Sunday, September 6, 2020

Which Side Are You On?

 

Which Side Are You On?

Luke 21:1-4

            Richard Hofstadter said, “One of the primary tests of a society at any given time is whether its comfortable people tend to identify, psychologically, with the power and achievements of the very successful or with the needs and sufferings of the underprivileged.”

            This is an apt saying for our time, since, as at least one candidate for president says, we are in a battle for the soul of America.  It’s also a good question for us to ask ourselves:  Which side are you on?

            The question has been asked many times in our past:

            Which side are you on in the battle between the royalists and those fighting for freedom from the British?

            Which side are you on in the battle between the union and the seceding states?

            Which side are you on in the fight over women’s right to vote?

            Which side are you on in the civil rights movement of the 1960’s?

In each case people were forced to decide which group they identified with:  those who held all the marbles or those who wanted to join the game.

            Now we fight that battle again, and once more we must decide between the group on the inside and those who want not just to get into the room, but also to take a seat at the table.

            This passage has been used by many preachers on stewardship Sunday, the day set aside to encourage the congregation to give more to the church in the upcoming year.  I have steadfastly refused to use these verses in this context for two reasons.  First, because the ones most likely to take this story to heart are often those who can afford to give the least.  They are the ones who are apt to feel shame at what they give.  Using this story to extort more money from a congregation is blackmail by guilt.

            The other reason I won’t use this passage in a stewardship sermon is based on something I learned in seminary.  Dr. Mitzi Minor used this story one day in class.  Her interpretation was different from any I’d heard before, and I’ve listened to a lot of preachers in a lot of churches over a lot of years.

            Dr. Minor said this widow should not have been contributing to the temple treasury at all.  Funds given to the temple were to be used for the relief of widows and orphans.  Instead of giving, she should have been receiving.  Jesus was calling attention to the role reversal that made a giver out of someone who should have been a receiver.  Clearly, the comfortable people of Jesus’ time identified with the very successful rather than with the needs and sufferings of the underprivileged.

            This is the question we must each ask ourselves over the next two months:  Will we, who are comfortable with our circumstances the way they are, who find the idea of significant change unsettling—will we identify with the successful ones in our society, or will we stand with the underprivileged, the disenfranchised, the downtrodden?  Jesus made it clear which side he was on. 

            The novelist Louis de Bernieres said it well.  “The real index of civilization is when people are kinder than they need to be.”

            We know which side Jesus was on.  Will we follow his example, or will we shirk our responsibility to those he has called us to help?           

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