Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
November 16, 2008 Stewardship Sunday
Matthew 13:44-45; Luke 15:1-7
A story told by Barbra Brown Taylor: “Not long ago a friend and I made a pilgrimage to Howard Finster’s Paradise Garden in Pennville, Georgia, about an hour and a half up the road from where I live. If you read People magazine or keep up with the world of art, then you know that Howard Finster is a folk artist of some repute, a seventy-three year old visionary who has painted close to ten thousand of his visions – on plywood, broken mirrors, soda bottles, old refrigerators, mailboxes, high-topped sneakers, and even an old Cadillac that is rusting in his garage.
“Finster started out as a Baptist preacher and served eight or nine churches in rural Georgia and Alabama before he became disillusioned in the early 1970’s. After preaching 4625 sermons, he conducted a survey at this church and found out that no one remembered anything he had said. So he retired from preaching and began fixing things instead – televisions and bicycles mostly – until 1976, when an inner voice, he says from God, told him to paint sacred art.
“ ‘I can’t,’ Finster told the voice, ‘I am not a professional.’ ‘How do you know you can’t.’ the voice demanded, and so Finster’s career as an artist began. His work is both beautiful and bizarre, but equally fascinating is his three-acre Paradise Garden, under construction for the past twenty-three years, which he has “consecrated to all the inventions of nature and man.”
Says Taylor, ‘I have been there twice and have only begun to take it all in. If you follow the walkways that are embedded with old watches, gears, jewelry, marbles and pottery shards, you cannot miss the twenty-foot tower fashioned from old bicycles, crowned with a cross made out of two lawn mower handles, or the two-ton concrete shoe, or the pump house made from Coca-Cola bottles. There is an aquarium that holds the bones of a three-legged chicken, a shed full of old sewing machines and a six-foot mound of serpents sculpted from poured cement. You might think nature would be offended by such a display but it is not so. There are blueberry bushes and blackberry vines and day lilies blooming among the clutter; there are hens laying eggs and bees making honey and tadpoles turning into frogs. It is, quite simply, the most gorgeous pile of garbage I have every seen.
“The man is excessive to say the least. Although he reckons that he records only about one out of a hundred of his visions, still he is extravagant, he is outrageous; there is not a moderate bone in his body. ‘I built this park of broken pieces to try to mend a broken world,’ he says. ‘What I do talks. I figure when I’m deceased my work will be talking same as if I was here. Jesus used things that were familiar to people to get the subject over to them. God’s message is getting around.’ ”
"The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field...the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls...which of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that was lost?"
Well, I can answer Jesus' question. Which of you? None of us! Who risks ninety-nine to find one? Who sells everything to get that one pearl which might be valuable? Who sells everything to get that one field where there is a treasure which might or might not be valuable? Can you imagine what that merchant's wife had to say when he came home? Are you telling me that you sold everything - our house, the money we set aside for the kids college education, our retirement accounts - for a pearl? Have you completely lost your mind? You left the entire flock unprotected, by itself in the wilderness, so you could go look for one sheep? My mother was right about you. No one in his right mind would ever do such a thing!
And she's right! These parables break the bounds of rational behavior. A person would have to be crazy to act like that - excessive, extravagant, outrageous, beyond moderation. None of us would behave in this reckless manner. Who can do this? To which Jesus replies, "I think you are finally beginning to understand. God's message is getting around."
Because, you see, these stories are not about us. These are God's stories. God is the searching shepherd, the reckless and extravagant merchant. God is not a discrete minimalist. Abundance, even reckless abundance, is in the nature of this God. God must love Finster's Paradise Garden. And when it comes to us, to God's love for us, there is no limit, no moderation. But wait. Is that why Jesus is telling these stories? He couldn't possibly expect such reckless extravagance from us...could he?
A Fred Craddock story: "I remember sitting in a little rural church on a Sunday night. It was a summer meeting, so it was hot and the window was open beside my pew. The minister was preaching on his favorite text, 'Be not the first by whom the new is tried, because a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, and it is better to be safe than sorry, because fools rush in where angels fear to tread.' I was listening to him drone away when a man came by the church building, stopped by the window and whispered, 'Psst, psst.'
"I said, 'What is it? I'm listening to the sermon.'
"He said, 'Come with me.'
"I said, 'Where are you going?'
"He said, 'I know where there is a pearl of great price that's more valuable than all the other pearls in the world.'
"I said, 'There's no such thing.'
"He said, 'In fact, where I'm going, there's a treasure buried in a field.'
"I said, 'You're kidding!'
"He said, 'Where I'm going, bums are invited to sit at the king's table.'
"I said, 'That's ridiculous.'
"Well, I listened to the rest of the sermon and after it was over, I told the preacher about how this guy came by and disturbed me and that I hoped it didn't upset him during the sermon."
"He said, 'Who was that?'
"I said, 'I don't know. He was telling me all this fancy stuff!'
"He said, 'Well, was he getting anybody?'
"And I said, 'Well, none of our crowd went, but I noticed he had about twelve with him.' "
But what about our crowd?
In a recent Newsweek feature article, Robert J. Samuelson wrote that for America and Americans, the future just ain't what it used to be. We have always been assured that tough times will pass, economic growth will return, and that the stock market was still the place for long-term investments, such as pension funds or retirement accounts. But, Samuelson suggested, perhaps those days are gone for America. He spoke, of "Affluent deprivation," people fighting over pieces of a fairly fixed economic pie instead of sharing ever-larger pieces of an expanding pie. Economic growth has anchored our identity, our self-esteem, he said. Slower growth could lead to a grumpier America, where our material desires cannot possibly all be satisfied. I suppose that also means a never-ending series of grumpy church budget committees.
But in response to all this gloomy news, Jesus comes along and says, "So what? You've all been too afraid anyway, spending your whole lives trying to secure yourselves against your insecurities. Open your eyes. There are treasures in the fields and valuable pearls all around you. Can't you see them? Jesus reminds us that the kingdom is both coming and is already here. He reminds us that the power of God can be and is working in us if we just let ourselves be open to it. He points us to a source of generosity and abundance that really has very little to do with Wall Street, indeed it subverts the "get all you can as fast as you can" ethos of Wall Street. In the words of pastor, Christine Pohl, "The freedom that comes with knowing we are loved and sustained by God is a freedom to give generously of ourselves and our resources. Because of our confidence in God's larger purposes, followers of Jesus can take risks and remain secure and live without fear."
How easily - and this would include me - we forget that Jesus is the true bread of life and instead seek to fill ourselves on junk food. We allow ourselves to be convinced that life consists of buying and selling, weighing, measuring and trading, until it all sinks into death and nothingness. But Jesus presents us with an entirely different kind of economy, one infused with the mystery of abundance and a sacrificial kind of generosity. Even one lost sheep is precious, 5000 are fed and food is left over. Says Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann, "Jesus transforms the economy by blessing it and breaking it beyond self-interest. From broken Friday bread comes Sunday abundance. Our faith is not just about spiritual matters, it is about the transformation of the world. The closer we stay to Jesus the more we will bring a new economy of abundance to the world." And to our lives.
Yes, this is Stewardship Sunday. And perhaps I haven't said enough about our support of this church...or perhaps I have. It might be a challenging year for us financially, but we are going to continue to dream and I hope continue to grow. At our Annual Meeting alone, we are going to talk about replacing Pilgrim House and about Kristen's becoming, sometime in the late winter or early spring, an ordained minister, which certainly will impact our church program. Which is to say that, much like Howard Finisher, we are not going to quit dreaming, quit pursuing our visions, quit believing that God's message of abundance and grace is getting around. And if that message gets into our hearts, when it gets into our hearts, giving, generosity, even sacrifice, simply will not be an issue, even when the world around us tells us to be afraid and cautious. For we will hear and respond to another voice.
A final Fred Craddock story: "I recall preaching in a university church in Norman, Oklahoma, some years ago, when a young woman came up after the service. I had preached on Jesus' call of the disciples. She came up and said she wanted to talk with me. She said, "I'm in medical school here, and that sermon clinched what I've been struggling with for some time.'
" 'What's that?'
" 'Dropping out of med school.'
" 'Why would you want to do that?'
"She said she was going to go work in the Rio Grande Valley. She said, 'I believe that's what God wants me to do.' She quit school, went to the Rio Grande Valley, sleeps under a piece of tin in the back of a pickup truck, and teaches little children while their parents are out in the field. She dropped out of med school for this, and her folks back in Montana are saying, 'What in the world happened.' "
I don't know her, but I think I know what happened. I think she was walking along and came across a pearl of great price. I think that somewhere in the distance she saw a shepherd rejoicing over finding one lost sheep. God's message got around and got in. She found true abundance. And she knew what to do. And so do we.