Preaching in the face of scandalous wealth

LOUISVILLE — While some preachers may be uncomfortable preaching about wealth, Dr. Raj Nadella offered up tools and encouragement during a webinar offered last week by the Synod of the Covenant.

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Nadella, the Samuel A. Cartledge Associate Professor of New Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary, delivered an 86-minute webinar he called “Preaching in the Face of Scandalous Wealth.” The Rev. Dr. Chip Hardwick, the synod’s executive, introduced Nadella. Watch the webinar here.

Nadella, who’s working on a book on the Bible and wealth, chose Luke’s gospel for its insights in economic justice. “Spoiler alert,” he cautioned. “It’s a complex picture.”

Luke is famous for its motif of reversals, starting with Mary’s Magnificat, Nadella said. Luke’s version of the Beatitudes announces similar motifs of reversal. How, he wondered, do these motifs play out in the rest of the gospel?

Nadella looked at four accounts in Luke’s gospel: The Feeding Story, The Great Banquet, The Story of Zacchaeus and Lazarus and the Rich Man.

The Feeding Story “occurs in the context of extreme economic disparities,” Nadella said. While the disciples’ attitude is “get these people out of here,” Jesus’ response is, “You give them something to eat,” and the verb in Greek is related to “donate.” The disciples highlight personal responsibility, while Jesus’ answer is “an ethic of compassion.” It’s “a mindset of scarcity vs. a vision of abundance,” he said.

Nadella asked: What is the miracle in this story? Look at the verbs in verse 16, he said: taking, looked, blessed, broke, gave. “I don’t hear the word ‘multiplied’ here,” he said. “Jesus apparently didn’t multiply the food. How did he feed people?” One participant suggested that as people began to share with others, “they were moved by generosity.”

“God’s abundance means sufficiency for all,” another said. “But so many of us live in the scarcity mindset. It seems to me the miracle is recognizing just what is enough.”

“You read my mind,” Nadella said. At the time, most people’s inclination was to hold onto whatever food they had, “because you never knew where your next meal was coming from.” Here, “someone shared what they had, and others were likely similarly inspired to share what they had.”

If Jesus were to grant Nadella one miracle, he’d ask “to convince the super-rich that it’s OK for them to part with some of the wealth that they actually have. It would be the biggest miracle we would witness in the 21st century.”

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Nadella suggested reading The Great Banquet story “in the narrative context.” Just before the parable, Jesus offers instructions on how to host a banquet and whom to invite. In the parable that follows, the host “is forced to open the banquet to those at the margins. What I take from this parable is, in context of Luke’s gospel, banquets are often metaphors for social and economic structures. … What I take from this parable is if I am a person with some privilege and I am invited to an exclusive banquet, I should by all means make excuses and not attend that banquet.”

“Those of us with some privilege are invited to leverage our privilege to ensure some of the exclusive economic structures we witness in our context are disrupted, opened up, so others at the margins can participate.”

Nadella preached on the parable recently and called his sermon, “Blessed are those who make excuses.”

The Zacchaeus story features “one of many tax collectors in Luke that Jesus associates with, but this is an encounter unlike the rest,” Nadella said. The crowd holds Zacchaeus accountable, and he responds by promising to give away half his wealth and pay back fourfold what he’s taken fraudulently. There’s a Christological aspect — Zaccheus can’t be in right relationship with Jesus until he is also in right relationship with the people — and a soteriological theme in that people are saved not when Jesus dies on the cross, but “when they repent and treat their neighbors justly,” Nadella said. “Salvation is about how people relate to other people. This is very important in Luke’s gospel, the idea that people experience salvation when they relate to their neighbors justly.”

In the Story of Lazarus and the Rich Man, “the grand reversal happens rather quickly,” Nadella noted. “This is the reversal the Magnificat promised, the Beatitudes promised.”

Then he asked: How do we appropriate the complexity of the gospel in our preaching?

“It’s right there” in the Bible, one participant said. “I’ve been thinking about the necessity of teaching the Bible.”

“Teaching the Bible, yes,” Nadella said, “but also an honest engagement with Scriptures, rather than making them say what we want them to say, or what we think they are saying.”

“Many Christians, especially Christians who might be reluctant to speak about economic justice, are more willing to engage those issues when we call attention to Scriptures consistently,” he said. “When we do that, people are less reluctant to walk away and brush them off.”

The Rev. Dr. Karoline M. Lewis, Homiletics Professor at Luther Seminary, will lead the next Synod of the Covenant webinar. She’ll speak on “Preaching the Gospel of John” beginning at 10 a.m. Eastern Time on April 2. Learn more and register here.