FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ATLANTA, GEORGIA
Sermon by Dr. George Bryant Wirth
The Fourth Sunday in Lent
March 21, 2004
You shall not steal (#8)
Scripture: Exodus 20:15; Acts 4:32 - 5:11
You may remember my telling you about a late plane flight returning to Hartsfield Airport several years ago. We were delayed by storms coming out of New York, and didn’t arrive in Atlanta until midnight, so Barb and I were tired and eager to get home.
We headed for the baggage claim area, waited a while as the carousel went around and finally found our luggage. Back in those days, they checked every tag and as the uniformed woman looked at the numbers to make sure we had the right stuff, she caught my eye and said “I know you.”
Somewhat surprised, but not prepared for an extended conversation, I replied “Have we met somewhere?” She answered “No, but I watch your church program on TV every Sunday morning.” Well, at that moment I suddenly felt more awake, stood up straight, smiled at this wonderful lady and said “That’s great! I’m glad you’re tuned in!” She looked at me and exclaimed “So am I, Dr. Stanley! So am I!” So much for my fleeting moment of fame. (Dr. Charles Stanley is pastor of the First Baptist Church of Atlanta which produces the worldwide “In Touch” television ministry).
As you know, they don’t check the tags in our airport anymore. Since September 11, 2001, most of the money is spent now on upgraded high-tech security systems. But flying to and returning from Africa on our mission trip recently, I did pay attention to what was happening in baggage claim as we made our way through Atlanta, Detroit, Amsterdam, London and Nairobi.
What I observed in the midst of all the frustration while waiting for luggage to arrive, was that people were watching vigilantly and nervously with apprehensive eyes, looking to see and to be certain that nobody walked away with the things that didn’t belong to them.
I.
The 8th commandment declares You shall not steal, and I think that airport scene describes how many of us feel about it. If you have ever been the victim of a theft or a robbery, where someone shattered your car window to take a laptop computer or a briefcase, or you came home after a vacation to discover that somebody had broken in and taken all of your silver and antiques – as happened to our family in Pittsburgh back in 1983 – then you already know the feeling of being violated. It’s not only the amount of the loss, but also the personal experience of being invaded deep down at the core of your life.
So it was long ago when God gave the Ten Commandments to Moses and the Hebrew people. Traveling together in the wilderness, they were a close-knit community who had to depend on and trust one another in order to survive. If anyone stole your goats or sheep, that meant your family went without milk or food or the wool to make clothing to keep you warm in the cold night.
You see, for those ancient sojourners, the 8th commandment was straightforward and simple enough – You shall not steal – because when the going got rough, they would need all of the resources which the Lord had laid in store for them.
It worked much the same way in the early church. Luke, who wrote the Book of Acts, reports that:
The company of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things which they possessed were their own, for it was all held in common. And with great power, the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many who owned land or homes sold them, and brought the proceeds to lay at the feet of the apostles, and distribution was made to each, as any had need.
(Acts 4:32-35)
Everyone in that Christian community knew the 8th commandment, and they tried to abide by it. But two of them, a husband and wife named Ananias and Sapphira, sold a piece of property and conspired secretly to keep some of the profit for themselves, which turned out to be a fatal mistake.
When Peter confronted Ananias, saying that he had stolen from the community and covered up with a lie, the Bible says that Ananias heard the words and then fell down and died, most likely, I think, of a heart attack. Soon thereafter, Sapphira came into the room, and Peter gave her the opportunity to tell the truth, but she didn’t. So Peter looked her in the eye, exposed what she had done and Sapphira keeled over and dropped dead, just like her husband.
Now I’ve tried to avoid the temptation of using that illustration during the Annual Giving Campaign (remember, we still need $79,000 to make our goal of $3.3 million). But the reality back then was and still is the same reality today – in the church, we have all been called to share the blessings we have been given with people who are in need – with families struggling to make ends meet; with homeless men, women and children who have no place to go, no food to eat and no shoes on their feet; with our sisters and brothers in far away places like Kenya, South Africa, Brazil, Honduras and Haiti.
And if we try to keep all or most of the gifts we have received to ourselves, this story about Ananias and Sapphira reminds us that we are dangerously close to stealing from God and from those who need our help – For what does it profit if we gain the whole world and forfeit our souls? (Mark 8:36)
II.
Now there’s another dimension to this 8th commandment which leads us toward the conclusion of our sermon today. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who had the courage to expose the bankrupt immorality of the old Soviet Union and spent 15 years of his life in a prison camp in Siberia, Solzhenitsyn wrote in his classic book “The Gulag Archipelago”:
“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being…”
What that means, my friends, is that each of us and all of us need to pay attention to the way that we live according to the 8th commandment. It’s front page news today – Martha Stewart was found guilty of lying to cover up why she sold 3,928 shares of Imclone Systems on the eve of an adverse ruling for its cancer drug Erbitux. “She could have come clean immediately and received a slap on the wrist from the SEC. But by sticking to a bogus story, she turned a civil case into a criminal indictment” (Time Magazine, March 15, 2004, article written by Daniel Kadlec).
Well, we can point our fingers at Martha Stewart and accuse her of breaking both the 9th commandment – You shall not bear false witness – and the 8th commandment – You shall not steal, and of course, we would be justified in our accusation. But remembering the words of Solzhenitsyn, how many of us have been close to the edge of insider trading in our own stock transactions?
It’s front-page news – Dennis Kozlowski and Mark Swartz are on trial for stealing $600 million from Tyco International to fund and to finance their own baronial lifestyles and personal investments. They are charged with 32 counts of grand larceny, falsifying records, inflating stock values and violating state business laws. More than likely, they will both go to jail, and we can point our fingers at them like Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor and say “They’re getting exactly what they deserve.” But remembering Solzhenitsyn’s words about the line dividing good and evil which runs through the heart of every human being, how many of us have ever fudged on our expense accounts or juggled the numbers of our income tax returns as we approach April the 15th?
And closer to home for a preacher, I saved an article from October 13, 2002 in the Sunday New York Times magazine about “A senior pastor at a large parish who was taking his sermons from the website and preaching them word for word. He then had them printed up and handed out under his own name. (From an article entitled “Divine Cheat” by Randy Cohen, New York Times magazine, October 13, 2002).
A member of the congregation blew the whistle on him, and hopefully, he will never do that again. And by the way, in my research for this sermon, I discovered that there is a website called “desperatepreacher.com,” which lists a whole host of sermons by well-known pastors that are available to those ministers who are struggling on Saturday night to put together a sermon for Sunday morning. Talk about temptation!
Well, that may not be as serious as the Martha Stewart and Dennis Koslowski situations, but at the end of the day, in each and every case, we are talking about the 8th commandment: You shall not steal. And the bottom line, always, is whether or not we can stand before the Lord and say “I seek to be and to become a person of integrity - an honest, law abiding and forthright Christian.”
A friend of mine in Pittsburgh preached a sermon on this 8th commandment back in 1975, and he quoted that late and great theologian Dear Abby by way of conclusion:
“Dear Abby:
I have a wonderful idea. We should go back to God’s laws. So I thought of having The Ten Commandments printed on pillowcases. If all the people who are shoplifting were to see ‘Thou shalt not steal’ on their pillowcases every night, they just might quit stealing. The Ten Commandments printed on pillowcases could change the world. I wrote two manufacturers of bed linens, and even sent them a sample I had made myself, but they turned me down flat. What do you think of my idea?”
And Abby replied:
“Dear Great Idea:
Send me a sample, and I’ll sleep on it.”
(From a sermon entitled “Piracy and Cattle Rustling” by Dr. Robert
Cleveland Holland, preached at the Shadyside Presbyterian Church,
March 2, 1975).
Well, it’s going to take more than pillow cases to help us keep the 8th commandment. And for all of us who have broken that ancient law as one time or another, I close with this story which I told on the first Good Friday that I stood in this pulpit. (March 29, 1991)
Twenty-three years ago, on a Saturday night in March of 1981, I boarded an airplane from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, and though I didn’t know it then, I can tell you today that it would become a night and a flight that I will never forget.
I had been invited by two young friends to participate in their wedding, and because it was a late afternoon ceremony, I left the Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church in a hurry to catch a 7 o’clock plane back to Pittsburgh. There wasn’t time to change, so I was still wearing my collar as I slipped into seat 4A and I remember thinking to myself “I hope no one wants to talk to a clergyman tonight, because I’m just not in the mood.”
At that very moment, a young man in a tweed suit stumbled down the aisle to where I was sitting and slumped into the empty seat across the way. His voice was slurred, and it appeared that he was intoxicated.
He said “Excuse me, Father, but do you have a minute?” I was cornered, so I said “Yes, what’s on your mind?” And with that introduction, as the plane took off, he went on for nearly an hour, telling me about a laundry list of problems in his life. I listened as best I could, but was glad to hear the pilot’s voice on the intercom announce that we were preparing to land and it was time to buckle up.
The young man in the tweed suit looked at me and said “Father, I’d like to have your address and phone number – maybe I can contact you sometime in Pittsburgh.” So, I reached up into the compartment above, took my wallet out of my raincoat, found one of my clergy cards and gave it to him. I put my wallet back into the raincoat, stuffed it into the compartment, and he said “Thank you Father” as he went back to his seat.
Within a few minutes, the plane landed, and as we touched the ground, the lights inside the cabin all went out for a moment. When we finally rolled up to the gate, the lights came back on, and as I stood up and reached for my raincoat, it was gone. I looked around and there was no sign of the young man in the tweed suit behind me. Instantly I knew that I had been set up and robbed.
People were now crowded in the aisle, and I looked forward toward the cockpit and caught a glimpse of the thief just as he was going out the door. I shouted “Stop that man – he’s got my raincoat!” which, by the way, is not something a plane full of people are used to hearing from a collared clergyman on a Saturday night.
With that, I pushed my way through the crowd, ran down the steps of the ramp and headed toward the terminal. My man was going through the door when I grabbed him from behind, took hold of his arm and said “Give me back my coat, or I’ll call the police!”
He was afraid – I could see that – and as I wrestled my raincoat out of his arms, I felt in the pocket for my wallet, and it was gone. “Give me back my wallet!” I shouted, and by then, a small crowd had gathered around us, wondering why this priest was roughing up a fellow passenger.
He reached into his back pocket for my wallet, handed it to me and started to say something that sounded like “I’m sorry…” but a policeman came up at that moment and asked “What’s wrong Father?” Without hesitation, I answered “This man stole my coat and wallet” and suddenly, the young man in the tweed suit broke away and started to run.
Two airline people wearing uniforms and several policemen went after him, caught him and by the time I got there, I could see his tweed suit jacket was torn, his face was red, there was fear in his eyes and as we all stood there in the midst of a crowd which now numbered fifty or more, that young man looked my way and shouted out loud “Father, forgive me!”
The policeman standing by said “Do you want to press charges?” I answered “You bet I do,” so off we went to the station below the terminal. As they searched the man, they found slips of paper and other cards, including mine, with the names of priests and other people on them, and a driver’s license that showed his address to be in Tarrytown, New York at a spiritual retreat center, which I learned later was one of the addresses of the Rev. Sung Young Moon. This man was a Moonie, stealing from unsuspecting folks and clergy people on airplanes, which surprised me, because everybody knows we don’t have all that much money.
Well, it was getting late, I was tired, and after giving my statement to the police, I left. A week passed by, and then a month, and another month, and all these years later, I’m still waiting for the call. I haven’t heard a word since, which is probably for the best.
But, I must confess that I have wondered, often, about that young man in the tweed suit and what he shouted out loud at me in the airport terminal that night: “Father, forgive me!”
And the more I have thought about it, the more I have come to realize that those words sound strangely familiar to what another young man shouted as he hung on a cross long ago and far away. Looking down at the people who had crucified Him, with some of the last gasps of breath left in Him, He shouted “Father, forgive them! For they know not what they do!”
It says in the Bible that if we confess our sin, God is faithful and just and willing to forgive us. That, my friends, in the name of Jesus, covers all of the baggage claims and sins in our lives, and encourages us to keep the 8th commandment:
You shall not steal.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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