Series: “Jesus’ Message: You Are Integral For Unity Being One Race And One Blood”
“Do Not Succeed At Something That Doesn’t Matter” – Job 23:1-9, 16-17, Mark 10:17-31
Grace Presbyterian Church aspires to make fully-devoted followers of Jesus Christ who are remembering, telling, and living the way of Jesus. Today’s Bible readings remind us that God enters our real-life circumstances and experiences.
Malcolm Gladwell published Revenge of the Tipping Point this month. Gladwell writes, “The Tipping Point is the biography of an idea,” I began, “and the idea is very simple.”[1] Historically, the tipping point idea of solving financial problems by robbing banks was made famous by celebrity bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger, and “Pretty Boy” Floyd. Gladwell writes,
In 1965, a total of 847 banks were robbed across the entire United States—a modest number, given the size of the country…In the early afternoon of November 29, 1983, the Los Angeles field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation received a call from a Bank of America branch in the Melrose District. The call was taken by Linda Webster…The suspect was a young white male wearing a New York Yankees baseball cap. Slender. Polite. Southern accent. Well dressed. He said please and thank you. Webster turned to her colleague, William Rehder, who ran the FBI’s local bank robbery division. “Bill, it’s the Yankee.” The Yankee Bandit had been active in Los Angeles since July of that year.[2]
The Yankee robbed one bank after another and on the afternoon of November 29th, he hit six banks in four hours. An idea of dealing with financial problems by robbing banks was implemented by thugs until the Yankee arrived on the scene. The Yankee was a class act.
And so, we face a tipping point in our approach to the 2024 Operating Budget and the 2024 Generosity Campaign for the 2025 Operating Budget. Finances, a social epidemic for institutions, individuals, families, and churches, are at a tipping point. At last Sunday’s Town Hall Meeting, we learned that Grace, like many mainline churches, is confronted with the chaos of the hurricanes of societal and cultural change.
Job 23:1-9, 16-17
Job 23 demonstrates we know that the question “Where is God” is answered by the church’s historic answer, “God is here.”[3] In the preceding speech to Job by Eliphaz, Eliphaz accuses Job of wickedness particularly in depriving others of clothing, water, food, and land. Eliphaz also blames Job for his own suffering. Job’s response was a clear argument with God about being elusive and absent. Job wants to present his case of innocence to God. He wants to learn and understand God’s reasoning. Job believes that God is hiding.[4]
Mark 10:17-31
Mark 10 exhorts the community of faith to be selfless. Jesus taught the man who approached him and teaches us that sacrificial living is God’s way. The point of the story of the rich man and the disciples is the relationship between discipleship and riches. Jesus states five imperatives to the rich man in the earshot of the disciples to go, sell, give, come, and follow. These five imperatives make one solid and seamless command with a promise inserted, between go, sell, and give and come and follow, “you will have treasure in heaven.” No matter how we might spiritualize this text, that is not to take it more literally as a lifetime journey, all disciples are implicated on what we do with wealth.[5]
God does not abandon the faithful.[6] Leveraged giving spends your intellectual, emotional, spiritual, financial, physical, and time capital, sacrificially. Sacrificial and responsible giving makes the community stronger. Mike Slaughter in The Christian Wallet writes, “Responsible investing means taking all that God has placed into our hands and fully deploying it in every sense of the word toward God’s preferred future picture—both for our own lives and for the lives of others. Investing in tomorrow also requires a simultaneous trust in God’s provision for both today and tomorrow.”[7] Leveraged giving spends your intellectual, emotional, spiritual, financial, physical, and time capital, sacrificially. It is responsible investing.
Dependency on God combines God’s action and human action into experiencing the kingdom of God. According to Barna Research, U.S. teens and adults have reported that, while they have mostly positive opinions of Jesus, their perceptions of the Church and Christians as a whole have often led them to doubt Christian beliefs. Other data Barna studies shows that the Church’s reputation in specific areas like pursuing justice and stepping up to help solve local problems is wavering among both teens and adults alike. It appears that most Christians (57%), including over seven in 10 practicing Christians (76%), are at a point in their spiritual journeys where they want to help the Church refocus on what’s truly important. Christians want to help the church realign with Jesus’ priorities.[8]
What are Jesus’ priorities? Micah 6:8 reads, “He (God) has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Might Grace rethink and organize a different way of being church when it comes to growth in membership? What about providing seminars at Grace on parenting, legal documents such as a Living Trust, Will, Power of Attorney, Medical Power of Attorney, post-traumatic stress syndrome, and living on a budget? How about Parent’s Night Out for parents in our children’s ministry as well as the parents of children in the neighborhoods of College Hill and Crown Heights? As it is the case in Kirk’s youth ministry, could we as a congregation and congregants develop a heart for reaching the unchurched and sharing the good news of Jesus Christ in word and deed?
Depend on God as you ponder your 2025 Pledge of Time and Treasure and a gift to replenish our cash reserves. Believe that dependence on God will lead you to obedient and sacrificial behavior in the volunteering and financial aspect of your Christian discipleship. Remember the tipping point is the unfolding of an idea that develops behaviors of transformation. As Gladwell writes so eloquently, “Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do.[9]
Your life is designed by God to be a wallet. As we read the Bible, we discover that God has given us prescription glasses enabling us to see more clearly the way of leveraging our giving from our life wallet. John Calvin refers to the Scriptures as spectacles for weak, failing eyes.[10]
Grace Presbyterian Church exists to demonstrate and offer others a better way to live. We do that by leveraging our giving. Jesus says, go, sell, give, come, and follow. Leverage your giving by spending your intellectual, emotional, spiritual, financial, physical, and time capital, sacrificially. Amen.
This sermon was preached the Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost on Sunday, 13 October 2024
by the Rev. Dr. Steven M. Marsh in the Great Room and Sanctuary at
Grace Presbyterian Church in Wichita, Kansas
Copyright Ó 2024
Steven M. Marsh
All rights reserved.
[1]Malcolm Gladwell, Revenge of the Tipping Point (New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company, 2024), ix.
[2]Malcolm Gladwell, Revenge of the Tipping Point, ix, 13, 15.
[3]My thanks to Thomas Edward Frank in David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors, Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 4 (Louisville, Kentucky, Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 146, 148, and 150.
[4]In this paragraph of textual analysis, I have benefited from the thinking of Mark McEntire, Wyndy Corbin Reuschling, Anna George Traynham, Zaida Maldonado Perez, William Yoo, Matthew L. Skinner and Richard W. Voelz in Joel B. Green, Thomas G. Long, Luke A. Powery, Cynthia L. Rigby and Carolyn J. Sharp, editors, Connections, Year B, Volume 3 (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2020), 127-129, 129-131, 132-134, 135-137, 137-139, 140-142 and 142-143.
[5]Adapted from Lamar Williamson, Jr., Interpretation Commentary, Mark (Louisville, Kentucky, John Knox Press, 1983), 182-188.
[6]This insight is gleaned from Kathleen Bostrom in David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 4 (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 154.
[7]Mike Slaughter, The Christian Wallet (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2016), 128.
[8]Adapted from Barna’s State of the Church Initiative, 2024.
[9]Malcolm Gladwell, Revenge of the Tipping Point, ix.
[10]For the analogy of spectacles for weak eyes see John Calvin in Book I, Chapter VI of Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 1, translated by Ford Lewis Battles and edited by John T. McNeill (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960), 69-74.
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