Have you ever
noticed how many people and places are selling fear? Politicians sell fear of
the future; of a world of scarcity and terror where we’ll have to fight for
everything we need to stay alive. Doctors sell fear of illness, disability, and
death, making us think if only we do all the right things we can cheat death.
Funeral homes sell us embalming and liners to protect our caskets in case we’re
afraid our God cannot handle resurrection without our help. Some churches sell
fear of hell and damnation. Banks and Brokers sell fear by telling us if we
accumulate enough and save enough, we will finally have enough. Retail stores and advertising tell us if we will buy
and own just the right stuff we will finally be happy. Yet, as a Connecticut
woman wrote in the 1940s, “Happiness is not upholstered in velvet, nor lighted
by the push of a button.”[1]
Yet everyone, it seems, is trying to tell us just what treasure is and how we
should accumulate it.
I believe our
world began to get fearful when we started changing the language we use to
describe things. We used to talk about death and people being killed in a war.
Now we call it “collateral damage.” We used to have people who worked for a living. Now instead of people we have
resources and assets. We used to hear bosses and business owners talk about
great people and wonderful employees. Do you know what you hear now? You hear,
“Our greatest asset is our employees.” “Our employees are our best resources.”
Do you have any idea what we do with
resources and assets? Join me for a moment in thinking about what we do with
assets in this country. We trade assets, we leverage assets, we spend our
assets, we use our assets, we sell our assets; we do all kinds of things to our
assets that have hardly anything to do with how we treat one another. I don’t
know how you want to be treated, but I sure don’t want to be leveraged or
traded, or sold, or used. I don’t want to be dehumanized and treated like a
resource or an asset.[2]
I want to be treated like a human being with thoughts and ideas and feelings.
The Dalai Lama
once remarked, “People were created to be loved. Things were created to be
used. The reason why the world is in chaos is because things are being loved
and people are being used.”
Suppose just
for a moment in this morning’s Gospel reading that in addition to money and how
we use that, Jesus uses money as a way of getting at how we treat one another. Those
purses that will last might well be our relationships with others. And suppose
for a moment we treated one another like treasures instead of assets.
Can you think
of a time when you were treasured? Do you remember what that was like? Have you
treasured someone? Do you treasure someone right now? How do you treat a
treasure? Do you love them, cherish them, speak kindly to them, and nurture
their thoughts and ideas and feelings? Does that sound like something that will
last?
Churches that
treat people like assets or resources are churches on a downward path. Inviting
someone to join a church because you need more people to contribute money for
your budget is a downward path. Would you want to join a place if the
invitation was “We need you to join us in our debt?” Attractive proposition,
isn’t it?
Imagine instead
a church that invited people to join them because the people already there
talked about God and their relationships with God and one another. Imagine a
church had such great worship people couldn’t wait to get there on Sunday
mornings. Imagine a church that was so friendly to everyone who came in the
door, no matter who they were or how they looked or what they said. Imagine a
church where people knew from the minute they walked in that they had to come
back. Do you think that church would treat people like the treasures they truly
are? Do you think you would want to
be at that church?
“People were created to be loved. Things were
created to be used. The reason why the world is in chaos is because things are
being loved and people are being used.”[3]
Who do you know who needs to be loved and treated like treasure? What is one
thing you could do to treasure the person? For where your treasure is, there
your heart will be also.
The Rev Nicolette
Papanek
©2016
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