No Freeloaders Need Apply

 Scripture    2 Thessalonians 3:5-13    The Message      

4-5 Because of the Master, we have great confidence in you. We know you’re doing everything we told you and will continue doing it. May the Master take you by the hand and lead you along the path of God’s love and Christ’s endurance.

6-9 Our orders—backed up by the Master, Jesus—are to refuse to have anything to do with those among you who are lazy and refuse to work the way we taught you. Don’t permit them to freeload on the rest. We showed you how to pull your weight when we were with you, so get on with it. We didn’t sit around on our hands expecting others to take care of us. In fact, we worked our fingers to the bone, up half the night moonlighting so you wouldn’t be burdened with taking care of us. And it wasn’t because we didn’t have a right to your support; we did. We simply wanted to provide an example of diligence, hoping it would prove contagious.

10-13 Don’t you remember the rule we had when we lived with you? “If you don’t work, you don’t eat.” And now we’re getting reports that a bunch of lazy good-for-nothings are taking advantage of you. This must not be tolerated. We command them to get to work immediately—no excuses, no arguments—and earn their own keep. Friends, don’t slack off in doing your duty.

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Red Skelton was a clown, and the son of a clown.  He loved being a clown.  He became famous performing in vaudeville and on radio and television shows from 1937 to 1971. He loved performing pantomime, which he usually did for at least one segment of his TV show, and he loved writing skits for a variety of strange characters, like Clem Kadiddlehopper and Gertrude & Heathcliff the Seagulls, and this guy in the picture.  This is Freddie the Freeloader, a hobo, a man who lived in the city dump and sometimes slept on park benches where he was usually rousted by policemen who chased him off so they didn’t have to arrest him.  You know, like Selma Police chase the people they see sleeping on the church steps.  Freddie here was a stereotype born out of the Great Depression of the 1930s when so many men had to hit the road to find work, and some just gave up.  Our image today of “the homeless” comes in part from this character.  Wimpy - whose picture DeeAnne put on the church bulletin today -  was another one of those stereotypes, the guy who always asking you to pay their way, you know, like the person who always forgets their wallet?  My brother actually had a college classmate, a fraternity brother named Fred whom everyone called Freddie the Freeloader because he never paid when they all went out.  

When I told my brother I was going to become a Protestant minister, his immediate reaction was to start attending Mass, which he had not done (except for funerals) in well over 20 years.  From then on, the one thing we did not talk about was religion.  The closest we ever got to theology was discussion of the coaching staff at Notre Dame after the football game on Saturdays.  So you can imagine my surprise when he quoted 2 Thessalonians to me one day, saying, “St Paul said “Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.”  He was quite happy to interpret this to mean there should not be welfare.  (This is one of the dangers of interpreting scripture literally one line at a time.) 

That is not what this means.  It does not mean there shouldn’t be welfare.   It does not mean churches shouldn’t help those in need.  It does not mean that all the homeless need to go get jobs and a place to live.  It does not that there should be no such thing as Social Security. 

When Paul and his companions were starting these churches all over the place, they were what we call today “bi-vocational ministers”   Priests in the Temple, in fact, all of the Levites, were supported by the tithe every Jew paid to the Temple.   Rabbis, on the other hand, worked full time at a regular occupation and served as teachers in the synagogues voluntarily.   Paul and company were rabbis, teachers, not priests.  They could have asked the congregations to support them, but they preferred to support themselves, in large part as an example to the members of the congregations.  We are told in Acts 18:3 that Paul was a tent maker, so he could and did work pretty much anywhere.   He didn’t have to depend upon the kindness of strangers to provide his food. And he wanted to give an example to the congregations he started about how to live together as a community.  Being financially self-reliant if you are able is an example of that.

In those days, the one law common to all cultures was the law of hospitality.  If a stranger to your community needed help, especially food or shelter, you were required to help them.  Thus the innkeeper helped Joseph and Mary, the Samaritan helped the man by the side of the road, and Abraham entertained angels.  Lack of hospitality is what got Sodom destroyed.  If you were a member of a community - a particular town or a congregation - and you were able to work, to contribute, you were expected to do so in order that the community had the wherewithal to help that stranger, that person in need.   It was understood that some, even within the congregation, would not be able to support themselves, like widows and persons with disabilities.  None of these are situations covered  by Paul’s words, “If you don’t work, you don’t eat.”  

In those early days of the church, Paul and many others believed that Jesus was coming back soon, maybe next week.  They believed that Jesus was speaking literally when he spoke of the end of days and said, “Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.”  One of results of this thinking was the belief among some church members that it wasn’t necessary to work the fields or do any work at all - that all they needed to do was pray and worship God day and night until that last day came and they would be gathered in Christ’s eternal embrace.  (This happens periodically even today - groups of people will come to believe that the end is coming next week, they quit their jobs, sell everything and gather on a mountaintop or someplace waiting for the Rapture, which doesn’t come.)   As time passed the leaders of the church, like Paul, would realize that maybe it would be a little longer till the Messiah returned, but even so, even if the end was to come next week, if the congregation was to prosper everyone needed to contribute.   

Likewise, as in any group of people, there would have been those who didn’t think they needed to do anything.  They could sit back and let everyone else supply their needs, either because they had entitlement issues or because they were, shall we say, less motivated to work and serve than others.  Paul was talking about those people - the people anticipating the end of days and the new who just didn’t want to work - both of those groups.  He was speaking of people who were able but unwilling to make any effort toward serving the needs of their church community.  

Early on it became obvious that there needed to be some guidelines about how to be church together.  When the Gentile Christians and the Jewish Christians were fussing over whose widows got better care, an apostle was delegated to oversee food distribution.  It was equally obvious that people needed be told how to love one another.  When the rich were bringing wonderful food to worship but not sharing it with the poor, Paul had to put his foot down.   When some perfectly capable people were sitting back, contributing nothing and letting everyone else do all the work, Paul had to say, “. . . we’re getting reports that a bunch of lazy good-for-nothings are taking advantage of you. This must not be tolerated. We command them to get to work immediately—no excuses, no arguments—and earn their own keep.”

We recently ended our annual Stewardship month during which we asked everyone to consider how they might help to support the needs of the congregation.  We are very grateful to everyone who took the time to fill out a pledge card and return it.  On that card there was a line titled “Talents.”  Many of you listed the things you are already doing to serve the congregation, and we are so grateful for all of those things.  We had hoped that people would use that line to tell us what they love to do, even if it doesn’t seem like something that could serve the congregation.  Alan loves working with wood.  He makes beautiful wooden things for us to use, not as part of a committee or anything, but he because he loves to do that.  Kathleen loves writing, so she wrote a children’s play that we will all get to enjoy right before Christmas.  No one asked her to.  She just loves doing it - and she is good at it.  She has an incredibly fertile imagination.   Sofia loves playing the bass, and she helps provide music on Thursday nights.  Ally isn’t even a member, but loves to show up and add the sounds of a cello to our Sunday worship.  And I don’t know what else Alfred loves, but when he worships he puts his whole heart and spirit into it.  I get to watch, you know.  And he inspires me.  

Maybe you love to knit or crochet or quilt.  Maybe you love hiking. Maybe you like to take photos.  Maybe you love to read and would like to be part of a book club.   Maybe you are a competitive shopper. (I’m pretty sure that’s a thing.)  Maybe you make beautiful cards, or do healing touch, or  . . . . I don’t know.  What do you love?  Think about that, and let me know.  Send me an email or a text.  Just for fun.  

From the first days of the Church it has been necessary for everyone to do some part of what is needful.  Yes, everyone has to help so that everything we need to do gets done.  But also so everyone feels like they are part of this community.  We all know there are some who cannot do much, perhaps because of work or age or mobility issues, and because they can’t do much, they may feel alienated from the community.  This is depressing.  They may feel a bit like Freddie the Freeloader, but they are not.  They are simply contributing in different ways now.  If all they can do is pray for us, that is a huge contribution.  It is important that they know this, and that they know that we know this.  Every one of our gifts and talents is valuable and necessary.

For, as Paul told the church in Corinth when they were fussing with each other over whose work was most important, “there are varieties of gifts, but one Spirit.”  And all of those gifts, all of our talents, all of the things we love to do, are ways in which we can serve God and one another.   So, let us stand and ask the musical question - What I can I give?

Dinner with sinners

Scripture  Luke 19:1-10   CEB 

19 Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through town. 2 A man there named Zacchaeus, a ruler among tax collectors, was rich. 3 He was trying to see who Jesus was, but, being a short man, he couldn’t because of the crowd. 4 So he ran ahead and climbed up a sycamore tree so he could see Jesus, who was about to pass that way. 5 When Jesus came to that spot, he looked up and said, “Zacchaeus, come down at once. I must stay in your home today.” 6 So Zacchaeus came down at once, happy to welcome Jesus.

7 Everyone who saw this grumbled, saying, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”

8 Zacchaeus stopped and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord, I give half of my possessions to the poor. And if I have cheated anyone, I repay them four times as much.”

9 Jesus said to him, “Today, salvation has come to this household because he too is a son of Abraham. 10 The Human One came to seek and save the lost.”

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Zacchaeus was a tax man.  That’s the title of the hymn we’ll be singing in a little bit and it is one of two things we are told about him, the other being his height.  (A bit of trivia for you - the average male height at that time was about 5’4”. Today the average is 5’9”.  So he was quite short by our standards.)  Being short he climbed a tree so he could see over the crowd and coincidentally, where Jesus could easily spot him.  And seeing him up in the tree, Jesus did something that not just the Pharisees had trouble with.  Everyone had a problem with this.  Tax collectors were collaborators with the Roman oppressors - often involuntarily, but still. . . They were known to overcharge and skim off the top, thus defrauding both the Jews who paid the taxes and the Empire that received them. Tax collectors were always classed by the people with the harlots, gamblers, and thieves, who lived promiscuous, lawless lives.  According to the rabbis there was no hope for the tax collector.  They couldn’t go to the Temple, associate with most other people in the community, even their money was refused by the Temple.  Tax collectors were even more unclean than lepers.  No one would associate with them.  But Jesus said, “Zacchaeus, come down at once. I must stay in your home today.”  Way to upset the crowd, Jesus.  Have dinner with someone everyone hated!  

And then we come to the interesting bit, and the reason we need to look at different translations of the Bible.  Because translators don’t always agree on how words are to be translated.

The CEB, which Charlotte read today, says:  Zacchaeus stopped and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord, I give half of my possessions to the poor. And if I have cheated anyone, I repay them four times as much.”

The NRSV says:  8 Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.”

You will notice a difference.  In the CEB Zacchaeus speaks in the present tense, in the NRSV he speaks in the future tense.  Depending on which translation you read, either Zacchaeus was already behaving more ethically than the vast majority of tax collectors or he decided to change his behavior and begin to treat people more ethically.  Either he was an ethical man in a crooked business or he was reformed by Christ and would become an ethical man in a crooked business.  Typically this passage is preached from the second viewpoint, but let’s give the first some consideration.  

Ethical dilemmas abound in our daily lives, even when we aren’t engaged in questionable behavior.  

Kirk Franklin is a Grammy award winning Gospel Artist -  a singer and song writer.  He was named Best Gospel Artist at the Dove Awards on TBN twice!  But he is boycotting Trinity Broadcasting Network, the Gospel Music Association, future Dove Awards shows and all affiliated events after comments he made about a recent fatal police shooting were edited out of his acceptance speech.  It’s not the first time.  The same thing happened at a previous awards show.   It’s not like he said anything un-Christian or political or otherwise offensive.  He named the victim and said, ““I’m just asking that we send our prayers for her family and for his and I’m asking that we send our prayers for that 8-year-old little boy that saw that tragedy and we just lift them up and I’m asking that you pray with us … just pray grace and mercy over their lives in the name of Christ our king,”  He was asking for prayer for victim, and the shooter and both of their families.  There’s nothing wrong with that, that I can see.  It’s kind of classic “Love your neighbor” stuff.  But when his acceptance speech was aired, that portion had been cut out.   (https://www.christianheadlines.com/contributors/lori-arnold/kirk-franklin-says-he-s-boycotting-tbn-dove-awards-for-failing-to-acknowledge-diversity-concerns.html?utm_source=Jeeng)

Now I don’t know much about the Christian music world, or the Gospel music world, but I suspect that a Gospel singer who turns his back on TBN and the Gospel Music Association might just be doing something significant.   Kirk Franklin had to decide whether his career or his ethics came first.  He chose his ethics - he chose the harder path.   I have to wonder, too, about the ethics of the video editor at TBN who decided to cut this sincere prayer out of the acceptance speech.  But the entertainment business has never been known as the most ethical business around.  One would hope TBN would be different, but . . . 

While researching for today’s message I came across an outstanding quote about Christ’s transformative power.  But when I looked up the author of that quote I had to stop and decide whether I could, in good conscience, quote this person.  She is rabidly anti-LGBTQ who promotes all kinds of terrible, ugly conspiracy theories, and these beautiful words that I found were part of a hateful rant she had posted.  I could just use those words and not say where they came from, but that’s plagiarism and plagiarism is bad.  I decided that, no matter how perfect the words are when taken out of context, I could not in good conscience quote a person who hates so strongly in a message about the Christ who loves everyone, welcomes everyone, rejects no one.   

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Back to Zacchaeus . . . whether he was already doing the right things or made that decision because of Jesus, he was still a tax collector.  He was still working in and for a corrupt system.  A person no church going person would want to associate with.  His status as an outcaste as far as the Temple was concerned wasn’t going to change just because he behaved justly and ethically.  As long as he continued in this occupation he would be rejected. The attitude of the Temple and the Rabbis was, “You cannot be a tax collector and a righteous Jew at the same time.”    And it’s not like a tax collector for the Roman Empire could just quit his job - not and keep his possessions, his freedom, and his family.   In many ways it would have been like trying to leave a crime family, which (according to books and movies) is not conducive to a long and healthy life. 

Jesus didn’t see things quite the same way as the Rabbis and the Pharisees.  We already know that, of course.  He hung out with people the good church folks avoided.  After all, earlier in Luke’s gospel, when the Pharisees asked, ““Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus answered, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor, but sick people do. 32 I didn’t come to call righteous people but sinners, to change their hearts and lives.” (Luke 5:30b-32).  He spent his time with people on the margins, people on the outside looking in.  People who felt alone, unwanted.  There were way too many of those people in Jesus’ time.  People who couldn’t afford the sacrifices they needed to make to be cleansed after an illness or having a baby or whatever health condition made them unacceptable to the Temple - a man with a skin rash, or the woman with a hemorrhage.  People who fell into certain occupational categories - tax collectors, prostitutes, loan sharks, gamblers.  These were not allowed to come to worship, or make sacrifices, or tithe.  They were’t even allowed to hang out with people who did go to Temple for fear of corrupting them.  Even if they behaved justly and ethically, like Zaccaeus, the Rabbis and the Temple said they just weren’t welcome.   

Sadly, we know that is still a thing.  I was having a conversation online the other day about Christianity, and one of the people said, “I used to go to church.  I don’t anymore.  I miss it.  But I was told, “You can’t be Christian and (that thing that you do) at the same time”.   Way too many church folks say things like that.  Way too many who are told that, believe it.  The thing about being Christian is that we aren’t perfect people. Or as I’ve seen it said on Facebook, “A church is not a museum for good people.  It is a hospital for the broken.”   

We don’t get to decide who Jesus will or will not accept.  Look at his friends.  Look at who he surrounded himself with.  People who were not welcomed by the establishment.  People who had been told repeatedly, “You cannot be (whatever) and come to the Temple at the same time.”  Jesus was not in the business of making the unclean acceptable to the Temple.  He was in the business of healing the broken, and of bringing salvation to the lost.   He was about changing people’s hearts.  He was about having dinner with sinners and inviting into the kingdom of God all who seek him.   Like Zacchaeus.  Like us.  

Will this be on the test?

Scripture      Luke 20:27-38    CEB   

27 Some Sadducees, who deny that there’s a resurrection, came to Jesus and asked, 28 “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies leaving a widow but no children, the brother must marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. 29 Now there were seven brothers. The first man married a woman and then died childless. 30 The second 31 and then the third brother married her. Eventually all seven married her, and they all died without leaving any children. 32 Finally, the woman died too. 33 In the resurrection, whose wife will she be? All seven were married to her.”

34 Jesus said to them, “People who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage. 35 But those who are considered worthy to participate in that age, that is, in the age of the resurrection from the dead, won’t marry nor will they be given in marriage. 36 They can no longer die, because they are like angels and are God’s children since they share in the resurrection. 37 Even Moses demonstrated that the dead are raised—in the passage about the burning bush, when he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. 38 He isn’t the God of the dead but of the living. To him they are all alive.”

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There are quite a few teachers and retired teachers in this congregation to whom this question strikes an immediate - and not necessarily harmonious - chord.  There are those students who will ask “Will this be on the test?” after you’ve written your name on the board on the first day of class.  (and you know who you are.)  Likewise, there are enough students in this congregation who have had the most random bits of information show up on exams that this seems like a fair question.  

Dr. David Bundy was my Early Church History professor at Christian Theological Seminary.  He almost never lectured from the book we were using - which was a pre-published copy of his own book.  He was using us for guinea pigs to see where it would need improvement before publication.   Dr. Bundy assumed we would read the book.  We were, after all, in a Master’s program.  Rather, he would lecture on random and obscure bits of history to help us understand things like how the Church changed over the centuries from an “everyone is welcome” mindset to a more exclusionary one.  Women in leadership, for example, abounded in the early church, and in some parts of the world, like Ireland, continued in leadership up until the 10th century.  This history was systematically erased or modified, to the extent that there is a statue of a certain bishop which one can tell has been changed since it was first carved.  The name on the base was changed from the feminine to a masculine form of the name, but more critically for those studying the trend of the erasure of women in church history, one can tell that the statue had originally had breasts, and at some point in time they had been removed.   This was a story Dr. Bundy told us sort of off-handedly one day, and, yes indeed, the name of that female bishop was on the exam.  

Although he was the teacher, Jesus usually had test questions going the other way.  The Sadducees and the Pharisees would come to him with test questions, questions that had no good answer and were intended to trip him up so they could then use those answers against him.  The Pharisees asked, “Should we pay taxes to Rome?”  Now there was a tough one.  If he said yes, he would anger pretty much all of the Jews and everyone would stop listening to him.  If he said no, he could be handed over to Rome for sedition.  They figured it was a win/win.  Silly Pharisees.  For as we know, he said “If it has Caesar’s picture on it, give it to Caesar.  Give to God what belongs to God.”  This sent the Pharisees away scratching their heads.  Their test had backfired on them.   

In today’s story, it was the Sadducees who came to Jesus with a trick question.  The Law of Moses says that if a man dies with no son, his brother was required to do his best to impregnate the widow, and that child would be the heir of the one who had died.  In their test question, this poor widow had been passed, childless, from one brother to the next until all seven brothers had died.  And the question was, on the day of the resurrection, which brother would be her husband, as she had been married to all of them.

One of the many differences between the Pharisees and the Sadducees revolved around the question of the end of days.  The Pharisees believed that on that last day, all who had died would be physically resurrected to live eternally in the bodies they had known in life.   The Sadducees were literalists, who believed that only what was written in the Books of Moses was to be considered scripture.   The 1st century historian Josephus wrote that “the Sadducees denied the resurrection, the immortality of the soul, eternal rewards, or the "world to come.”  The Sadducees kept their focus on the status quo of the nation of Israel in this world and not the next.”   (https://bible.org/seriespage/sadducees)  Basically, they believed that this is all there is.  No heaven, no hell, no Sheol, nothing at all after we die.  So their test for Jesus was this - did he or did he not believe that Scripture was to be interpreted literally?  As you may have guessed that question was pretty divisive at that time - as indeed, it still is -  and they could easily turn their backs on him if he answered “incorrectly.”  

His answer stopped them in their tracks, because his answer to them was that the question of the resurrection had already been answered - and by Moses! In the very books they considered the literal Word of God - saying, “[Moses] speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. 38 Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.”   

39 Then some of them answered, “Teacher, you have spoken well.” 40 For they no longer dared to ask him another question.”  

The question of what comes next remains a human preoccupation. Even those of us who anticipate an eternal life when our physical life ends don’t agree on what that is going to look like.  Some believe we will all become one with God and with each other, no physicality, just pure spirit.  Others believe they will get their wings and harps so they can sing God’s praises eternally.  Some think they will be living in the New Jerusalem as it is described in the 21st Chapter of the Revelation to John, “8 The wall is built of jasper, while the city is pure gold, clear as glass. 19 The foundations of the wall of the city are adorned with every jewel . . . And the twelve gates are twelve pearls, each of the gates is a single pearl, and the street of the city is pure gold, transparent as glass.” 

Frances Shaw was a beloved member of Augusta Christian Church in Indianapolis, and quite the character.  She baked pies for every church event, cheerfully shared “her” pew with visitors, and blamed all her orneriness on being a Preacher’s Mom.   I ran into her son at General Assembly in July and told him that I sometimes use his mother as a sermon illustration.  He just shook his head . . .   She believed her husband would be waiting for her at that gate made of pearl, and that she would spend eternity baking him casseroles and pies.  I kind of hope this is what she found when she got there.   

As a student of world religions and an avid reader of science fiction and fantasy I have run across so many different concepts of what awaits us once this life is over, and all that I know for sure is that I don’t know what that life will look like.   What I do believe is that Jesus said our God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.  To God, all still live, all who have gone before, all who are yet to be born, and all of us here - all living at one time in God’s heart.   

On this All Saints Sunday we celebrate and remember all of those who have gone before.  And whether they are inhabiting physical bodies and walking streets made of gold, baking casseroles, and singing in the heavenly choir, or simply existing in God’s heart, we know they live.  And we believe this to be true because our Lord Jesus assured us of this.   I do not know what our eternal life will look like, but I am convinced that we will be reunited with all the saints when our time comes, for in Him death is abolished, and all will live with him forever.   

In the hymn we will be singing, lyricist Carolyn Winfrey Gillette says:

O God, we're still trying to understand dying
And many still wonder if heaven is real.
Yet Christ clearly told us that death cannot hold us;
We'll know of a new life your love will reveal.

No more questions.  No more tests.  Simply eternal life and love, in Christ, our Lord.    Amen.