Tag Archives: Tobit

How to build a secure portfolio (8th Sunday after Pentecost, 8/3/2025)

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Readings

There are two sermons here. They have the same beginning, but split midway depending on whether Track 1 or Track 2 in the readings is followed.

“Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” Putting that question to Jesus was perhaps not the guy’s smartest move, as seen by Jesus’ follow up: “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” ‘Greed’ is a common translation of the Greek; ‘insatiableness,’ ‘avarice,’ or ‘covetousness’ are also quite possible. A standard dictionary (BDAG) gives this definition: “the state of desiring to have more than one’s due.” While we won’t be focusing on this, “one’s due” comes into play because greed does tend to blur the line between what’s mine and what’s not mine. Anyhow, greed, one of the foci of this sermon as we notice some of the issues Jesus’ words raise.

Jesus follows up that “Take care!” with a short parable that ends “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.” And here we might recall that bit from Matthew’s “Sermon on the Mount:” “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal” (6:19-20).

“Store up…. treasures in heaven.” How are we supposed to do that? If we’d asked that of Jesus’ audience, I suspect that the common reply would have been “Read Tobit!” Tobit, a lovely short story we relegated to the Apocrypha. Early in the story Tobit, thinking he’s near death, gives this counsel to his son:

“To all those who practice righteousness give alms from your possessions, and do not let your eye begrudge the gift when you make it. Do not turn your face away from anyone who is poor, and the face of God will not be turned away from you. If you have many possessions, make your gift from them in proportion; if few, do not be afraid to give according to the little you have. So you will be laying up a good treasure for yourself against the day of necessity” (Tob. 4:7-9).

In fact, just over half of Matthew 6 (the middle chapter in Matthew’s “Sermon on the Mount”) is devoted to almsgiving and generosity. Recall: don’t give alms to get more status (vv.2-4); store up treasures in heaven (give alms!) (vv.19-21), generous vs. greedy eyes (vv.22-23); don’t try to serve two masters (v.24; the likely source of the equation of greed with idolatry in our Colossians reading); don’t worry about possessions/seek the Kingdom (vv.25-34).

What are we supposed to do with Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel? Perhaps at least three things. First, recognize that Jesus, Tobit, and most of the Greek and Roman moralists were swimming upstream. That T-shirt “The one who dies with the most toys wins” would have translated very easily into Aramaic, Greek, or Latin! Recognize how much of the constant flow of advertising in all media depends on stoking our greed, insatiableness, avarice, covetousness. Lean into the moments that allow us to acknowledge “this is enough.”

Second, wonder about how generosity and greed are playing out in our decisions, in our checkbooks. Our almsgiving can be a useful indicator. (Stewardship of possessions is about all our investments and expenditures, not simply what we give to the parish. Nothing in the New Testament encourages us to ignore Tobit’s (or Jesus’!) counsel.)

Third, we might wonder about how we respond to Jesus’ words as a community. We were never meant to figure out how to individually respond to, say, the Sermon on the Mount. Rather, the challenge/invitation: how do we order our community life so that Jesus’ words make sense? At the national level programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid were attempts to do this. Recall Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor under FDR for 12 years, who had a major role in shaping the “New Deal,” and whose feast we celebrate May 13. But national programs are vulnerable to political winds, and this might be a time to wonder what more we might be doing on the parish, diocesan, or national church levels.

Now, what of our other readings?

Track 1

Colossians works with a strong set of spatial images. In baptism we’ve been raised with Christ, who is “seated at the right hand of God.” Our life “is hidden with Christ in God.” And there are times when we need to hear that, to hold onto that. But our Gospel reading reminds us to hold Paul’s “the things that are above” vs. “the earthly” in tension with the quite wondrous effect of almsgiving: the gift to the poor here registers as a deposit there. Or, recalling another text from Matthew, Jesus is “seated at the right hand of God” and hidden among the hungry, thirsty, strange, and naked—to the surprise of both the sheep and the goats (Mt 25:31-46).

Meanwhile, our first reading from Hosea, gives us, as it were, Jesus’ Father’s experience in Jesus’ parable. The rich man with the fertile land isn’t a bad picture of Israel, whose history God recites in the opening verses. “They kept sacrificing to the Baals,” for the common wisdom was that if you really wanted abundant harvests, Baal was the ticket. God responds in anger, but not only anger: “My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.” We keep choosing death, reducing life to “the abundance of possessions,” and God will stop at nothing to get us back on track, as we are about to celebrate again at the Table.

Track 2

Both the first lesson from the Old Testament and the Psalm are chosen to accompany the Gospel. Both are products of what we call, broadly, Israel’s wisdom traditions; both—perhaps in keeping with those traditions—raise as many questions as they answer.

“Even though honored, they cannot live for ever; / they are like the beasts that perish.” Not a bad summary of Jesus’ parable. But consider v.4: “Why should I be afraid in evil days, / when the wickedness of those at my heels surrounds me…” Is the death of the wicked in itself reason enough not to fear? Probably not. The psalmist warns us that this text is a riddle (v.3), and leaves the riddle in our laps: why shouldn’t fear get the last word?

As you may recall, the lectionary gives us only the first half of the psalm. It’s not that the answer to the riddle is in the second half, but v.15 is certainly a hint: “But God will ransom my life; / he will snatch me from the grasp of death.” What’s the psalmist talking about? Commentators—predictably—disagree. But what we can observe is that in the psalmist’s imagination God’s agency—unbound by the assumptions of the wicked—is reason for hope. A popular commercial asks “What’s in your wallet?” This psalm asks us: “What’s in your imagination?”

What of our first reading from Ecclesiastes, which claims Solomon as its author? With the Gospel’s “for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions” and “You fool!” ringing in our ears, we do wonder whether Solomon is among the wise or the foolish, a question Scripture itself leaves open. The rich man and Solomon: both remembered for their building projects, for their stored up treasure. Jesus’ parable doesn’t describe the rich man’s treatment of his underlings; the Book of Kings tells us that Solomon’s taxes were so heavy that most of Israel revolted immediately after his death.

The point here is not to trash Solomon, but to observe how Jesus’ parable touches even Solomon. We often think of wisdom and folly as being miles apart; in practice the border between them can be razor-thin. From the Book of Proverbs: “Do you see persons wise in their own eyes? There is more hope for fools than for them” (26:12). Jesus’ parable throws Solomon into question; how soundly should I be sleeping?

“Take care!—Jesus tells us—Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

Living when off the map

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This year St Dunstan’s (Madison WI) developed its Vacation Bible School around the Book of Tobit and the two Sundays after VBS bumped the normal Old Testament readings to continue the focus. I was invited to preach on the second of these two Sundays.

Readings: Tobit 14:3-4a, 5-8; Psalm 80:1-2, 8-18; Hebrews 11:29-12:2; Luke 12:49-56

How do you live when you’re off the map? Moses had provided a pretty clear map: live righteously and you’ll prosper in the land; live unrighteously and you’ll lose the land. But when you’re off the land through no particular fault of your own, what then? So it’s not surprising that we encounter a number of stories about that in the Old Testament: Joseph (minus his technicolor dreamcoat) in Egypt, Esther in Persia, Tobit in Assyria. The Joseph and Esther stories have a certain fairy-tale quality to them: Joseph becomes the #2 man in Egypt; Esther wins the beauty contest and marries the king. Tobit, after achieving some success in exile, gets bird poop in his eyes and goes blind, the loss which kicks off the main story in the book that eventually results in Tobit regaining his sight.

How do you live when you’re off the map? In addition to telling us a rollicking good story, complete with a carnivorous fish, a damsel in distress, and an angel in disguise, the book gives serious attention to that question. This morning we’ll look at two elements in its answer: bless God and give alms.

Bless God

God blessing us: we’re used to that idea. In the catholic (small c) tradition we believe that priestly ordination authorizes the priest to convey God’s blessing to us, and so we leave each Mass with “the blessing of God Almighty” ringing in our ears and working its way into our very selves. Scripture takes blessing as a given and so doesn’t define it. An approximate definition might include God’s presence, God’s generosity, health, fertility, success in ways designed to benefit us and those around us.

That’s important in Tobit. But Tobit focuses on our blessing God. We heard it in our first reading: “to be mindful of God and to bless his name at all times with sincerity and with all their strength.” It shows up at the beginning of some well-known psalms (Ps 103, 104). What’s that about? It’s like praise, but more oriented to the future: God’s reign really is beautiful; may it grow and expand! It’s like thanksgiving, but not tied to something specific I’ve or we’ve received.

We Christians haven’t done much with this, but our Jewish brothers and sisters have, and their practice might enrich ours. A Jewish prayer book puts it this way: “A berachah acknowledges God as the “Source” of whatever we eat or enjoy, or whatever natural marvels excite our awe.… The blessing makes us conscious that nothing in nature is to be taken for granted…” [1]

So there’s a blessing before drinking wine or grape juice:

Blessed are You, the Lord our God, King of the universe, who creates the fruit of the vine.

One for seeing beautiful trees or animals:

Blessed are You, the Lord our God, King of the universe, who has such as these in His world.

One for hearing good news:

Blessed are You, the Lord our God, King of the universe, who is good and beneficent.

One for hearing bad news:

Blessed are You, the Lord our God, King of the universe, the true judge.

You get the idea. For the vision behind the practice we might look to Psalm 19. It starts:

The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the firmament shows his handiwork.

It continues in this vein for a number of lines. The heavens clearly their act together. What about us? Notice how the psalm ends:

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight,
O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.

Blessing God is one of the quite lovely ways this can play out.

One more thing about this before I move on. Part of most people’s consciousness is this running series of responses that plays as a sort of sound track throughout the day, approving of this, disapproving of that, being anxious about this, being relieved about that. The practice of blessing God can be part of that running series, helping our responses to be more mindful, more realistic, perhaps less anxious.

Give alms

We heard that in our first reading too: “Your children are also to be commanded to do what is right and to give alms…”

What’s that about? In the last month or so our first reading has been from the prophets, Amos and Hosea. In coming weeks we’ll get a good dose of Jeremiah. And one of the primary prophetic themes is God’s passionate concern for the poor, God’s anger at how the poor are getting crushed. That anger explains why Tobit is in exile in Nineveh rather than home in the Upper Galilee. And the prophets were speaking directly to the folk in power, the folk who could do something about it:

Cease to do evil, learn to do good;
seek justice, rescue the oppressed,
defend the orphan, plead for the widow. (Isa 1:16b-17 NRS)

But in exile, or in the bowels of some foreign empire the possibilities for doing something about it are severely limited, so God’s passionate concern for the poor translates into the repeated exhortation to give alms. Give, that is, to those at the bottom, to those who have no realistic prospect of paying you back or returning the favor.

The language for this practice is important: that “give alms” that we heard could be translated more literally as “do mercy.” “Doing mercy” is, of course, broader than giving alms, and in Tobit includes Tobit’s dangerous practice of burying discarded bodies. But “doing mercy” often, from context, means “giving alms” and that’s important because it connects the mercy we hope to receive from God with the mercy we’re exhorted to show to those who need it.

Being in exile makes it difficult to follow the Law’s commands regarding gifts for the sanctuary. And in exile the faithful connect those commands with almsgiving. So earlier in Tobit we hear Tobit tell his son Tobias:

Indeed, almsgiving, for all who practice it, is an excellent offering in the presence of the Most High. (4:11)

This shows up in other writings of this period (Sirach), and lies behind some of Jesus’ teaching on almsgiving:

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. (Mat 6:19-20)

We, probably, are at a point somewhere between the prophets’ audience and Tobit’s audience. We have some power to “do something about it” with regard to the condition of the poor, and to that degree we need to listen to the prophets. But we often don’t have the power to do much, and to that degree we need to listen to Tobit, and pay attention to whether some of our resources are going into mercy, helping those in no position to return the favor. So Tobit is, alas, not particularly helpful for a capital gifts campaign, but very relevant when we pass the plate for the Middleton Outreach Ministry.

Bless God & Give alms

How do you live when you’re off the map? Bless God and give alms.

Looking at these two themes we might think of them as pointing to the twin virtues of gratitude and generosity. I could go on about this for a good stretch, but I’ll leave that for you in the coming week. Notice how many elements in our culture work against any sense of gratitude. Notice how nurturing gratitude, also through the practice of blessing God, helps us see our world more clearly. Notice how gratitude, in turn, frees us for generosity. The world is not zero-sum. God continually drenches the world with gifts. All of us have the privilege of blessing God for it, and mirroring God’s generosity in our own.

The privilege, that is, of doing so with Tobit and Anna, Raguel and Edna, Tobias and Sarah. And that’s not bad company.

[1] The Authorised Daily Prayer Book of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth (1998) 742.