Monday 1 April 2019

Sermon 7th April 2019 - 5th Sunday in Lent – Text John 12:1-8 – Feeding the poor


Sermon 7th April 2019
Text: John 12:1-8 – Feeding the poor

Something that really struck me when l listened to the presentation by Vicki Gollasch from ALWS last week was her question – what if today you only had what you thanked God for yesterday.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure I would have a lot today.
To remind myself of what I should be thankful for I went back to Luther’s explanation of the Apostles’ Creed first article.
Let me read that:
I believe that God has made me and all creatures; that He has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members, my reason and all my senses, and still takes care of them. He also gives me clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, wife and children, land, animals, and all I have. He richly and daily provides me with all that I need to support this body and life. He defends me against all danger and guards and protects me from all evil. All this He does only out of fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, even though I do not deserve it. For all this it is my duty to thank and praise, serve and obey Him. This is most certainly true.
I think I would be quite bare and lonely today if I only had what I thanked him for yesterday.
In our gospel reading today we have an interesting exchange between Jesus, Mary and Judas.
Mary has an expensive bottle of perfume – John says it was worth a year’s salary.
Would you be surprised to know that the latest average annual salary in Australia is $82,436 a year.
That’s one expensive bottle of perfume.
Judas was furious at the waste saying it could have been used to feed the poor.
We know from John’s commentary on the text that Judas’ had ulterior motives.
But the interchange in this morning’s gospel comes down to thankfulness.
Mary was thankful for all that Jesus had done for her – raising her brother Lazarus from the dead in particular, and so her response was to use what she valued to show her thanks.
She didn’t care about the cost.
Yes it could have fed the poor but once the money was gone it was gone.
As the old saying goes – you can only sell the farm once.
But what Mary did was put her treasure where her heart was which would provide a lot more for the poor in years to come when the money would be gone.
It’s like the story Jesus told about the widow who put in 2 small copper coins into the treasury which Jesus said was of greater value than the thousands that the rich people had put in because God could use her heart more than he could use the dollars.
I think what we can get from this interchange is that sometimes we are so worried about the future and what is going to happen that we fail to recognise the present and what God is doing.
That’s why Jesus said to Judas to leave Mary alone.
You’ll always have the poor and opportunity to look after them – but what is it that will keep you passionate about helping them.
When the money is all gone, if you don’t have the passion to help them then you will stop helping them.
And how often doesn’t that happen when we see the poor around us and we throw our hands in the air and look for reasons to not help them.
I’ve barely got enough to pay my own bills.
Surely they could find a job if they were really that desperate.
What did they spend their benefits on – cigarettes and alcohol I bet.
But if we can start at a different position and look at the abundance of blessings with which God has blessed us and is blessing us with then we don’t look for a reason to avoid helping but we look for an opportunity to help.
Rather than protecting the little we have we start to help from the abundance we have.
The Red Cross once produced a comparison of what truly makes up riches in the world:
WE ARE THE LUCKY ONES
You can read…you are luckier than over one billion people who cannot read at all.
If you woke up this morning with more health than illness … then you are luckier than the million who will not survive this week and even luckier because you have medicare that guarantees you will have healthcare in case of illness.
If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation...then you are ahead of 500 million people in the world.
If you can attend any meeting you want—political, religious, social…… then you are luckier than 3 billion people in the world.
If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and a place to sleep… … then you are richer than 75 per cent of this world.
If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace…then you are among the top eight per cent of the world’s wealthy.
If you can read a list like this, then you don’t belong to the 1 billion people who CANNOT read...
Jesus said that we will always have the poor among us – but for how long will we be passionate about helping them before we burn out and say “let someone else feed them”.
But when our first love is Christ then helping the poor and loving our neighbour never becomes tiresome as St Paul reminds us:
Whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him.
Regardless of Judas’s motives for Mary’s use of the perfume, Jesus’ criticism remains relevant.
Jesus criticism of Judas was not because he felt he had more right to Mary’s treasured perfume than the poor.
His concern was that his care for the poor was not motivated by his love of God.
Remember when Jesus was asked – what is the greatest commandment.
He said – Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.
And the 2nd is like it – love your neighbour as yourself.
Our love for our neighbour, rich or poor, comes from our love for God – which Mary was showing.
As Jesus says – seek first the Kingdom of God and all these will be added onto you.
Or when Solomon chose wisdom over riches and success but God rewarded him with those very riches and success because he didn’t seek after them.
Likewise if our heart is first for God then our heart for the poor and all humankind will multiply many times more than if our focus is on what we can afford.
So many times our mission has been driven by what we can afford.
If our heart is for mission then what we can afford won’t be the indicator of what we do or don’t do.
With a year’s salary we could feed the poor for a long time, but with Jesus we can feed the world for eternity with his body and blood which never runs out and frees all people, rich and poor unto eternity in heaven.


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