Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18

1 Thessalonians 5:1-11

Ruin awaits us.

America is like the drunkards Zephaniah describes "stagnating over the remnants of their wine." America is like those Paul describes in his letter to the Thessalonians as falling into a drunken stupor. We've drained the keg of complacency and now we're sniffing around for more. We're dead to the world, we're dreaming through misery that thrives in our own country, in our own urban slums. Our public schools are decaying, and we refuse to fund them, instead debating private school voucher plans. Our playgrounds are turning into killing fields, and increasingly those who have means are forced to put their children in private schools while those who have no means are doomed to generations of degradation and poverty. We tear down affordable housing and quibble about raising minimum wages, while the numbers of homeless skyrocket. We refuse to address the root causes of poverty; instead, we blame poverty on the poor and build more prisons. We're sleeping through misery abroad that we've caused. We build exploitive factories and sweatshops in Mexico, so that you and I can spend less on food and clothing and more on luxuries. But when Mexicans come here to benefit from the wealth we accumulate at the cost of their sweat and blood, we chase them down with guns and dogs and brand them as criminals and send them back in heartbreak and shame and violence. While the pleas of the poor and the oppressed rise up to our sleeping ears, we dream dreams of glory and wealth, more cheap labor, higher stocks, more markets to plunder, more environments to exploit, and more video games.

We may think that our borders are safe from our enemies, that our military is powerful enough to protect us from anything or anyone. But we're not safe. Our military cannot protect us from ourselves, from the violence we do to each other. Just two weeks ago, somebody broke into our neighbor's home and assaulted their eleven year old daughter. What good is national security, when you cannot protect an eleven year old child? We may think that the economy will just keep booming forever. But our economy is not booming for everyone and nothing in all of God's creation has ever kept booming forever. What good is a booming economy when men, women, and children are sleeping on the streets? What will we do when times are bad, if we can't even treat each other right when times are good? We might think that we are free to just keep living however we like. But our freedom is an illusion. We are slaves to a lifestyle that is destroying our neighbor, destroying our planet, ultimately destroying us. We would have to be drunk or dreaming to really believe that we are somehow different, that America is forever blessed while every other civilization is cursed.

At times, I despair. Perhaps it is as Zephaniah laments. The good can only thrive once there has been a great day of reckoning, a Great Day of the Lord. Once the Lord has looted the wealthy and laid them low, torn down our houses, laid waste our towns with foreign armies and brought such sore distress that we grope like the blind, once the Lord has poured out our blood like mud and our corpses like dung, maybe then, maybe only then, will we understand our folly. Perhaps only then may we become a "humble and lowly people," who "do no wrong," who "tell no lies," and who can "shout for joy" because at last we have no greedy, mighty kings or presidents for earthly rulers, but God alone for our sovereign (Zephaniah 3:9-20). If I knew such terror and destruction might cure us of our senselessness and pride, I would look forward to it with eagerness, as Zephaniah did. Perhaps I should just be patient and wait for the tower of pride to fall.

When Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, many of them despaired, even as I often despair. They looked around them and saw a world full of rampant sin and evil. And they eagerly anticipated the Great Day of the Lord. They hoped for it to come any minute. Perhaps it was because they felt so powerless to change the evil around them that they had given up living what they considered moral lives. They had given up on the idea of living a life at odds with the world, and were content to comply with the world until God came soon to set things right. Many American Christians have also giving up on the idea of living at odds with the world. We too are content instead to comply with its ways.

America's sin is the idolatry of abundance. We call the idea that everyone should strive for more wealth "the American Dream." We romanticize upward mobility and we fetishize money. Desire for money–which we equate with security–competes for our precious time, energy, and wit with everything else we claim to value more: our family, our church, our community, the way of Jesus, the reign of Justice and Love. The values of a money culture rule in our brains and our hearts, so that we cannot but devalue those who have failed by its harsh standards. For Americans, more than for the majority of the world's other cultures, pledging allegiance to God means we must struggle with the Demon Mammon. Where do we stand in the struggle with the Demon? Are we engaged in the struggle? Have we given up? Do we feel we have a choice?

These are hard questions. Last week, on my way to work, I stopped at the Dinkytown McDonalds to buy a Sausage McMuffin with Egg Meal. It was early in the morning, and I watched the mostly black and hispanic workers rushing around their work stations to prepare and deliver hot food quickly to the mostly white, affluent, student customers on their way to class at the U. I considered that the three dollars, thirty-seven cents I spent on my meal was not enough to pay these workers much more than minimum wages with no benefits, no health care. I asked myself, Are they glad to have this job, because however intolerable it might be it's better than being unemployed and with no resources at all? Can they afford to pay rent with this? I of course also thought about the rainforests being denuded by South American beef growers in order to make the sausage in my McMuffin possible, and the excess fat I was taking into my system by eating it. But I was hungry. OK, so I should have gone shopping the night before and bought an apple and some rolls to take with me to work. But I didn't and now it was seven-thirty in the morning, and no place else was open, and I needed some food in my system, or damn it, I wasn't going to be any use to anybody. And anyway, if everybody stopped eating at McDonalds, wouldn't all those hard-working folks inside be left without a job? And if I'd bought an apple at Rainbow, who's to say it hadn't been picked by exploited migrant workers somewhere? What can I do? I'm hungry!

Our modern life is full of these types of quandaries. And if we understand the nature of things and we face our life honestly, it often seems that doing the right thing is crazy or impossible. Divest all my mutual funds that make money through exploitive foreign investments? What will I do for my retirement? Build a homeless shelter in our church? Our neighbors would hate us, and we're too tired. We can't fix it. We can't solve it. We can't overcome it. We can't avoid it. Better to just wait, and let God sort it all out for us. We may be headed for disaster, and if so, praise God because God knows we deserve a disaster, we need a good disaster. We need someone to fix things, and if that's what it takes so be it. I don't know about you, but sometimes that is how I feel.

But I think there is a better way, and Paul alludes to it in his letter to the Thessalonians. He was writing to a church whose people had given up on morality, who were tired of being at odds with the world, and who used their belief in the Great Day of the Lord as an excuse to just give up. His words strengthen me. Paul did not demand perfection, but he did demand vigilance. "Stay awake and sober," he said. He acknowledged that there is cause for sorrow and pessimism, but he called for community and commitment. "You are well aware that the Day of the Lord is going to come like a thief in the night," he added his voice of warning to that of all the prophets who have come before. "When people are saying ‘how peaceful and quiet,' sudden destruction falls." But we should respond to this reality, Paul continued, not by giving up, but by giving "encouragement to each other, and strengthening one another." "Be at peace, support the weak and be patient, do not repay evil for evil, be joyful, give thanks, this is the will of God," for "God has not destined us for wrath, but for salvation."

Today is Stewardship Sunday. The fundamental meaning of stewardship is the idea that nothing belongs to us; all things belong to God. We are merely stewards of that which belongs first and always to God; we live in God's world. Acceptance of the idea of stewardship will put us at odds with the world. It will put us at odds with a culture whose credo is ownership and accumulation. But if this notion of stewardship is the basis of our covenant with each other and with God, we allow for radical transformation. We may not save the world from the coming destruction; but then again we may. We may not be able live a life that is pure of Mammon, but we will assume a posture in relation to God, in relation to each other, in relation to the world, that allows us to be transformed, and that allows us to become instruments of transformation, healing, and hope. We open ourselves to change and possibility. Paul understood this when he admonished the Thessalonian saints to be vigilant together, as a community. He understood that salvation is a process and a relationship, not a panacea, not a credo.

Our resistance, our struggle with the Demon starts with a simple covenant: our commitment to each other to be stewards. Our commitment starts right here in this room, with our commitment to Lyndale. I covenant, I commit, to be in community with you. I will help you bear your burdens, and you will help me bear mine. We will struggle together. We won't give up on each other. We will encourage and strengthen each other. I covenant with you my resources of time, of energy, of spirit . . . and of money.

As Americans, our covenanting of money is particularly problematic. We don't like Stewardship Sunday because we hate talking about money and we hate being asked for money. And because we know that we hate being asked for money, we dread asking for money. We dread asking people to give more money than they might feel comfortable giving. And yet, money is the fabric of the society we've built, it's the foundation of our society. "Money makes the world go around." Our money economy is why some people work exhausting full-time jobs and are still homeless, while others have so much they can afford several homes. Our stewardship requires that we struggle with what we do with money, where our money goes. It is a vital part of our covenant. All that any of us can ask is that we contemplate our financial commitments to each other, to Lyndale, with prayer and humility and honesty.

I am grateful for you. You are one of the greatest blessings in my life. I can't name you all, I can't thank you all by name. But I can say that my life is not what it was before becoming a member of Lyndale Congregational United Church of Christ. I can say that my life is transformed by you, by your love, by your commitments, by your wisdom, by your presence. You have grown on me, and I am a better person, a more loving person, a more committed person, a wiser person. I don't know if we can save the world; I don't know if all the other Lyndales out there can save the world working with us. But I know that I can live with some hope because I am in covenant with you. I pray that we will continue to renew that covenant, yearly, monthly, and daily, in Jesus' name, Amen.