line is sovereign.

But friends, how about a risk? How about we reach? How about we decide what is necessary to fulfill the mission of this Old South Church in Boston in this city, in this time and we at least start to make a budget adequate for pulling it off, even if it appears to run a deficit? Down the line, as one of our top officers insists, to do the job we must do from this corner, we are going to have to double our endowment, double our pledging, and double our membership. So we can begin thinking about the costs of a truly significant ministry on this corner right now, maybe a deficit budget will be a sign of our willingness to take a risk for God's sake on the future. Scold me if you will. But we had better at least, in faith and hope, think and pray about it!

And so we are finished. Can we distinguish between means and ends? Can we commit ourselves, first of all, to the vital ministry and mission of love and compassion in this world, and then in some decent, mutually appreciative manner among ourselves devise the means in time and money and imagination, to bring it to fruition? Of course we can! And lest over these next months and years you and  I confuse means with ends, please, I beg you, let us remind each other of that glorious Gaelic lyric of Mary Byrne:

Riches I need not, nor life's empty praise,
God my inheritance, now and always.
You and you only are first in my heart,
Great God, my treasure, may we never part.

Let us pray: It is treasure, God, you have entrusted, gain through powers your grace conferred; Ours to use for home and kindred and to spread the Gospel Word. Open wide our hands in sharing as we heed Christ's ageless call, Healing, teaching and reclaiming, honoring you by loving all. Amen.