Genesis 2.18-24                                                                                                                                                     Carol A. Solovitz

Psalm 116.5-7                                                                                                                                                        Pentecost 18B

Hebrews 1.1-4                                                                                                                                                       Stewardship 2

Mark 10.13-16                                                                                                                                                       October 8, 2006

The Purse-Driven Life

Gracious is the LORD, and righteous; our God is merciful.  The LORD protects the simple; when I was brought low, he saved me.  Return, O my soul, to your rest, for the LORD has dealt bountifully with you.  Psalm 116.5-7

My late mother did not spend a fortune on clothes, but she did dress according to the rules of etiquette.  She did not wear white shoes between Labor Day and Memorial Day, and her purse always matched her shoes.  Hers were not just any purses, though.  She didn’t buy them because of their designer labels; no, she bought them because of their size.  Her purses had to hold her wallet and checkbook, sunglasses, pens, notepads, a calendar, a compact, lipstick, chapstick, tissues, nail files, a comb, her rain bonnet, breath mints, chewing gum, Purell, bandaids, aspirin, Tylenol, Excedrin, Extra-strength Excedrin, ibuprofen, allergy medicine, sinus medicine, and antacids.  She didn’t carry all of that for herself, of course; she carried it in case someone might need it.  After all, she was a mother, and she had to be prepared. 

A year ago, when she had a mild stroke in addition to the Alzheimer’s Disease that gradually robbed her of her decision-making ability, she asked my sister what she should put in her purse when the ambulance came to take her to the hospital.  My sister told her, “Your medical cards and a tube of lipstick.”  When she was transferred to a long-term care facility, I picked up her purse and could not believe that it was my mother’s.  It was far too light.  Indeed, all she had in the big bag was one lipstick and a folder with a few cards in it.  A few months later, my brother was visiting her in her new room, and she revealed a stash of purses beneath the clothes in her laundry basket.  She had found them in neighboring rooms and was unable to resist them.  Against her will, he gave them to a nurse whose purse just happened to be missing.  Mom did love her purses.

Now I’ve always been a bit smug about my own free-spirited approach to purses.  I prefer the smaller bags so that I can’t carry too much with me.  I left bigger bags at home and carried only a little wallet-purse all over Germany for 3 weeks last year.  I will carry the same handbag for years and pay no attention to the season of the year.  Still, it is embarrassing to clean a closet and discover that I really do have a plethora of purses.  I thought only my sister inherited Mom’s purse obsession, but I just can’t bear to get rid of my old ones.  And I have a vast collection of tote bags, backpacks and duffels to carry all the stuff that won’t fit into my purse.  There goes my smugness!

When Dorothy Allen and I visited the Navigator Press bookstore in Colorado Springs this past summer, a book by Anita Renfroe caught our eyes.  It is called The Purse-Driven Life: It really is all about me.  I immediately decided that I would borrow her title – a clever play on words from Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life - for this stewardship sermon.  I hope she is flattered.  The book is mostly about many womanly quirks, and she spends a few chapters on the importance of purses.  She claims that one can look at a woman’s purse and learn a great deal about her “purse-onality”. 

I have been intrigued with the concept of a purse-driven life.  It should be intriguing to all people as we contemplate our highest priorities in life.  Not only do purse-driven folks need to hang onto their purses with tight fists, but they worry endlessly about what is – or is not – in them.

It was always risky to go shopping or to lunch with my friend Chris.  She either had $100 bill or a quarter in her wallet.  If she’d broken the $100 bill, it was a sure bet that she’d be down to a quarter within hours – and I’d get stuck with paying for lunch.  She just could not keep cash in her purse.  She didn’t worry about it, though.  She was confident that she would have another $100 bill in there tomorrow.  Even though I often ended up paying, it was refreshing to be with Chris.  She and her family were fairly well-off financially, and they were generous with their support of our church and worthy community causes.  They were not purse-driven; they were confident that the Lord would provide them with all they needed.  In fact, the Lord dealt bountifully with them.

In our reading from Psalm 116 today we continue to hear how the Lord has heard the pleas of the psalmist and responded with grace, righteousness, mercy, protection and salvation.  “Return, O my soul, to your rest, for the LORD has dealt bountifully with you.”  This is a statement of profound faith, that one can be at peace and have confidence that God does respond to our needs with abundance.  Professor Walter Brueggemann, in his essay “Enough is Enough,” writes

    “The Bible is about abundance.  From the first chapters of Genesis, God not only initiates abundance – calling forth plants and fish and birds and animals – but promises continued abundance by commanding them to ‘increase and multiply’ [1.22].  God’s generosity and fidelity reach their climax on the sixth day, when God proclaims a sufficiency for ‘everything that has the breath of life’ and declares all this ‘very good’ [1.30-31].  Having thus set in motion a world of abundance, God rests – the mechanisms are in place, the world will have enough.”

Why do we cling to our wallets when God promises that no matter the circumstances, we always will have enough?  In fact, many in this nation have more than enough.  What are we to do with the excess?  We’re told that we must save it all for a rainy day, of course!  Open another bank account, build another silo, hide it in a mattress, keep it in a purse under your pillow.  That is the way to live a purse-driven life.  With all that abundance stashed away and no intention to ever use it, a purse-driven person is planning a future of worry and fear.  For many of us, there will never be enough in savings to give us complete assurance of a well-kept future.  We can get only that assurance from trusting in a God of abundance.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in A Testament to Freedom, wrote, “Let none say: God has blessed us with money and possessions, and then live as if they and their God were alone in the world.  For the time will come when they realize that they have been worshiping idols of their good fortune and selfishness.  Possessions are not God’s blessing and goodness, but he opportunities of service which God entrusts to us.”  As we ponder our own abundance, our own fears and our own commitments to serving the Lord and the Lord’s children, let us also be careful to make sure that we live mission-driven, purpose-driven, love-driven lives and leave the purse-driven life for the real pros like my dear mother.

 

Let us pray:  O Lord, we do love you, and we trust that you love us and hear us when we call on you in trust and in fear.  Give us the wisdom and courage to share ourselves, our time and our possessions in service to you.  Through Jesus and the Holy Spirit we pray, Amen.