Sermons

Philippians 2:1-11

Luke 16:19-31

I know that this story is on my mind today because I am a rich man who has recently been among the poor. I returned last night from an eight day trip to El Salvador and Nicaragua with 11 other pastors of our Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). One of our hosts referred to Central America as "the patio of the United States." So, if I might borrow from the story line of this scripture, what I did this week was to leave the house by way of the south gate where I saw with my own eyes, there on our nation's patio, Lazarus. Lazarus who, according to Jesus, "longs to satisfy his hunger with what falls from the rich man's table." What I'm saying is that as a rich man who has been beyond the gate, out on the south patio, among the poor, this story has demanded my careful attention.

What I've been wondering, among other things, is why this rich man in Jesus' story did not reach out to the poor man at his gate. It's too bad that no name is given to this rich man, because if we knew who he is we could ask him why he didn't reach out to the poor man. Maybe you know who this particular rich person is, but I sure don't. No name is given. All I know is that he didn't reach out to someone in need, and I'm wondering why.

It's all conjecture, of course, but maybe he didn't reach out because he just didn't care. Some folks don't, you know. He might have thought that Lazarus' being poor was a sign of laziness or lack of initiative or something like that. Whatever the reason, it was his own doing, so don't come ringing my bell for a hand-out. Get a job! Maybe he just didn't care.

Or maybe he did care, but it's just that his caring was directed to meeting needs other than Lazarus' particular needs. Right? I mean, what with all the problems in this world, you can only do so much. You can't help everybody. And you know as well as I do that when you give to one do-good organization these days, they turn around and sell their mailing list (with your name on it) to a hundred and seventy-five other do-good

organizations, and soon your mailbox is filled with appeals for helping every needy Tom, Dick, and Lazarus from Columbus to Calcutta, and you just can't respond to everybody.

I don't know, I suppose we could speculate all day long as to why that rich man didn't respond to that poor man at his gate. Who knows?

But what if . . . what if he didn't reach out because he didn't even notice Lazarus was there? Didn't even see him. You know, it's possible. I mean, some of the gates people live behind are so tall that it would be possible for a poor man to sit on the other side and the folks on the inside not even notice he's there. Why, by and large the neighborhoods we live in, the places where we shop and play and work are so well insulated that you can live, shop, work and play there and never see a poor person. Let me ask you: If you look out from the window above your kitchen sink, would you be able to see a poor person? From where you sit in your office, can you see the poor? I sure can't. While walking through your neighborhood, would you likely come across Lazarus? I'm just saying that it is entirely possible that this rich man didn't even notice that Lazarus, a poor man, was right there on his doorstep, at his gate, on the patio. And hey, how can we criticize him for not reaching out to others in need if he didn't even see the poor man in the first place? And as my friend Johnny Wray, Director of our Disciples Week of Compassion, once said, "Before we can show compassion, before we can do justice, before we can engage in the simplest deeds of mercy and kindness, first we must notice." And what if he never noticed?

And while we're on the topic of noticing, my friend goes on to ask, "Have you noticed how much of Jesus' ministry was precipitated by his noticing what others miss?"

In a crowded temple (as the deacons are passing the offering plates), Jesus notices a woman, a widow, drop in a single coin. He gets his disciples' attention. "Did you see that?" he said. "She gave all she had, her whole life." They evidently missed it, but he noticed.

He's in a crowd, people jostling each other, busily on their way when Jesus stops and asks, "Whoa. Whoa. Did somebody touch me?" A woman who had been hemorrhaging for twelve years admits it was she.

Ashamed, a cast-off from society, she was trying to be unobtrusive, and she was to everybody
else, but Jesus noticed her. Responded to her. Healed her.

Children trying to draw near to him, the adults paying them no mind, even shooing them away,
and Jesus noticed: "Don't hinder the children from coming unto me."

Jesus noticed everything, everyone. Read the scriptures and see from yourself. Particularly the
poor, the suffering, and the excluded: women, men, children. Whereas others were oblivious to
them, Jesus noticed and reached out to those in need.

What he did, if I might paraphrase Paul's words in Philippians, was to come down out of his gated
community. What gated community are you talking about, David? Heaven. You know: the

Pearly Gates. Up there. With God. Away from earth's misery. "But Jesus," Paul says, "counted
equality with God a thing not to be grasped (He chose not to live in a gated community), but
instead he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, even unto death on a cross." It has been
pointed out more than once that the direction of our Lord's outreach - from heaven to earth come
down - might be called downward mobility. "He was rich," say the scriptures, "but for our sakes
became poor." I'm saying that far from the disciples and others who tagged along with Jesus and
watched but didn't notice, God so loved the world that noticing its need, God reached out and
sent God's only begotten Son. This is all to say that Jesus came down out of his place of privilege
and pleasure, noticed people in need, and reached out to them.

One thing my trip to Central America taught me is that reaching out begins with first simply
noticing, but that noticing requires our coming down out of our places of privilege and pleasure
so as to actually see and meet Lazarus. Greg and Dawn Nottingham, our missionaries in El
Salvador, are doing incredible ministry among the poorest of the poor. (Among other things,
Greg ministers to families who live in the city's garbage dump, scavenging for things to sell,
recycle, and eat). During a tour of that city, built on the sides of a mountain, with the old town
center at the base of the mountainside and houses built up the mountainside around it, Greg and
Dawn told us of a particular street about two miles or so up from the city center which locals,
particularly American nationals, refer to as the DMZ - the demilitarized zone - so named, because
few of the folks living above the street ever venture below it, thereby keeping themselves safely
secluded from and oblivious to the plight of the poor down below.

Rev. David A. Shirey
Southport Christian Church
(Disciples of Christ)
Indianapolis, Indiana

Deuteronomy 10:12-22

I doubt that you expect a Week of Compassion sermon to begin with a reference to circumcision. I would usually begin by recalling the touching stories in the Minutes for Mission that the Outreach Committee has brought us these past weeks. Or with the posters that are in the hallway. Who can forget the pictures of people who evoke compassion from us?

But as I was exploring our text from Deuteronomy in preparation for preaching for Week of Compassion, the reference to circumcision caught my attention. "Circumcise, then, the foreskin of your heart, and do not be stubborn any longer." (Deuteronomy 10:16)

Long before Deuteronomy, God gave circumcision as a sign of God's covenant with Abraham and Sarah and their descendants (Genesis 17:9-14; cf. Exodus 12:48; Joshua 5:2-12). Today, many of us regret that the tradition preserved a sign that was available only to males; we wish that the symbol could be equally accessible for women and men. However, I suspect that in ancient Israel, the presence of circumcised people in the community functioned as a sign for both women and men.

Circumcision was a bodily sign of identity. It was a reminder that Jewish people belong in a covenant with God. And with one another. A covenant is a relationship of promise. God promises to be our God and to love us with everlasting love. "Although the heaven of heavens belongs . . . to God, the earth and all that is in it, yet [God] set [God's] heart in love on your ancestors alone and chose you, the descendants after them, out of all the peoples, as it is today (Deuteronomy 10:14-15)."

In turn, we promise to be God's people, and that includes doing what God wants. "So now, O Israel, what does . . . God require of you? Only to fear . . . God, to walk in all [God's] ways, to serve [God] with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of [God] . . ." (Deuteronomy 10:12-13). The commandments and laws of the First Testament are designed to help the people of Israel know how to live in response to the covenant. The laws are not means to earn God's favor; they are instructions in how to put God's promises and love into everyday practice. Circumcision was a symbol that would remind people of the importance of following the law.

That seemed the perfect point of entry into a Week of Compassion sermon. Of course, the covenant intended to assure the people of God's love for them. Even more, the covenant aimed to create a community in which everyone had access to the material necessities of life and in which each and all could live in peace. The social laws of Israel were designed to translate this desire into practical effects.

God "executes justice for the orphan, and the widow, and . . . loves the stranger, providing them with food and clothing" (Deuteronomy 10:18). These are needy people in their own right. And in the Biblical world, they represented those whose existence is most precarious. They are on the margins of survival.

Now, this sounds great. God provides them with food and clothing. But how? The people of the community provide for the needy by obeying God's laws. Listen to this colorful and practical description of how the people become agents of divine justice.

When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be left for the alien, the orphan, and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all your undertakings. When you beat your olive trees, do not strip

what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan, and the widow.

When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, do not glean what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan, and the widow. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt; therefore, I am commanding you to do this (Deuteronomy 24:19-22).

The people who own and work the land can take as much as they need for their own survival. But they are to leave some in the field for those who have no fields from which to harvest.

Now, today we know that we need to do more than leave our leftover sheaves in the field and some olives and grapes on the tree and vine. We need to join in solidarity with the poor (and with others) to create a social world in which people are less likely to get pushed to the margins. In today's technical language, we need systemic change. But in the meantime, we can appreciate the point of this commandment: you say yes to the covenant and its designs for life by working with the poor, the threatened, the hungry.

When we give to the Week of Compassion, we do just that. We provide practical help for the disadvantaged, the poor, the hungry. And we say "yes" to the covenant. Giving to the Week of Compassion is a way whereby we leave our sheaves in the field, our olives on the tree, our grapes on the vine.

In addition, there is another twist to circumcision that struck me with fresh force in connection with the Week of Compassion. Circumcision is a reminder. Yes, the text is clear, "You shall also love the stranger." And it goes on, "for you were strangers in the land of Egypt" (Deuteronomy 10:19; my emphasis). Now, the truth is, Deuteronomy was written several hundred years after Israel was delivered from bondage in Egypt. But the Deuteronomic theologians speak as if God has delivered the people of Israel who were alive at the time Deuteronomy was written. In those days, when you remembered a past event, you experienced its power as if you were present in the event itself.

I hesitate to say what I am about to say. Our modern culture leads us to be self-absorbed. From our earliest moments in life we are taught that we

should look out for our own feelings and interests first. But there is also some truth in what I am about to say.

When we give to the Week of Compassion in a Deuteronomic spirit, something positive can happen for us. We can be reminded of how much God has done, and continues to do, and will do in the future. For us. Dare I say it? Our gifts take on a sacramental quality. They help us remember God's love for us. We were strangers in the land of Egypt. And when we give to the Week of Compassion, our offerings can help us remember how God delivers us. The money we put in those dollar-bill size envelopes gives God an opportunity to help us experience afresh God's presence, and God's promises, and God's liberating power.

Our contributions to the Week of Compassion can function a bit like circumcision: they remind us of who we are, and what we are to do, and what God does for us. Now, this connection is especially vivid, given the way in which Deuteronomy speaks about circumcision. "Circumcise, then, the foreskin of your heart . . ." (Deuteronomy 10:16). In the Bible, the heart is the seat of understanding. To us, the heart is a symbol of feeling. This is included in biblical thinking about the heart. But to the people of the Bible the heart is much more fulsome. It includes the full range of human understanding. Intellectual power. Reasoning. Intuition. Feeling. They all come together in depth of understanding in the heart.

To circumcise the foreskin of your heart is to understand the covenant in the depths of your being. It is to remember that God has delivered us. It is to place your gift in the offering tray and to remember how much God loves you and how much God does for you.

And, to circumcise the foreskin of our hearts is to realize that you and I are one with those for whom the Week of Compassion offering is intended. To be Deuteronomic, we need to be more than donors. We need to understand ourselves to be in a relationship of covenant with the people we heard about in the Minutes for Mission. Our hands are joined to the hands of the people on the posters. Can you feel them? Can you feel those hands? They are the hands of your child, your grandchild, your niece, your nephew, your

neighborhood friends. We are together in solidarity and community by virtue of God's love for us both.

We who live in the developed world are further from captivity in Egypt than those who live in the two-thirds world. We have more material stuff. We live far less anxiously. We do not normally fear our survival from day to day. But when we circumcise the foreskin of our hearts, we can feel at least something of what it is like to be in the situation of the poster child. We can do what God wants us to do, not because we must obey an external law, but because we feel the love that God shows us, and we want to respond as fully as we can with our own love for those with whom God has joined us in community.

And then a peculiar but wonderful thing happens. Something about which we do not often think. But something that is very important: our gifts bring joy to God. They do not provoke God to love us any more than God already does. Indeed, God already loves you unconditionally and without reserve or end. You are already wrapped in infinite love. But what we do (and what we do not do) makes a difference to God. You can quicken God's heart by circumcising your own heart and laying your gift on the Lord's Table with hands that are powered by the depths of your knowledge of God, and your neighbor, and God's love for you.

A mother works with her children to help them feel loved, to help them learn to read and to do their math, to help with the household, to help one another. She feels love in her own heart for them. But she's not always sure how they feel about her or what they feel for one another or what they are learning. One day she's in a second story bedroom, changing the bed, when she hears a chilling cry from the back yard. She runs across the hall and pulls up a shade. The youngest child has fallen out of the climbing tree. Her heart all but stops as she remembers what it is like to lose your grip on the limb, and the panic of being out of control and afraid in the split seconds that it takes to drop from the tree to the ground. And the dull thud as your body hits the ground; the empty feeling before the pain comes into focus.

But before she can turn to the stairs, an older child has clambered over the fence and run to the

youngest. The older child kneels, and lifts up the younger, and gives the younger a long hug and a lot of kisses. And the old one uses the corner of a dusty tee shirt to wipe the tears. And can that be . . . the sound of singing? Do you remember that? Being small and afraid and crying. And being embraced in the arms of love?

After a few minutes, the two children are up. The older child looks up at the mother, and gives her thumbs up. And the mother's heart fills. Her own compassion has found compassion in the heart of another.

That's the way it is with God, too. And that may be the most important reason of all to give to the Week of Compassion.

Genesis 47:13-19

Luke 24:13-32

Would you join me on a journey this Sunday morning? We're going to the village of El Limon in the mountains of Honduras. When we get there we'll be met by the representatives of 12 families who are project partners with Heifer Project International, and they will want to share with us the story of their Heifer herd of eight cows and how it has grown in three years to a herd of 23. Who knows what else we may learn from these campesinos, these poor people of the Honduran land, some of whom have been jailed for working the land and resisting the muscle of large land owners?

But first, we have to get there. We're part of a group of 12 gringos, all from the United States, who have come to Honduras for a Heifer Project Board Meeting and visits to Heifer project sites. I'm in that group representing our Disciples Week of Compassion, which provides money for Heifer development programs to avoid a duplication of effort.

We climb into two four wheel drive trucks, leaving the paved roads of Trinidad, for the gravel road leading us into the mountains. First there's a toll bridge of log planks to go over, a bridge that most people use for walking but our driver assures us will carry our truck safely over the rain swollen river. Then it's about 30 minutes up the rutted road past homes and small villages with scrawny dogs and hungry looking children eyeing us as we pass. Then there's a sharp turn of the rutted toad onto a rutted path down the mountain side, and eventually even that pathway ends at the stables of a large land owner. We park our trucks and take off for what we think is a 30 minute walk. And for 30 minutes we walk through a cow pasture on the mountain side, glimpsing cloud covered mountains in the distance and the swollen river far below. Then we start scrambling down a creek bed, those of us going first making it a muddy mess for those who will follow.

After about 45 minutes we have clawed and slipped our way down the hillside, finding ourselves at the village of El Limon, where a child comes to tell us that the villagers want us to join them in the field where their cattle come to water. Off we trudge, for another 45 minutes, through a dry and dusty cornfield, down a ravine, across a creek and up a ravine. Village children have come out to encourage us, assuring us with hand gestures that it's not far.

What a welcome site is the roofed and floored area where we are met by 12 men representing the El Limon project, along with as many children. We are exhausted and gratefully take our seats on log benches, with the cows coming over to sniff us, so that we have to push them away.

There is that usual awkward time when strangers meet as we look each other over, making conversation with the children. Then it becomes apparent that our hosts are preparing to feed us, as they take gourd bowls out of saddlebags and spoons out of shirt pockets. Soon the one adult woman in the group is spooning up a tantalizing concoction of steamed rice and milk, flavored with the homegrown sugar cane and spiced with cinnamon that someone has made an effort to purchase. I watch our translator begin to eat his bowl of rice, uncertain that we should eat this food, yet aware that not to eat it is to insult our

to be unobtrusive, and she was to everybody else, but Jesus noticed her. Responded to her. Healed her.

hosts. But the wonderful aroma of the dish wins out and finally, aware of how exhausted and hungry I am, I gratefully eat.

A little boy of about four sits next to me, eyeing my food with interest. I pass the half full bowl to him, and he drinks it down hungrily. Perhaps that is when I begin to realize what these people have done. Like any proper host they have served their guests first. But we are wealthy guests, and our hosts are people whose very subsistence is precarious. They have served us not only out of courtesy but out of a generosity that means there will be less milk that day for the rest of the village. As we gringos return our bowls and spoons, they are washed and refilled and the children are fed, then the bowls washed and refilled again and the men are fed. And I sit there stunned, realizing that I have just been served communion. If communion for us represents the broken body of Jesus Christ and his blood poured out for us, then certainly in the hospitality of this poverty stricken village I have experienced a portion of that kind of sacrificial giving. I feel like I have had my own journey to Emmaus, amazed and awed like Cleopas and his companion to find myself in the presence of Christ.

After our common meal, our campesino hosts ask us to join them in a reading of the word. As this village is too poor and isolated to have a priest visit but several times a year, in El Limon there is a Delegate of the Word, a man responsible for reading the scripture and leading the people in studying it. The scripture that day is the reading from Genesis you heard earlier, and we listen to it read in Spanish while our translator tells us the English words. At the end of the reading the Delegate asks, "What do you have to say about this scripture?" Now comes a scene right out of a lot of church school classes I've sat throughnobody says anything! We just sort of hem and haw and look around at each other. I'm sitting there thinking: Well, it tells the story of Joseph's leadership during the famine. What else can you make out of it? Finally, the Delegate says, "Well, let's take the scripture verse by verse," and I know full well we're going to be there for a long time. And a long time it is, at least another hour and a half, verse by verse. But I will never look at scripture the same way again.

For our campesino hosts, this was not a Bible story about Joseph's leadership, but a story symbolic of their own lives. They too had lived through times of famine, they had known what it was like to have their parents and grandparents work like slaves for the large land owner. And then one wonderful day they had an opportunity to receive cows through the Heifer Project, making the one promise that Heifer Project participants make, that within a certain period of time they would "pass on the gift," giving to another Heifer Project family a female offspring from each cow.

But when they received the cows, the adjacent wealthy landowner strongly encouraged them to sell him all the milk. What a temptation, to have money in their pockets from the cows. They deliberated about the offering, finally deciding that they would refuse, for to accept the offer would mean they would have to use the earned money to buy back milk for their own children. Angry at their refusal, the landowner has stubbornly refused to allow them access to the river for water for their cows and routinely makes bullying efforts to buy them out.

As they read that scripture from Genesis, they identified with the poverty stricken people who eventually sold themselves as slaves in order to survive. Their understanding of God's word that day was that they should never again put themselves in a position of owing the land owner anything: not their children's milk, not the meat from the cows, not their hope for sustainable living.

As we said our good-byes and prepared to walk back through the cornfield and up the mountainside in the heat of the day, I wondered how I would find these people a year from now, even five years from now. On our way back down the mountain road we once again passed mangy dogs and hungry looking children. And then it hit me: The children of El Limon were not hungry, their eyes were not listless, their bodies were lean but firm, the bodies of children whose parents faced insult and persecution in order to assure them of better health and a better chance at life.

I left Honduras so grateful for our Disciples Week of Compassion that sees its mission not only to help refugees and people in crisis from

natural disasters, but also works with ecumenical programs like Heifer to establish small development programs that bring hope and renewed life to villages like El Limon.

Coming back to the United States I found myself grateful for all those things we take for granted: good roads, clean water, a relatively decent government, pollution control and contraception. But far beyond the creature comforts, I am grateful for our faitha faith that reaches out to brothers and sisters whom we may never see, yet whom we are bound with through the love of Jesus Christ. And I am grateful for the road to Emmaus scripture and what that says about our faith: that Christ is always being revealed to us regardless of how much our personal or community stress blinds us to his presence. It is when we break bread, the bread of the communion wafer, the bread of the family dinner table, the bread of the steamed rice of 12 gringos and their campesino hosts, that sometimes we stop long enough to remember this: that God calls us all to the same table, to break bread with people like and unlike ourselves and that God loves us all beyond compare.

I don't believe we need to travel abroad to be reminded of God and the timeliness of God's word, although the road to El Limon will always serve as a distinctive reminder of God's presence. I do believe we can travel the roads of this state and this community and be open to the same humbling experience. It simply means placing ourselves in situations where we are dependent upon the hospitality of people unlike us and listening to how they listen to God's word. It means temporarily leaving the comfort of our daily lives. That can be as simple as working on a Habitat for Humanity project or doing tutoring in a local school. Or it may be more complicated, such as determining that sometimes our lifestyle may blind us to opportunities for God's grace and mercy.

Where will your next journey to Emmaus take you? Will it be a side road somewhere near this community? Will it be a friendship with someone of a different background in race, or class or education? Will it be a chance encounter in the grocery store, where you begin to listen to the Hispanic mother as she shops for food for her

family? Will it be in a classroom setting with someone of a different race?

Wherever you find your next road to Emmaus leads you, may Christ's presence be joyfully received by you.

Exodus 22:21-27

1 Corinthians 15:51 - 16:4

Matthew 15:29-39

It's silly of me, I know, but almost every weeksometimes more than once in a weekI have the feeling that I have offended Don Kerr.

Don and I, as you may know, like to get together occasionally to play tennis. During the summer we play in Rockford Park, where we can use the courts free of charge, but in the winter we play indoors, and then we have to pay for the use of the court. At least I do. Since Don is a member of the club where we play, his membership fee covers his use of the courts. But as a guest I have to pay each time we play. So after every match I get my billfold, take out some bills, and right thereright out in the open!I hand Don the cash. And every time I do that I have the feeling that I've done something rude, even a little bit coarse.

Now it's all in my head, I know. When I told Don how I felt about it, he said it didn't bother him a bit; I could hand him money any time I wanted to!

You see, my problem goes back more than thirty years to an experience I had when I was living in Germany. A friend and I were buying groceries one day for a church picnic. And when we went through the checkout line, I reached in my pocket, pulled out my billfold, took out enough cash to cover my share of the purchases, and tried to hand it to her.

Children trying to draw near to him, the adults paying them no mind, even shooing them away, and Jesus noticed: "Don't hinder the children from coming unto me."

Jesus noticed everything, everyone. Read the scriptures and see for yourself. Particularly the poor, the suffering, and the excluded: women, men, children. Whereas others were oblivious to them, Jesus noticed and reached out to those in need.

What he did, if I might paraphrase Paul's words in Philippians, was to come down out of his gated community. What gated community are you talking about, David? Heaven. You know: the Pearly Gates. Up there. With God. Away from earth's misery. "But Jesus," Paul says, "counted equality with God a thing not to be grasped (He chose not to live in a gated community), but instead he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, even unto death on a cross." It has been pointed out more than once that the direction of our Lord's outreachfrom heaven to earth come downmight be called downward mobility. "He was rich," say the scriptures, "but for our sakes became poor." I'm saying that far from the disciples and others who tagged along with Jesus and watched but didn't notice, God so loved the world that noticing its need, God reached out and sent God's only begotten Son. This is all to say that Jesus came down out of his place of privilege and pleasure, noticed people in need, and reached out to them.

One thing my trip to Central America taught me is that reaching out begins with first simply noticing, but that noticing requires our coming down out of our places of privilege and pleasure so as to actually see and meet Lazarus. Greg and Dawn Nottingham, our missionaries in El Salvador, are doing incredible ministry among the poorest of the poor. (Among other things, Greg ministers to families who live in the city's garbage dump, scavenging for things to sell, recycle, and eat). During a tour of that city, built on the sides of a mountain, with the old town center at the base of the mountainside and houses built up the

I could tell from the look on her face that she was very uncomfortable. She told me to put the money away, that she would pay for everything now, and that we would talk about it later.

And when we talked about it later, she told me that in Germany in polite society for a person to hand cash to a friend that way in public was considered very crudeespecially if they are of different genders.

It was a lesson that I did not forget.

It was also a lesson that was reinforced for me years later when I lived in Japan. I very quickly learned there (fortunately without making another blunder) that the Japanese exchange money in public even more reluctantly than do the Germans. In fact, except for paying a clerk in a store, in Japan when you give another person money you always put it in an envelope. And you don't just stick it out there with one hand, you offer it politely with two hands.

That attitude toward money, I was told, is why the Japanese handle their household finances the way they do. You see, traditionally in Japan the husband brings his salary home and gives it to his wifeall of it. She then gives him an allowance for his personal spending money and keeps the rest to run the household.

Now before you wives jump to the conclusion that that would be a good system to have here, let me share with you the rest of the explanation. That custom, I was told, goes back to the old samurai ethic. The samurai-warrior was a noble figure. He had dignity. Morally and spiritually he was a superior person. As such he could not be bothered with such an unclean and degrading thing as money. And since worrying about financial matters was beneath his dignity, he let his wife take care of them.

Did you ever notice how the Week of Compassion always seems to overlap with the beginning of Lent? Every year that I can rememberin this church at leastsome or all of the Week of Compassion is in the season of Lent, and this year Ash Wednesday falls right in the middle of the Week of Compassion. Isn't that just a little bit crude, letting the physical and the spiritual overlap like thatletting talk about money intrude into our reverential penance that way?

Some churches avoid the problem by moving the Week of Compassion up a week. They received this special disaster relief offering last Sunday and today so it would not intrude on the more spiritual activities of Lent. But we've never done that. When the calendar says that it's time for the Week of Compassion offering, we take up our Week of Compassion offering.

This Wednesday evening we will meet here at the church for an Ash Wednesday service of penance. While the Worship Committee has not yet planned the details of the service, I can tell you that we will be very solemn. Very penitential. Very spiritual. And, of course, we will not talk about money. We will be here to take care of our spiritual and emotional needs.

Then next Sunday, the first Sunday in Lent, we will begin our spiritual discipline for the day with scripture and prayer at 9:30. And in our 11:00 o'clock worship hour we will focus again on repentance. Again we will be spiritual.

Except for those irritating announcements at the beginning of the service. And except for that envelope tucked away inside your worship bulletin. That envelope. It's so irritating. You open your bulletin and it falls out on the floor.

How crude! How offensive! Mixing the spiritual and the material that way. How can we focus on our own spiritual disciplines when someone is talking to us about disaster reliefabout floods and tornadoesabout houses and church buildings destroyedabout refugees who don't even talk and look and act like we do?

How can we listen quietly for God to speak to us when people are clamoring for thingsthings that our money can provide for them? How can we block out the noise so that we can hear God?

It's all so rude, so discomforting, so . . . well, so biblical.

I wonder if the epistle lesson that John read for us this morning grated on your sensitivities as much as it did on mine. The fifteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians is one of the most powerful chapters in the entire New Testament. In it Paul explores the issues of death and resurrection: your resurrection, my resurrection.

Toward the end of the chapter, almost as if normal words fail him, he breaks into poetry:

"Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? . . . Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."

And then, without missing a beat, he says: "Now, then, about your Week of Compassion offering."

Isn't that jarring? Talk about harmonic dissonance! You would think that if Paul had to talk about money, he would at least have done it somewhere else. He would have wrapped the money question in a nice envelope made of delicate Japanese rice paper to soften the harshness.

But he doesn't. Instead, he takes the money question out of the envelope and flaunts it. Right there in public, and at the climax of the letterat the spiritual high pointhe promotes the Week of Compassion offering.

Paul, of course, does not actually use the expression "Week of Compassion"that's our term. He calls it the collection for the saints in Jerusalem. But when you read his correspondence you discover that this collection that he promoted in all of his churches bears an uncanny resemblance to our Week of Compassion offering.

You see, those saints in Jerusalem were not saints in our modern sense of the term. They were common, ordinary members of the Jewish-Christian community in Jerusalem. And many of them were in need of disaster reliefso many of them that the Jerusalem church could not meet all their needs.

And so Paul went around to the churches that he had established out on the mission fieldyoung churches, churches with their own share of disadvantaged people, predominantly Gentile, urban churchesand he said to them: "Now here is a chance for us to show our solidarity with our Jewish brothers and sisters in Jerusalem. I want each of you to set aside some money each week for those saints in Jerusalem." And his words carried a special power, because he was asking for the money not to support himself or the programs of the local church but to express God's compassion for suffering people in another culture.

Earlier we heard Becky read for us an Old Testament word about that compassion. And, interestingly, it was a word buried in the laws of

Exodus. Pedantic laws. Laws dealing with the harsh realities of life for the underclass and for people who have fallen on hard times.

We heard her read: Be especially sensitive to the needs of three groups of vulnerable persons: resident aliens, widows, and orphans. And we heard her read: Be sure to help the poor who have fallen on hard times. When you lend money to them, don't charge interest. And don't make them give you the shirt off their back as collateral. Because, God says, when your neighbor cries out to me, I will hear it, for I am compassionate. In the Old Testament, you see, disaster relief is an expression of God's compassion.

In our gospel lesson this morning we have heard that there were thousands of people in the crowd that day when Jesus fed them. And for almost two thousands years people have tried to find a hidden, spiritual message in the story of the feeding of the multitudes. They claim that it is a symbolic description of our communion service. They say that Jesus gives people the spiritual bread of life. And to a degree they may be right.

But the story itself is more simple than that. Jesus says simply: The people have been with me for three days. They're hungry. And I refuse to send them away hungry, because I have compassion for them.

From the laws of the Old Testament and from the gospel story, like antiphonal music, we hear the sounds of God's compassion for us.

And it is God's compassion for us that makes it possible for us to be compassionate toward our neighbor. The gospel word is not a word that coerces; it is a word that empowers. It does not say: You must help other people, or else. It says: You are able to help other peopleyou are set free from your self-centered greedbecause God has been compassionate toward you.

That is why Paul without any hint of embarrassment says to the people in the churches: Remember your Week of Compassion offering. In fact, put aside some money regularly for it, because that is a spiritual discipline. It is every bit as important for your health and for the health of the church as are the other spiritual disciplines of prayer, of fasting, of penance.

Earlier we asked the question: How can we

hear God in the midst of the noise of the world? In the coming weeks of Lent, when we are listening for signs of God's presence, how can we block out the cries of the poor, the dispossessed, the refugees so that we can hear God speak to us?

And it turns out that the answer is: When you block out the cry of the suffering, you cannot hear God. We will hear the voice of Godif we hear it at allnot in spite of the noise of human suffering; we will hear it in the voices of the people whose needs are so obvious that we cannot ignore them

And that is why it is important for us, right in the middle of the Week of Compassion, to begin our season of Lent with a penitential Ash Wednesday act of worship.

For what, do you think, will we be doing

penance anyway? For forgetting to say our bedtime prayers last week?

I think not! At least I hope not.

We will be gathering to do penance for our unhealthy attitude and our unhealthy behavior toward ourselves and the world around usincluding the money in our billfold. Including the neighbor whose cries we would rather not hear.

And then next Sunday we will, once again, practice the spiritual discipline of receiving a Week of Compassion offering.

But, in case you are still a bit sensitive about the practice, we will let you use an envelope.