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A sermon preached at
Westmoreland Congregational United Church of Christ
Bethesda, Maryland
by the Rev. Rich Smith
October 23, 2005
1 Thessalonians 2:1-8, Matthew 22:34-46
Last Sunday’s Washington Post carried a fascinating story about one Travis Pastrana, a twenty-two-year-old Virginia man who has been an extreme sports legend since the age of 15. He has turned his estate into a playground for what some might call the foolhardy, with ramps and tracks and pits, on which to push motorcycles to their limits, drive four-wheel vehicles on just two wheels... “Pastrana has long lived in defiance of fear and inhibition, and that lifestyle has simultaneously built him up and broken him down. At 22, he is considered perhaps the greatest motorcycle rider ever. His fearlessness has allowed him to draw a seven-figure salary, live in a house featured on MTV and enjoy more than two dozen sponsors willing to reward him for almost any death-defying stunt. He helped push extreme sports and their premier event, the X Games, into the lucrative mainstream of American popular culture during the last decade
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“But his audacity also has caused 18 serious concussions, more than 50 broken bones and 11 knee surgeries. He suffers short-term memory loss. At an age that most of his peers start their working lives, he is preparing to make a major transition, from the career that made him famous -- motorcycle racing -- to the relatively safer field of auto racing.
“That's not saying that his near-reckless disregard of human limits will change....’It's crazy,’ Pastrana said, ‘but the most exciting stuff happens when you turn off your brain and forget about fear.’" (Washington Post 10-16-05)
Now, I have known about “extreme sports” for a while now, and while I have never been a fan, I was fascinated to witness, down on a Florida beach a while back (while visiting our daughter) some guys on surfboards tethered to parasails. Instead of riding the wave in like normal surfers, they let the wind pull them along, and occasionally, when making turns, they are pulled up out of the water several feet into the air. You wonder what a big sustained gust would do!
An extreme sport is a general, somewhat hazily-defined term for any of several newer sports involving adrenaline-inducing action. They often feature a combination of speed, height, danger and spectacular stunts. It includes things like bungee jumping from a helicopter, skiing in places where one shouldn’t, and even “naked roller-blading.” (Ouch!) Levels of danger vary widely, but there is always an element — an "extreme" factor — that causes an adrenaline rush which keeps participants loyal to their sport. Some participants termed 'adrenaline junkies' develop an obsession with their sport and even claim to be "addicted to adrenaline".
Some might say that even some of the more traditional sporting activities would qualify as extreme, such as climbing Mt. Everest, or rugby, or sky-diving. There are even parodies of all this which I discovered when I found a website dedicated to “extreme ironing.” “Extreme ironing is an outdoor activity that combines the danger and excitement of an 'extreme' sport with the satisfaction of a well pressed shirt. It involves taking an iron and board (if possible) to remote locations and ironing a few items of laundry. This can involve ironing on a mountainside, preferably on a difficult climb, or taking an iron skiing, snowboarding or canoeing.”
I don’t know if we have any extreme sport enthusiasts in our congregation, although one couple has participated in the iron man/iron woman triathalon, and George Harris still runs marathons – and more importantly, finishes them!
I was never very good at sports at all, preferring more traditional ones such as tennis and softball, or simply fishing and hiking, but nothing too dangerous. And I have never been an extreme anything, unless that would be an “extreme moderate.”
But I suppose I can understand some of the attraction, which is the satisfaction that comes when you push yourself beyond the limits you thought were there, move out of the confines of a “normal” life to something more. As Bob Drury, a paraglider pilot says, “We do these things not to escape life, but to prevent life escaping us.” Or, as one anonymous saying has it, "All who live, die. But not all who die have lived." And giving oneself with a passion to an extreme sport helps them experience life at another level altogether. But perhaps being passionate about anything would accomplish that, whether it me music, or art, or a social justice cause, or even faith.
It does give me some ideas for our church! How about “extreme ushering?” With twenty-five collections plates, the offering could be taken in less than ten seconds! Or “extreme confession:” Folks come up and try to out-do one another in describing the luridness of their sins. Or “extreme hymnology.” That’s where we sing seventeen unfamiliar hymns in the same service. You may think we do that already!
There has been a lot of attention paid in recent years to religious extremists, from Christians who blow up abortion clinics to Muslim terrorists and suicide bombers to Mormon polygamists....and there are good reasons to be wary of them. But I sometimes wonder if Jesus himself wasn’t suggesting a way of practicing one’s faith that borders on extremism – faith not as an extreme sport, but as a way of life!
Consider our Gospel lesson – where Jesus gives what is known as the “Great Commandment,” to love God with ALL your heart, with ALL your soul, and with ALL your mind. Not a tithe of your heart and soul and mind, not a portion of them, but ALL of them! Sounds kind of extreme to me. I mean, isn’t there some portion of my life that I can keep for myself?
And as if that’s not bad enough, Jesus is always saying something like this. In the story of the rich young ruler who came to him, asking what he had to do to gain eternal life, Jesus tells him to go and sell everything he has and give it to the poor, then come follow him. To one who wanted to follow but first had some family business to take care of, Jesus said, “Let the dead bury their own dead,” and “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” He lifted up the example of a poor widow who put two copper coins in the offering plate, a pittance in contrast to the rich folks who put in far greater amounts – but which represented a huge commitment from her, “everything she had,” said Jesus, “her whole living.” In the Sermon on the Mount, he warns of storing up treasures on earth, “where moth and rust consume and thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven....for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. And even earlier, in calling his disciples, it is reported that they set down their nets, left everything and followed him.
With Jesus, it seems to be all or nothing! It IS a bit extreme, this insistence that one’s dedication to God must be total.
In the church we try to be more understanding, more tolerant of human weakness, more accepting of mixed loyalties. We don’t set the bar as high as Jesus did. After all, we’ve all got to live in the real world, and such total dedication, extreme, if you will, would wreck havoc on our families, our social lives, our careers. We come “gently”, as Paul did with the Thessalonians.
Nevertheless, maybe it’s time to consider taking up a new sport. I call it “Extreme Stewardship.”
Now, what do we mean by that?
When we say stewardship what generally comes to mind is financial support of the church, especially this time of year, when we’re hearing the marvelous witness of the Pillars in the Pulpit, and getting letters from our Stewardship Chair and Moderator, and preparing for Consecration Sunday next week.... Stewardship does involve setting aside a portion of our income and wealth to support the work of the church, and more to respond to the appeals that pile up from all kinds of organizations and causes that do good works in this world, that go where we cannot and reach out in ways that transform and heal and help. A good bench mark is to set aside 10%, take it right off the top, before you spend anything, or pay the mortgage or even your taxes...just say that the first ten per cent – the first fruits, as our ancestors in faith called it – belongs to God. That’s standard stewardship, something to reach for and then exceed.
Extreme Stewardship is where you realize that it’s not just 10% that belongs to God, but everything! And so all financial decisions are made in light of that assertion. The kind of home you live in, the kind of car you drive, the vacations you take, the places you eat, the products you buy, the entertainment you enjoy, the companies you invest in – all of it is a matter of stewardship! Maybe extreme stewardship. It is every dollar, every penny, being subject to one’s faith, loving God with ALL one’s heart, ALL one’s soul, ALL one’s mind... and ALL one’s checkbook and portfolio as well.
You don’t have to be an Albert Schweitzer or Mother Theresa, or even like a professor I knew, who made it a point to give away not just 10%, but 25%, and who deliberately had no insurance and no pension – that’s REALLY extreme – but you do have to have an attitude towards wealth and possessions and money that understands grace and the transience of it all, and a belief that stewardship is really taking care of that which is not finally yours.
Now there are benefits to all of this, to living this way, to practicing extreme stewardship. First, of course, the church that we all love will be financially healthy, in fact will grow and thrive. We will be able to not just meet our expenses – and the expenses of running an institution, operating a physical plant, paying staff, supporting mission beyond ourselves, are always considerable. And while we’ve reined it in over the past couple of years, it still costs money, and we always have bigger dreams of what we could do together. Good stewardship on all our parts, more than a healthy stock market, will keep us financially healthy.
Secondly, each one of us who practices extreme stewardship, who gives before we spend, generously, extravagantly, even recklessly, will no longer be possessed by our possessions; we will experience a real sense of freedom, freedom to concern ourselves with the things that really count in life. It’s transforming!
And third, there is a very real spiritual side to all of this – remember what Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” In giving, we form and nurture and enjoy the connections to something larger than ourselves. We connect with the Spirit and with our deepest, best selves – just as over the last few weeks we have been talking about our connections with Westmoreland, with the United Church of Christ, with the Community – today we are talking about connecting with something larger still. In giving ourselves away, we find ourselves. In freeing ourselves of all we possess, we make the connection with the One whose possession we are, to God to whom we belong, the One in whom we live and move and have our being. In giving we don’t just support an institution, we give as a spiritual practice – and we would need to do that, and would grow from it, even if the church had no need of our gifts. Because it’s just like the extreme sport paraglider pilot said, “We do these things not to escape life, but to prevent life escaping us."
We have all been challenged this year – there has been so much human need that we have been called to address, beginning with the tsunami, followed by hurricanes in the Gulf Coast, and an earthquake in Pakistan. At our forum this morning we will hear more about the poverty that was uncovered on the Gulf Coast, which will require a lot more than our money to fix – a total dedication to establishing a fair and just society. Our own UCC has set up funds and appealed to our generosity and sense of compassion, and we have responded extremely well. On top of that, the UCC is attempting to raise some $1.5 million so that we can continue our very successful “God is Still Speaking” identity campaign, with a successor to the “Bouncers” TV ad – with all that has happened, that drive is in danger of falling short and we may not get the ads on the air in December, and risk losing the momentum. And the pile of requests from other organizations on our family’s coffee table grows daily. There is no shortage of need. I pray that abundant need will be matched by a sense of abundant compassion, abundant generosity, and abundant and even extreme stewardship. Perhaps God is using all of this need not to bleed us dry, or put us into compassion fatigue, but to grow us into the kind of people who do love with ALL our heart, ALL our strength, ALL our mind – and in that way to love our neighbors even as we love ourselves.
I guess it all comes down to the analogy involving my favorite breakfast - ham and eggs. It has to do with the difference between involvement and commitment. With ham and eggs, the hen's involved, but the pig's committed!
It's time for us to be committed! To go the whole hog, as it were, in acts of reckless, faithful, compassionate, and even extreme, stewardship, in response to the God who has already surround us with extreme love!
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