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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