The Outskirts of Town

“The Outskirts of Town”

The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry

January 28, 2024

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.               

Carolyn Whitney lived on the North Side.  There were five parts of town: West of Washington, East of Washington, the Near East Side, the Flats, and then, the North Side.  Property values followed this list downward.  The North Side was rough. I remember visiting a parishioner whose son died in Manhattan on 9/11 and she spent the entire time apologizing that I had to cross the river and venture into such a poor neighborhood to visit with her.  "I am sorry you had to come to the North Side." 

On one of my visits to the North Side I called on Carolyn Whitney.  She was a retired nurse in her late eighties.  She lived alone in a very modest one-bedroom, walk-up apartment.  The furnishings were almost non-existent.  It was as if Carolyn was living a monastic life. 

She was great.  We chatted and talked about hospitals and health care and how things had changed since she retired.  She had many stories to offer, and I gathered them up.  At the end of our visit, I said a prayer and thanked her for her time. 

I didn't know it then, but Carolyn was dying.  The call for the pastor was a covert last rite.  She didn't tell anyone about her condition, save her attorney.  Soon after Carolyn died her attorney called me.  The church and five other organizations in town were beneficiaries of her estate.  I must confess I thought this was a 10,000 call.  I was stunned when the attorney said, you and five other organizations will each receive half a million dollars.  The retired nurse without family living on the North Side had saved over three million dollars by living a frugal and simple life. 

Over the years I have had this experience a few times.  And each experience leaves you with a sense, "you have no idea.  What you think is not how things are." 

My classmate from seminary had this happen to him in a painful way.  Wayne was an ad exec for the Houston Chronicle before seminary so he was used to looking over accounts and income projections and financial statements.  Thus, he was quite put out when the treasurer told him he couldn't see the "books" of the church.  That was confidential he was told.  To which he suggested such confidentiality was not helpful and demanded to see them.

When Wayne called me the next day he was in tears.  He had been at the church a year and in his words, "everything I thought was wrong.  People I thought supported the church do not, and people who have very little give the most."  And then he said, "I am ruined."  Ruined was a bit dramatic.  Confused, stunned, maybe embarrassed.  Ruined?  No.

It's hard though when any definition you trust proves false; any idea you hold dear when it is seen as delusion, well, that hurts.  Makes you question, how much more.  If I am wrong about this, how much more am I wrong about?  Money and generosity often yield such confusion.  You assume people who like you and are kind to you will be generous with you.  Such an assumption is predicated on the belief: how people treat others is consistent with how they deal with money.  Not always the case.  Or, like Wayne, if someone is wealthy then they would most likely be generous.  Wayne discovered this was a false assumption. Wealth and generosity don't necessarily flow from one to the other.

I served a church where the largest donor was common knowledge.  Everyone knew who gave the most.  The Robinsons were very wealthy and their gift to the church was over 10% of all the pledges.  Big gift.  As the years of my ministry unfolded, though, I came to see it wasn't so much a gift as it was a demand.  With such a donation came notions of veto power for projects they didn't like, access to the session, and, perhaps worst of all, a critique of anything deemed extravagant. 

Audrey Robinson loved to say, "well, they have champagne tastes on a beer budget."  I heard this enough that I can't help but cringe saying it out loud. I cringe because of the shame the words inflicted.  "Do you really expect me to pay for your wastefulness" was the not-so-subtle insinuation regarding champagne.  If only you were sensible and stayed in your place, then you would not put me in such an awkward moment of correcting you. Fun times had by all!

One of the greatest lessons for ministry I received came from Audrey and her judgmental ways.  It came with a recognition about our own giving.  What are we doing to support the church?  What is our life in stewardship?  I didn't want to follow Audrey's example of "pay to play."  But I did ask, no matter if there is champagne or beer how are you budgeted for faithfulness? What do you give and how?

I asked this question partly because I could see that if I was not generous, how could I challenge Audrey's abusive generosity.  And it was abusive.  Her gift didn't come with strings as much as it came with shackles.  I didn't like the shackles, but how could I speak to it unless I offered a better form of generosity?  What right do I have to speak if I am not generous at all?

Part of this question was simply you must lead by example.

As a child, as a I left the house each school day, as I was just at the backdoor heading out, my mother would holler, "show example."  Show example is another phrase that makes my eyes twitch.  How often did I want to hear, "have fun" or "learn a lot" or "don't get in trouble" anything but "show example." Yet, there it was every school day, "show example."  Hence it's a natural question: how could I lead a congregation to live a better form of generosity than pay to play and shame if I didn't show example?

In our years at Bremerton, we sacrificed to learn generosity.  We did.  I don't say that to boast; I say that to rejoice.  For in the sacrifice, we found freedom.  What I learned by tithing with one income and five kids under the age 15 was this: generosity of spirit is a path toward freedom.  Freedom from fear and worry and dread.  The more we gave, the more we came closer and closer to the tithe the more we could see the paradox: you only keep what you give away.  If you want to be first, you must be willing to be last, least. 

The next lesson was even more shocking.  Gaining freedom from the fear of money, or the fear of not having enough money, was a hard step to take, a hard path to start down, but it was only the beginning.  Once this was achieved, other, more challenging, questions came up.  Can you find freedom from control and possession and expectation?  Can you find freedom from ambition and greed?  Learning how to be generous with money, it turned out, was not the end, it was the beginning.

In the long discipline of lectio continua, where I preach from the gospels following their order, every few years I get to preach the birth stories of Jesus outside of Christmas.  This is a particular joy because there is so much about these stories that is profound and challenging and inspiring, and yet must remain silent in the liturgical season.  Poverty and suffering, the confusion of the birth and paradox, are not good topics for Christmas Eve.  Nobody wants to hear about poverty on Christmas Eve.  And no one needs to. 

The spirit of Advent is a long theme in generosity.  Giving lavish gifts to those in need: I have a bevy of stories fitting this theme.  It is the only time we need not be reminded to be generous.  Is this not the theme of Dickens’ Christmas Carol.  Even Mr. Scrooge is compelled by the season.

Generosity is built into the weeks of Advent.  We have to remind ourselves not to give too much when it comes to Christmas.  Hence the Grinch.  Who hasn’t spoken the words of Cindi Lou Who to welcome the true spirit of Christmas as love and generosity and friendship, not presents?

Yet, this is half the picture.

The other half of the birth of Jesus according to Luke is this: God undoes the order of power by being born as a peasant; the child will grow to be a man who loves the poor; on the last days of his life, Jesus dined and lodged with the poor.  Bethany, where Jesus stayed before his crucifixion, Bethany means, house of the poor.

The first half of the birth story is about generosity; the other half is about poverty.  Jesus will teach blessed are the poor in spirit and blessed are the poor.  He will tell his disciples when you offer mercy to the least, you offer it to me.  He will tell his disciples in Bethany after being anointed with oil that this act of extravagance in the house of the poor must always be remembered for the preaching of good news.  He will tell the rich young ruler, sell what you own and give it to the poor, then come and follow me. 

The story of his birth, being born in Bethlehem, is about being amongst the poor.  Jesus was born on the outskirts of Jerusalem, in a town where the only people the angels could find were wily shepherds, the most marginalized, the outsiders beyond the outskirts.

To ponder what this means is to reckon with how little we trust or seek out the blessing of poverty, to empty ourselves.  We look to gain safety in abundance not scarcity; we seek to find freedom in amassing wealth, not in great generosity.  Consider: what is the key to retirement?  Having enough money.  In the teachings of Jesus, the key to freedom is found with the poor, in extravagant generosity; incarceration is holding on to what we possess, to build bigger barns, to fear the loss of control we experience with money. 

The birth of Jesus, the coming of power, was in the form of poverty.  That is the message of our passage.  Again, not a good Christmas Eve message.

Many, many years ago I invited a pastor to give a stewardship talk at a dinner.  Before he gave his talk, he asked everyone to take their wallets out.  Then he said, pass your wallet to someone at your table; give it to someone who is not your spouse.  The room got painfully quiet.  No.  He insisted. I am not joking.  Pass them around.  After all the wallets were passed, he said, now we are going to take an offering and I want you give like you have always wanted to give.  Give with the generosity you’ve always dreamed of. 

Some people laughed; some people got nervous.  Finally, he said, I am joking.  But then he said, for those who were excited and those who were afraid, hold on to that feeling.

What he said next was all about fear.  We fear not having enough; we fear running out of money, being taken advantage of.  If you lived anywhere near the depression, you fear poverty to your core.  We fear what the lack of money will mean to us, how it will humiliate us or restrict us. 

This is a deep fear.  You can live your entire life and have this fear no matter how much money you have.  There is always a precariousness to wealth.  What if I lost it tomorrow? 

The birth of Jesus is a simple message: freedom comes generosity borne of poverty.  The question the story begs is this: will you ever know freedom from fear by finding generosity of spirit; will you give life away so to find it?  Will you be free like Carolyn or shackled like Audrey?  Amen.