Hat Rack

Sermon

I think maybe because of all the storms, and where they’ve hit, I’ve been thinking about my grandparents lately, especially on my mom’s side. When we lived in Clearwater, they lived in St. Petersburg, both metro areas of Tampa, Florida, and they later owned a bed and breakfast in Western North Carolina. I have great memories of both states.

In particular, and perhaps unrelated, I’ve been thinking of a saying of one of grandfather’s that weirdly reminds me of this passage today—“I need that like a moose needs a hat rack.” You need it like a moose needs a hat rack, “like a moose needs a hat rack.”

It’s so folksy, it says so much and so little at the same time. Moose don’t wear hats, and if they did, they wouldn’t need a hat rack, because their whole head, much of a moose’s whole vibe really, can be a hat rack. Though I would be remiss if I didn’t also tell you that moose are dangerous. They are not hat racks. You should never approach them as such. This is a folksy saying: it is not an educated zoological experiment you should try.

If Jesus didn’t intend “it’d be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle” as a folksy saying, well, it certainly became one anyway. It’s been printed and said so often I think technically it is a saying even if he didn’t intend it as such.

And I love this folksy story for the same reason as I love the moose needing a hat rack: it says so much and it also says nothing at all. There’s no directive for us here. It’s a story of a directive to someone else. I love this text and I don’t like this text because even though this story isn’t about us, there’s no one who leaves this text feeling totally comforted or totally confident in whatever challenge that’s ahead of us. If religion is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, as civil rights ally Rabbi Heschel has famously said, and this text leaves you wondering and asking yourself, “Wait, am I afflicted or comfortable?!”, the answer is YES.

We won’t all arrive at the same answer on this journey. At various points, I believe we should all arrive at different answers.

The Reverend Dr. Sarah Hinlicky Wilson asks, “Is there any way to hear this text, and preach it, without management? Is there a way to resist the temptation to say, “Jesus doesn’t really mean that…” (that being whatever we’ve assumed about ourselves and the text and what Jesus meant)? Probably the only hope is to leave it as open-ended as Mark does.

We have no idea what became of the rich young man… Maybe he got more tight-fisted as he aged, maybe he was in the crowd at the foot of the cross, or on the day of Pentecost… We do know he’s the only person in the entire Gospel of Mark singled out as being loved by Jesus. (In fact, the only other three uses of “love” in this Gospel appear where Jesus quotes Leviticus and Deuteronomy in his summation of the law.)”

I love that. I also love the idea of a group of male friends being a little bewildered by all this—like dude, you never look at us like that—we’ve been on this way with you for several chapters and yet… But of course, of course, Jesus loves the disciples. They should probably go to group therapy, but of course he loves them. The Gospel of Mark is immediate—we haven’t talked about the Gospel much in the last few months; we veered into St. Paul, but the Gospel of Mark is fast and approaching brutal. We may feel like we’ve lived the Gospel of Mark the last few months or years with so many unprecedented storms in all senses of the term.

But if we focus in on the money and the status weighing on this beloved person, we’re easily reminded of the weight of living in a competitive society that focuses so much on acquiring—getting things, maintaining things. I will tell you I never feel more lacking, more like a moose looking for a hat rack, than when thinking about what I’ve accomplished, what should I have accomplished today, this month, in my life—or worse, shopping. Shopping truly overwhelms me; there’s really no end to the pressure to acquire more status, more money, more, just more everything. But I feel the richest, the most taken care of, when I give.

I believe that’s why God gives us giving. When we give as God calls us to give, as Jesus invites this man, we’re able to let go of what holds us back. We are no longer camels or moose trying to shove ourselves and all our extra bits into a round hole. We aren’t worried about acquiring things. Though it can still bring up a question that Jesus seems to get at here:

What is enough? When am I no longer lacking? What is enough to have, to give, to create? There isn’t a directive answer. We will arrive at different places on the way.

It’s important to note, too, that this text has been used to manipulate others, intentionally or unintentionally, individually, and systematically. Like Westminster and its staff will never ask you for gift cards in a phishing e-mail, we would also never want you to give more than called or able to— though there are beautiful stories of this passage inspiring saints to give it all, famously, like St. Francis. There are also some lesser-known stories of yore telling of monasteries changing the prices of their goods so they don’t make any profit—and their price changing, their not wanting to deal with the weight of profit, ruining other small businesses that the communities they were in relied on. And we’ve all heard stories on the news or throughout history of classes of people or families or organizations giving money or possessions to churches or other nonprofits to feel better about price gouging elsewhere, like guilt money laundering.

But when we start with Jesus’ love of this man (which is a good place to start for lots of reasons including that there’s no mention from Jesus of the commandments about God here, there’s only mention of the commandments surrounding people, our relationships with each other—it seems a love and a relationship with God is assumed), it’s not hard to imagine Jesus is simply kindly asking this moose, this man, to rethink if he needs a hat rack—which is folksy but can be dangerous(!) because it is to rethink what we think is possible.

While visiting my wife’s grandparents, I can’t think of any folksy sayings they have about moose… But I digress. In South Central Michigan, there is a deli—actually two delis and larger community businesses, now, technically, Zingerman’s, and that deli is a space for sandwiches and great olive oil and condiments and brownies and cinnamon rolls and this really good raisin bread. It’s a space for thinking and rethinking what it means to be in community, what it means to feed a community and work together, especially when you’re working with money, and importantly: sandwiches. I’ve digressed again. But one of its founders, Ari Weinzweig, writes frequently on leadership and business practices, and recently wrote on dignity in the 21^st century; he was both afflicted and comforted, inspired by the Revolution of Dignity in the Ukraine.

Ari writes, I went looking for a way to deal with my despair about one country’s invasion of an innocent neighbor, and I came away with a different understanding of how to do business… of how to start revolutions of dignity in our everyday lives, or in a work context, in our businesses. There are always acts of dignity we can each do for each other, whether it’s slowly, responsibly selling our possessions, as it’s possible this rich man may have done, or preparing and playing music for us, is a great act of dignity; the preparing of coffee is a great act of dignity, preparing a bible study to share, is a weekly act of dignity… getting yourself or God forbid even your kids dressed and coming here is a great act of courage and also dignity.

Ari continues, The “impossible” community can slowly but surely, seemingly become possible. The seemingly impossible, after all, is what Ukraine has done.

I think about the other things we think are impossible. How can we support a country that was attacked while not also supporting the attack of another innocent country? How can we solve the housing crisis? How can we stop fentanyl? How can we… I know it’s easier to walk away sad. But fight that. Be sad, we do all need to be sad sometimes, but fight the idea that the end of this story is sad, that the punchline of the folksy saying is that the moose is still looking for a hat rack. That’s not what defines us.

I have seen Westminster be so faithful with its funds. We have plans, we have things that are actively happening—an accessible bathroom, a new office space for WeShine (a nonprofit working on housing the folks who struggle the most to find it), and we have people who would tell you a million more ideas of what we could do with a million more dollars. Don’t give beyond your means, but do consider giving—your money, your time, your talent—as a way of knowing you have enough. Jesus looks at you and loves you, regardless of what you have or what you give or what you give up, or how long you’ve been on the journey or if you just showed up or worse if someone else just showed up and you’re mad about it.

But I’d like to give you one more folksy saying, to make it three, from a Westminster minister, who was so Carolina his name is the same as a Western Carolina county—the Reverend Haywood Holderness, one of my mentors. He fundraised for everything, and at everything he said the same thing: the good news is we have all the money we need! It’s still in our pockets, but that should make it easy to get to. Like a camel going through the eye of a needle or a moose that needs a hatrack. For the love of God, Amen.