Proper 20 B + Generosity of Spirit + 9.22.24
M.Campbell-Langdell
All Santos, Oxnard
(Proverbs 31:10-31; Psalm 1; James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a; Mark 9:30-37)
Good morning!
In Mark,
Jesus says: “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of
all.”
As many of you know, Pastor Alene and I just had the blessing
of spending a week traveling in Alaska, with a few days on either end in
Vancouver, BC and Eugene, OR. While in Ketchikan, the Salmon Capital of the
World, we visited the local cultural center. Ketchikan has a beautiful downtown
with a street that is built over a creek in which you can see the salmon swim
and the seals hunt them. At the cultural center we learned about the local
Tlingit and other first nations’ traditions around totem poles, handmade
baskets and other woven goods, and about the tradition of the potlach. Potlach
means “give away” and is not all about a shared food experience like our modern
mainstream US tradition of a “pot-luck.” Alene and I read that in traditional
Tlingit culture, potlaches were put on by families who had reached a high
social status and the goal for those families was to give away everything. Not
just intricate carved goods, but also practical items, were and are given away.
The idea was reciprocity within community, that if at a given potlach, one
family gave away items, especially to members of another clan, then in another
instance they would receive. Nonetheless, I was taken with the concept that
those carrying out the potlach would intend to give it all away. In that sense,
the one who would be first must truly be the servant of all.
Our collect today says “Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious
about earthly things, but to love things heavenly” and I found the practice of
this clan to be fascinating because it reminds us that to follow God, we must
of course focus on earthly needs in order to survive, but we must also remember
that God provides those things. If we truly love things heavenly, we can put
our focus on the heavenly things and share, hoping and expecting to have what
is shared returned in some way. This also resonates with a certain theology of
stewardship in which we give, trusting that what is good will be returned to us
in some form. This does not mean we are generous just because we anticipate the
generosity of others, but instead it helps us be childlike, truly putting our
trust in God and not just in what we have squirrelled away.
In the Wild Lectionary, a lectionary that is focused on care
of creation, Ched Meyers translates the words of James in the passage today
thus: You do not have, because you do not ask.
You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend freely
(or wastefully, dapanaō) on your hedonism. (Jam 4:c-3)
He suggests that James says we must resist the “devil” of
false spending and pleasure just for our own sake, and instead “Insofar as we
seek intimacy with God, divine reciprocity will be re-animated.”[1]
How can we seek intimacy with God? How can we look beyond the miserly instincts
of our world and instead learn from siblings such as the Tlingit to be willing
to hold less lightly our possessions but instead to remember that all we have
comes from God?
In Proverbs today we hear: “She opens her hand to the poor, and
reaches out her hands to the needy.” The woman from Proverbs is lifted up – she
is a simple woman, not a queen, but she is a queen of her household and I love
that her generosity with the poor is elevated. Ched Myers suggests that if we
see her not just as the archetype of the traditional Jewish householding woman,
but rather we overlay upon her the concept of Mother Nature, we look through an
interesting lens: “Nature indeed “looks well after the ways of her household”
(Prov 31:27). Like the woman, the diligent yet gift-oriented economy of nature
contrasts with the presumptions of male elites who rule and plunder!”[2]
Bearing in mind James’ warnings not to ask just for selfish gain, but rather for
the good of others, could we examine our current capitalist model and instead
look at how we could care for creation and each other, looking towards the
generous example of Mother Nature here?
Mother Nature is especially on my mind this week. Last Sunday’s
section in the LA Times, “It’s Up to Us” reminded readers not only of the
climate crisis, but also of our responsibility in responding to it. It reminded
us that changes that we make now can still make a difference. As a church, we
have installed solar panels, shifted to a more sustainable waste disposal
process and more as a result of trying to do our part. This is not just good
for the environment, but it is more economically sustainable. One challenge our
trustees had recently was learning that we are in part invested in traditional
energy forms. While it was not smart financially to ask our investors to divest
right away, we have been following the example of the larger Episcopal church
in moving away from fossil fuels and into supporting sustainable energy forms
and other innovative solutions.
As we look at the psalm today, I am drawn this this verse: “They
are like trees planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in due season, with
leaves that do not wither; everything they do shall prosper.” And in this we
are called to be rooted, as the song that Pastor Jade and Victor like to sing,
we want to be “like a tree, rooted, planted by living water.” How can we find
our roots again, and connect to the original source?
Back to my initial example of the Tlingit peoples, it is a cliché that our
first nations tribes know the way out of the current climate crisis, but one
based on a truth. As the original sustainable lifestyle influencers, we can
learn from them about how to build sustainable communities. The wisdom of the
Spirit calls to us in this age of climate crisis and urges us to learn from our
ancestors- not just our individual ancestors but particularly those who are
indigenous to this land, and to their descendants who continue in this land.
How can we reconnect with Mother Nature, that bountiful figure who can show us
a way forward? How can we forget what we suppose, become like little children,
and enter the kingdom of God? On the way, perhaps we can also help our planet
and the generations to come, becoming in turn wise ancestors for the future?
Amen.
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