Sermon delivered Sunday, May 7, 2017 (Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year A), at The Episcopal Church of St. John the Baptist in Aptos, CA, on my first Sunday serving that congregation as rector.
Sermon Text(s): John 10:1-10
“I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”
Jesus, in using the image of himself as a shepherd, says that he came to give the sheep “abundant life.” He doesn’t say he came just to protect them from the thief, just to keep them alive. He came to give them abundant life – lots of life, more than they already had.
The kind of “life” Jesus is talking about here is more than literal, physical life, more than a beating heart and breath in our lungs. He’s talking about emotional life – lightheartedness, joy, excitement, love, resilience, fulfillment. Jesus came to give us more than breath in our bodies; he came to give us joy in our souls, the kind of joy that is unshaken by the ups and downs of life, an abiding joy that lives deep down, that connects us to the Source of all that is, the Source that tells us, in the words of Julian of Norwich, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
I can’t think of a more perfect passage of scripture to begin our lives together as priest and people than this line from John’s Gospel about abundant life, because this is what the Church is all about: receiving and celebrating the abundant life that Jesus offers to us.
It’s sort of a personal mantra of mine that people should feel as comfortable in their church as they do in their own living rooms, and what I mean by that is that the church should be just as safe of a space for them as their private home is. It should be a place where they feel completely free to be themselves. Too often, the image people get of “the Church” is that it is a place of judgment, a place where they have to put on a certain face, keep up appearances, be presentable. But I take the view that, as the saying goes, the church is not a club for saints, but a hospital for sinners. It’s a place where we stand before the Almighty God to whom “all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid,” as our Collect for Purity says. It’s a place we come to lay bare the whole truth about ourselves and to reckon with what we find there. For some of us, it’s a lot easier to do that in front of God than in front of other people. But if you’ve ever been to a 12-Step meeting or a support group of any kind, you know that that kind of vulnerability and intimacy, the kind that leads to the healing of wounds and the ability to live your life to the fullest, is possible within the context of a gathering of flawed human beings. And I believe the Church should be about creating those kinds of spaces for people, spaces where people can experience the abundant life that is possible in Christ.
On Wednesday, I shared part of my spiritual journey with the Episcopal Church Women at the luncheon they held to welcome me, and I mentioned that although I was raised in church, I didn’t come to know Christ and commit to follow him until I was a teenager. In the first few years after that “conversion experience,” I listened to a lot of contemporary Christian music. One song I heard during that time, a song by Ginny Owens called “Free,” gave me an image of the kind of life that could be possible for me if I could truly embrace the gift of God’s grace. Nearly 20 years later, I’m still working on letting go enough to truly experience this kind of freedom, but I have tasted moments of it, and I deeply believe this is the kind of abundant life to which Jesus calls us. The song starts with a description of what the author’s life was like before she embraced God’s grace:
Turnin’ molehills into mountains
Makin’ big deals out of small ones
Bearing gifts as if they're burdens --
This is how it's been
Fear of coming out of my shell
Too many things I can't do too well
‘fraid I'll try real hard and I'll fail --
This is how it's been
‘Til the day you pounded on my heart's door,
And you shouted joyfully,
“You're not a slave anymore!
You're free to dance --
Forget about your two left feet!
And you're free to sing ---
Even joyful noise is music to me!
And free to love
'Cause I've given you my love and it's made you free…
Free from worry
Free from envy and denial
Free to live, free to give, free to smile!” [1]
This is what “abundant life” looks like to me: Singing and dancing with abandon because I know I am accepted as I am. Giving freely because I know I have more than enough to share. Radiating love to all around me, drawing from that internal well of joy, unshaken by the ups and downs of this world, that comes from knowing that Christ has given me his love and it’s made me free. I don’t claim to be a perfect picture of that in every moment, but it’s the image I hold in my mind of the kind of life that is possible if I allow God’s grace to work in me.
Because although the world operates out of a mentality of scarcity, hoarding things because we believe there is not enough to go around, the message of the Gospel is one of abundance. In God’s economy, the concept of “scarcity of resources” does not exist. The gift of God in Christ is more love, more grace, more mercy, more soul food than we can possibly consume on our own. In the face of such abundance, we are compelled to share – because as that grace continues to flow into us even after it has filled us up, it overflows out of us to everyone around us. There is so much grace available that we literally cannot keep it all to ourselves. As the psalmist says, “our cup is running over.”
What does this look like in practice? The image of the early church in our passage from Acts 2 this morning gives us an example:
“All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.”
That intangible, internal sense of abundance can be translated into an experience of external abundance as well. The church is meant to be a place where we all share what we have to make sure that the needs of all are met. To the extent that we do that, the church community itself becomes a sacrament – “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace,” as the Book of Common Prayer defines it (BCP 857). And as with all sacraments, both aspects must be there for it to be truly sacred – the outward sign is meaningless without the inward grace, and the inward grace is meaningless if it does not manifest in an outward sign.
So as we come together today as priest and people, I pray that our lives together will be sacramental: manifesting through outward and visible signs the inward and spiritual grace that we know through our relationship with Jesus Christ. I pray that our community will be known as one of abundance – abundant life, abundant gratitude, abundant compassion, abundant giving. Through our gratefulness for the abundance of God’s grace, I pray that we too, like the early church, will distribute our plenty to any among us who have need – and I hope we’ll sing and dance with abandon while we’re doing it.
[1] Ginny Owens, "Free," from the album Without Condition. ℗ 1999 Sony Music Entertainment Inc.
Showing posts with label generosity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label generosity. Show all posts
Sunday, May 7, 2017
Sunday, October 23, 2016
Giving with right intentions
Sermon delivered Sunday, Oct. 23, 2016 (23rd Sunday After Pentecost (Proper 25, Year C, Track 2)) at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church in Oakland, CA.
Sermon Text(s): Sirach 35:12-17, Luke 18:9-14
A few weeks ago, when we kicked off our stewardship campaign for 2017, we considered the difference between giving out of a sense of obligation, out of a sense that we “owe” someone something verses giving freely out of a sense of joy, in gratitude for the many blessings we have received from God. Our readings this week invite us to continue to explore that theme of “right intentions” with regards to our giving.
No matter what aspect of spirituality you’re looking at, intention is important. In fact, Jesus and the Old Testament prophets emphasize intention so much that one could argue that in religious practice, one’s intentions are even more important that the actions he or she performs. Despite the wisdom of the classic axiom “actions speak louder than words,” it is also true that “actions are judged by intentions.” While all the words in the world mean nothing if we don’t put them into practice, it is also true that all the wonderful actions in the world also mean nothing if they are done with the wrong intentions. Prophets always emphasize this because they know that one of the worst dangers of religious life is the possibility for internal deception, of being convinced you are “righteous” because you do all the right things when internally, your heart is rotten to the core.
Take the Pharisee in today’s Gospel reading, for instance. He is a textbook example of “a good religious man,” if one measured him by his actions only. He fasts twice a week, he tithes, he goes to the Temple to pray and make offerings. But the glimpse into his inner thoughts that we receive in the parable shows us that he’s doing these things for the wrong reasons. His prayer is all about how much better he is than others. Even as he’s thanking God, an religiously praiseworthy action, he’s continuing to feed the sin of pride: “Dear God, I thank you that I am not like other people.”
Jesus tells us that this man’s prayer is not acceptable to God. The tax collector who is aware of his own sinfulness goes home “justified,” but the Pharisee does not. Why? Because you don’t get to thank God for your arrogance or your pride or your sense of superiority. You can’t thank God for those things because God didn’t actually give you any of those things. They are of your own making. Hence the scriptures tell us that this parable was aimed at those who “trusted in themselves that they were righteous,” rather than trusting in God, acknowledging that everything they had was a gift from God, and allowing that realization to humble them.
In our first reading from the book of Sirach, we are encouraged to “give to the Most High as he has given to you, and as generously as you can afford,” but almost in the same breath we are warned against “offering God a bribe”:
“Do not offer him a bribe, for he will not accept it
and do not rely on a dishonest sacrifice;
for the Lord is the judge,
and with him there is no partiality.” (Sirach 35:14-15)
In other words, you can’t buy God’s favor. Not only can you not “pay” God for the blessings you receive, as Naaman, the commander of the Aramean army, tried to do in our reading from 2 Kings a few weeks ago, but you also can’t get God to do what you want by passing him a wad of cash under the table. God shows no “partiality” in the sense that he doesn’t treat people who give lots of money any differently than he treats people who give very little. God’s grace, God’s love, and God’s mercy are freely available to all. They can’t be bought and they can’t be manipulated.
So yes, we should “give to the Most High as he has given to [us], and as generously as [we] can afford,” but not so we can consider ourselves better than others, or because we want to be praised by others, or because we don’t want to owe God anything or in order to try to get what we want out of God. If we are giving for any of those reasons, even though our outward actions look respectable, we’re actually not giving with the right intention. Instead, we should be giving as an act of generosity, as a means to share the blessings we have been given, as a spiritual practice to help us lessen our attachments to physical things.
In recent weeks I’ve been sharing with the folks at the 8:00 contemplative mass some writings on generosity from Sharon Salzburg, a contemplative teacher in the Buddhist tradition. She talks about how in traditional Buddhist teaching, as it came to us out of India and then through East Asia, generosity comes first in the sequence of instruction. Before you can learn about meditation, before you can learn about ethics or morality, you must learn about generosity. It is the foundation upon which all the other teachings are based. But in the U.S., when Buddhism is taught, meditation practice usually comes first, and generosity is often tacked on as an afterthought or appendix. We tend do the same thing in the church: worship, biblical studies, prayer, education about Christian history, all these things come before stewardship and giving and get much more attention in most churches. As a culture, money and financial giving is something we don’t like to talk about very much. Perhaps this is because as a culture, we Americans value “wanting, getting, and hoarding,” as Sharon Salzburg puts it, much more than generosity and sharing.
American society measures our value by how much we have, and this translates into the world of philanthropy by valuing people for how much they can give. The biggest donors are given the most attention, the most status, the most privileges. But the spiritual practice of generosity has nothing to do with comparing ourselves to others, and everything to do with cultivating an interior spiritual state that allows us to let go of our attachments. Jesus’s example of the Pharisee at the temple is a perfect illustration of this: focusing on how what we give compares to what others give takes us away from the spiritual practice of generosity and into the sins of pride, jealousy, and resentment. And Jesus was clear in other places that attachment to one’s wealth prevents us from entering the kingdom of heaven, as in the case of the rich man who cannot bring himself to obey Jesus’s command to sell all he had and give to the poor, but instead “went away grieving, for he had many possessions” (Matthew 19:22). Jesus uses this man as an example, telling his followers, “Truly I tell you… it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:24). Why is that so? Because of the dangers of attachment to one’s physical possessions and the false sense of security that wealth can present.
True generosity actually has nothing to do with how much we have to give based on any objective standards. As Salzburg puts it, “Generosity allies itself with an inner feeling of abundance – the feeling that we have enough to share.” This inner feeling of abundance can be present in rich or poor people alike, just as an inner feeling of lack or scarcity can also be present in rich or poor people alike. “There are wealthy people who… find it difficult to give despite their external abundance. There are economically poor people who are very generous even though from the outside they seem to have nothing to give.” In the Christian tradition we see this truth illustrated in the story from Luke 21 about a poor widow who drops two small coins into the temple treasury and is praised for giving more than the wealthy who put in large sums (Luke 21:1-4). Salzburg writes that “[o]ne of the great joys that come from cultivating generosity is the understanding that no matter how much we have by the world’s standards, if we know that we have enough, we can always give something.”
She goes on to talk about how to develop this sense of inner abundance. She says that in her own spiritual practice, she has used this question to help her cultivate it: “What do I really need, right now, in this moment, in order to be happy?” Although the world will tell us we need a new this or a different that – maybe the latest technological gadget or a larger home or a romantic partner or a vacation – always something other than what we have right now, in reality we often need very little beyond what is right in front of us to be happy. Acknowledging that can help us to cultivate that sense of inner abundance that allows generosity to flow freely and releases us from the deadly grasp of attachment and desire. There will always be something shinier and more attractive out there luring us away from where true happiness can be found. The key is being able to recognize that as human beings we have an endless capacity for disappointment and an insatiable desire that will never be fulfilled, and not let those grasping, desperate parts of ourselves to control us. To remember that a sense of inner abundance really has no connection to how much we actually have in objective reality. Because human beings also have an endless capacity for contentment and joy in the present moment. Of being happy where we are, with what we have, and having a sense that we not only have enough, we have enough to share.
Sermon Text(s): Sirach 35:12-17, Luke 18:9-14
A few weeks ago, when we kicked off our stewardship campaign for 2017, we considered the difference between giving out of a sense of obligation, out of a sense that we “owe” someone something verses giving freely out of a sense of joy, in gratitude for the many blessings we have received from God. Our readings this week invite us to continue to explore that theme of “right intentions” with regards to our giving.
No matter what aspect of spirituality you’re looking at, intention is important. In fact, Jesus and the Old Testament prophets emphasize intention so much that one could argue that in religious practice, one’s intentions are even more important that the actions he or she performs. Despite the wisdom of the classic axiom “actions speak louder than words,” it is also true that “actions are judged by intentions.” While all the words in the world mean nothing if we don’t put them into practice, it is also true that all the wonderful actions in the world also mean nothing if they are done with the wrong intentions. Prophets always emphasize this because they know that one of the worst dangers of religious life is the possibility for internal deception, of being convinced you are “righteous” because you do all the right things when internally, your heart is rotten to the core.
Take the Pharisee in today’s Gospel reading, for instance. He is a textbook example of “a good religious man,” if one measured him by his actions only. He fasts twice a week, he tithes, he goes to the Temple to pray and make offerings. But the glimpse into his inner thoughts that we receive in the parable shows us that he’s doing these things for the wrong reasons. His prayer is all about how much better he is than others. Even as he’s thanking God, an religiously praiseworthy action, he’s continuing to feed the sin of pride: “Dear God, I thank you that I am not like other people.”
Jesus tells us that this man’s prayer is not acceptable to God. The tax collector who is aware of his own sinfulness goes home “justified,” but the Pharisee does not. Why? Because you don’t get to thank God for your arrogance or your pride or your sense of superiority. You can’t thank God for those things because God didn’t actually give you any of those things. They are of your own making. Hence the scriptures tell us that this parable was aimed at those who “trusted in themselves that they were righteous,” rather than trusting in God, acknowledging that everything they had was a gift from God, and allowing that realization to humble them.
In our first reading from the book of Sirach, we are encouraged to “give to the Most High as he has given to you, and as generously as you can afford,” but almost in the same breath we are warned against “offering God a bribe”:
“Do not offer him a bribe, for he will not accept it
and do not rely on a dishonest sacrifice;
for the Lord is the judge,
and with him there is no partiality.” (Sirach 35:14-15)
In other words, you can’t buy God’s favor. Not only can you not “pay” God for the blessings you receive, as Naaman, the commander of the Aramean army, tried to do in our reading from 2 Kings a few weeks ago, but you also can’t get God to do what you want by passing him a wad of cash under the table. God shows no “partiality” in the sense that he doesn’t treat people who give lots of money any differently than he treats people who give very little. God’s grace, God’s love, and God’s mercy are freely available to all. They can’t be bought and they can’t be manipulated.
So yes, we should “give to the Most High as he has given to [us], and as generously as [we] can afford,” but not so we can consider ourselves better than others, or because we want to be praised by others, or because we don’t want to owe God anything or in order to try to get what we want out of God. If we are giving for any of those reasons, even though our outward actions look respectable, we’re actually not giving with the right intention. Instead, we should be giving as an act of generosity, as a means to share the blessings we have been given, as a spiritual practice to help us lessen our attachments to physical things.
In recent weeks I’ve been sharing with the folks at the 8:00 contemplative mass some writings on generosity from Sharon Salzburg, a contemplative teacher in the Buddhist tradition. She talks about how in traditional Buddhist teaching, as it came to us out of India and then through East Asia, generosity comes first in the sequence of instruction. Before you can learn about meditation, before you can learn about ethics or morality, you must learn about generosity. It is the foundation upon which all the other teachings are based. But in the U.S., when Buddhism is taught, meditation practice usually comes first, and generosity is often tacked on as an afterthought or appendix. We tend do the same thing in the church: worship, biblical studies, prayer, education about Christian history, all these things come before stewardship and giving and get much more attention in most churches. As a culture, money and financial giving is something we don’t like to talk about very much. Perhaps this is because as a culture, we Americans value “wanting, getting, and hoarding,” as Sharon Salzburg puts it, much more than generosity and sharing.
American society measures our value by how much we have, and this translates into the world of philanthropy by valuing people for how much they can give. The biggest donors are given the most attention, the most status, the most privileges. But the spiritual practice of generosity has nothing to do with comparing ourselves to others, and everything to do with cultivating an interior spiritual state that allows us to let go of our attachments. Jesus’s example of the Pharisee at the temple is a perfect illustration of this: focusing on how what we give compares to what others give takes us away from the spiritual practice of generosity and into the sins of pride, jealousy, and resentment. And Jesus was clear in other places that attachment to one’s wealth prevents us from entering the kingdom of heaven, as in the case of the rich man who cannot bring himself to obey Jesus’s command to sell all he had and give to the poor, but instead “went away grieving, for he had many possessions” (Matthew 19:22). Jesus uses this man as an example, telling his followers, “Truly I tell you… it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:24). Why is that so? Because of the dangers of attachment to one’s physical possessions and the false sense of security that wealth can present.
True generosity actually has nothing to do with how much we have to give based on any objective standards. As Salzburg puts it, “Generosity allies itself with an inner feeling of abundance – the feeling that we have enough to share.” This inner feeling of abundance can be present in rich or poor people alike, just as an inner feeling of lack or scarcity can also be present in rich or poor people alike. “There are wealthy people who… find it difficult to give despite their external abundance. There are economically poor people who are very generous even though from the outside they seem to have nothing to give.” In the Christian tradition we see this truth illustrated in the story from Luke 21 about a poor widow who drops two small coins into the temple treasury and is praised for giving more than the wealthy who put in large sums (Luke 21:1-4). Salzburg writes that “[o]ne of the great joys that come from cultivating generosity is the understanding that no matter how much we have by the world’s standards, if we know that we have enough, we can always give something.”
She goes on to talk about how to develop this sense of inner abundance. She says that in her own spiritual practice, she has used this question to help her cultivate it: “What do I really need, right now, in this moment, in order to be happy?” Although the world will tell us we need a new this or a different that – maybe the latest technological gadget or a larger home or a romantic partner or a vacation – always something other than what we have right now, in reality we often need very little beyond what is right in front of us to be happy. Acknowledging that can help us to cultivate that sense of inner abundance that allows generosity to flow freely and releases us from the deadly grasp of attachment and desire. There will always be something shinier and more attractive out there luring us away from where true happiness can be found. The key is being able to recognize that as human beings we have an endless capacity for disappointment and an insatiable desire that will never be fulfilled, and not let those grasping, desperate parts of ourselves to control us. To remember that a sense of inner abundance really has no connection to how much we actually have in objective reality. Because human beings also have an endless capacity for contentment and joy in the present moment. Of being happy where we are, with what we have, and having a sense that we not only have enough, we have enough to share.
Sunday, October 9, 2016
How do we respond when God gives us a gift?
Sermon delivered Sunday, Oct. 9, 2016 (The Twenty-First Sunday After Pentecost (Proper 23, Year C, Track 2)), at St. Cuthbert’s Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA.
Sermon Text(s): 2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c; Luke 17:11-19
How do we respond when God gives us a gift?
That’s the question our scriptures invite us to consider today. When we receive a gift from God, when God offers us new life, when God heals us, how do we respond?
In both our first lesson from the book of 2 Kings and the story in the Gospel passage from Luke, we are given examples of people who received gifts from God – healing from the skin disease of leprosy. There were different circumstances surrounding each healing, but in both cases we could say that the healing was example of God’s grace, a gift freely given to the people who were ill. They did nothing to “deserve” or “earn” the healing, they were simply offered it.
So what are the responses of the people who are healed? Naaman, the commander of the army an enemy nation, returns to the prophet Elisha and proclaims that he now knows that the God of Israel is the only God – for him, the healing prompts a conversion experience, a confession of faith.
In the Gospel passage, one of the lepers who had been healed praises God and goes back to Jesus and thanks him. But Jesus observes, wryly, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they?”
The other nine are still healed, though. The scriptures don’t tell us that because they failed to thank Jesus, their healing was suddenly revoked. Presumably they still remain disease-free, whether or not they returned to thank the person who healed them or give praise to God. So God’s healing remains a gift, not contingent on the people’s response to it.
Returning to the story of Naaman, the lectionary actually cuts off his response mid-sentence, so we don’t get the full picture of how he responds to the experience of being healed. When he says, “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel,” he immediately follows that statement with, “please accept a present from your servant.” Naaman returns to Elisha not only to make a statement of faith but to offer a gift in return. But Elisha refuses to accept Naaman’s gift, saying, “As the Lord lives, whom I serve, I will accept nothing!”
It’s perhaps natural for Naaman to feel that he “owes” Elisha something after he’s been healed, but Elisha disabuses him of that notion. By refusing the lavish and expensive gifts Naaman offers him, the message Elisha conveys is: “You don’t have to pay me. Your healing was a gift from God. You can’t earn it, you can’t buy it, you can’t make this an even transaction by reciprocating in any way. There is no reciprocation with God. There is only grateful acceptance of gifts freely offered.”
Today we kick off our fall stewardship season, when we’re going to be thinking a lot about the gifts God gives us and how we respond to those gifts. Are we grateful, like the leper in the Gospel reading? Do we give praise to God and return to the one who has blessed us to thank him?
The part of Naaman’s story that doesn’t appear in the lectionary complicates this narrative. In stewardship season, we often hear a lot about how all we have is a gift from God, and so therefore we ought to joyfully “give back to God” in thanksgiving. But when Naaman tries to make a gift to the prophet after his healing, Elisha refuses it. Does Elisha’s refusal of his financial gift mean that we shouldn’t give to the church in grateful thanksgiving for all God has given to us?
As I read this passage, I think the key element here is intention. Naaman is essentially trying to “pay” the prophet for the service he has received. The prophet rejects that as an emphasis on the fact that God’s grace is freely given. We still continue this tradition in the church today by the fact that clergy do not charge for performing the sacraments of the church. In some religious traditions, there is a set fee for every ritual that you ask a religious leader to perform. But we don’t do this in the church. Every time I work with a family who is not closely connected with the church for a wedding or baptism or funeral, inevitably they will ask me what my “fee” is for doing the service. “No fee,” I always tell them. “The services of the church are provided free of charge. They are a gift, just as God’s grace is a gift.” They are usually shocked; given how “transactional” our society is, they can’t imagine something being provided without there being a charge for it. When they persist in asking how they can compensate me, I tell them that the church survives financially on the generosity of its members, so if they feel called to give something, we would welcome a donation to the church, but as a priest I cannot accept “payment” for performing a religious ritual.
To some, this might sound like mincing words. You can’t pay the priest for the ritual, but you can make a donation to the church, and the church pays the priest’s salary. So aren’t you essentially supporting the priest financially if you make the donation as well? Well, on some level, yes, but the distinction between giving generosity out of a free desire to give and giving because you feel you “owe” someone something and you are seeing that gift as a “payment” for services received is important. The kind of giving we encourage in the church is giving as a spiritual discipline, not giving as paying the bills.
What do I mean by this? Well, think about how different your mindset is when you receive a bill in the mail that you owe and you pay that bill verses when you spend money on a gift for someone for their birthday -- or maybe not even for their birthday, but “just because,” when you see something that reminds you of them. Think about how different it feels to spend money because you want to bring joy to someone verses when you spend money out of a sense of obligation.
In the church, we operate out of a principle of abundance and generosity. Rather than using guilt to motivate people to give money by presenting them with a “bill” for how much they “owe” for the religious services and community and use of the communal meeting space they’ve experienced in the past year, we ask people to give as a spiritual practice – as a way to practice generosity, to practice letting go of our attachments to physical things – and as we all do that collectively, together, we have faith that there will be enough money among us to pay the bills.
John Rawlinson [a retired priest who attends St. Cuthbert's] recently left me a handout with a list of differences between “living churches” and “dead churches.” One of the characteristics of “dead churches” was that in their financial giving, “people tip God.” To me, that speaks to the difference between giving out of generosity and joy to support the work of God in a community together and giving out of a sense of obligation or payment – “tipping God” for the services we’ve received. “Gee thanks, God, for going out of your way to carry my suitcase and save my soul while you were at it; here’s a sweaty $5 bill that I’ll discreetly press into the palm of your hand.” When we approach giving that way, we take care of an obligation without it inconveniencing us too much. We’ve settled our “debt” and so now the score is even, or perhaps even a little in our favor, since we’ve gone above and beyond what we owed by adding a tip!
But the story of Naaman reminds us that we can’t “pay God back” for the gifts God gives us. We can’t settle the score, we can’t even things out, we can’t free ourselves from any sense of obligation to God, because the truth is we will be forever indebted to God for our very life and breath as well as whatever other blessings he may have brought into our lives. But instead of that truth making us feel burdened, it can free us. We don’t have to worry about “paying God back.” We can instead “pay it forward” by sharing with those around us – and in doing so, we may find that our needs and theirs are both met. Giving financially to the church is not about “giving back to God” -- remember, the church is not God! The church is a community of other Christians gathered together to praise and worship God and to serve others. So when we give to the church, we’re not “giving back to God,” we’re “paying it forward,” sharing what God has given us with others to ensure that together, we can continue to do God’s work in our church and the neighborhood around it.
In freely giving us the gifts he gives as pure grace, God sets forth a chain of giving that doesn’t circle back to himself, but expands out like ripples from a pebble dropped in a pond of water, touching and benefitting an ever-expanding circle of people. And it all starts with an acknowledgement of the gift as gift, as something we cannot repay, and the gratitude that comes with that realization. As the leper did in today’s Gospel reading, the only thing we can do is praise God and give thanks – and keep that wave of generosity going by sharing God’s grace and mercy with others.
Sermon Text(s): 2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c; Luke 17:11-19
How do we respond when God gives us a gift?
That’s the question our scriptures invite us to consider today. When we receive a gift from God, when God offers us new life, when God heals us, how do we respond?
In both our first lesson from the book of 2 Kings and the story in the Gospel passage from Luke, we are given examples of people who received gifts from God – healing from the skin disease of leprosy. There were different circumstances surrounding each healing, but in both cases we could say that the healing was example of God’s grace, a gift freely given to the people who were ill. They did nothing to “deserve” or “earn” the healing, they were simply offered it.
So what are the responses of the people who are healed? Naaman, the commander of the army an enemy nation, returns to the prophet Elisha and proclaims that he now knows that the God of Israel is the only God – for him, the healing prompts a conversion experience, a confession of faith.
In the Gospel passage, one of the lepers who had been healed praises God and goes back to Jesus and thanks him. But Jesus observes, wryly, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they?”
The other nine are still healed, though. The scriptures don’t tell us that because they failed to thank Jesus, their healing was suddenly revoked. Presumably they still remain disease-free, whether or not they returned to thank the person who healed them or give praise to God. So God’s healing remains a gift, not contingent on the people’s response to it.
Returning to the story of Naaman, the lectionary actually cuts off his response mid-sentence, so we don’t get the full picture of how he responds to the experience of being healed. When he says, “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel,” he immediately follows that statement with, “please accept a present from your servant.” Naaman returns to Elisha not only to make a statement of faith but to offer a gift in return. But Elisha refuses to accept Naaman’s gift, saying, “As the Lord lives, whom I serve, I will accept nothing!”
It’s perhaps natural for Naaman to feel that he “owes” Elisha something after he’s been healed, but Elisha disabuses him of that notion. By refusing the lavish and expensive gifts Naaman offers him, the message Elisha conveys is: “You don’t have to pay me. Your healing was a gift from God. You can’t earn it, you can’t buy it, you can’t make this an even transaction by reciprocating in any way. There is no reciprocation with God. There is only grateful acceptance of gifts freely offered.”
Today we kick off our fall stewardship season, when we’re going to be thinking a lot about the gifts God gives us and how we respond to those gifts. Are we grateful, like the leper in the Gospel reading? Do we give praise to God and return to the one who has blessed us to thank him?
The part of Naaman’s story that doesn’t appear in the lectionary complicates this narrative. In stewardship season, we often hear a lot about how all we have is a gift from God, and so therefore we ought to joyfully “give back to God” in thanksgiving. But when Naaman tries to make a gift to the prophet after his healing, Elisha refuses it. Does Elisha’s refusal of his financial gift mean that we shouldn’t give to the church in grateful thanksgiving for all God has given to us?
As I read this passage, I think the key element here is intention. Naaman is essentially trying to “pay” the prophet for the service he has received. The prophet rejects that as an emphasis on the fact that God’s grace is freely given. We still continue this tradition in the church today by the fact that clergy do not charge for performing the sacraments of the church. In some religious traditions, there is a set fee for every ritual that you ask a religious leader to perform. But we don’t do this in the church. Every time I work with a family who is not closely connected with the church for a wedding or baptism or funeral, inevitably they will ask me what my “fee” is for doing the service. “No fee,” I always tell them. “The services of the church are provided free of charge. They are a gift, just as God’s grace is a gift.” They are usually shocked; given how “transactional” our society is, they can’t imagine something being provided without there being a charge for it. When they persist in asking how they can compensate me, I tell them that the church survives financially on the generosity of its members, so if they feel called to give something, we would welcome a donation to the church, but as a priest I cannot accept “payment” for performing a religious ritual.
To some, this might sound like mincing words. You can’t pay the priest for the ritual, but you can make a donation to the church, and the church pays the priest’s salary. So aren’t you essentially supporting the priest financially if you make the donation as well? Well, on some level, yes, but the distinction between giving generosity out of a free desire to give and giving because you feel you “owe” someone something and you are seeing that gift as a “payment” for services received is important. The kind of giving we encourage in the church is giving as a spiritual discipline, not giving as paying the bills.
What do I mean by this? Well, think about how different your mindset is when you receive a bill in the mail that you owe and you pay that bill verses when you spend money on a gift for someone for their birthday -- or maybe not even for their birthday, but “just because,” when you see something that reminds you of them. Think about how different it feels to spend money because you want to bring joy to someone verses when you spend money out of a sense of obligation.
In the church, we operate out of a principle of abundance and generosity. Rather than using guilt to motivate people to give money by presenting them with a “bill” for how much they “owe” for the religious services and community and use of the communal meeting space they’ve experienced in the past year, we ask people to give as a spiritual practice – as a way to practice generosity, to practice letting go of our attachments to physical things – and as we all do that collectively, together, we have faith that there will be enough money among us to pay the bills.
John Rawlinson [a retired priest who attends St. Cuthbert's] recently left me a handout with a list of differences between “living churches” and “dead churches.” One of the characteristics of “dead churches” was that in their financial giving, “people tip God.” To me, that speaks to the difference between giving out of generosity and joy to support the work of God in a community together and giving out of a sense of obligation or payment – “tipping God” for the services we’ve received. “Gee thanks, God, for going out of your way to carry my suitcase and save my soul while you were at it; here’s a sweaty $5 bill that I’ll discreetly press into the palm of your hand.” When we approach giving that way, we take care of an obligation without it inconveniencing us too much. We’ve settled our “debt” and so now the score is even, or perhaps even a little in our favor, since we’ve gone above and beyond what we owed by adding a tip!
But the story of Naaman reminds us that we can’t “pay God back” for the gifts God gives us. We can’t settle the score, we can’t even things out, we can’t free ourselves from any sense of obligation to God, because the truth is we will be forever indebted to God for our very life and breath as well as whatever other blessings he may have brought into our lives. But instead of that truth making us feel burdened, it can free us. We don’t have to worry about “paying God back.” We can instead “pay it forward” by sharing with those around us – and in doing so, we may find that our needs and theirs are both met. Giving financially to the church is not about “giving back to God” -- remember, the church is not God! The church is a community of other Christians gathered together to praise and worship God and to serve others. So when we give to the church, we’re not “giving back to God,” we’re “paying it forward,” sharing what God has given us with others to ensure that together, we can continue to do God’s work in our church and the neighborhood around it.
In freely giving us the gifts he gives as pure grace, God sets forth a chain of giving that doesn’t circle back to himself, but expands out like ripples from a pebble dropped in a pond of water, touching and benefitting an ever-expanding circle of people. And it all starts with an acknowledgement of the gift as gift, as something we cannot repay, and the gratitude that comes with that realization. As the leper did in today’s Gospel reading, the only thing we can do is praise God and give thanks – and keep that wave of generosity going by sharing God’s grace and mercy with others.
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