• About
  • Contact Page
  • Generic assignment feedback…
  • Resources for studying theology
  • Writing and Editing Tips

radiescent

~ Richard A. Davis blogging

radiescent

Category Archives: poverty

SERMON: Third Sunday after Pentecost (29 June 2014)

30 Monday Jun 2014

Posted by radiescent in poverty, sermon

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Abraham and Isaac, child poverty, sermon

Sermon by Dr Richard A. Davis preached at St Ronan’s Presbyterian Church, Eastbourne, Lower Hutt, New Zealand

29 June 2014

Lectionary Readings

  • Genesis 22:1-14
  • Psalm 13
  • Romans 6:12-23
  • Matthew 10:40-42

Sermon

Today’s Old Testament reading tells the infamous story of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac.

It was said of Thomas More’s short book Utopia that it takes an afternoon to read and a lifetime to understand. Our story of Abraham and Isaac takes only a moment to read and is perhaps not understandable within our lifetime, this is because to understand this story requires nothing less than to understand God.

We might not be able to understand God, but perhaps we can understand something of Abraham. To learn about Abraham is not only helpful in grappling with today’s reading, but because Abraham is upheld as the father of three faiths, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, the quest for peace in the world today demands we understand each other’s faiths and where they came from. And Abraham remains central to this task.

Abraham is a towering figure of the Bible and world religions. But in studying this passage the esteem in which he is held seems to be very strange, for the actions Abraham displays here are as much worthy of being condemned as being praised.

So curious is this tale that the Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard wrote a whole book on this story entitled Fear and Trembling.

But Kierkegaard, even though he was a great philosopher, and knew his Bible well, is hardly of help to the preacher who wishes to explain his passage. The more Kierkegaard looked into this passage the less he understood it. In the end he concluded that we can only admire Abraham, not understand him.

But in his various stories and retellings of this text, Kierkegaard did offer one warning to the preacher and to you!

He tells the imaginary story of a preacher who, in preaching this text, convinces someone in the congregation that Abraham ought to be emulated, and so the parishioner goes home and kills his most precious son. The preacher then visits the poor man in prison and exclaims: “You despicable man, you scum of society, what devil has so possessed you that you want to murder you son?”

In a sense this is simply Kierkegaard’s dark humour. In another sense, he uses this story to point out that what Abraham did is not ethical and that as much as he is upheld a faithful man we should in no way emulate him. Here is the paradox of Abraham for Kierkegaard.

The passage, as read today, is a puzzle, but it is perhaps best seen as the end of a process Abraham has been through.

We must remember God’s promise that Abraham and Sarah, even though they were old, were promised uncountable offspring. God’s covenant with Abraham, was that God would give him ancestors as numerable as the stars in the sky. It is against this promise that Abraham’s action and faith can be understood better.

Among characters of the Bible it is Job who is best known for his patience. But I’d say that Abraham and Sarah should be the ones credited with patience. Abraham was promised numerous offspring several times and they never seemed to arrive. The first time was way back in Chapter 12 of Genesis and Isaac isn’t born until Chapter 21. We don’t know how many years that was, but Abraham was already 100 years old by then.

Yet, suggesting that Abraham was patient might be a little inaccurate. He did not fully trust God and took matters into his own hands to survive his trials and ensure that he had an heir.

In Chapter 12, for example, Abraham, (then known as Abram), left for Egypt to escape a famine. Thinking he might be killed by the Egyptians who might desire his beautiful wife Sarah (then known as Sarai), he made up a story that they were brother and sister so that they would both be safe. Weird? Perhaps. But the point here is that he did not exactly trust God’s promise that he would father a great nation. Would God really allow Abraham to be killed before his promise could be fulfilled?

Later, in another example, Abraham and Sarah, impatient with God’s timing, decide that Abraham should try having children through their slave-girl Hagar. This does not go well. Even while Hagar was pregnant with Abraham’s son Ishmael, there is strife between the two women. And then God says to Abraham, “Yes I will bless Ishmael, but the son you shall conceive with Sarah, is the one I will make covenant with.” So God effectively says that you tried to get around my plans for you, but you will follow my way in any case.

Eventually Isaac was born to Sarah and Abraham. After decades of waiting for a child of their own, Isaac was their blessing and their hope. They loved Isaac.

Then God asked Abraham to kill him. To sacrifice Isaac would mean the end of their hopes. There seemed to be a contradiction here as God promises offspring yet requires that their long-awaited son be sacrificed. But what appears contradictory to us is not contradictory to God. We may be tempted at some point to cling to the things we like most – the promises of God and not the challenges, the rewards, and not the trials.

This temptation is hard to resist. We may prefer to focus on God’s blessings and what God promises and gives us, rather than God’s trials and what God requires of us. Can we instead remember that God is in control even when he tests us?

Abraham appears to be prepared to sacrifice his future blessings of his children’s children and further generations in his faithfulness to God. If he had sacrificed Isaac we might not be here now. In effect it would have been the end of history, with no Jacob, no Joseph, and no Moses.

This raises questions for us about what we sacrifice and to what. Abraham is prepared to sacrifice his child in obedience to God. What do we sacrifice out of command for God? And what do we sacrifice to other gods?

Last week I was at the launch of a new book by Professor Jonathan Boston and Dr Simon Chapple entitled Child Poverty in New Zealand. Based on their long research of public policies to help children they have written a timely book about an issue all New Zealanders should take seriously this election year and beyond. But let’s not be fooled; solving child poverty will not be easy to fix, even with a change of government. To lift some 285,000 children out of poverty will require nothing less than a fundamental change of heart among New Zealanders. For too long we have accepted child poverty as an acceptable sacrifice for our way of life.

In the time I grew up, parents, mine included, made sacrifices so that their kids could have a better life. This was a common theme in the post-war depression and post-war periods. Parents were determined to give their kids a better life than the one they had. This meant they were prepared to make sacrifices for them so that they could go to university and have experiences that they never had the chance of having.

But in recent years something has changed. Many kids are now worse off than their parents. And many kids fear inheriting a New Zealand with entrenched child poverty, gross inequalities, and a massive environmental debt they did not incur themselves.

I’m not wanting to blame individual parents here, but one way of describing what has changed is that just as once parents sacrificed their present for their kids’ future, nowadays, as a society, we seem prepared to sacrifice the future of our children. This is, I suggest one way in which to understand how it’s now tolerable that as a society we are doing so little about climate change and child poverty.

But to what have we sacrificed our kids? Several things, perhaps, but it is almost certainly our own present. We, like the younger Abraham, have decided to take things into our own hands rather than depending on God’s promises to us for peace and a life in all its fullness. In this quest for a human-made future we have set aside God’s plan and timing for us.

In general, we can say that whatever justifies not spending more on our children is an idol we have sacrificed them to. If, for instance, we say that we cannot afford to fund policies that will help alleviate child poverty, we sacrifice our children to what we’d prefer to do with the money.

Abraham knew better. A lesson he learned the hard way was this: if you are going to sacrifice your child there can be only one reason for doing so – that the one true God requires it. Only that can justify the sacrifice of a child, nothing else – ever.

But as we know God didn’t require the sacrifice of Isaac, only that Abraham be willing to do so. Abraham, by showing that his obedience to God is greater than his love for this son demonstrated his fear of God.

In this way we can see that in the end the story is not really about the sacrifice of Isaac, but the sacrifice of Abraham’s own will. Having made so many attempts to secure his future in his own way he finally comes face to face with the reality that wanting to have his own way requires disobeying God. God forces Abraham to face the reality that his own actions are not enough to secure both God’s favour and his earthly reward.

In the end of the story Abraham names the place of the sacrifice ‘The lord will provide’. Was Abraham talking about God’s provision of the ram? God provided much more than that. It was at this place that Abraham finally came to see that God not only provided him with an heir, but also that God had been faithful to him all along.

Abraham endured much, including the test of sacrificing his only son for whom he waited decades. We don’t know whether God would have given an heir to Abraham earlier had he demonstrated more faith in God’s promises. God’s timing is something that remains obscure and a mystery to us. But perhaps Abraham would not have endured so much if he had simply trusted God to be faithful to his covenant.

Throughout his life, God remains faithful to Abraham. And to his credit, Abraham was finally obedient to God. By faith, he passes the test of God.

May we also be willing to submit to the tests of God, and through faith endure them, and in doing so work out our own salvation with fear and trembling.

AMEN.

Advertisements

Bonhoeffer on Voluntary Poverty

27 Thursday Mar 2014

Posted by radiescent in church, poverty, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

divestment

Dietrich Bonhoeffer solves church fossil fuel divestment issue – “The church is church only when it is there for others. As a first step it must give away all its property to those in need.”, Letters and Papers from Prison (DBWE, 503).

SERMON: Fifth Sunday After Epiphany (9 February 2014)

09 Sunday Feb 2014

Posted by radiescent in economics, money, poverty, sermon

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

money, sermon

Order of service (PDF) for 9  February 2014 at St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Readings selected from those set down for the Sunday closest to Waitangi Day in the “Lectionary and Calendar, 2013-2014: Year A – Matthew” (Methodist Faith and Order Committee, 2013)

  • Deuteronomy 10:12-21
  • Matthew 6:19-24
  • 1 Corinthians 1:26-31

SERMON

My confession this morning is that I have chosen to preach on something I barely come into contact with, and know about distantly, if at all.

My topic is – Money.

However, in these times, which values opinion over knowledge, ignorance is not something that prevents people from having and sharing their thoughts.

Here, however, we have something that the preacher needs to be especially wary of – that the balance of one’s bank account influences one’s opinion of money.

This temptation is one Kiwi writer Joy Cowley, describes well in her Psalm on this topic:

I am not sure where I am with money.
When I’ve had very little of it,
I’ve been full of theories about sharing;
but when I’ve had more than enough,
the money changer in my temple
tends to label the surplus “my” and “mine”.

With this caveat, I wish to focus this morning on Matthew chapter 6, verse 24, which in the New Revised Standard Version reads as follows:

“No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”

This, I’m sure is a very familiar text to you. It is also known widely outside the church, even in this age of widespread biblical illiteracy. Perhaps for the church it is too familiar; for the familiar is no longer news. This should concern us, for as the famous monk, Thomas Merton, warned: “if it is not news it is not Gospel.”

Let’s look in more detail at this familiar verse from the Gospel of Saint Matthew, especially this statement of Jesus:

“You cannot serve God and wealth.”

There is much packed into these six simple words.

To those who say the Bible is illogical or unscientific – we should observe that we have here a clear logical statement. Just as a person cannot travel North and South at the same time, one cannot simultaneously serve both God and money. Jesus does not suggest that we might not be able to serve both. Or that we may not serve both – but the emphasis is on CANNOT serve both.

A second thing to observe is Jesus’s assumption that we humans have to serve somebody. We are the slaves or servants of God or money. Servanthood is not something we can opt out off. We comfort ourselves that we are the masters, but we are not – we are servants. In his song “Gotta Serve Somebody”, Bob Dylan sings:

“Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody”

As servants we cannot master God. God never becomes our servant – God does not exist for us, serve us, and do our biding. Our prayers are not – or should not be – commandments for God to obey. If that were so then we would be god ourselves.

Rather we are to serve God. How do we serve God?

The service of God is to do what God requires of us. What this is is described in one form by the familiar verse of Micah 6:8:

“He 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?”

This verse from the Hebrew prophet Micah is justifiably famous as a statement promoting justice. But sometimes Christians too readily throw the word ‘justice’ around as if everyone knows what it means.

Doing justice has become a slogan with the assumption that everyone knows what justice is and what it demands of us, the church, and the government. Too often “doing justice” makes us avoid the difficult task of thinking through what God’s justice would look like in a particular situation.

With this in mind let’s return to our text from Deuteronomy, which also guides us to know what God requires of us, while helping us flesh out what justice demands. The text begins with the simple yet profound question:

“What does the LORD your God require of you?”

And it proceeds to answer in this way, possibly offering a more complete guide on what God requires:

“Only to fear the LORD your God,
to walk in all his ways, to love him,
to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul,
and to keep the commandments of the LORD your God and his decrees”

Later in the reading we hear that God’s justice means care for the widow and orphan, loving the stranger by providing them with food and clothing.

That is what the service of God looks like.

But what does the service of money look like?

Some of you might be surprised to learn that money is a master at all. You might say –

“hold on a minute, isn’t money something we master? Isn’t money a servant of humanity, being a useful tool for trade in the marketplace? Isn’t money something we earn, save, and spend as we will. It’s ours to dominate, right?”

Such a response is a common cultural assumption. A major NZ bank, for example, has the slogan “Be good with money”, suggesting that we are, or could be, in control of money. The bank and its helpful staff can help us save, borrow, and spend money. Money is to be managed, and something that we manage we are surely the master of. Right?

But consider how this notion becomes a system of both justification and condemnation.

On the one hand, the wealthy can believe that they are rich solely because they have mastered money, and manage it well. They are justified by the money system to think themselves more worthy or blessed.

On the other hand the poor are condemned to be poor because they don’t manage their money well. And because they are bad with money, they only have themselves to blame for being poor. This is the dark side of this notion that money is ours to control. And if we fail to control it well we deserve the consequences.

To all this Jesus says, “No!, Money is a master”. Money can enslave you. And if we are servants of money, we are not serving God. In fact we begin to serve a different god altogether.

Money can appear to be god-like. In our capitalist economy, money is all powerful, and everywhere at once. It alone appears to have the power to create and to destroy. Almost nothing gets done without money.

Yet despite its omnipresence, money remains a mystery. Who knows where money comes from? Who creates money? Where does it go when wasted?

These days most of us have our money in banks and know how much they have by seeing a line on a bank statement or computer screen. But we cannot see, touch, or smell this money as we can cash. It exists as entries in computers somewhere.

These are modern mysteries to many people – even bankers. The global financial crisis happened in part because bankers invented sophisticated products that they themselves did not fully understand. Truly enslaved to money, some bankers were so controlled and disciplined by money that it ultimately had the last word, with devastating consequences. Perhaps linked to a financial downturn are the last week’s spate of banker deaths in the world’s financial capitals.

In light of this, those who maintain that money is still merely a tool are fooling themselves. As the Catholic social critic Ivan Illich once said:

“A tool can grow out of man’s control, first to become his master and finally to become his executioner”.

How many people have been killed by money or been sacrificed to it?

Closer to home, how many children live in poverty in New Zealand because to provide their families with adequate wages or benefits would be fiscally imprudent? It could be said that we are sacrificing our children in service to the demands of money.

This is an election year. By the end of the year we will most likely have a new government of one form or another. People have told me that key election issues for them will be how money is distributed in society. And I think it’s fair to say that issues of poverty and inequality are very likely to be issues in this election year.

Those who advocate a more equitable redistribution of wealth are sometimes accused of holding to a “politics of envy”. They are accused of being envious of the rich and this envy translates into a desire to redistribute the wealth which, as the theory goes, the rich alone have created.

Those seeking a more equitable distribution of wealth aren’t always envious, they might be simply concerned with the direction of society and giving a fair deal to all.

But we should not dismiss this accusation of envy altogether. We can appreciate the warning that we should be careful of being envious. Envy is one of the seven deadly sins and can destroy our very soul.

But we should also remember that other deadly sins are gluttony, greed, and pride. Those with wealth need to remember that money will tempt them to display their wealth in a prideful manner, and by doing so encourage the envy of others. As Christians we need to be careful that our actions do not lead our brothers and sisters into sin.

Such care for our neighbour is counter-cultural in an age of the cult of celebrity which promotes the accumulation of wealth in order to emulate movie stars and corporate high-fliers.

Such imitation of the wealthy are acts in the service of money – money becomes upheld as the way to gain acceptance, fame, influence, and as the quickest way in which to enjoy the good life.

These are, perhaps, extreme examples. Closer to home we can be tempted to think that once we have enough money, either as a household or as a nation then, and only then, can we afford to serve the needs of the poor in our midst.

Another way in which money is a false god is offering itself a medium of justice. Money can nowadays be used to buy justice, but never God’s justice.

This last week we saw how money can be used to try to attain justice for Maori. Whether you think Treaty settlements are too low or too high, the idea that justice for Maori means monetary compensation buys into the notion that money can do the work of justice. The focus on money risks ignoring issues of Maori sovereignty, iwi autonomy, and the protection of taonga. Money alone can never bring justice to Maori.

But where there are signs that past wrongs are being acknowledged and new relationships built, we can celebrate these as steps towards a fuller notion of justice.

In our own lives we are called to serve God in joy and in serving God we find our freedom and true human fulfillment.

We can, each and every one of us, serve God and our neighbour directly and whenever we encounter them.

This is our calling today.

Amen.

Child Poverty in New Zealand Seminar (8 May 2013)

15 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by radiescent in conference, poverty

≈ Leave a comment

Save the Children New Zealand in association with the Waiwhetu Uniting Church

is delighted to present a Seminar on

Child Poverty in New Zealand

Hear leading experts and commentators discuss a significant issue facing New Zealand society today.

7.30 pm, Wednesday, 8 May 2013

at the Waiwhetu Uniting Church, 6 Trafalgar Street (cnr Grenville & Trafalgar Sts) Waiwhetu, Lower Hutt

[Phone 04 569 5338 or 04 569 9635 for further information]


PROGRAMME

  1. Welcome and Introductions
  2. Opening remarks by the Chair, Arthur Davis, Immediate Past-President, Save the Children NZ
  3. Deborah Morris-Travers, Manager of EveryChild Counts, an organisation committed to the well-being of children in New Zealand
  4. Jonathan Boston, Co-Chair of the Children’s Commissioner’s Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty in New Zealand, who will outline the Group’s findings and recommendations
  5. A Local Solution? A Community Project at one Lower Hutt School in response to this issue – Julia Milne, and Bunnie Willing, Principal, Epuni School

There will be opportunity for questions and comments after each speaker

Supper, and an opportunity to discuss the issues

A Koha to defray expenses, and donations for work in New Zealand supported by Save the Children, would be appreciated

PDF version of this flyer and programme: Child Poverty Event Programme May2013

Recent Posts

  • Reflection in PTC Chapel on Acts 8:26-40 (23 April 2018)
  • Luther on the Scientific and Theological Understanding of the Rainbow
  • That Christianity and Anarchism Should Be Friends
  • John Wesley’s Rules for Stewards
  • Sermon at St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Suva, Fiji (13 November 2016)

Archives

  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • February 2017
  • November 2016
  • August 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • December 2015
  • October 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • July 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • December 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • October 2011
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • April 2009
  • February 2009
  • November 2008
  • September 2008
  • April 2008
  • February 2008
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • June 2007
  • May 2007
  • April 2007
  • March 2007

Categories

  • activism
  • anarchism
  • blogging
  • books
  • capitalism
  • Catholic Social Teaching
  • Catholic Worker
  • chaplains
  • Christian Anarchism
  • Christian ethics
  • church
  • church & state
  • climate change
  • community
  • conference
  • creation
  • democracy
  • distributism
  • Dunedin
  • economics
  • Edinburgh
  • education
  • Ellul
  • environment
  • ethics
  • exile
  • Fiji
  • food
  • forgiveness
  • Holy Spirit
  • human rights
  • humor
  • internet
  • Japan
  • justice
  • Kingdom of God
  • Kiwi Culture
  • lectionary
  • Luther
  • management
  • mission
  • money
  • movies
  • munro-bagging
  • pacifism
  • PCANZ
  • peace
  • people
  • PhD
  • politics
  • poverty
  • PTC
  • Public Theology
  • Quotes
  • religion
  • research
  • Scotland
  • sermon
  • state
  • technology
  • theology
  • tramping
  • travel
  • Uncategorized
  • videos
  • violence
  • war
  • website
  • work
  • worship

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries RSS
  • Comments RSS
  • WordPress.com
Advertisements

Blog at WordPress.com.