Mr Moneybags and the Big Issue seller

Once upon a time, there was a really big city gent, known as Mr Moneybags.
You might have seen him, dressed in an Armani suit,
with a Philippe Patek watch on his wrist,
being driven through Brixton in a really smart car to his offices in the City, or perhaps in Canary Wharf.
Mr Moneybags did a great deal for charity;
he always gave a handsome cheque to Children in Need and Comic Relief, and quite often got himself on the telly giving the cheque to the prettiest presenter.

But in private he thought that the people who needed help from organisations like Comic Relief were losers.
Actually, anybody who earned less than a six-figure salary was a loser, he thought.
He despised his five brothers,
three ex-wives,
ten children,
twenty-five grandchildren
and the hordes of mistresses,
secretaries,
assistants
gofers
and general flunkies
who surrounded him –
and they knew it, too.
Especially, though, he despised the homeless people,
who he thought really only needed to pull themselves together,
to snap out of it,
to get a life.

Particularly, he despised the Big Issue seller
who he used occasionally to come across in the car-park.
He would usually buy a copy, because, after all, one has to do one’s bit, but once in the car would ring Security and get the chap removed.

Laz, they called him, this particular Big Issue seller.
Not that Mr Moneybags knew or cared what he was called.
I’m not quite sure how Laz had ended up on the streets,
selling the Big Issue
or even outright begging.
It might have been drugs, or drink,
or perhaps he was just one of those unfortunate people who simply can’t cope with jobs and mortgages and families
and the other details of everyday life that most of us manage to take in our stride.
But there you are, whatever the reason,
Laz was one of those people.
He was rather a nice person, when you got to know him;
always had a friendly word for everybody,
could make you laugh when you were down,
knew the way to places someone might want to go, that sort of thing.

But what he wasn’t good at was looking after himself,
keeping hospital appointments,
taking medication,
that sort of thing.
And so, one morning, he just didn’t wake up,
and his body was found huddled in his bed at the hostel.
They couldn’t find any relations to take charge of it,
so he was buried at the council’s expense, very quietly, with only the hostel warden there.
But the warden always said, then and ever afterwards,
that he had seen angels come to take Laz to heaven.

At about the same time, Mr Moneybags became ill.
Cancer, they said.
Smoking, they muttered.
Drinking too much….
Rich food….
So sorry, there was very little they could do.
Now, of course, Mr Moneybags wasn’t about to accept this,
and saw specialist after specialist,
and, as he became iller and more desperate, quack after quack.
He tried special diets,
herbal remedies;
he tried coffee enemas,
injections of monkey glands,
you name it, he tried it.
But nothing worked and, as happens to all of us in the end, he died.

His funeral wasn’t very well-attended, either.
Funny, that –
you’d have thought that more of his
five brothers,
three ex-wives,
ten children,
twenty-five grandchildren
and the hordes of mistresses,
secretaries,
assistants
gofers
and general flunkies
might have wanted to be there.
But no.
In the end, only the ones to whom he had left most of his money were there,
and a slew of reporters,
hoping to hear that the company was in trouble.
Which, incidentally, it wasn’t –
whatever else Mr Moneybags may have been,
he was a superb businessman, and the company he founded continues to grow and flourish to this very day.

Anyway, there they were,
Mr Moneybags and Laz the Big Issue seller, both dead.
But, as is the way of things,
it was only their bodies which had died.
Mr Moneybags found himself unceremoniously told to sit on a hot bench in the sun, and wait there.
And he waited, and waited, and waited, and waited,
getting hotter and hotter,
thirstier and thirstier.
And he could see the Big Issue seller, whom he recognised,
being welcomed and fed and made comfortable by someone who could only be Abraham, the Patriarch.
After a bit, he’d had enough.
“Abraham,” he called out, “Couldn’t you send that Big Issue seller to bring me a glass of water, I’m horrendously thirsty?”

And you know the rest of the story.
Abraham said, not ungently,
‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things,
while Lazarus received bad things,
but now he is comforted here and you are in agony.
And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed,
so that those who want to go from here to you cannot,
nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’
And he pointed out that Mr Moneybags’ five brothers,
three ex-wives,
ten children,
twenty-five grandchildren
and the hordes of mistresses,
secretaries,
assistants
gofers
and general flunkies
wouldn’t listen to Laz if he were to go back and tell them –
they really knew it already, thanks to Moses and the Prophets.
You note, incidentally, that Mr Moneybags didn’t ask if he could go back!

===oo0oo===

Jesus had a lot to say about money, and our relationship with it
didn’t he?
And about our relationship with other people, too, for that matter.
Do you remember the story he told about the sheep and the goats?
This was when he reckoned that at the Last Judgement it would be those who had cared for Jesus in the persons of the sick, the prisoners, the hungry and, yes, the Big Issue sellers who would be welcomed into heaven, and those who had ignored him, in those guises, would not.
“For whoever does it unto the least of one of these, does it unto Me”, he said.

It must have come as a shock to Jesus’ hearers.
They had been taught that if you were rich and successful, it meant that God favoured you, and if not, not.
I am always rather amused when I read Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes and compare them with Luke’s –
Luke says, frankly, “Blessed are you when you are hungry, or thirsty, or poor”, but then, he was a Gentile and didn’t have the background that Matthew, a Jew, had.
Matthew can only bring himself to write “Blessed are you when you are poor in spirit, or when you hunger and thirst after righteousness.”
For him, still, poverty is not a sign of God’s favour, but rather the reverse.

Even today, you know, there are those who preach prosperity, they preach that if you are God’s person you will be rich and healthy.
But that isn’t necessarily the case.
Jesus never said that!
Okay, so he healed the sick, but he had a great deal to say about the right attitude to possessions and to other people.

It’s in this sort of area, isn’t it, where what we say we believe comes up smack bang against what we really believe.
We discover, as we study what Jesus really had to say, that being His person isn’t just a matter of believing certain things, it’s about being in a relationship with Him, and about letting him transform us into being a certain kind of person.
It’s no good believing, says St James, if that faith doesn’t transmute itself into actions.
And this seems to be what Jesus says, too.

It’s no good saying you believe in Jesus, and ignoring the very people Jesus wants you to look after –
the dispossessed, the refugees, the downtrodden, the marginalized, the exploited.
It’s not easy, I know.
We do hesitate to give money because of the very real possibility it might be spent on drugs or drink.
But there are other ways of giving.
There are various charities we can give to, or even lend a helping had at.
I believe one organisation sells meal tickets one can give away.
Of course, one can even buy the Big Issue!

Seriously, though, we need to take this sort of thing seriously.
Quite apart from anything else, our very salvation may depend on it.
We say that salvation is by faith, and so it is –
but what is faith if it doesn’t actually cost us anything?
What is faith if it is mere lip-service?

And anyway, what sort of picture are we giving to the world if we just talk the talk, and don’t walk the walk? (I mentioned something here about Back to Church Sunday, and how we need to show people who we are, as well as tell them)
Do you remember Eliza Doolittle, in My Fair Lady, exclaiming “Don’t talk of love, show me!”
I reckon the world is saying that to the Church right now.
Don’t let’s just talk about Jesus, let’s show people that he is risen and alive and dwelling within us by the power of his Holy Spirit.
The best way to cultivate a right attitude to money, people and spiritual things is to see the “beggar outside our gate” –
quite literally the Big Issue seller, if you like, but basically anybody who is not like ourselves.
The miracle is that the more loosely we hold our possessions, the more we enjoy them, the more we serve the needs of others, the more we value them, and the more we listen to God’s words, the more we value ourselves.
And, of course, the more we are able to show people Who Jesus Is, and that he is alive today.
Amen.

In or Out?

So which football team do you support? Or do you prefer rugby, or cricket – what’s your sport, and who’s your team? Do you play for a local team? Or did you, when you were younger?

It’s great being part of a team, isn’t it? Or perhaps being part of a group, or a gang of friends. At least it can be. But suppose you are left out? Suppose you’re the one who is always the last to be chosen because you’re hopeless at games? Suppose you’re the one they jeer at and laugh at?

Here’s another suppose. Suppose you were part of a group whose function in life was to do nice things for people – perhaps you did shopping for old people, say, or you knitted blanket squares for charity. And your group got together each week to catch up on what you’d been doing, and perhaps have a meal together, or generally have a bit of fun together. You’re a group, a gang, and it shows. People know who you are. They like you.

But then supposing you suddenly discovered that someone else was doing the same nice things as you were. The specky, nerdish kid that nobody likes. He was also fetching shopping for old people, or knitting blanket squares for charity, or whatever it was.

I wonder how you’d react. Would you think, oh, that’s nice, good for him. Or would you think, here, how dare he? He’s not one of us, what does he think he’s doing? We’re the only ones who do that job!

I think both Jesus and Moses came up against this attitude in our readings today. “How dare they! They’re not part of our group – tell them to stop!” For Jesus, it was when one of the disciples discovered that someone else was casting out demons in Jesus’ name, but it wasn’t anybody they knew and, as far as they were concerned, he had never met Jesus and he wasn’t One of Them. “We tried to make him stop,” explains John, “but he wouldn’t!”

But what was Jesus’ reaction? “"Don't stop him. No one can use my name to do something good and powerful, and in the next breath cut me down. If he's not an enemy, he's an ally. Why, anyone by just giving you a cup of water in my name is on our side. Count on it that God will notice.”

And something very much the same has happened in our Old Testament reading, too. Moses has got fed up again – Moses frequently gets fed up! This time, the children of Israel have been grumbling because they don’t like the food. God has been supplying them with Manna – nobody knows quite what that was, but it was a basic food source for them while they were wandering in the desert. Anyway, although they hated being in slavery in Egypt, they are beginning to miss all the fish, and the melons, the leeks, the cucumbers, the onions and the garlic. Well, I don’t blame them, really – I think I’d miss those things if I couldn’t have them! But not worth being a slave for! Anyway, God is a bit cross with them and says that okay, they want meat – fine, he’ll give them so much meat they’ll get sick and tired of it! At this stage, Moses doesn’t know how on earth God plans to do this – later, we learn, it was flocks of quails, which are a type of rather delicious game bird – and it all seems a bit much, so he gets his 70 elders, his team leaders, together to pray. And while this is happening, the Holy Spirit falls on the elders, and they begin to speak forth God’s word.

This was unusual in those days – the Holy Spirit didn’t come to people as a matter of routine, in the way that he does today, so when it did happen, it was thought to be a mark of God’s favour. And there are two of the elders who, for whatever reason, haven’t joined the gathering. Their names are Eldad and Medad, and they have stayed in the camp – but because they are elders, the Holy Spirit has also fallen on them. Oh dear. So, of course, someone comes running up to tell Moses, and his heir, Joshua – the same Joshua for whom the book of the Bible is named – says “Well, aren’t you going to stop them?”

Moses, I think, roars with laughter. “Are you jealous for me? I wish that all God's people were prophets. I wish that God would put his Spirit on all of them.” A wish that, of course, came true at Pentecost.

But do you see? It’s all about wanting to exclude people, isn’t it? They’re not part of the gang, so they can’t do what we do. They mustn’t be allowed. They must stop casting out demons in Jesus’ name, or they must stop speaking forth God’s word in prophecy.

Oh dear.

Not good.

Well, yes, we know that in theory, but do we know it in practice? It’s all too easy to exclude people, isn’t it? For a wide variety of reasons. Primary school kids sometimes form gangs whose whole idea is to exclude the opposite sex: No Girls Allowed; No Boys allowed. That’s relatively harmless, of course – but then you get the ones who exclude people whose skin colour is different, or who perhaps have some kind of disability. Or who are of a different religion – it is a very short step between reckoning that they’re mistaken in what they believe, to reckoning they, themselves are bad people for believing it.

None of this is nice; it’s the road to ethnic cleansing, to genocide, to the Holocaust. A road humanity has trodden all too often, and will probably tread all too often in the future.

But almost worst is when it happens in the Church. You will probably know better than I do the story of what happened when Black Christians first came over to this country with the Empire Windrush and its successors, and it’s not pretty. But that’s not the only form of exclusion, even if it is the most obvious one.

It’s what about the other Christians? People who worship God differently. People, who perhaps, disagree with us about certain issues. We are altogether too apt to say “Well, if you don’t agree with me, you’re not a Christian!” I know I’ve been guilty of that in my time. We try to limit God – who is in, who is out? Who’s in God’s gang?

But God doesn’t. We’re not Christians because of what we do or don’t believe; we’re Christians because God loves us and has sent his Son to die for us. We have responded to that, but that’s not what has saved us – God has!

There is a man in America1 who, for a variety of reasons, has decided to spend this year worshipping in a different church every Sunday, not just Christian churches, either, but Jewish and all sorts. I’ve been following his blog for the last couple of months; I can’t remember how I first found it. It’s fascinating reading his journal, and watching his faith grow and develop. A couple of weeks ago he went to a church that he found constraining – they were, for his taste, too negative, too full of “Thou shalt nots”. And after some thought – and argument with people from that church who commented on his reflections – and a Sunday spent worshipping in a Church that was rather more to his taste, he has this to say:

“I don't care who you are, what you've done, who you voted for, how often you read the Bible, or what your political stance is on gay marriage or abortion. I don't care if you are gay, straight, or bisexual. I don't care if you've had sex with a thousand people or you're forty years old and saving yourself for marriage. I don't care if you are Methodist, Catholic, Muslim, or you sat next to me at the Church of Scientology. GOD LOVES YOU. Not because of what you can do for him, but because he's freaking God, so he doesn't need you to do a damn thing. He loves you because he made you. He created you to be the jacked up person you are, and he loves you in spite of your flaws. You're the Prodigal Son. So am I. And God is running toward us with open arms. Nothing else matters except his desire to welcome us back home. And he's waiting. Despite the thousands of rules Pharisees will lay on you to convince you that you're unworthy of God's love, God says you are worthy because of the sacrifice Jesus made two thousand years ago. Period. Bottom line. End of story.”

To which I could only respond: “Amen!” And, that being the case, how dare we exclude anybody? They may not worship God the same way we do; they may look different, or behave differently. They may have quite different views about all sorts of issues that we think are important. But, as Jesus said, “Why, anyone by just giving you a cup of water in my name is on our side. Count on it that God will notice.”

And then Jesus went on to give a warning: “On the other hand, if someone –however insignificant they might seem – is believing in me and you put up a road block and turn them back, you’ll be made to pay for it. You’d have been better off being dumped in the middle of the bay wearing concrete boots.”

You see, it does matter. We are all part of God’s kingdom, and woe betide us if we try to exclude anybody, or try to make someone else feel they don’t fit in. God is Love – and woe betide us if we try to cut anybody off from that love. Just because they aren’t on our team doesn’t mean they’re rubbish players!

1 http://stevenfuller.blogspot.com