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 "PLAYING IT UNSAFE" Ruth 3:1-5,
I want for us to talk today about something that I think plagues the church almost as much as idolatry, that hurts the church almost as much as deceit, and kills the church faster than almost anything. Moderation.
Moderation is an insidious little thing that slips into our lives of faith almost unnoticed. It's awfully Presbyterian, we who pride ourselves in doing everything "decently and in order." Our quest for religious moderation is nothing new. We've been after it since the days of Plato and Aristotle. I always thought that it was my mother, not Aristotle, who coined the phrase "everything in moderation." Turns out she'd heard it before. We don't want to veer too far to the left, or too far to the right. We don't want to get too evangelical, and we don't want to get too radical. And for heaven's sake, let's not get emotional! As long as we stay in the middle of the road, we can't hurt anyone and no one can hurt us. Best of all, we won't have to get tied down. We've got enough commitments already, after all. Who could be against moderation?
Well, scripture, for one. The book of Revelation begins with seven letters to seven churches. A couple of the churches, like are doing very well, and get commended for their faithfulness. Some of them, like aren't doing well at all, and are encouraged to turn things around. But the church that gets the harshest words of all is Laodecia - and they are chastised for being neither hot nor cold. They probably thought that they were doing well to live moderate lives. But the Spirit tells them that they are about as lively and inviting as coffee at room temperature, as oatmeal left out on the counter - so tasteless and blah that all you can do is spit it out. Moderation may have worked well for Goldilocks when she was trying to find some porridge that wasn't too hot or too cold but just right. But Goldilocks is a fairy tale. Moderation does not suit the
Do you remember that book The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis? That's the book he wrote about the fictional devil Wormwood who writes to his nephew the apprentice devil Screwtape about how to keep people from becoming Christians. One of the first lessons that Wormwood gives to Screwtape is about the importance of moderation in helping someone avoid becoming a Christian. Wormwood coaches him this way: "Talk to him about ?moderation in all things.' If you can get him to the point of thinking that religion is all very well up to a point, you can feel happy about his soul. A moderated religion is as good for us // as no religion at all." Moderation in the faith is exactly what the enemy desires for us to achieve. ------------------------------------ How did we get here? How did we get from the riskiness of and the immoderation of the empty tomb to this tepid place where we play it safe in the middle so that we don't stick out and offend anyone?
It wasn't from the Hebrews. The Jews understood that we are whole people, a complex combination of body and mind and spirit. In fact, they saw that struggling with the conflict between those competing forces was what produced truthful living. But then, towards the end of the first century BC, Greco-Roman thought came to the fore. And it was Plato who first suggested that we as humans separate out reason from our emotions and our will. He said that each of us is like a chariot led by three horses - the rational one, the one which drives our appetites, and the one that drives our spirituality. Three separate horses, they were. And since one horse must out of necessity lead the pack, he thought, reason should be it // because it was reason that could hold the other two in check. So then Plato's student Aristotle came along and decided that Plato's teaching must mean that the good life was a life of moderation. Since then, the teaching of Plato and Aristotle have so influenced western society that we have practically made an idol out of moderation. We prefer to avoid conflict, we don't like extremes, we hang out with people who look and act and think like us, we try to blend in, we play it as safe as we can. And in avoiding conflict, we avoid the healthy give-and-take that allows us to grow. ------------------------------------------------------ Friends, where our faith is concerned, it's time for us to stop playing it safe. that the only thing you find in the middle of the road are yellow stripes and dead armadillos. You and I are neither. God has given us the permission, the ability, and the mandate to play it unsafe: to color outside the lines, to get passionate about our faith, to go for it.
That's exactly how King David was born. The safest thing for Ruth to have done when her first husband died would have been to go home to and live out her life among people like her who would take care of her because she was needy and who wouldn't require too much of her. But instead she made the bold choice to live as a powerless widow in a land with people she did not understand, and stay alive by gleaning after the harvesters just to get daily bread for herself and Naomi. Naomi got the idea that Ruth might ask Boaz out on the first date, as it were. Moderate women wouldn't do that Moderate men wouldn't go for that. But she chose to play it unsafe. She took a bold step out in faith, and because she was willing to do so, she eventually became the great-grandmother of a king. What would we have done?
Or look at the widow in the temple. Jesus had been taking note of all the nice, moderate people who were going through the temple and making sure everyone knew they were giving their tithe. But this woman refused to play by the rules. Clearly she didn't know her place. She wasn't one of the four hundred of She probably wasn't dressed right. And instead of the rustle of a paper check or dollar bills brushing the offering plate, her two copper coins made a loud clanking sound as they fell straight to the bottom.
She barely had two nickels to rub together, much less two to put into the offering plate. But Jesus was far less impressed with the amount of money she gave as he was with how she gave it. Jesus said quite literally that the woman put her whole life into that plate. Nothing moderate about it. She put not only all that she had, but all that she was into her offering that day. And hers was the example that Jesus holds up for us. Where would we have been standing in the temple that day? ---------------------------------------------- Friends, we are SUPPOSED to stick out. You and I are SUPPOSED to be noticeably different from the rest of the world. But when we insist on all things in moderation, especially where our faith is concerned, we blend in to the woodwork and communicate to others that our faith and our God are just about as exciting as that room-temp oatmeal.
In his autobiography Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis tells his story of coming through atheism to a deep faith to marriage late in life and an early bereavement of his beloved wife. And yet he shared that he had learned this: "Give up your self, and you will find your real self? Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will really be yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead."
The good news of the gospel is that when we dare to keep back nothing - when we dare to give up our selves and to do so without moderation, God provides a safety net for us. We can give everything we have and everything we are without fear. We don't need to spend time and energy trying to protect ourselves and to lie low in our moderation so that no one calls on us to share our faith. God has promised to protect us. God has promised to give us the words we need, the energy we need, the faith we need. The security God offers us is not a promise about what won't happen, like we won't be hit with a flu pandemic or we won't lose people we love or we won't lose our last dime. Those things may indeed come to pass. The security God offers us is a promise of what WILL happen: in the words of the psalmist, "If I make my bed in hell, you are there." Friends, that is real security. And with the security of God's love undergirding us, we can risk it all, we can give it all, we can live it all. ----------------------------------------------- As you know, today is the day we call Stewardship Dedication Sunday. You may think that this is all about money, and that I'm asking you to just put your checkbooks and wallets into the offering plate. If you feel so led, go for it. The Session will not complain! But actually, I'm asking you for so much more. I am asking you to risk playing it unsafe.
C'mon! Show your faith. Stick out in the crowd. Sing a little bit louder. Talk back to your pastor. Make a difference. Risk putting down your last two cents, with the knowledge that God is there to catch you and pleased that you are being so immoderate. Let it be known with your whole life that you are a follower of Jesus.
Let's close today by praying this prayer of the great theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. Let us pray. O Lord, who has taught us that to gain the whole world and lose our souls is great folly, grant us the grace to so lose ourselves that we may truly find ourselves anew in the life of grace, and so to forget ourselves that we may be remembered in your Kingdom. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
---------------------------------------------------------------- The world is a better place because of the immoderate C.S. Lewis and his many writings, two of which are The Screwtape Letters and Surprised by Joy. They are widely available in many editions.
For the point about the promises God does and does not make to us, I am grateful to Marilyn Chandler McEntyre and her work "An Invitation to Insecurity," quoted in The Christian Century October 17, 2006, page 17.
Reinhold Niebuhr's prayer was quoted by William Willimon in a sermon on this passage. The sermon and prayer can be accessed at http://www.chapel.duke.edu/worship/Sunday/viewsermon.aspx?id=23
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