Leading an Effective Church-
Caring for the Poor and Needy

Pastor Burcham’s Sermon

 Sunday, October 21, 2007

[Video] “You drive up. You feel uncomfortable. Avoid eye contact. Don’t look at him. Wait for an eternity for the light to change. Would it make a difference if you knew he wouldn’t buy alcohol? Would it make a difference if you knew he was suffering from a debilitating mental illness? Would it make a difference if you knew he wanted a job? Look at him. Look into his eyes. In this short moment, are you brave enough? What if he was God’s son?”

Would it make a difference? If you’ve exited the freeway Interstate 80 at Merle Hay Road, you have sat at the light. You have seen the man with the sign. If you are like me, you have asked those questions. “Does he want a job? Will he take a job that’s offered? Is he going to go out and buy booze if I give him money? Does he have something wrong with him that doesn’t allow him to work?” You’ve asked all those questions and more, I’m sure, as you’ve sat there waiting for an eternity for that light to change. But the question I want us to wrestle with this morning is, “Does it matter how those questions are answered?”

Jesus said, “Whatever you’ve done for the least of these brothers of mine, you have done for me.” So let’s wrestle with the question. Does it matter how you would answer those questions that are going through your mind? And I’m going to be really honest and transparent with you because my first reaction is, “Yes, it matters.” In fact, it matters a lot to me. It matters a lot to me that if I give him money, he’s going to go out and buy some booze and have a liquid dinner. Yes, that is a determining factor for me of whether I’m going to give him any money or not. Yes, it matters to me whether that person is willing to work or not. Scripture says, “He who will not work shall not eat.” It matters to me if he has some debilitating disease or some mental issue that doesn’t allow him to work and, therefore, he needs my help. All of those questions and more, the answers to them matter a great deal to me as I sit at the traffic light and I look at the man with the sign. And at the same moment, a debate goes on in my head and I say, “No, it doesn’t matter.” The answers to those questions don’t matter at all. After all, Jesus said, “Whatever you’ve done for the least of these brothers of mine you have done for me.” Jesus did not say, “Whatever you have done for the least of these brothers of mine after you’ve corroborated their story and you’ve guaranteed to yourself that they truly are in need and they tried to get a job but weren’t able to get a job and so now they sit on the corner, now you have done it unto me.” Jesus didn’t say that. Jesus said, “Whatever you do for the least of these brothers of mine, you have done for me.”

How can I look into the heart of the man standing there with the sign? How do I know the story that’s behind the sign? How do I know the situation he has? What shall I judge him by? Shall I judge him by how he looks? Well, now where’s that going to get me? What if he’s really scraggly? What if he hasn’t shaved in a week? What if he just smells rancid? You know what my first reaction is? My first reaction would be my mother’s saying going through my head, “Soap is cheap.” You may be poor but that doesn’t mean you have to be dirty. Soap is cheap and there’s part of me that agrees with Mom on that one. Well, then what should I do? What if he is dressed not bad and the shirt may be a little bit wrinkly but the hair is combed and he is clean shaven? Well, then what will my reaction be? “He doesn’t look too bad off to me. I’m not sure he needs my help.” So where’s that fine line? When does he look just dirty enough but not too dirty? And when is he just clean enough but not too clean? How can I judge how he looks? I can’t look in his heart. So I say to myself, “No, the answers to the questions don’t matter.”

And then I say to myself, “How do I know what God will do either in his life and in somebody else’s life that’s connected to him?” What I mean by that, maybe he is taking full advantage of me. Maybe as he stands there holding the sign, he has absolutely no intention of getting a job. At the end of the day, he jumps into his Beemer and he drives to his house out in Country Club and he stops for a six-pack along the way. Maybe he does all the things that I fear. And maybe 999 times when somebody gives him money, he kind of snickers to himself that he snookered somebody else. But how do I know that on that 1,000 th time that God doesn’t break through? I don’t. So I wrestle with the question, “Does it matter?” For the man holding the sign on the street corner? I can’t answer it. I cannot give you a definitive answer of whether it matters or not because the debate is still raging in my head. “Yes, it matters.” “No, it doesn’t matter.” So I don’t know.

There are two things that I do know and one thing that I fear. The one thing I fear is that we would get so cynical about the poor and the needy, those who are reaching out for help, that we would want to have so much assurance that we weren’t being taken advantage of, that somebody wasn’t doing a con job on us, so they didn’t have something going on that, in the end, we don’t help anybody at all because, after all, we have to be careful with this kind of thing and our heart gets so hardened that we just offer no help to the poor and the needy who are among us. That’s my fear because I think it’s a legitimate fear that all of us could slip into.

But that brings me to the two things I know. The first thing I know is that God says we are to help the poor and the needy among us. It is throughout scripture, there is little doubt about the fact that God is always concerned with the poor people, with the widows, with the orphans, with those who are in need and He is always instructing His people individually and corporately to see to the needs of the poor and the needy among them, Old Testament, New Testament, it’s there. Book of Deuteronomy, “If there is a poor man among your brothers in any of the towns of your land that the Lord your God has given you, do not be hard hearted or tight fisted towards the poor brother. Rather, be openhanded and freely lend him whatever he needs.” Book of Proverbs says, “The righteous care about the justice for the poor but the wicked, they have no concern.” Jesus’ own words in the Gospel of Luke, He’s talking to the Pharisees and He says, “Now when you have your dinner parties, do not invite all of your rich friends over because, next week, they’re just going to extend an invitation to you to come to their house.” Instead, He says, “But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind and you will be blessed.” We look to the early church in the Book of Acts and we find out there that they are always caring for the orphans, the widows, the poor among them. The reading we had this morning, Acts 4, it says, “They shared everything they had.” And then it goes on to say, “And there were no needy people among them.” It is obvious from God’s Word that God wants us to take care of the poor among us. You can’t really debate that. His Word is crystal clear so that’s the one thing I know. God instructs us as individuals and as a church to see to the needs of the poor.

The second thing I know is God says when we respond to the needs of the poor, we respond out of grace, not out of guilt. A very important distinction. We respond out of grace, not out of guilt. If you will for just a moment, let’s trace through the early church as we get a snapshot of them in Chapter 4. It says, “All the believers were one in heart and mind.” What were they one in? What were they united in? They were united in their faith in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. These are the first believers. These are the people who have been waiting for generations for the Messiah to come and now God has called them to faith and they know Jesus was the Messiah. They knew God sent His Son and He lived among them and He taught them. They knew God’s Son was nailed to a cross but when He died, He died for all of them. And through His blood, their sins have been forgiven. They knew Jesus rose from the dead and that because He rose, that gave new life to all of them, an eternal life, a place in heaven for each and every one of them and they were united in that. They were one in heart and mind in believing that Jesus Christ was their Lord and Savior. That’s the foundation of the church.

Then it goes on. “No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own but they shared everything they had.” Now I don’t want you to get the misunderstanding here that they had some sort of commune where everybody sold everything and they sort of threw it all into a general kitty and then they all lived off of it equally. That’s not what it says. It says, “None of them considered their possessions their own.” A little bit later on, it says, “From time to time, some of them, those who owned land, those who had houses, sold it when there was a need.” So it isn’t that they didn’t have their homes. It isn’t that they didn’t have their possessions but they had a change in attitude. They knew what it was to be a steward of what God had given to them. There was a recognition among them that everything they had, beginning with their salvation but even their physical things they had, was a gift from God. Then in reality, it all belonged to God to begin with and God is simply giving them to be stewards of it and recognizing that, then they could freely give it to those who had need. Even generously. Can you imagine selling a piece of property, selling a home so you could give it away to someone else? They understood what it was to be a good steward of what God had given to them, considering it all belonging to God, therefore, having no problem with giving it away and giving it away generously.

And then it goes on from there, “With great power, the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus with much grace upon them.” They were living in grace. Grace equals undeserved love. It’s unconditional love. It’s the kind of love God has for us. It’s a love that flows one way. It’s not a love that says, “I’ll love you as long as you love me in return.” It looks for nothing in return. That’s how God’s love is. They understood that. They didn’t deserve it. They didn’t deserve anything they had in their life but yet God graciously provided it. They understood they didn’t deserve God’s love, they didn’t deserve His forgiveness and salvation but God gave it to them and so as they were loved unconditionally, they showed that unconditional love to others. You see, they gave out of grace, not out of guilt. It’s not that they felt guilty or they felt sorry or they felt pity. They had grace.

In reality, that’s what Jesus is describing when He talks about the sheep and the goats. It’s so easy to misunderstand this passage, so easy to misunderstand this passage to say that we must see to the needs of the poor. We have to clothe people. We have to visit people in prison because if we don’t, we have a really hot future in front of us. “Because, after all, if you didn’t visit me, if you didn’t feed me, if you didn’t clothe me, then away from me into eternal condemnation.” But is that really what Jesus is saying here? Read through it carefully. It says, “Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come to me. You are blessed by my Father. For I was hungry. You gave me something to eat. I was thirty. You gave me something to drink.’” And on and on He goes. But listen to the response of the righteous, “Then the righteous will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you? When did we clothe you? When did we visit you?’” Do you hear the shock in their voice? What do you mean visit you? It’s not as if the righteous were saying, “Yeah, there’s a requirement and you’re right, Jesus, I have it covered. I knew I’d check that one off. I visited the sick and I fed the poor and I put clothing on that one person. You got it, Jesus, I know I did that.” It’s not as if they were trying to check off some obligation. They were shocked saying, “Why are you calling attention to this?” That’s what believers do. It’s just something that comes naturally to us. If we’ve experienced God’s grace and God’s love, then we show that grace and love to others so, of course, we fed that hungry person. Obviously, we went and visited that person who was sick. Naturally, we would help the poor. “We didn’t realize it was you, Jesus. We just did it because that’s what believers do.”

When you and I respond to the poor and the needy, it has to be out of grace, not out of guilt. It isn’t that we feel guilty living out here in the burbs and we look at all the things we have and all the fine possessions and then we hear about the poor and the destitute and so we throw a few shekels their way and now we feel a little bit better because we’ve done our part and now we feel okay and we can go back to our nice, comfortable home. We don’t do it out of guilt. Nor do we do it out of pity. Nor do we do it out of obligation. It’s out of grace. It’s a love that is undeserved. It’s a love that is unconditional.

Now that’s easy to say but it’s really hard to do. Because if it’s love that is unconditional, that means we’re looking for nothing in return. Because, frankly, we could help people and they could resent it. We could help people and they could be very ungrateful, even rude to us. I am guessing we could go around this sanctuary and each one of you would have a story about how you lent a helping hand to somebody and they were ungrateful for the whole thing. I remember when we had a food pantry here at Gloria Dei several years back and I’d take people downstairs to the food pantry and I’d listen to them walk through there and grumble about the poor selection. And then they would say to me, “You didn’t have diapers last week and you don’t have diapers this week. When do you think you just might have some diapers for us?” And in my mind, I would think, “How ungrateful could you be?” But does it matter? You have to wrestle with that. Does it matter whether they’re grateful or not?

Unconditional love. Undeserving love. How many times have we been ungrateful for the things our Father has given to us? We give out of grace, not out of guilt, not out of obligation but as God has loved us, we want to show that love to others.

Well, it just so happened Friday afternoon, after I finished writing this message, I found myself on Merle Hay quite by accident and sure enough, I went up underneath the overpass at Interstate 35 and there he was with his sign and, wouldn’t you know it, the light turned red. And I pulled up right next to him and he stared at me the whole time. And I’m going to be really transparent with you here, the whole debate raged in my mind even after writing this message. “Does it matter to me?” “Yeah, it does.” “No, it doesn’t.” “Yes, it does.” “No, it doesn’t.” In the end, the light turned green and I went on my way. Was it the right decision? I don’t know. I have to wrestle with it. So do you.

Believe it or not, just yesterday afternoon, I was sitting in my office trying to get ready for the Saturday night service. I hear somebody out in the reception area calling to see if anybody is there. I open up the door. Here is this gal in sweats and kind of mussed up hair. I knew what it was. She was going to be looking for help so I sat down with her. I listened to her story. And again I’m going to be transparent with you. I’m a very skeptical person and so I started listening for inconsistencies in her story and contradictions. They were there. In the end, I reached in my wallet and I gave her a $20. Right decision? I don’t know. I have to wrestle with it. You have to wrestle with it.

You see, the one thing I do know is there are poor among us. There are poor worldwide and there are poor in our community. There are some 12 million orphaned children in Africa because of the AIDS epidemic. In Uganda, I was surrounded by some of those little tykes, no mom, no dad, taken away because of AIDS. What are they going to do? In the U.S., it’s estimated there are 3 million homeless people. This winter, they will be living in cardboard boxes. It’s estimated that there are 5,000 homeless youth here in Iowa, young people. Where are they going to live this winter? Under overpasses, in boxes. In Iowa, 12 percent of the population is at the poverty level and we’re a lucky state. In the Des Moines area, over 20 percent of those at poverty are single mothers trying to take care of their children. Here in Urbandale, over 16 percent of those signed up for the hot lunch qualify for the reduced rate because of their income level. The poor are here. They’re right outside of our doors and they’re across the ocean and we have to wrestle, my friends, as individuals and as a congregation. How do we respond? There are no easy answers.

The two things I know, though, God tells us that we are to see to the needs of the poor among us. And God tells us we are to do that out of grace, not out of guilt or any other motivation. So you and I will have to struggle with that and I believe it’s time for us to struggle as a congregation as well. I know that many of our ladies’ groups are seeing to the needs of the poor and the single moms around us. I know that some of our mission trips go out and see to the needs of people but I believe that a congregation this size needs to do more. I believe we have a responsibility from God to do more. We are a large congregation and I think we can have a large impact. And we have to struggle through that.

My invitation to you is if you want to struggle through that with me, send me an e-mail or call the office so I know who you are and in the next couple of weeks, we’re going to get together. There will be no quick answers. But we need to begin and we begin today. And if that’s something that’s on your heart and you want to take a leadership role in that, you send me an e-mail and you give me a phone call and we’ll get together and we’ll find out where we go from here. Because God says that we need to take care of the poor. That’s what believers do. And we have been blessed by God and we’ve experienced His grace and now we want to share that grace even with the poorest and the neediest among us. Amen.

Copyright 2007 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church