Because Commitment Matters - Sermon Transcript

It's good to see each and every one of you.

I'm grateful for you to be here.

My name is Mitchell.

I serve as the senior minister here at First United Methodist Church of Dallas.

And if you're a guest worshiping with us for the first time, I am grateful you are here.

You chose quite the Sunday to be here.

It is Commitment Sunday, and as I've said before, there's no

 No obligation.

If you're a guest, I don't want you to feel obligated at all to fill out a commitment card.

You can fill one out, but you don't have to.

So, you know, I've done a lot of funerals.

That's sort of maybe a strange way to start Commitment Sunday sermon, but I've been in ministry...

 16 and a half years, and served at White Rock before here, and Lone Oak before that, and there was a brief stint in college where I was a to-be-supplied pastor to talk about the benefit of the connection, a very small church in Springfield, Arkansas, Springfield United Methodist Church, received me graciously as a 20-year-old with black hair and earrings,

 to work out my process theology from the pulpit.

That's essentially what I was doing.

And they loved me anyway.

And I served at Springfield for a year and a half.

And they certainly wouldn't have had a pastor had it not been for the connection.

 or what it means to be United Methodist.

And I was studying at a United Methodist college, Hendricks College, and it was a great year and a half of learning for me.

I'm not sure it was great for them, but they loved me anyway.

And in my ministry, I've done close to 200 funerals, probably.

And

 There's this sort of amazing learning that happens for us who are clergy, who get to sort of sit with families in the midst of this grief and pain.

It's a threshold experience, no doubt, the thin veil between life and death.

And that is where we can learn so much if we're paying attention.

I try to pay attention.

And what I've noticed is that

 More times than not, when I'm sitting with a family, usually around a kitchen table, sometimes in my office, somewhere in that conversation, something happens that I've sort of come to expect, and that is that somebody discovers something that they didn't know.

 A daughter might find a stack of thank you cards written from strangers to their mother, people she's never heard of.

A neighbor shows up at maybe the visitation and says, you know, your dad drove me to dialysis every Tuesday for three years.

 A son goes through the checkbook or the bills or the accounts and finds small amounts of money given month after month after month to a food pantry or a scholarship fund or a kid down the street who needed braces.

And nobody knew, not even the people who loved them most, knew the full extent of their generosity.

It's rather beautiful, actually, so much of our generosity as people is

 It's quiet.

It's unremarkable.

 Unremarkable moments of giving, small sacrificial offerings that no one notices except the recipient.

And the family just kind of sits there because for the first time, they're beginning to see the whole shape, the whole picture of their loved one's life.

The look on their faces is almost the same.

It's the love, it's the grief, and underneath both of those, there's this moment of discovery.

How did we not know?

 I think about that question a lot because I don't think it's only a funeral question.

I think it's a human question.

We're surrounded by people giving their lives away in quiet ways, and most of the time, we don't actually see it.

We're looking at other things, louder things, bigger things, things that are easier to count or see or discover.

Today is the last Sunday of our series, Why Church?

It's also Commitment Sunday, and when we come forward together and offer our pledges for the year ahead,

 I want us to start with this question around the kitchen table.

How did we miss this?

Because today's gospel story is about a life almost everyone missed, almost everyone except Jesus.

 So I invite you to rise, embody your spirit for the reading of the gospel.

We'll be in chapter 12.

I'll be reading verses 41 through 44.

Hear these words.

Jesus sat down across from the treasury and watched how the crowd was putting in their money.

Many rich people were putting in large amounts and then a poor widow came in.

 and put in two tiny copper coins worth almost nothing.

Jesus called his disciples over and said to them, truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than everyone else giving to the treasury.

They all gave out of their extra, but she, out of her poverty, she put in everything she had

 her whole life.

For the word of God in scripture, for the word of God among us, and for the word of God within us.

Thanks be to God.

You may be seated.

Will you pray with me?

May the words of my mouth, the meditations of our hearts be pleasing and acceptable to you, O God, our rock and our redeemer.

Amen.

 Help us to see the way you see.

Amen.

It's a short story in the Gospel of Mark, four verses.

You could read it in less time than it probably takes you to find it in your Bibles.

And I think it's part of the reason we rushed through it.

We also know this one, the widow's mite.

Poor widow, two coins.

 Jesus says she gave more than all the rich people, and it's a very nice story.

Let's pass the plate, give like the widow, right?

That's why it shows up on Commitment Sunday more often than not.

But I want us to slow down before we just sort of discard the story due to familiarity.

I want us to slow down and notice the very first thing that Mark tells us about the text, which is that Jesus sat down.

 sat down across from the treasury.

He's been in the temple all day, Jesus, arguing with religious leaders.

It's easy to do.

Answering trick questions, teaching in the courts.

And then he stops and he takes a seat across from the treasury where people bring their offerings.

And Jesus is simply just watching as people come in.

It's one of my favorite past times.

I say past times, people watching.

I have no time for it these days.

Airports,

 or sporting events or state fairs with children don't offer the luxury of just sitting around and people watching.

But it is really a wonderful thing to do.

I love just sitting and watching.

You start noticing things that you would normally walk right past, like, how did those two people end up together, you know?

 or you see like a really patient father that sort of breaks the stereotypes about how dads are with their kids, or you see kindness between two strangers, kindness that would never be reported on in the news, but it is an example of how our communities are far more dependent on one another than we may.

 uh actually acknowledge and so this is what jesus is doing he's people watching he's sitting across from the treasury and there's a lot to watch at the treasury it's a very busy place mark says many rich people many rich people are putting in large amounts of money it's a very busy room full of giving full of people bringing on what they have to give to the treasury and to the work of the temple and i imagine it's a room where people notice who gives what

 Sort of designed that way, actually.

The big gifts get seen.

That's usually how it works.

And then she walks in, this poor widow.

A widow, Mark uses that word twice, actually, poor widow, as if he wants us to be sure that we don't miss it.

 Because in her world, a widow was about as vulnerable as a person could be.

No legal standing, no reliable income, no protection.

So she's living on the edge of the edge.

She drops in two small coins, the smallest there were.

Together, they're worth almost nothing.

If you'd been in that room,

 You wouldn't have heard them land into the plate.

You wouldn't have looked twice.

But Jesus does.

Jesus sees this woman, calls his disciples over.

He wants them to see this.

And he says, she put in more than all of them.

They gave out of their abundance, the text says.

She gave out of her poverty.

She put in everything that she had.

 And then Mark does something rather beautiful with the language.

That last phrase, the one we usually translate as all she had to live on, literally means that she gave her whole life.

 It's an echo, actually, of verses that show up earlier in the text in the same chapter.

Someone asked Jesus what the greatest commandment is, and Jesus says, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, all your strength, whole, like all of it, whole, whole, whole, whole.

 and love your neighbor as yourself.

Everybody in that temple could recite it, and the religious leaders love to debate what that actually meant.

And then a widow sort of walks in and does it without saying a word, and no one notices.

And the only one who sees is Jesus.

This is a part of the text, though, that grips me.

I've been wrestling with all week, because in a world that doesn't invite that kind of reflection, we see Jesus do it.

 And if this story reveals a Christ who is slowing down enough to notice others, the world looks past.

The expectation then, as disciples, is that we learn to do the same thing.

To pay attention.

To observe.

To learn from God.

 What a wonderful example of grace that is.

And what a gift it is to then be seen by others.

Really seen not for what we produce, not for the size of our gift or the title on our door or how impressive our sermons are or how impressive our life looks from the outside, but wholly seen, fully seen, the whole picture being revealed.

Seen for what we've poured out when nobody knows.

 was watching.

And the truth is a lot of us are doing that right now.

I have this unique

 perspective, this unique vantage point.

It's not because I'm like uber talented or more important.

It's just I have a role that I play.

I'm the senior minister of a church.

And from this position, I get to see just from a different angle what is happening in the lives of you all.

I get to walk alongside you.

And it's one of the greatest honors of my life.

And what I realize is that so many of us are pouring ourselves out on behalf of others.

 We are.

Maybe you're caring for an aging parent and nobody at work knows you're doing that and it's stressful and it's hard, but you're committed to it.

Maybe you're holding your marriage together or holding yourself together one day at a time.

Maybe you're giving everything you have to a kid or a job or your recovery.

 or a calling, and it feels like it all could disappear rather quickly without a sound.

Two small coins and nobody hears them land.

The good news of this story is found though right here.

Jesus sits down long enough to see the whole life, and it is a life worth showing to others.

But what is so challenging about the text is that

 Mark isn't actually finished because what makes the story more powerful and perhaps more painful is what is happening right before and right after this story.

Right before Jesus sits down to do his people watching, he warns the crowd about religious leaders.

Jesus warns the crowd about religious leaders who love long robes.

Now, I am wearing a robe.

 I enjoy it, but I don't love it, okay?

And religious leaders, be weary of religious leaders who love the best seats and being greeted with respect in public.

People who say long prayers for show.

And then Jesus says, they devour the widow's house.

The religious system that should have protected this woman has been feeding on women like her.

 And right after she gives, as Jesus walks out of the temple for the last time, one of his disciples looks up and says, teacher, teacher, look at all these stones.

 Look at the buildings, and Jesus says, not one stone will be left on another.

Think about what the disciples just did.

Jesus called them over to see the most important thing in the room, this woman, sacrificially giving, faithfully giving, and on the way out, the disciples are admiring the architecture.

Before her, a system that is devouring the widow's house.

 After her, a building that will fall.

And in the middle, between these two instances of condemnation and warning, in the middle of it all is a woman who gives her whole life away.

And she knows that she cannot save herself.

She knows that she can't fix this system.

She has two coins and her faith, and she gives both of them to God.

And nobody sees it.

 Why?

Because that room sees the way the world sees.

 A treasury spends all of its time counting things.

I think that's its job.

It measures.

It adds up stuff.

It compares.

And there's a whole way of seeing the world that works exactly like a treasury.

It notices what's big.

It notices what's loud.

It admires what's impressive.

It values people by what they produce or what they're worth.

And we know this way of seeing because we live inside this way of seeing.

Every time I log in to my bank account, I'm...

 I see how much money I have in my bank account.

I'm also unfortunately reminded of my family's net worth.

I don't know when they started doing that.

But I'm constantly being reminded of how much I'm actually worth, you know, my net worth.

Every app that I open up reminds me of how many likes or followers I have.

Our kids are evaluated by academic rankings and testings very early in their education.

 The quiet assumption is that the people who matter most are the people with the most or the highest scores or the longest titles.

Our economy actually runs on this.

Much of our politics, unfortunately, runs on it too.

And if we're honest, a lot of religion, a lot of churches run on it as well.

The scribes wanted to be seen.

The disciples wanted to be impressed.

The treasury way of seeing is actually a very, very, very old way of seeing.

 In a room that sees like a treasury, the widow is invisible, and so are most of us the moment we stop being impressive.

And so on Commitment Sunday, days like today, once a year, I'm actually a bit anxious.

I shouldn't shock y'all.

I get a little anxious because I honestly, I care about the numbers.

 I do.

I kind of have to care about the numbers.

A church like ours has a budget and a staff and a building.

We have a lot of stones that we have to take care of.

And there's a part of me that can walk into a room and I do the math.

I notice who's here and who isn't.

I can see the big gift and I feel a rush of relief when it comes in and walk right past the person who gave two coins in their whole heart.

It's easy to do.

 I sit in a treasury too, and there are days when it feels like it is the most important job to do, to do treasury things.

I think many of us feel that.

Most of us in this room read this story from the seats of the people who gave out abundance, and that's just simply true.

And it's why this story has sometimes been used in harmful ways to pressure the people with the least to give the most.

I don't want to do that this morning.

 And it's very clear why.

Jesus actually never says go and do likewise.

He doesn't hold this poor widow up as like a fundraiser goal.

He simply holds her up as someone to be seen.

 And because we're a church, there's another seat that we sit in.

We aren't only the givers in this story.

We're also the community that receives what people give.

So we're giving and we're also the treasury.

The treasury is us, which raises a question.

What kind of community actually deserves a gift like hers?

 I'll be honest with you, I don't think we're there yet as a church.

I don't think any church is, actually.

But I think the question that we've been asking through this entire series is the right question for us.

Why should we, though, give?

 Because the world will always see like a treasury.

Why church?

Because we need a place, a people where our eyes get trained to see like Jesus.

We are not a perfect institution, we're not, but I believe we're striving to be a faithful one.

And I've come to realize that so much of the work ahead of us is continuing to create environments where we can learn to see one another as simply beloved,

 to cultivate belonging, to seek justice, to find purpose, to experience joy.

And it all comes back to this idea of being able to truly, truly see one another.

Like the reality of sitting at a kitchen table, the family who discovers after the funeral the whole shape of a life they loved and somehow missed.

I think the church is supposed to be the place where we don't have to wait till the funeral to see the whole shape of our life.

 where we see each other's lives as whole right now.

While there's still time to say thank you, while there's still time to say I see what you're carrying, where there's still time to say I see what you're giving and it matters.

And seeing like Jesus means seeing people we don't naturally see, people who aren't like us, the folks in the other service, the person who votes differently than you, prays differently, wants different music, sees the world through a different window.

The treasury way of seeing turns those differences though

 into a competition where we need different sides to battle it out to find a winner they aren't something to fight over though those differences they're part of what we offer one another and that's where generosity comes in because here's what i've learned about generosity it doesn't fund the i mean it does fund the church okay it does it doesn't just fund the church yes lights and

 microphones and property insurance and programs, and the occasional brass on Sunday mornings, and choir robes and facility staff.

I mean, your money does fund the church, but it doesn't just fund the church.

Generosity forms the church.

We are formed as a community through our generosity.

 Every time we give, the treasury loosens its grip.

 on our eyes a little.

When we give our money, we practice trusting that our worth isn't the number in our accounts.

When we give our time, we practice seeing people we'd otherwise walk past.

When we give one another grace across our differences, we practice being one body instead of a room full of separate totals.

We don't become a church worthy of the widow's gift and then start giving.

We become that church by giving, by practicing generosity, slowly and perfectly, but together.

 The more generous we are, the more we become people who can see.

And the most important thing is this.

We don't get there actually by trying harder because the widow isn't the end of the story.

A few days after she gives her whole life in that temple, Christ is betrayed, imprisoned, and executed.

Out of his poverty...

 Unseen by the powerful, mocked by the religious leaders, abandoned by his disciples who are admiring the stones, Christ empties himself, kenosis, gives everything he has his whole life for people who never noticed him.

For the scribes, for the disciples, for us.

That's the gospel.

 Before we ever came to know God's grace, God saw us.

Before we ever gave anything, God empties God's self.

We aren't trying to earn our way into being a worthy church.

Grace has already taken care of that.

That's the good news.

Now we're learning to live like it.

That's our work.

For four weeks, we've been asking this question, why is church important?

 Some of you have sent us emails, some of you have made, taken opportunities to talk to us in the halls, and a lot of you have written this on the board.

Someone wrote, to be with those who can voice the beliefs I can on any given day, that is an incredible statement.

To be in community with people who think differently than me,

 so you know that you're not alone, to practice loving others.

None of it is about stones.

That's why church.

Not because we figured it out, because we've been seen and we're learning to see and we're learning how to be in community.

And so in a few moments, I'm going to invite you to come forward.

 And as you come, I want you to picture that widow one more time walking up to the treasury, two coins in her hand, and nobody's watching her.

No one's paying any attention to her except one person.

 And what you bring may feel small, it may feel like a lot, and either way, I want you to know, though, you aren't actually walking up to a treasury.

Instead, you're walking with the grace of God, with the one who sits down long enough to see your whole life, who sees yours, and you're walking with a community of folks

 that are generously giving alongside of you.

And maybe the question to carry forward isn't how much, maybe it's simply this.

What would it look like to become the church that truly sees one another, truly sees one another, truly sees the way that God sees?

There is so much uncertainty in our world today, but there is one thing I know, one thing that I have come to truly believe.

We are becoming that type of community.

 Slowly, sure, sometimes far slower than I would like.

Imperfectly, yes, we are not perfect.

But God's grace is working on us.

We are being shaped and we are being formed.

And I know that we are learning new ways of seeing and new ways of being.

And I'm grateful for that.

I'm very grateful for that.

 And I'm grateful the ways your generosity helps create that space, a space for belonging, purpose, justice, and joy.

So now as we take a moment to bring our pledges forward, to make a commitment, to bring our offerings for the year ahead, I ask that God bless our commitment.

May God bless our work as a church.

 And may God bless our commitment to one another to continue working hard to truly see one another as we learn to be more and more generous, as we learn to be the church that God so desires us to be.

 In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen.

So friends, as we take this time to bring our commitments forward, I want you to know

 It's an opportunity for you to make a commitment to our budget next year, but it's also an opportunity to be in prayer for our church and for our denomination.

And so I invite you to bring your commitment cards forward.

We have wonderful baskets held by our youth, and they would love to receive your commitment, but you can also spend some time at the altar rail

 in prayer for our church, and I hope that over the next few minutes, God will continue to show us what it means to live faithfully, and may God bless the commitments we're about to make together.