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You make a comment about some of Jesus' surprising teachings. You say, "He doesn't talk about abortion or homosexuality, but he says a lot about divorce."

I think one of the great tragedies today is that so many people in the secular world think that all the church cares about and ever talks about are these kinds of issues, like abortion and homosexuality. I've literally had some of my secular friends say to me, Do you ever talk about anything besides those things? I think we have to get away from being so focused on those issues, as important as they may be and are to so many people, and remember that the person that we follow in all of this, said nothing about either one of those.

I know I'm going to ruffle some feathers by saying this, but I've always assumed that if he felt they were that important he would have said something about them. And so I follow that example, I put them aside. I'm not saying they shouldn't be debated and discussed, but I'm saying they are not the central issues when it comes to being a follower of Jesus.

Evangelicals don't want to talk about the fact we are upwardly mobile suburbanites who are financially blessed in a world where there's still a lot of poverty. Because of that, the Sermon on the Mount can make people very uncomfortable.

It is clearly the most difficult issue for me emotionally because, unexpectedly, I have made much more money than I ever thought I would as a parish minister. So what do I do with this and how do I live according to the teachings of Jesus? I've tried to do it in some systematic ways by tithing, or even more than tithing. But I have never given 'til it hurts and so now, at this point in my life, I'm really trying to think about what I do with what I have. I don't think you can escape that question if you claim to be a follower of Jesus. It's everywhere in the gospel, as I said earlier, and it's clearly in the Sermon on the Mount. And so I'll just say boldly, I don't think you really can claim to be a follower of Jesus unless you've agonized over this question, if you have money to spare.

You use Kiplee, your daughter, as an illustration of how people can actually live out the issues that mattered to Jesus according to the way he discussed the final judgment.

Jesus says what's going to separate the sheep from the goats is how you treat the least among us. And that is phenomenal when you think about it, because we focus on all this other stuff. Jesus focuses on how we treat the least of us. People are going to be surprised at judgment. They had no idea when they were taking care of the least among us that they were really taking care of Jesus. And I talk about my daughter, who is not formally religious, but she has a heart that is just as big as all outdoors, and spends her summers taking care of handicapped people. She has a doctoral degree in physical therapy, but she takes her summer vacations and goes to a place where she, for 24 hours a day, takes care of handicapped people. According to the portrait of judgment, she's going to do better on that day than I am.

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May (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48