A Movement Begins: Stop Making My Father’s House a Marketplace

I want to tell you the story of “The Great Tom Wat Controversy of 1988.” Some of you might remember Tom Wat. Remember—or imagine—back in the day when there were door-to-door salesmen. They carried their briefcases around house to house, where they could show people examples of encyclopedias, or vacuum cleaners, or Bibles, or whatever. During this time, there was a fundraising company named Tom Wat, who had the brilliant idea of creating a parallel experience…for children. They made these little cardboard briefcases, filled with toys and stocking stuffers and order forms, for these kids to lug around from house to house and try and sell to their neighbors. They would tell them that they were trying to raise funds for a youth trip, and if they got the highest seller award, they would get some extra prize!

I know, because I drug one of those suitcases around from house to house to do just that. And I have two memories from that experience. One, it taught me then and there that I did not have a future in sales! I hated doing it. I was bad at it. I did not get the highest seller award, and was just fine with that.

But my second memory of that experience, in middle school at Calvary Baptist Church in Monticello, Illinois, is all about John 2. I don’t remember the specifics, but I remember there was a big theological question on whether or not youth fundraising was making the Father’s House a marketplace! Were we contributing to the very thing that made Jesus angry by engaging in fundraising in the local church? Would Jesus be as angry as he was in John 2…if he showed up and saw our children dragging Tom Wat briefcases around to the neighborhood?

At the heart of this story is a deeper question: What is an appropriate level of fundraising in the church? How much is too much, before Jesus shows up with a whip made of cords? It is not an irrelevant question to a congregation that spends time raising funds for trips to Nicaragua, and for youth to go to camp, and for us to pay off our mortgage. How much is too much?

To answer that question, we first have to go back to what was happening in Jesus’ time. This was a context in which animals were offered as sacrifices at the worship center in Jerusalem. The Deuteronomic Code was clear about what was required for one to make an offering before the Lord. Two birds for this offense. A lamb for this offering. A goat for this symbolic worship event. But there was a practical problem for those who travelled a long distance as pilgrims to Jerusalem in order to make these offerings. On a journey of several days, or even weeks, it would be difficult to bring live animals, keep them fed and vibrant, in order to make the required sacrifice. So, there arose a market around the Temple practice that sold animals, ready for sacrifice. The people would arrive at the Temple, pay their fee, and take the animal for their offering. Complicating the process is that an unclean Roman coin with the graven image of the Caesar was not allowed in the Temple, so there had to be special coinage provided to pay for these services within the Temple. The whole process was ripe for abuse. Sellers had pilgrims over the barrel, able to charge exorbitant prices because there was no other option. Think Kaufman Stadium or Allen Fieldhouse. How much do you pay for a handful of chips and a tub of fake cheese? At the Temple, the sellers had the only product available, and they knew it.

Jesus showed up, and saw these pilgrims who had possibly spent their life savings to go on this pilgrimage to the Temple to be able to worship in this meaningful way, finding themselves forced to pay inflated prices simply in order to be able to worship. And it enraged him! He started to drive out the money changers, and let their animals go free, and turned over their tables, and yelled and screamed and proclaimed that what was happening was unjust and not what God had in mind for Temple worship! This was meant to be a place for spontaneous joy. This was meant to be a moment for equal and mutual community. This was meant to be an experience where the pain and oppression of one’s own life was set aside…but now it was replaced with a new oppression. A new injustice. What was happening instead was a hierarchy where some could afford to worship, and others could not. What we translate here as “Jews” is actually Judeans, and by this, John meant the rich, ruling class of Temple elites, who abused the lower class pilgrims and had no accountability. They came in poverty, and the Judeans exasperated that poverty. Jesus was ticked off. And he let them know it.

So back to our question: when we have a fundraiser for the Nicaragua team, or ask for a pledge to pay off the mortgage, are we in danger of making Jesus angry with our fundraising work? All year long, the SLT has been reading a little book by Henri Nouwen titled A Spirituality of Fundraising. It talks about exactly what it sounds like: a way to think about how we ask for money in ways that are spiritual and appropriate and Christ-like. We have prayed through and talked through his ideas, and I think his words help answer our question of the day, and connect us back to the text:

First, the WHO. Nouwen pushes back on the capitalistic principle that ought to value people based on how much money they have. It causes us to create hierarchies of value that are contrary to the way that Christ taught. In the text in John, Jesus is pushing back against these hierarchies. The Temple structure allowed some to worship, and excluded others. Women were kept out. Non-Hebrews were kept out. And now those who could not afford the extortion-prices…are left out, too. Jesus is overturning those systems, those hierarchies, those exclusionary practices. Nouwen writes that spiritual fundraising flattens that hierarchy. Fundraising is spiritual when it allows all youth to be able to attend the camp. When it means that not only the highest earners can go on the mission trip. Our values as a church must be about giving all access, just like Jesus insisted. Even as we engage in a national conversation about immigration, we find ourselves raising funds to host partner congregations for folks like Rey de Reyes. The WHO matters. When he saw the contrary, he responded with righteous anger. I think we do this well, but should remain committed to this inclusion.

Second, Nouwen talks about the HOW. Spiritual fundraising must be conducted with prayer and gratitude. Matthew’s and Mark’s Gospels use this language when they talk about this event, with Jesus proclaiming, “My house must be a house of prayer!” Does our fundraising bring us closer into relationship with Jesus, in prayer and gratitude? Nouwen reminds us that prayer is meant to reorient us to a universal need, for Christ to supply our need. When we ask for money, we do it with a spirit of prayer, asking God for wisdom. And when we raise funds for church work, Nouwen reminds us, it makes us thankful for all of the good and perfect gifts that we have been given.

Finally, a third point that Nouwen makes is about the WHY: many of us hate to ask for money or participate in fundraising, because we feel like that kid dragging a cardboard briefcase around the neighborhood selling cheap plastic crap to the neighbors. But that is not what Kingdom work is meant to be. When it is done well, the way we ask for money is a gift: a gift for the asker, and a gift for the giver, because it allows us all to participate in a Kingdom vision and a Gospel mission! Jesus seemed to lament how the Temple worship had lost touch with the vision of what it was meant to be in the first place. A worship center where one might experience the awe and holiness and majesty and sovereignty of God. That is the vision for Temple worship, and that is what angered Jesus, because it had been lost.

I want to end the sermon today with a story, and a field trip. And it has to do with values and Kingdom mission and Gospel vision. Go with me back to the year 2011. First Baptist Church of Lawrence, KS proclaimed that one of their values was hospitality, but the building itself struggled to tell that story. Several years before, the church had grown to the point of needing extra space. So, a wise decision was made to remove the back wall of the sanctuary, a simple though temporary fix. If you walked into the front doors of the church at that time, you would have walked right into the sanctuary itself. Chairs came all the way back pretty far, and it made room for everyone to gather in worship. But over time, the church realized why that was only meant to be a temporary fix. People who sat in the back had a hard time hearing, and felt disconnected from the rest of worship, and it was intimidating for someone to come into the door and find themselves stared at by a bunch of worshippers in the middle of the first hymn. In fact, eventually we put a sign out front that said that we wanted you to come to the back door and find your way to the sanctuary through the back hallway. We said that we were a hospitable church, but the building itself got in the way of that value and that message. So, in 2012, we determined that we would begin a campaign to renovate the sanctuary. The capital campaign title was powerful: Building Hospitality: Inviting All to God’s House. We started the campaign, raised funds, and began to match our values with our funding.

We drew up plans for a hospitality vision for the sanctuary, and a renovation for the Sunday school hallway and new tile in the Roger Williams Room while we were at it. Then, somewhere along the way, things got complicated. It became clear that water leakage had slowly caused mold damage in several rooms down the hall. Water was coming in from above, through a roof that was not sound. It was coming in through from the side, from a foundation that was not sound. It was coming in from below, where our HVAC vents were located and had begun filling with groundwater. Mold was the inevitable result, and the half a million dollar project swelled to about a million dollars. But if our value was hospitality, we must make it right. The moment it became clear to me that something must be done was when our volunteer building manager and I heard a heavy rain pounding outside. We went together to the nursery, where the old building and the ten year old renovation joined, and we heard the water pour in behind the wall, and watched the carpet become soaked several feet from the wall. We had to make room for all in God’s house, especially the most vulnerable in our midst.

Why do I tell you this story? Because after the first few years, we had paid off the first half million dollars, but then the economy changed and we stagnated, until last year, when we decided that we needed to finally pay off the project. That’s the hospitality vision that you have been completing over the last 12 months, through Ministry not Mortgage. You have made it possible to replace the wall, allowing for a true welcome space, separated from the sanctuary. You have made it possible to open the narthex into a space for both welcome and worship, where our 838 service meets every week, and where the Fringe meets every Tuesday night. We renovated the sanctuary to move back the walls, and the stained glass window, giving us space for us to now proclaim that the youngest among us are welcome here. And we have remediated and renovated our Sunday school space, proclaiming our vision and value that God’s house is open to us all.

Jesus, and Nouwen, and our very own building remind us that all are welcome for worship and Gospel work. May we never forget those values. May we never forget our calling. May our Father’s House never become a marketplace of misplaced values, but a place of prayer and hospitality for all peoples. Amen.