Luke 12:32-40
“From Fear to Faith”
The movement in the gospel lesson today is from fear to faith, from inaction to action. Luke begins by telling us that Jesus calls his followers “little flock.” This was not a megachurch. He is using the diminutive case. Take a look around. This is a little flock. I think Jesus is talking to us. Sometimes we worry if Pine Valley is going to survive as a church. We think of what we don’t have. It’s called “if only” theology. If only we had … you can fill in the blanks. Jesus said, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can move mountains.” In a secular version of that statement Margret Mead said, “Never underestimate the power of a small, thoughtful, dedicated group of people to change the world, indeed it is the only thing that ever has.” In some measure we all believe that to be true. And, if we don’t believe that yet, we want to believe it. We are like Peter when he stepped out of the boat, “I believe, Lord. Help me in my unbelief.” That’s why we are here.
If the church did not exist, we would have to create something like it because we need communities of imagination. Remember the George Berhard Shaw quote, “Some people see the world as it is, and ask why. I see the world as it might be and ask why not?” In his inaugural address Jesus said, “I have come to bring good news to the poor, release to the captive, recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, and to proclaim this the acceptable year of the Lord” (Luke 4:18-19). The acceptable year of the Lord is the Year of Jubilee–the year of debt forgiveness. The promise behind the Year of Jubilee was that there would be no debtor’s prison, that people would not be trapped in debt. That’s also what the Lord’s Prayer is about. “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” That’s a Jubilee prayer calling for the end of debt servitude.
That is also what the next part of the reading for today is about. Jesus is talking about money. It’s hard to miss. “Sell all your possessions. Provide for yourself a purse that does not grow old, a treasure that does not fail, where no thief approaches and which moths cannot destroy. Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
The truth is this simple truth makes us uncomfortable. We are not going to take these words literally. Making ourselves poor is actually not going to help anyone. But, I think this is actually a misreading of the text. Money and possessions are really secondary issues. The central issue in this text is power. Who has power, how did they get it, and what do they do with it.?
What kind of power do we have, and how do we use it? The theological question is how does our understanding of God relate to our ideas about power and how it is used? Martin Luther famously said, “God’s grace is a passing storm of rain. You must not think you will have it forever.” Where and how do we experience the presence of God in our world today? How does our understanding of God shape our ideas about power? Too often we tend to equate God’s power with the power and authority to rule over. It is the power to control.
Latin American educator and theologian Paulo Freire tells about a poignant experience he had when visiting San Francisco several years ago (Pedagogy of the Heart, Continuum Publishing Company) that might change how we think about power. Freier tells of a time when he was visiting a church that had a meal program–maybe something like the Lord’s Diner, or maybe it was a program that gave people baskets of food for people to take home. He asked a woman who had come for something to eat: “You are an American, aren’t you?” She answered, “No. I am poor.” Freire says that this is the first time he ever heard poverty used as a nationality. She was poor. In her experience, poverty meant the absence of citizenship. Indeed, poverty expelled her from existence itself. The fabric of poverty clothed her in a fatalistic understanding of the world and of God. Poverty clothes us with the same garment of fatalism. The world is divided between rich and poor. There is no other way. We used to hear political leaders, when speaking of the state of the economy, they would tell us, “There Is No Alternative.” That was the doctrine of TINA.
The Bible challenges us to believe that there is an alternative. There is another way to understand power. The Bible would have us believe that when we encounter our neighbor, we encounter God. Pope Francis called this a “theology of encounter.” In explaining this theology he said we have to stop living like horses with blinders, and be willing to cross boundary lines of race and class and gender. We have to be willing to change our plans and our priorities. As he learned on his recent visit with the First Nations People of Canada, sometimes these encounters have a prophetic edge. The First Nations People told the pope that his apology was nice, but what they wanted to hear was a revocation of the Doctrine of Discovery–a specious doctrine that says Euroamericans discovered North America and therefore have a right to claim it. When we think about the Doctrine of Discovery, we need to think about the biblical story of Naboth’s Vineyard. You can read that story in I Kings, chapter 21. Maybe I will do that next week.
What does power look like to you? Where does God encounter us? What is our capacity to be agents of change for the good? We can use the biblical story. The biblical story teaches that the Hebrew people wanted change, they did not negotiate with Pharaoh, they walked out. Jesus did not negotiate with Pilate. He challenged Pilate to tell the truth. What is our understanding of power? If we want to be a movement for social change for the good, if we want to be what I have called a school for discipleship, we have to think some new thoughts about how we understand power. Heads up, LInda as chair of the gathered community, I plan to meet with you this week to share some ideas that I have about how we might begin thinking of ourselves as a school for discipleship.
The text in Luke is saying the move from fear to faith requires a new understanding of power. That’s the first step. The second step is to recognize and identify oppression and exploitation as it exists in our own community. To name the situation that we see and identify who the players are and what our role is as members of this community. The third, and for us the most difficult step, is to understand that we have the power to change this situation. Can we see ourselves as agents of transformation? We need a theology of decontrol. Our future will be defined not by how much we own, but by the quality of our relationships with members of our community as we work together with unions, Indigenous peoples, other congregations and people in all situations of life to create a people-oriented society.
It’s a tall order. We are talking about building the church as a social movement for change. We need congregations like Pine Valley that can be incubators of social change for the better. We need congregations like Pine Valley, that can show others what it means to practice forgiveness and seek justice and love mercy and walk together in a spirit of humidity. We need congregations like Pine Valley that are not afraid to confront the injustices of the past with a message of hope for a new tomorrow. “Fear not little flock.” Gird your loins and keep your lamps burning.”