My seminary classmates and I were approaching graduation, and went through a little process requested by the alumni office of the seminary. They asked us to fill out a form that would help them place us in churches or other ministry positions, now that we were finishing our training. And one of the blanks on the form asked us what size salary we needed to have ... notice the language ... needed to have. Not what we wanted or what we fantasized, but what we needed.
Now you will remember that we are talking about seminary students here, and seminary students, young ministers, are not greedy in front of each other. They are not avaricious in public. Behind closed doors, maybe. In the closets of their hearts, probably. But not where anybody can see you … out there, on paper, you try to be at least a little modest.
It’s kind of like what they say about drinking alcohol, you know -- they say that the difference between Baptists and Episcopalians is that the Episcopalians will drink in front of one another, but Baptists ... well, you figure it out.
Anyway, as we struggled with that little blank, knowing we had to be reasonable and suggest a living wage; and yet not wanting to look greedy and certainly not wanting to price ourselves out of the market … I think I ended up putting down about $4500 as the salary I would need. Yes, 45 hundred, not thousand, for you yuppies -- who think of 4500 as the price of a week in the islands. 45 hundred.
Remember that we are talking about the late middle ages, 1963, and remember that I was going one up on my wife, who was earning about 42 hundred as a fulltime public school teacher.
Well, after a number of weeks a job offer came in ... to do campus ministry at a small college in eastern Kentucky. I said yes, that sounds good, I’d like to do that, and then called my wife on the phone to say, Guess what, we might be moving to eastern Kentucky. I have a job offer. And she, practical creature that she was and is, and carrying our first child, has the temerity to ask, "What does it pay?"
You know what? I hadn’t asked. I hadn’t asked because I was first of all too excited about having a job offer, and second, because, well, ministers are somehow not supposed to be interested in money. And she said, "Ask.” “Ask.” And I did ... and we both whooped and hollered and got all excited because the salary would be Five thousand five hundred and twenty dollars a year ... more than a thousand more than I had asked for. Wow.
Sitting in clover, with an eighty-five dollar a month mortgage payment on our first house and hospital bills of $312 for the subsequent childbirth -- what riches!
But of course what I really learned out of that experience is that there is no denying it … I did want and need and expect a payday. That’s not just a matter of practical survival: it is also a very human emotion. We want to be rewarded, we expect to be compensated, we need to have a payday. We need to have a payday someday not just for something to take to the grocery store, but also as a way of recognizing worth, as a way of building self-esteem.
You see, there was a day in this country, and some of you can remember it, when a white man and a black man, working the same kind of job, using the same skills, were paid on
a different basis. The white man a generation ago was more than likely paid as much as double the black man on the same job -- and the effect -- the intended effect -- was to say to the one, You are somebody, and to say to the other, You are
not worth much. Payday means self-worth, self-esteem day.
My fifty-five hundred and twenty dollar a year job? When I got there and started digging in the files, I found out that the woman who had held it before me was paid only thirty-six hundred. Simply because she was a woman ... and the system, even the Baptist system, said, well, you aren’t worth as much as a man, and so on payday we will tell you that you aren’t’ t worth much. Payday is self-esteem day, self-worth day.
Incidentally, if on the last Sunday of each month you see me and your associate pastor with a lean and hungry look, you will know that we are waiting for Mr. Powell and his little envelope of self-esteem. Yes, payday is important even to spiritual folks.
And so you can understand the complaints raised by those folks with whom the prophet Malachi was dealing. You can see why the charge they raised is a natural one, an important one. “It is useless to serve God; what do we gain from the Lord of hosts by observing his rules and behaving with reverence?” What do we gain ... and when is payday? We’ve got to have a reward, we’ve got to have a payday... in order to know that we are somebody, what gain is there? When is payday?
I
In fact, the complaint goes deeper. Malachi’s contemporaries think they have seen the balance sheet and that it does not add up as promised. “We count the arrogant happy, blessed ... it is evildoers who are successful; they have put God to the proof and come to no harm"
Do you see what these folks are saying? Maybe you’ve said it too. Here I’ve done all these things, I’ve attended worship, I’ve said my prayers, I’ve paid my tithes ... and right next door my neighbor is an arrogant so and so who has not darkened the door of any church for twenty years. He uses the name of God only for cursing, and as for giving, why, he wouldn’t give a dime to a blind beggar with three freezing children .. and do you know the rascal cleared fifty thou last year. There is no justice. The arrogant prosper ... they get their payday, regularly, generously. Now when is mine, Lord? Ever felt that?
It’s only natural, isn’t it? We’ve got to have a payday someday, just to feel affirmed and wanted and justified. If you and I allow ourselves to feel as Malachi’s people felt, we
could very easily wind down into a morass of self-pity, just as they did ... why, with the time I’ve spent in church I could have written the great American novel and could have been doing something lucrative. Why, with the money I’ve given I could have had my mortgage paid and could be driving a new luxury car instead of this nondescript Plymouth econobox. When is payday.. just got to have a payday someday... and
look at the rest of the world enjoying itself, with no penalty, no problem.
To all of this Malachi offers two responses. To all of these complaints the prophet replies in two ways to assure us that, yes, there is a payday someday. Malachi’s answers:
First, your payday consists in the knowledge that you belong to God, that you are His, that you are loved beyond the power of any material reward to satisfy. Payday someday, today.
And second, yes, there is an ultimate payday someday, there is an ultimate reckoning. And our God, in his own way and in His own time, will deal with evil and will bring joy to the faithful ... you may not be able to put this day on the calendar and you may not be able to use it for collateral at the bank, but it is coming. Payday, someday, ultimately.
Look at these two ideas very briefly with me.
Malachi says to the chronic complainers who argue that it is useless to serve God and that there is no gain from living God’s way... “But those who fear the Lord.. they shall be mine, says the Lord, my own possession. They shall be mine, my own special beloved, valued possession.”
What did I say to you a few moments ago that payday meant? It is not only something to take to the grocery store, but payday is also esteem, it is also worth .. to be paid in dollars, to be given a raise once in a while .. that says, we care for you, we honor you, we appreciate you. And I can tell you that it is just as important for us to know that somebody appreciates us as it is to be able to put a few more shekels in the bank. Payday is about being loved and appreciated, it’s about esteem and worth.
And so the prophet is telling us, Your God values you. Your God keeps you as His own. Your God sees how you live, He knows your heart, and He is Himself your reward, He is Himself your payday. "They shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts, my own possession .." He values you.
You who have just been baptized .. you are His. No one can take that away from you. We dare not promise that because you have chosen to follow Him you will get rich or you will succeed in business or you will have all your problems solved or you will win the winter Olympics! But we do dare to promise that you will run and not be weary, that you will walk and not faint, for you are His. You are His own possession. And that is your payday. You are His and he values you.
You whom we are about to ordain .. you are His. No one can take that away from you. We do not promise that because you have accepted this important task of servanthood you will get rich or that everybody will look up to you or that you can polish your pedestal. Quite the contrary. The task of a deacon is not at heart an out front task where anyone will praise you. Standing in front of the church to serve the Lord’s Supper is only the tip of the iceberg .. for underneath that lies hours of visiting and contacting and counseling. Going to meetings to make weighty decisions about the future of the church is only the smallest fraction of what you will do, for before those meetings happen there is to be arduous committee work and creative thinking and days spent in reading and training ... if you are here to be ordained because you want the glory of it all, you may as well pick up your cushion and walk. These plush cushions down here may well be the last relaxation you have for the next three years! There is no paycheck and there is very little public acclaim .. but --
There is the smile of God for doing what is right. There is the approval of the almighty because you are seeing to it that not one of his little ones is lost. There is his word to you, You are my possession, you are my own. And that is your payday. He values you.
And then there is this: there is an ultimate payday someday. There is an ultimate reckoning. Our God, in His own way And in His own time, has a way of settling accounts. Hear this word from the prophet Malachi -
“The day comes, glowing like a furnace; all the arrogant and the evildoers shall be chaff, and that day when it comes shall set them ablaze, says the Lord of Hosts. But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in his wings, and you shall break loose like calves released from the stall.’
I do not pretend to be an expert on either heaven or hell. I do not pretend to be able to tell you the landscape which lies ahead. But this one thing I do know, this one thing I stand upon .. that our God is a God of justice, our God will do what is right. This much I stand on .. that in His infinite mercy He gives us plenty of rope to dangle by -- enough to hang ourselves on, in fact .. He gives us all the freedom we can use, and that is His mercy.
But he is a God of justice and of judgment, and the day will come which you do not see now, but come it surely will... when he will say with joy and with triumph to some, Well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of the Father’s Kingdom. And on that day .. it’s not on my planning calendar and it’s schedules for sometime between this afternoon and eternity -- on that day he will also be found saying, Depart from me, you workers of iniquity, Our God will be merciful but He will also do what He must.
Payday - someday, yes. Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee the crown of life.
Payday, someday, to be sure. They shall be mine, says the Lord of Hosts, my own possession against the day that I appoint and I will spare them.
And when that payday comes someday, know that it will be good measure, pressed down, running over. Thanks be to God.
