Sermons for the Month

The Navajo Investment Club
DATE: April 30, 2000
SERVICE: Easter II
TEXT: Acts 4:32-35
“To all of you Saints here this morning, grace and peace to you from God our Father, from His Son, Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit. AMEN
A blue-chip investment firm flailed and flopped recently when it flew a suit from the high-rise canyons of Boston to the mesas of the Navajo Indian nation to explain to a group of Arizona Navajos why they should invest for old age.
Hoping to hook the 95 Navajos gathered, the presenter started by asking how many had heard of Willard Scott. None had. The representative explained that Willard Scott was the former weatherman of the Today Show who often featured 100-year-olds on their birthdays.
"You know what?" the rep queried. "More people are living to be a hundred." No one reacted. On the reservation, people die younger than the general population. The pitch didn't even cross the plate.
Undaunted, he persevered by telling them about health consciousness and New Year's resolutions to lose weight.
Again, blank stares. The Navajos don't make New Year's resolutions, don't have health clubs and aren't obsessed about weight.
And so it went. Clearly Boston had nothing to do with Gallup, New Mexico. The Bostonian wasn't able to cross the cultural divide in this low-income population where they don't even have Navajo words for "savings" or "retirement."
A local resident explained that for the Navajo, "Money is different. It's there to be spent. If you have some, you help your family."
Later, the tribal offices set up their own investment team, led by a 24-year-old investment-savvy Navajo. This time, this team was able to get the pitch into the strike zone where the people could hit the ball. They emphasized family, and how saving can help others, not just the individual.
"We don't target only the participants, we target families." With unemployment as high as 70 percent on the reservation, the team hopes that by encouraging those who have jobs to save money they'll be better able to help their relatives in the long run. It isn't investing for selfish reasons. It's investing for the benefit of their wider family.
Since then, there's been a 10 percent increase in the investment plan participation. In a culture that's truly family-based, taking a family approach works, savings grow, and in the long run, the family benefits.
Even Blue Blood Bostonian investment firms get it. Stocks bought today are not just for retirement; they're there to pass on to the children, who pass them on to their children, and on and on, never spending the principle and reinvesting a percentage of the dividends, buying more as necessary and watching the whole thing grow generation after generation. It's a way for families to pool their income so that eventually no one in their family lacks.
Of course, not everyone can do this. Taking the short view is tough enough for most folks trying to make ends meet, pay mortgages, finance cars, fund orthodontics. The long, long view is an idea many folks never think of, let alone dream about. Investing for the long term is a hard sell to much of America.
It's a hard sell for the church, too. But the early church gave it a shot. They agreed to pool their resources. "No one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common" (Acts 4:32). They sacrificed. They sold what they had, land or houses, and turned it over to the group - and as a result, no one lacked.
They worked together. They invested themselves with social capital. They created community. They took chances. They invested in each other and everybody's needs were met. "There was not a needy person among them" (4:34).
In the late 1700s and early 1800 hundreds a number of communities sprung up in America following the example of the early church. Around here we are most familiar with the Zoarites. I wonder if you have ever heard of the Harmonists? They were a truly communist group who worked together for the common good. They founded the town of New Harmony, Indiana. They were German Pietists led by George Rapp who left Germany in the early eighteenth century because of the conservativism and ceremonialism of the German Lutheran church. They emigrated to Pennsylvania and founded a "community of equality" in Lycoming County. They were so successful with their community's production levels they could not find buyers for all they produced so they moved to Indiana to find better markets and grazing land. There they started over.
There they rebuilt their town. They were the inventors of prefab housing creating within very short order quality homes for the entire 1000 member community. They operated a silk-factory, a sawmill, brickyard, woolen mill, distillery, oil-mill. Absolutely no one wanted for anything. They founded the first kindergarten in America, the first trade school, the first free public school system, the first free library, the first woman's club and the first geological society. Indeed, everyone became so rich they could not spend all their wealth which again they held in common. Ultimately, they divided up their wealth and gradually disappeared as a community.
Could the early 3Millenium church match the success of this church or its model, the early 1st Millennium church?
In this period of unparalleled prosperity, the church is filled with needy people. Some need money. Others need love. Some need hope. Others need joy. Some need solace. Others need prayer. All need God. That's the bear market news.
But we're a part of a bull market church. Needy people have a lot to give. The church is a mutual funding company.
Lots of folks who come to church lack something, and often are seeking that something in church ... from us, from God.
.Need: Some lack companionship because they're widowed and lonely. Investment: Invest yourself in a friendship with an elder and see what good can come from it for everybody.
.Need: Some come to church because they hurt inside. Investment: Invest your ear time for their mouth time.
.Need: Some lack heat, or food, or school clothes, or money for the doctor. Investment: Sink your money in the Pastor's Discretionary Fund or give to World Hunger or help our Missionaries, the Schmalzlies in Africa.
.Need: Out-of-hand kids today need a helping hand. Investment: Invest yourself in the Explorers' Club, youth programming, tutoring and mentoring or being a prayer partner for a youth.
The church is an investment club, only our capital is more than money. We invest our time, energy, talents, hopes as well as cash in our church. What would the church look like if it could be a people, a place, where no one lacked? A place where we invested ourselves in each other? A place where no one was needy?
The church would look like the people of God acting with one mind and one heart. Church isn't just for us. It's here because ancestors in faith built it, mind and heart, sweat and bones, calluses and money. They invested in us long before we even were born. They provided the sanctuary, the education rooms, the parking lot, the Fellowship Wing, the organ, the choir robes, the pulpit, the carpet, the kitchen.
We need to calculate church today with the same equation. It's not just for us that the church is here. It's for our children's children and for those who come here with a need.
Jesus said, "Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal" (Matthew 6:20). Invest yourself in the church; invest yourself in the people of God. Call it the Nazarene Investment Club.
AMEN