Caring and Sharing
Acts 4:31-37
06-08-08
"A blue-chip investment firm flailed and flopped recently when it flew a man from the high-rise canyons of Boston to the mesas of the Navajo nation to explain to a group of Arizona Navajos why they should invest for old age. Hoping to hook the 95 Navajos gathered, he started by asking how many had heard of Willard Scott. None had. The representative explained that Willard Scott was the former weatherman of the Today Show who often featured 100-year-olds on their birthdays. "You know what?" the rep queried. "More people are living to be a hundred." No one reacted. On the reservation, people die younger than the general population. The pitch didn't even cross the plate. Undaunted, he persevered by telling them about health consciousness and New Year's resolutions to lose weight. Again, blank stares. The Navajos don't make New Year's resolutions, don't have health clubs and aren't obsessed about weight. And so it went. What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem? Clearly Boston had nothing to do with Gallup, New Mexico. The Bostonian wasn't able to cross the cultural divide in this low-income population where they don't even have Navajo words for "savings" or "retirement."
A local resident explained that for the Navajo, "Money is different. It's there to be spent. If you have some, you help your family." Later the tribal offices set up their own investment team, led by a 24-year-old investment-savvy Navajo. This time, this team was able to get the pitch into the strike zone where the people could hit the ball. They emphasized family, and how saving can help others, not just the individual. ‘We don't target only the participants, we target families.’ 1
With unemployment as high as 70 percent on the reservation, the team hoped that by encouraging those who have jobs to save money they’d be better able to help their relatives in the long run. It isn't investing for selfish reasons, for future wealth, or for an exciting retirement. It's investing for the benefit of their wider family. Over the last several years, there's been a significant increase in the investment plan participation. In a culture that's truly family-based, taking a family approach works, savings grow, and in the long run, the family benefits.
Many stocks bought today are not just for retirement; they're there to pass on to the children, who pass them on to their children, and on and on, never spending the principle and reinvesting a percentage of the dividends, buying more as necessary and watching the whole thing grow generation after generation. It's a way for families to pool their income so that eventually no one in their family lacks. Of course, not everyone can do this. Taking the short view is tough enough for most folks trying to make ends meet, pay mortgages, finance cars, fund orthodontics. The long, long view is an idea many folks never think of, let alone dream about. Investing for the long term is a hard sell to much of America. We are focused on paying for our day to day lifestyles for perhaps a couple years down the line.
Looking at the long-term family approach is a difficult sell for the church, too. But the early church gave it a shot. As we heard in our scripture passage this morning, early churchgoers agreed to pool their resources. "No one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common" (Acts 4:32). They sacrificed. They sold what they had, land or houses, and turned it over to the group, and, as a result, no one lacked. They worked together. They invested themselves with social capital. They created community. They took chances. They invested in each other and everybody's needs were met. "There was not a needy person among them" (4:34). They epitomized "Caring and Sharing".
We today are more a culture of incentives. We ask first how it benefits us, then how perhaps it benefits others. We are much more individualistic, worrying about our immediate families and ourselves first. Incentives cause people to do amazing things for good or for ill. Take cheating, for example, which the book defines as "a primordial economic act: getting more for less." People will risk an awful lot if the incentive is great enough. In 1987, for example, 7 million children in the United States suddenly disappeared on April 15. Was it a massive alien abduction? Hardly. See, before 1987 people were only required to put the names of their dependents on their tax forms. Beginning in 1987, both names and social security numbers were required for each child listed. Overnight seven million kids, who had never existed at all, simply vanished. The risk of getting caught outweighed the incentive of the tax break.
Incentives are powerful, but so is community. Can the early third-millennium church match the success of the early first-millennium church? Good question. Our circumstances differ. One thing has not however. In this period of unparalleled prosperity, the church is still filled with needy people. Some need money. Others need love. Some need hope. Others need joy. Some need solace. Others need prayer. All need God. Needy people have a lot to give. You see, unlike the other organizations in our lives, the church is a mutual funding company. Lots of folks who come to church lack something, and often are seeking that something in church from us, from God. For some people the greatest need is companionship: because they're widowed and/or lonely. The investment for the rest of us then is to invest ourselves in a friendship with a single, lonely person and see what good can come from it for everybody. For some people the greatest need is healing. Some come to church because they hurt inside. So we need to invest our ear-time for their mouth-time [just listen as they talk]. For some people the greatest need is a lack of heat, or food, or school clothes, or money for the doctor. So, our investment would be to put our money in the church's mission projects. For some people the greatest need is someone to teach their children our investment. Invest yourself in the Sunday school, youth programming, tutoring and mentoring. When other people’s needs are being met, chances are more likely that ours will be met as well. And like any investments, we pick and choose what we can invest in. To avoid being spread to thin, we must choose how to invest skills, prayers, money, and service. Caring and Sharing manifests itself in endless possibilities.
The church is an investment organization, only our
capital is more than money. We invest our time, energy, talents, hopes, and cash
in our church. What would the church look like if it could be a people, a place,
where no one lacked? A place where we invested ourselves in each other? A place
where no one was needy? I think that would be a pretty incredible image of the
people of God acting with one heart. You see the Church isn't just for us. It's
here because ancestors in faith built it, mind and heart, sweat and commitment,
calluses and money. They invested in us long before some of us were even born.
They provided the sanctuary, the Sunday school rooms, the parking lot, the bell,
the organ, the choir robes, the pulpit, the carpet, and the kitchen. They
provided the playground, the chairs in the parlor, and the hymnals in the pews.
We need to calculate church today with the same equation as those in the early
days of Christianity; just like those from Newman UMC’s past. It's not just
for us that the church is here. It's for our children's children. This church is
for our families, in whatever ways we define family. This church is for the
community; for people to find solace, belonging, love, acceptance, fellowship,
and God. Discipleship is about giving and receiving. Caring and Sharing is a
language that any culture can understand. My hope is that we are able not just
to care for one another, invest in each other in this time and place, and
equally share what we can offer, whether that be little or much, but also I pray
that we invest for the future of this church. I pray that we invest now for our
children and their children. That we teach by example what it is to Care and
Share in community. So, invest yourself in the church; invest yourself in the
people of God. Experience the return when we invest in each other, and you will
glimpse the love of God.
1 This example comes from Bob Kaylor, Senior Minister of
the Park City United Methodist Church in Park City, Utah. From the March/April
edition of Homiletics, 2000.
Blessings, Melissa