Jesus and the Venus Rosewater Dish -- FPC sermon excerpt

It’s a dish.

A little more than 18 inches in diameter. Made of sterling silver. Around the rim appears the goddess Minerva, with symbols for the liberal arts, from arithmetic to rhetoric.

There’s nothing on the dish about tennis. Which is strange, given the fact that it is the trophy awarded to the ladies’ singles champion at Wimbledon, the tennis tournament that ended just a week ago.

The Venus Rosewater Dish. That’s what the trophy is called, and the “Venus” part was there long before Venus Williams won it five times, most recently this year — over her sister Serena.

According to The Washington Post (November 17, 2007), the dish was made in 1864, and has been awarded to the singles champ since 1886. The winners get to hold the dish, but they don’t get to keep it. The original stays in the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum, and the winner gets an 8-inch replica and prize money — roughly $1.4 million.

Not a bad consolation prize.

Now if you were to run across this dish in an art gallery, you might say, “Huh?” It looks like something that should be propped up in your grandmother’s china cabinet. But if you are a tennis player, The Dish is a precious treasure, a holy grail, a pearl of great value. Players from around the world push themselves to their physical and mental limits — training, practicing, focusing, competing — hoping to be able to play at Wimbledon. And all the way, they are dreaming of the Venus Rosewater Dish.

Of course, this trophy is not unique. There is no lack of odd prizes that people pursue with passion and single-minded purpose. Consider:

The Borg-Warner Trophy, awarded to the winner of the Indianapolis 500 since 1936. On it are the sculpted faces of each winner, and the cup’s hollow body is able to hold 48 cans of beer.

The Green Jacket, given to the winner of the Masters golf tournament since 1949. Winners are thrilled to wear the coveted Green Jacket, even though it is really quite ugly.

An Olive Wreath, placed on the heads of Boston Marathon winners since 1897. Sad to say, I didn’t get one when I ran in 2006. These olive branches are cut from groves in Marathon, Greece, the scene of the battle from which the original marathoner, a man named Pheidippides, ran to announce the Athenian victory in 490 B.C. Then he dropped dead.

At least I survived my run.

Open your Bible to Matthew 13:31-52, and you discover another set of rather peculiar prizes that people pursue with passion and purpose, using every ounce of their heart, soul, mind, and strength. What unites all these treasures is that they are illustrations of the kingdom of God.

“The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field,” says Jesus, “which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field” (Matthew 13:44).

Pay-What-You-Can Christianity -- FPC sermon excerpt

If you walk into the One World Café in Salt Lake City, you’re going to be surprised by what you see. Or, more specifically, by what you don’t see.

There are no menus, and no set prices.

You price your own meal at the One World Café. You pay what you can afford, or whatever you think is fair. “Most people give what the going rate is,” says the woman who founded the café in 2003. “It’s the honor system.”

Pay-what-you-can restaurants have also appeared in suburban Seattle and New York City. According to Utne magazine (November-December 2007), these eateries mix together unselfishness and the pay-it-forward concept: Patrons who can’t afford much leave only what they can. Those who have abundant resources give a little extra, to cover for the less fortunate.

At the One World Café, everyone has a seat at the table. And this is true at Fairfax Presbyterian Church as well, where everyone is invited to come to the Lord’s Table. There are no menus here, and no set prices. Instead, you give what you can.

I think Jesus would enjoy a restaurant that tosses prices out the window, because he was willing to break with tradition in his own dining habits. In Matthew 11, Jesus criticizes the crowds for their inability to accept what he and John the Baptist are doing. He starts by saying that the generation of people all around him are behaving like children — boys and girls who criticize others for not joining in their games. “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance,” they say; “we wailed, and you did not mourn” (11:17).

Jesus sees that the people of his day expect a certain amount of conformity, with everyone dancing or mourning along with the crowd. But Jesus and John are following God in a different direction, like a restaurant that decides to abandon menus and prices. What Jesus discovers is that people cannot tolerate this lack of conformity, and they criticize both John and Jesus for marching to the beat of a different drummer.

“For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’,” reports Jesus; while I, the Son of Man, “came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’” (vv. 18-19). John is demonized because his self-discipline is too strict, while Jesus is rejected because his behavior is not strict enough. The generation of people around Jesus is behaving like Goldilocks, finding everything too hard, too soft, too hot, too cold.

In response to these insults, Jesus says simply that “wisdom is vindicated by her deeds” (v. 19). Divine wisdom is proved right by its results … or, to continue the Goldilocks analogy, you might say that “the proof is in the porridge.” Jesus knows that he and John are doing the will of God, and that wonderful things are happening: “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them” (v. 5). These deeds prove that God’s wisdom is at work in Jesus, despite the criticism of the crowd.