Everything Has a Price

Generosity is accepting a personal cost . . .

Everything has a price, even if it’s not in the way we might typically think of cost. If you have a leak in your roof, there’s a price to fix it and there’s also a price to leave it as it is. If you have a responsibility to someone, there’s a price to take care of them and there’s also a price to leave them to their own devices. In a certain way of thinking, a lot of our decisions are weighing these different costs and deciding which cost you’d rather pay.

But in some instances, you aren’t the only one who might be paying a price. At the grocery store, you can wait in line and pay the price of your time or you can cut in front of someone else and they can pay that cost. If a friend asks you for help with a home project, you can help them out and pay the price of your labor or you can leave them to pay the cost on their own. When we make decisions, it’s true that we weigh different costs but we also weigh who will have to pay them.

Nehemiah confronts the other Israelites in our reading today because the leaders were consistently choosing to make others pay the price. He calls them to do better and to their credit they do. Nehemiah challenges them to be more in alignment with God’s picture of what His people and their community should look like, and it’s a people who are identified by selflessness and generosity. And I think it’s fair to say that, at its core, generosity is accepting a personal cost. It’s looking at a situation and saying “I will pay the price here.”

. . . for the sake of your neighbor.

It’s looking at a situation with a neighbor facing a price, facing a cost and saying “I will accept a personal cost for their sake.”

And that can really have a powerful impact on that other person. They’re staring down this cost, and maybe for them the cost is high, maybe for them the cost seems impossible. Whether that’s a bill that they just can’t pay, or a responsibility they just don’t have time for, or a need they just can’t fill on their own. When you step in and pay that bill, or take care of that responsibility, or fill that need - that is a radical swing in emotion. This person goes from feeling anxious and fearful and worried and panicked to feeling relieved and optimistic and supported and grateful. It’s a complete 180.

And, as long as you weren’t a jerk and didn’t try and hold it over their head, those emotions are going to impact how they see you. In that moment, you have given them a chance to experience sacrificial love. In that moment, you have shown them how God has called His people to interact with one another. God intends for us to live with generosity, to live a generosity that accepts a personal cost for the sake of your neighbor.

. . . for the sake of the community.

But this impact isn’t limited to relationships between two people. It can extend to families and groups and whole communities. And the church should be the peak example of this generosity. I look around this room and it is filled with people who accept personal costs for the sake of our community here.

I see the Marsh family, who comes early most Sunday mornings to help set-up. They accept the personal cost of time and maybe extra sleep on Sunday mornings, and everyone sitting here benefits from that.

I see Sarah and Sarah, who put hours of work and months of planning and accept loads of stress into making Vacation Bible School happen for the kids. They accept the personal cost of time and stress and anxiety, and the kids of our community benefit in huge ways.

I see Debbie, who puts in work every month and puts up with me on a regular basis to lead the Discipleship Team. That whole team accepts the personal cost of time and effort, and we all get to enjoy events that bring our community closer together and strengthens our friendships with one another.

These are just a few examples of when generosity can impact our community in amazing and meaningful ways. When we are generous in accepting a personal cost for the sake of the community, God works through that.

. . . for the sake of Jesus Christ.

And each time we accept a personal cost for the sake of a neighbor or for the sake of the community, we also accept a personal cost for the sake of Jesus and following His example.

In Jesus’ ministry, He tells this parable. He says that there was a very rich man who had people that were indebted to him. And they got called in, to whatever a meeting room looked like back then, and he told them it was time to pay up. One man fell to his knees begging that he only needed some more time, that he couldn’t pay the loan back, that he didn’t deserve to go to debtors’ prison. And that rich man looked at the man, who owed him a ton of money, and forgave the debt. Didn’t just give him more time, cancelled it entirely. And that man turns around and has someone else put in debtors’ prison over like twenty bucks. Jesus (obviously) doesn’t approve of that.

Because we all owed God a debt we could never pay. And Jesus looked at us, He looked at our insurmountable debt, He saw our anxiety and our fear and our despair and our panic, and He accepted the cost. Everything we owed, all of the failures and sins and shortfalls we had, He accepted the personal cost by suffering and dying for us, for the sake of each of us individually. So we accept His call to generosity, we accept personal costs for the sake of others and for the sake of our community, because He accepted the personal cost of sin and death for our sake. Amen.