Your Market Value

Sermon for Oc.t 22, 2023
Isaiah 45:1-7; Matthew 22:15-22

Welcome to the stewardship season!  If you’ve been part of other churches’ stewardship efforts, you may be familiar with the variety of ways congregations tackle this annual time of gratitude and fundraising.  There’s the “give us money” approach:  Here are the church’s financial needs; please pony up.  There’s the duty-based approach:  The Bible says give, so give.  There’s the “pray and pay” approach:  If we pray hard enough, we won’t have to ask for pledges because the money will just come in.  There’s the assessment approach:  Let us know your adjusted gross income, and we’ll figure your pledge for you.  (That actually happens in some faith traditions.)

Our approach is a little different.  I think there’s a lot that will bless you over the next five weeks, and I don’t want you to miss it.  So, we offered a “road map” in this weekend’s communications, but I want to give you a quick overview now, too.

The theme is “going deep and going wide to find God’s peace,” so we’ll be offering several resources to help us on that journey.  Here in worship, we’re beginning a sermon series titled, “Is It Well With My Soul?”; and today we’re kicking it off by asking, “Do I have worth?”  In these sermons, we’ll ask God questions that keep us up at night, which certainly beats trying to wrestle with them alone.

Then, after each sermon, we’ll hear an interview with a St. Andrew’s member who’s tapping into God’s love, and the peace it brings, through the life of the church.  For example, today we’ll hear from Sara Welch, a relatively new member who came into St. Andrew’s through classes and discussions from our Adult Formation ministries – and who’s now helping to lead them.

A final resource you’ll have is a daily prayer-and-Scripture guide, inviting us to still the anxiety of our lives by reflecting on God’s love.  For example, in this first week, as the sermon asks, “Do I have worth,” the daily Bible readings and prayers will help us remember that God loves us unconditionally – and what greater worth could we seek?  You’ll find these readings and prayers on St. Andrew’s daily social media, on the website, and in your mailbox, part of the stewardship packet you’ll receive this week.

Then, at the end of this season, we’ll ask you to make a financial pledge, an estimate of your giving for 2024 to support God’s work here at St. Andrew’s.  What does that have to do with finding God’s peace?  Well, to me, it works this way:  The church is like an app, a resource for tapping into the peace the world cannot give.  The more you use it, the more peace you find.  The more peace you find, the more gratitude you feel.  And the more gratitude you feel, the more you want to give back – in thanksgiving for the blessings you’ve found and to support the church’s work to bless others.

So, for today – here’s the first big question in our sermon series: “Do I have worth?”  I did a little looking for ways the world around us conceives of self-worth.  You probably won’t be surprised to know there’s a psychological instrument for measuring the “contingencies of self-worth,” showing us where we tend to look to gauge our own value.  These sources of our self-worth fall on a range from more extrinsic to more intrinsic – categories like personal appearance, approval from others, success in academics, success in competition, family support, the practice of virtuous behavior, and an awareness of God’s love.¹  The instrument doesn’t make judgments about those different contingencies of self-worth; it just lets you identify where yours lie. 

I mention this because it illustrates the different places we might look to gauge our worth.  I’m no psychologist, but I’d bet my next paycheck that those who find their self-worth in their appearance or in approval from others have a less-peaceful life than those who find their self-worth in virtuous behavior and the love of God.  

To me, seeing our worth is about claiming our true identity and the blessings that flow from it.  And I think we get a glimpse of that from our readings today.  They aren’t explicitly about such a modern construct as self-worth but about the true source of our value instead.

In the Gospel reading, Jesus is still confronting the religious authorities, who are trying to get him sent to prison.  They’ve joined forces with the lackeys of King Herod, himself a lackey of the emperor in Rome.  They try to get Jesus to indict himself by preaching against paying taxes to Rome.  But Jesus beautifully avoids the trap by rejecting the either/or, stepping out of the false choice by turning the question around.  Sure, Jesus says, “give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s” – coins bearing his name and face – but “give to God the things that are God’s” (Matt 22:21).   

And what are those things?  Well, in one sense, those things are … everything.  As God says in the reading from Isaiah, “There is no one besides me, I am the Lord, and there is no other.  I form light and create darkness … I the Lord do all these things.” (45:6-7)  So, you could say that what we should give to God is … everything.  But what I find amazing in that Isaiah reading is where God goes with this overwhelming authority.  “I am the Lord, and there is no other” … and, I know you by name.  You may not fully know me, but I know you, God says.  I am Love, and I made you in love, and I will use you to bless the world with love.  God is willing to come to us, to begin the relationship, because that’s what Love does.  So, if we’re called to “give to God the things that are God’s,” the most fundamental thing you can give is relationship – returning the love that comes to you as a beloved child of the One who knows you and calls you by name.

Contrasting with that source of our worth, we have the culture around us insisting it has the power to define our value.  The culture says our worth comes from our possessions or our assets or our power.  The culture says our worth comes from what others think of us.  The culture says our worth comes from how hard we work and what we achieve, that our value is a function of our outputs.  The culture says our worth comes from making it on our own, pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps to achieve individual success.  

And then there’s maybe the loudest voice arguing with God about our worth – our inner critic, the voice that tells us we’re imposters who’ll never be good enough anyway.  Isn’t it amazing, and a little tragic, how we can hear 10 affirmations of our talent and maybe begin to accept it, but just one well-placed criticism affirms the inner critic and sucks the wind out of the sails of our self-worth?

Well, here’s a way to see our worth differently, a perspective from a higher authority than the culture or the inner critic.  Think about this:  According to the principles of economics, how do we assess something’s value?  Well, the market tells us value is the price someone is willing to pay for a good or service. So, imagine that someone is God, and the good being paid for is you. 

What price is God willing to pay for you?  The calculation works regardless of the theology of the atonement you prefer.  You could say the Father sent the Son to suffer and die to pay the debt for our sin, a debt we could never pay ourselves.  Or you could say God took human flesh and dwelt among the lowest of the low, enduring constant oppression and unimaginable suffering, to share the Love that gives us eternal life.  Or you could say God went to war against the forces of evil, dying in order to vanquish sin and death and win a battle we could never win on our own. 

However you see Jesus’ work to redeem us, the message is the same:  You are of ultimate value to the sovereign of the universe.  You are worth dying and rising for, because God loves you enough to pay the ultimate price for you.

That sounds great. But how do we come to believe it for ourselves?  Well, by walking the pilgrimage of faith, going deeper with God and coming to know God’s love one-to-one.  It’s a journey of being formed into the person God has created you to be, coming more and more into spiritual “maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13).  The church calls that process Christian formation, and it can happen all along and all across our lives.  And it happens explicitly through ministries here that give us the chance to go deeper in relationship with God through learning, praying, and sharing with others.  We’re formed into the full stature of Christ through Bible studies, book groups, discussion opportunities, classes, podcasts, daily Scripture reading, daily prayer, and contemplative practice. 

All those formation opportunities point us toward the God who sees such worth in us that God gave up the distance of divinity, paying the ultimate price to let you know how deeply you’re beloved.  And what does God ask in return?  Just that you return the favor, making your own effort to bridge the gap between humanity and divinity, giving back to God the ultimate gift, the best you can offer – the gift of love.

1.     https://www.asc.ohio-state.edu/psychology/crockerlab/documents/CSWscale.pdf