DOES IT PAY TO BE RELIGIOUS? John M, Buchanan
Matthew 10:37-42 Broad Street Presbyterian Church
June 11, 1978 Columbus, Ohio

Does it pay to be religious? The Chairman of the Board of the Tiffany
Company thinks so, In an article in the May 22 issue of New York Magazine on the
growing number of business executives and bankers who have been "born again",
Walter Hoving is quoted: "I think people make religion look complicated, It's
really very simple, You open yourself to the Lord and the Lord helps, At one time,
when I had to buy Bonwit Teller, I was $2.5 million short and didn't know how to get
it, It was completely a miracle, And the same thing happened when I purchased

Tiffany and I was $1 million short,"

In the same vein, I had an acquaintance in another city for whom Mr, Hoving's
testimony would have been very real. A successful business man, he had undergone a
rather dramatic conversion experience and felt that God was calling him to establish
a Christian Radio Station somewhere in Florida, It was at a time when the real
estate market was very slow, and he encountered real difficulty in selling his house
at anything close to what he thought it was worth, And so he prayed about it. Lo
and behold, a buyer appeared, signed on the dotted line and rewarded my friend with a
tidy profit, He was convinced that God had interceded to help him earn a few dollars,

I confess that I never know quite what to make of that sort of thing, One of
my deepest operating principles is to respect and never to question the authenticity
of another person's religious experience, even when it is contrary to what I happen
to believe, I am equally careful to resist from the particular to the general: about
creating sweeping theological truths out of the personal experience of one individual,
Perhaps God did help Mr. Hoving find $2.5 million to purchase Bonwit Teller, and
perhaps He did intercede to find a buyer, at a profit, for my friend's house, There
is no way, of course, to prove that He did or did not, Nor is there any justification
for assuming that He will be persuaded to act in that manner should we ask Him,

There was a time, however, when the mainline Protestant Church thought that
the answer to the question, "Does it pay to be religious?" was a robust yes, Ona
superficial level it was clearly good business to be a churchman: preferably an
Episcopalian, perhaps a Presbyterian, maybe even a Congregationalist, Ona deeper
level the legacy of the Puritans was felt throughout Protestantism in earlier days;

a legacy which held that God does, indeed, reward righteousness, in very tangible
ways, The unfortunate, but logical, inference was that financial success - poverty -
was the mark of impiety and unrizhteousness, The rich are good: the poor are bad,
If it were not so, the argument ran, why does God seem always to be helping the rich?

We have outgrown that, of course, We have become a little more honest with
the Bible, and a little more sensitive to the complexities of poverty, We are not
so quick to make value judgments on the basis of a person's bank account, But down
deep in many of us, we would like to believe that ultimately it does pay, at least
a little bit, to be religious,

If we look at the Bible, however, the doctrine will not fit. The people of
God in the Old Testament receive very little by way of tangible rewards for their
having been chosen as His special nation. In fact, about all they get out of it is
a lot of trouble, suffering, exile, defeat, disaster after disaster with an occasional
attempt by one of their prophets to smooth it all over by suggesting that the suffer-
ing has meaning, I am reminded of that delightful New Yorker cartoon portraying a
group of Rabbis conversing, One says: "If only Moses had turned right instead of

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left: we'd have the oil and they'd have the Ten Commandments,"

In the New Testament, Jesus was totally candid with His disciples, Their
lot would not always be pleasant, Curcifixion loomed on His horizon and He warned
them not to expect much better for themselves, They would be ignored, persecuted,
imprisoned, banished and sometimes executed, They would have little to call their
own besides sa:xiql: and tunic, He told them that the essence of discipleship was a
self-denial so absolute that even the dearest human realtionships would have to be
secondary to their commitment to Him, He certainly never promised that they would

prosper because of their faith,

The history of the church teaches an interesting lesson in this regard, ‘The
most productive and creative times have been, without exception, those periods when
the church has been persecuted, driven underground, opposed by the civil authorities,
On the other hand, those times when the church has been welcomed by the culture,
handsomely rewarded in terms of property, money and prestige, have not been particu-
larly productive and creative,

The academics have been quick and persistent in pointing that out, Fn our
age, when the Christian church has made its peace with the culture and settled back
to enjoy the rewards of its affluence the academic community delights in making us
uncomfortable with our relative comfort, The job of the preacher in this situation,
we are told, is to "comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable," Out of the
horrors of the Third Reich came the powerful voice of Dietrich Bonhoeffer teachinz
that when Christ calls a man He bids him come and die, And Professor James Smart,
who was in our pulpit last year,in his latest book, The Cultural Subversion of the
Christian Faith, writes that "American Christianity is often only a pale imitation
of the Life of discipleship, sacrifice and obedience portrayed in the New Testament,"
A friend of mine, Professor John Mulder, a¢ Princeton Seminary, has written a recent
essay on the crisis in the church and urges that we recover our sense of the reality
of crucifixion and resurrection as the motifs that bring life to the church. The
church really lives when it is prepared to die, His words bite a bit - "The Gospel
in America is colored by a pervasive hedonism at once materialistic and emotional,
One longs to hear a testimonial of how following Christ did not bring prosperity,
American Christianity has a love affair with success, and it effects every sphere
of the church's life." (Theology Today, April 1978, 7.4),

E am convinced that we need that reminder, It is very easy to measure
churches by the same standards we amploy to meayure other ineticucions in thia
country; size and fiscal growth, We regard, too easily, a church as successful if
people are joining it and its budget is growing, Likewise, we rezard, too easily, a
church as unsuccessful if its vital signs are moving in the opposite direction re-
gardiess of the reason, The truth of the matter is that a church may be wildly
successful and popular and growing by leaps and bounds and not be doing much of any-
thing that its Lord seemed to care about, The simple truth is that we are not
primarily in the growth business: our business is doing the Gospel of Jesus Christ,
That may mean that we grow: it may alse mean slowly giving up the life of an institu-
tion, The truth is that we are called to be faithful,

On the other hand, it is easy to romanticize poverty, suffering and persecu+
tien: to seek it: to establish failure as a goal and then, in a curious twist, parade
it as success when it happens, which it does under those circumstances, The time was
not Long ago when large, stable congregations were suspect, their pastors regarded

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as court chaplains to the aristocracy, while the real heroes were the men and women
who sought out and received persecution and suffering, The church has, at times,
over-reacted to its own success, ‘Theolopicaily, we have backed ourselves into a
corner where the whole matter of rewards cannot even be discussed intelligently,

Yet, Jesuc did not ignore the subject, In fact, He addressed it rather
overtly. In our New Testament Lesson this morning, the subject of rewards receives
full attention, Three times it is mentioned -

"He who receives a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward,"
"He who receives a rishteous man will receive a righteous man's reward,,"
“Whoever gives a cup of cold water to one of these little ones,.,

shail not lose his reward,"

Now, before we leap to the conelusion that there are tangible, monetary
rewards for being religious, we must recall the other side of the picture, Jesus
didn't say that, Before we conclude that a Gospel of selfishness and self-centerad-
ness is appropriate, we must recall that He prefaced those remarks by telling His
disciples that the way to find life was to lose it, That is to say, He Was changing
the basic ground rules, He was assuming for Himself the right to define the word
"reward", And until we allow that, we will not make much sense out of what He said,
Jesus was, I have aiways felt, the ultimate realist about the human condition, He
was no soft-headed romantic, inviting people to lose their lives for the sheer joy of
it, He knew, and understood and accepted the fact that people, all people want life;
that in the human heart there is an unquenchable thirst for meanings and significance
and peace, He did not say that it was selfish to want those things, He offered a
way, IT believe, to find them,

That, E believe, is the only genius we have. We have something to announce
fo our culture: something our culture desperatesy needs to hear, There are two
ideologies in conflict out there, They are set, currently, in the context of the
generation gap, The adult, traditional view is that a person's self-interest is best
served by hard work, discipline, prudence,saving, for the purpose of reaping a reward
some day in the future, ‘The other view, often espoused by young people, is that
self-interest is best served by "doing your own thing",now, "Have fun'' is the way it
was said in an address I heard recently, I take that to mean that the self is served
best if one does whatever one wants to do so long as it feels esoaod,

Ironically, advocates of both use the Gospel as defense and can quote
scripture, But, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, it seems to me, says neo to both of those
views, It sees the wrongness of both in the fundamental thesis which they share;
namely, that self-satisfaction, peace, wholeness are available to the individual if
he gives his life to their pursuit, That's the trouble, accordins to Jesus, And that
is very close to what Christianity has always defined ag sin: the elevation of self
to the position of sole moral and behavioral arbiter; the elevation of self-gratifi-
cation as the primary motivation for all of life, The project is doomed for failure,
if Jesus knew what He was talking about, whether you can enjoy your life by investing
every penny so that you can enjoy your retirement some day, or whether you are con-
suming your life entertaining your individual wants and drives in the present, It
won't work - you're playing by the Wrong Set of rules, And there are signs that we
are finally realizing that,

am dp oe

I picked up a copy of the recently published Gallup Opinion Index on
Religion in America, JI was surprised to read the following in the introduction:
The image of church goers, in the eyes of others, may be necative but "it is
important to bear in mind that church involvement and religious commitment have very
positive, and measurable effects on one's life style and outlook on life," The
xeport goes on to list a few examples: positive attitude, a feeling of happiness,
involvement in charitable, person-to~person activity, But the intriguing passage was
editorial in nature, The researchers conclude that, "People of all ages are search-
ing for deeper meaning in their lives, There is evidence of considerable and growing
spiritual oxperimentation, a new interest in the cults and mysticism, Many appear to
be spiritually homeless and laoking for the particular faith or denomination in which
they feel at home,"

It is so clear and so simple that we often miss it, The rewards for which
we are willing to sive our very Lives are right there in front of us. Beneath the
frantic working and saving and consuming, what we really want is something elusive
called peace of mind, some sense that our individual lives matter, some feeling that
after the children are gone our existence counts for something, some knowledge that
We are needed and wanted and loved,

in the plainest language possible Jesus taught that those gifts are given
to us the moment we stop pursuing them and devote ourseives to someone, something
other than self, In the plainest language possible Jesus held up a vision of true
joy which results when someone else's needs receive attention before our own, In
brilliant, but simple, words He said: "Whoever gives a cup of cold water to one of
these Little ones will not lose his reward,"

Tt may net be what we wanted, or what we thought we vanted, We may not be
rewarded by wealth or a prospective buyer for our property, or a promotion, or
success, It will be something far more important than that. The New Testament calls
it salvation and the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the announcement that it is there -
right in front of your eyes - in the form of the person who needs you,

James Russell Lowell causht the beauty and truth of it in "The Vision of
Sir Launfall'". The good knight pians to ride off in search of the Holy Grail, will-
ing to travel to the ends of the earth and to give life itself for the quest, But
he is haunted by the knowledge that at his gate there is a leper, And so he stopped
his journey before it began, dismounted, took out his cup and gave the Leper a drink,
And the cup - the cup ef cold water offered to one of these little ones - became
the Holy Grail, The search was ended, What he was looking for vas at his very
gate in the form of a man who needed his love and kindness and compassion, The
simple cup became the Holy Gup of Christ,

Does it pay to be relicious?
Amen,

God our Father, you know our deepest needs before we are able to identify
them, Save us from empty selfishness, Fill our lives with the joy of love and
generosity and kindness, Make us sensitive to those who need us: those whose
needs are our salvation: through Jesus Christ our Lord,

Amen,