A Fourth Church Sermon by Joanna M. Adams

November 9, 2003 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Mirror, Mirror

Joanna M. Adams
Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 146
Mark 12:38–44

Have mercy, O God, upon your humble servants,
who are not always humble or always faithful,
but whatever state we are in, we belong to you.
We are gladly yours and pray now
that your tenderheartedness be turned in our direction
and that your word shine as a light to illumine our way,
for the sake of Christ our Lord. Amen.

Many in our congregation have been waiting for this day with great eagerness and hope. Commitment Sunday is our opportunity to make our pledge to the ongoing life and ministry of Fourth Church and to our Capital Campaign, “A Light in the City: Sharing God’s Grace.” It is through this Capital Campaign that Project Light will become a reality—Project Light, that bold and visionary plan to share God’s grace through expanding our space and our commitment to mission.

It seems to me that there have been few more pivotal moments in the life of our church than this one. The closest comparison is, I think, the decision made ninety-five years ago when the congregation had just called its new pastor, John Timothy Stone, and pledged to support financially an ambitious building program that resulted in the magnificent sanctuary in which we worship today. John Timothy Stone was a distinguished spiritual leader with a passion for outreach into the community through mission and through evangelism. In fact, the Session had to meet every Wednesday night after prayer meeting in order to accommodate the need to receive new members into the life of the congregation. Mission and evangelism—these were the cornerstones of Fourth Presbyterian Church one hundred years ago, and they are still the cornerstones of this wonderful congregation today. People come to our church eager for ways to serve, eager to hear the gospel. People look to this church for kindness, for generosity, and for a strong voice for justice.

Dr. Stone used to exhort his congregation right here in this sanctuary: “Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God.” I can hear his voice today offering a similar challenge to us. (I imagine that his effectiveness and inspiring generosity a century ago exceeded that of the pastor who, on Capital Campaign Sunday, got up in the pulpit and announced to his congregation, “I have good news and I have bad news today. The good news is that we have enough money to pay for our new building program. The bad news is that it’s still out there in your pockets.”)

Happily the commitments that many of you have already made to the annual stewardship campaign and to the “Sharing God’s Grace” Capital Campaign indicate that your pockets and portfolios are open to this great opportunity that is before us. You get it, don’t you? You understand that your gift is needed and that your gift, whatever its size, will make all the difference in the spirit of this place and the capacity of this community of faith to welcome the stranger, to teach the children, and to touch people’s lives with the love of Christ.

Here’s the thing. There are many great organizations out there that do terrific things. But the church is the only institution whose sole purpose is to share the love of Jesus Christ. When we give to the church, our money goes to serve him. When we give our money to the church, our money goes to serve others in his name. I can’t imagine a greater enterprise to be a part of. I am heartened to learn that the number of our members who are pledging annually is increasing. I am encouraged to learn that the number of people who are making significant financial contributions is also growing. Those who can, need to give out of their abundance. But I am moved beyond description by something I learned just this past week. I was told about one faithfully kept annual pledge. The amount: $5.20. It is made by one of our members who participates in the programs of the Elam Davies Social Service Center. He always keeps his pledge current. Fifty-two weeks a year, he makes his offering to God. He has little pocket money, but he is rich beyond description and filled with love and generosity. “Here you, who have helped me, use my gift to help some of the others. Here Almighty God, you have turned my life around. I want to say, ‘Thank you’ every week.”

One day a woman whose name no one even knows slipped into the temple in Jerusalem. A lot of others had been making great show out of dropping their money into the horns in which people dropped their offering. There was a lot of clanking and carrying on, a lot of show and display, but this woman reached into her pocket and took out two small copper coins. They were all that she had, and she gave them to the glory of God. Jesus said to his disciples, “Look at her. She has her Ph.D. in understanding what it is to be a human being. She can show you what the abundant life really looks like.”

Looking at that widow putting all that she has into the treasury at the temple is, for me, like looking into a mirror and seeing, not myself as I am now, but the kind of person I want to be, seeing a person in whom God’s way with the world is so clearly reflected. This is the kind of life to which I aspire and to which Jesus calls all of us who would follow him.

I have a wonderful friend who is rabbi in Jerusalem.(1) Every week he sends via email his spiritual reflections to people all around the world. Not long ago, the topic of his email was the mirror. He wrote how Moses had been suspicious of mirrors because they encouraged vanity in people. That kind of vanity is what we would call narcissism in our present age. Sadly, narcissism, excessive self-absorption, is the hallmark of our consumerist, self-absorbed society.

Mirrors could also be used for good in the Hebrew tradition. Mirrors were used to build the laver, or bowl, that the priests used to purify themselves before performing sacred rituals. I thought of the continuity between the laver and the baptismal font as we celebrated the sacrament this morning. “There is more to the mirror,” my friend says, “than meets the eye.” He goes on to tell a story about a rabbi who went to visit a wealthy man in his congregation. He went to see him in order to solicit a contribution to enable the congregation to feed the hungry and shelter the homeless. The rabbi told the story of the need. The wealthy man was unmoved.

The rabbi said to him, “Please come with me to the window.” Together they walked to the window and looked out onto the street. “What do you see?” the rabbi asked.

“I see a lot of people. I see a lot of poor people. I see a lot of need there, I surely do.”

The rabbi then took the man to the mirror and said, “Look into the mirror. What do you see there?”

The man said, “Well, I see my reflection, of course.”

The rabbi said, “Both the window and the mirror are but pieces of glass. We can see through the window but not through the mirror, because the mirror has a backing of silver. Our silver and our gold and our attachment to our material resources—these are what can blind us to the needs of others.”

The wealthy man said to his teacher, “Now I see.” He made a gift that made all the difference to the community of which he was a part.

Telling that story brings to mind a member of a Presbyterian congregation I once served. The chair of the Stewardship committee and the pastor at the time paid a call upon this man. He was known as a wealthy, prominent person in town. “We really need for you to step up to the plate this year,” the pastor said to his parishioner. The man looked at his pastor. He held his arms up—they were sitting in the living room—and said, “Just look at the major renovation my wife and I have done on our home. How could we possibly do any more than the minimum this year?”

Both the mirror and the window are but pieces of glass. It is the silver that can blind us to the needs of others and to a vision of what it means to be truly human.

In our apartment is a full-length mirror, one that we have had for a long time. It’s on a stand that swivels, so you can see yourself from every angle, if you know what I mean— the good, the bad, and the “needs improvement” angle. “Where did you get that mirror?” a visitor recently asked. “I’d like to have one like that.”

“Why?” I said.

“Because every now and then I like to see my whole self.”

I believe that the Bible is the most important mirror in our lives. It shows us who we are and who we can be—and what could stand a little improvement. It speaks especially, I believe, to the minimalists among us and to that part of the human spirit in all of us that says, “Well, I’ll do a little bit, but don’t you understand—I have all these other things I have to do.” When we find ourselves doing that, chances are we are spending more time looking in the mirror rather than out the window—and less time than we ought in moving out the door into the world and into the places of great need.

The scriptures show us that throughout the Old Testament, throughout all of Hebrew history, everyone was expected to give—the rich, the poor, and the in-between. Those who had more than others were expected to build the sanctuaries and educational facilities that were essential to the spiritual development of the people of God.

When you look at the Bible, you see the Good Samaritan, who was busy and had things to do and places to go but who stopped in his tracks to take care of the man in the ditch. You see the widow who was filled with an attitude of gratitude and who demonstrated the triumph of trust in her life by offering her all to God.

The widow reminds me of the game of hearts. Have you ever played hearts? In hearts, there can come a moment when you realize that you and your hand do not have very much going for you, and so you think to yourself, “Maybe I will shoot the moon.” You risk everything in order to gain everything. This widow makes me wonder if there is not some great cause, some important purpose, to which I want to give everything that I’ve got.

Last stewardship season, a mother in our church wrote me a note in which she recounted a conversation with her little boy. The mother’s father, the child’s grandfather, was quite ill in the hospital, and the mother and son wanted to do something that would be sweet and comforting for papa. They decided that a stuffed animal might be good. There were many to choose from—dinosaurs, teddy bears, so on and so forth. The mother suggested this one and that one and the other one from those that were on the shelf, but the child said, “No. I’ve decided I’m going to give Tigger to papa.” But the problem with Tigger, as the mother saw it, was that, in all his black and gold tattered glory, he was the child’s favorite. Tigger was the one with whom the child slept every night, the one with whom he played every day. “I had wanted my father to have something my son could spare,” the mother wrote, “but my son, wanted to give his dearest and his best.”

That makes me think of the great American poet Walt Whitman, who wrote, “Behold, I don’t give little lectures or little charity. When I give, I give myself.”

Where in the world did the idea ever come from that Christianity was only about adhering to a certain set of beliefs? Where did we lose the conviction that Christianity is also way of life?(2) The earliest followers were called “People of the Way.” Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

As Frederick Buechner reminds us so beautifully, participating in, being caught up in, Jesus’ way of life is what it means to be Christian.(3) Jesus was the one who gave it all for the sake of the world.

Thirty years ago, Al and I had two little children and very little money. We went to church every Sunday. We were in the habit of writing a check to the church every month after we had paid all of our bills. I remember the Sunday we were introduced to a more meaningful way. A leader in our church whom we both admired told the personal story of how he and his wife, who had twice as many children as we had, had decided early on to tithe, that is, to give ten percent of their income to the church, and that they would ensure that it would happen by writing the check to the church first, before writing the check to the power company or the mortgage company. “That is the pattern we have followed ever since,” our friend Burt Vardeman said. “I can only tell you that Martha and I have had the greatest and the most abundant life you can imagine.”

Hearing those words encouraged Al and me to begin to leave our minimalist days behind. It was for us the single best decision we have ever made.

Harry Emerson Fosdick once defined “atheist” as someone without any invisible means of support. When you can see beyond the mirror and out to the goodness of God, when you see that vision that extends beyond yourself, then you start moving towards a life marked by freedom and joy. You let the biblical worldview begin to shape who you are. Once you said to yourself, “I am what I’ve got, and what I’ve accomplished,” but now you say to yourself, “I am who I am and I have what I have through the grace of God, and how many ways can I say thank you?” When you find yourself asking that question, then you know that in the eyes of Jesus, you have truly become a winner in the game of life.

For seven weeks our sanctuary has been a place of exceptional life and light because of the stars and doves—hundreds of them, created in the imagination of artist Nancy Chinn. They were cut and pasted and strung together by members of a small, decidedly unwealthy little congregation in California, near San Francisco, where Nancy Chinn worships. For months the children, men, and women of that congregation labored. On September 14 of this year, those workers gathered at the front of the altar and celebrated the completion of this great project, which was then blessed with prayer, put in boxes, and shipped to Chicago, where it was hung in our sanctuary by many people working together.

Remember the man who said, “Look up. How can you ask me to give?” As I read the prayer the pastor prayed the day the stars and doves were blessed, I invite you to look up and think of how we are blessed with the gifts of love and kindness.

Star light, star bright,
All the stars we see at night
Twinkling brightly up above,
Shining with God’s heavenly love,
Pale beside these twinkling beauties
We now send off to other duties.
We made these stars for love and money;
The making was hard and long and funny.
We worked alone, we worked together,
In peace and quiet or stormy weather.
All our efforts became a prayer
For this church and that church,
That both may dare
To do new things with thought and care,
To reach and stretch and strive and share.
These stars, as they fly away
To shine and twinkle night and day
Carry with them hours of caring,
Weeks of working, planning, sharing,
Sleepless nights and sticky fingers,
Words and work whose memory lingers.
And even as our job is done,
Their new purpose not yet begun,
We ask a blessing: God, please shine
On each new purpose they’ll define
Make them part of Love’s design.
As each star takes its place above
We grace it with our gift of love!
Amen.(4)

And so it is that all of us, every single one of us, can be winners when it comes to abundant life in God. Every gift, large or small, can reflect the light of God that pushes back the darkness. I love being a part of you—God’s pushy people in Chicago. May all that we say and do now and in the years to come be not to our own glory but to the glory of God who made us. Amen.

Benediction
John Wesley was once asked what one person could do on behalf of the kingdom of God. He answered

Do all the good you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.

The grace of Christ be with you all. Amen.

Notes
1. Arnold Goodman, a dear friend from Atlanta, where he was a revered and moral leader.
2. See the new book by Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 2003).
3. Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1993).
4. Evergreen United Methodist Church, Fort Bragg, Calif.