In Giving We Receive: The Upside Down Way of Generosity
The Upside Down Way of Jesus (Lent 2024) • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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35 In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ ”
6 Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously.
41 Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. 42 But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents. 43 Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. 44 They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.”
I’d like to begin by sharing a story that I came across in a book I was reading this week. Now you need to know that story is introduced as an “urban legend”....so its not true....but it’s still a great story…and it has something important to say as we think about what Jesus says to us today, “it is more blessed to give that to receive.”
Once upon a time there was a rich man from Charlotte North Carolina that bought a case of 24 very rare and very expensive cigars. The first thing he did is take out an insurance policy for them, insuring them against, if you can believe it, FIRE. When he received the signed policy, wouldn’t you know, within a month he smoked all of them. Without having paid a single insurance payment, he proceed to submit a claim to his insurance company stating that his cigars were all lost in a series of small fires. The insurance company of course refused to pay saying that all the cigars were used exactly for the purpose they were made! Refusing to take no for an answer the man sued the insurance company.
The judge eventually ruled in the man’s favour. Looking over the policy that explicitly insured the cigars against fire, he stated that nowhere did the policy specify what or what was not an insurable fire. So he ruled that the company had to compensate that man for his loss of 24 cigars that were worth a total amount of $15,000.
The insurance company chose not to appeal the decision, but decided to pay the man his $15,000 for cigars lost in the fires. However, right after he cashed the cheque, the insurance company had the man arrested. He was charged with 24 counts of ARSON.
Using the man’s own testimony in the previous case as evidence against him, the man was convicted of intentionally setting fire to each of the rare cigars and he was sentenced to 24 consecutive one year terms.(Paradoxy, Tom Taylor, p.65-6). The End.
I told you it was a good story. It’s a story that in some way holds up a mirror for us, doesn’t it? It shows us how clever we can be in order to make more money for ourselves, but it also teaches us that greed always backfires. Greed always backfires in the end…and that’s a clear teaching in the Bible...
16 And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. 17 He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ 18 “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. 19 And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.” ’ 20 “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’ 21 “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”
Greed always backfires in the end....
27 The greedy bring ruin to their households, but the one who hates bribes will live.
But there is another way.... it’s what from the world’s eyes is an upside down way… We heard it read earlier...
6 Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously.
So here’s the way of the Christ and His Kingdom....
27 Those who give to the poor will lack nothing, but those who close their eyes to them receive many curses.
You know the Bible begins with this way of Christ and His Kingdom, and its a picture of abundance and fruitfulness a picture of plenty for everyone, provided that we live according to God’s rule for our lives: In giving we receive.
In our world and in our lives we often live with some sense of scarcity. Resources are limited so we need to gather into barns…we need to store up for ourselves…we need to keep saving for a rainy day… because the world teaches us that more is always better....and you never know.
But what does the Bible teach us?
Allow me to take the next few minutes and summarize for us how the begininning stories of the Bible teach us about the “liturgy of abundance” Now where did I get that phrase from? Years ago when I was still in Seminary I was introduced to very fine OT scholar named Walter Brueggemann. At one point he came and delivered some lectures at our school and I came to really appreicate him. I soon bought a bunch of his books and looked out for whatever articles he wrote.
In 1999 he wrote an article called “The Liturgy of Abundance and the Myth of Scarcity”. I’m leaning on it a little bit now.
In the begining the Spirit of God hovered over the waters we read in Genesis 1 and everthing was dark, chaotic, empty and void. The Spirit hovered over nothingness and called forth fruitfulness. Land, sea sky, were created and filled with life, lots of life, worms, whales and winged creatures of every kind....and it was all good, good, good, and very good. So fruitful and full of life that God could rest on the seventh day.... He could rest because the provision of creation from the gracious hand of God was enough!!
But soon the Deciever entered the story of the world, and he focussed all our attention on what we did not have....did God really say you must not eat from that tree in the middle of the garden.... the deceiver introduced to us the very kind of question that perennially invites us to doubt God’s generous provision!
But God’s command was to enjoy the fruit of all the trees in the garden, his command was to be fruitful…multiply.... have dominion over the earth in such a way that you call forth it’s blessing because there is more than enough for all when we live according to God’s way.
In spite of the way in which humanity continued to doubt God’s provision, .... Cain....and his descendents....domination and control.......
God chose to bless a particular family, Abraham and Sarai, and promised that through their decendents he would bless many, many people and nations.
Even through a season of famine, God graciously ensured that his servant Joseph would be raised up to oversee a massive food collection and distribution program that would provide for the Israelites and the Egyptians alike.
What is also true however is that during those seven years of famine people were required to see not only their livestock and land, but themselves as well. In those years of famine Pharaoh exerted more and more control over the people.
By the time the book of Exodus begins, 400 years had gone by, and now a new Pharaoh had come into power, one who had amassed a massive slave work force of Israelites. He no longer showed kindness towards the Israelites like his predecessor once did.
And as the book of Exodus begins
The Book of Exodus records the contest between the liturgy of generosity and the myth of scarcity -- a contest that still tears us apart today
Even as slaves to Pharaoh God kept blessing his people - grew exceedingly numerous....No matter what Pharaoh tried to do, more babies were born.
God wants to set his people free from the domination and control of Egypt. He wants to set them free from a way of life governed by scarcity and he enters into a power encounter with Pharaoh.... uncreation of the plagues....
By the end of Exodus, Pharaoh has been as mean, brutal and ugly as he knows how to be --and as the myth of scarcity tends to be. Finally' he becomes so exasperated by his inability to control the people of Israel that he calls Moses and Aaron to come to him. Pharaoh tells them, "Take your people and leave. Take your flocks and herds and just get out of here!" And then the great king of Egypt, who presides over a monopoly of the region's resources,asks Moses and Aaron to bless him. The powers of scarcity admit to this little community of abundance, "It is clear that you are the wave of the future. So before you leave, lay your powerful hands upon us and give us energy." The text shows that the power of the future is not in the hands of those who believe in scarcity and monopolize the world's resources; it is in the hands of those who trust God's abundance.
32 Take your flocks and herds, as you have said, and go. And also bless me.”
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God is calling his people to trust him. Will you trust me?
And in order to show his people this liturgy of abundance he brings them into the wilderness. He wants to show them that it’s not the creation itself and all its resources that we are to depend on, its Him!!
Fruitfulness and blessing in the WILDERNESS!!
they wanted to go back to Egypt!....
water from a rock....bread from heaven.... tried to hoard, control, store, save, invest....
God wanted them to take what they need… remember what happened
God is cultivating the hearts of a people to trust him....and by trusting him they can live generously as they trust in a God who is generous.....
And I share those beginnings stories of the Bible to invite us to consider how we order the lives that God has given us to live. Do we live with a posture of trust? Do we live with some sense of enough? Do we live with a posture of dependence on God and a willingness to share generously with those in need?
Jesus says to us it is more blessed to give than to receive.
And we know that is true because we know God has given us so much.
[Share about the funeral service of my mom.... baptism and death....
The gospel story of abundance asserts that we originated in the magnificent, inexplicable love of a God who loved the world into generous being. The baptismal service declares that each of us has been miraculously loved into existence by God. And the story of abundance says that our lives will end in God, and that this well-being cannot be taken from us. In the words of St. Paul, neither life nor death nor angels nor principalities nor things -- nothing can separate us from God.
What we know about our beginnings and our endings, then, creates a different kind of present tense for us. We can live according to an ethic whereby we are not driven, controlled, anxious, frantic or greedy, precisely because we are sufficiently at home and at peace to care about others as we have been cared for. (Brueggemann)
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Do not worry, says Jesus,
25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?
31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
I think all of us hear in these words an invitation to a particular posture in life.... a posture that comes from trusting God.... changes how we think about our treasures and our time.....
A little bit ago we talked about the daily feeding miracle of God in the wilderness when each day the Lord provided manna from heaven.....
Each of the four Gospels record Jesus’ feeding miracles...
At one point Jesus reveals himself as the bread of life....or as bread from heaven..... Jesus alone can satisfy our hunger....he alone is the source of our spiritual nourishment.....
He reveals that in a miracle of feeding......
The feeding of the multitudes, recorded in Mark's Gospel, is an example of the new world coming into being through God. When the disciples, charged with feeding the hungry crowd, found a child with five loaves and two fishes, Jesus took, blessed, broke and gave the bread. These are the four decisive verbs of our sacramental existence. Jesus conducted a Eucharist, a gratitude. He demonstrated that the world is filled with abundance and freighted with generosity. If bread is broken and shared, there is enough for all. Jesus is engaged in the sacramental, subversive reordering of public reality.
And that public reordering of reality takes place as you and I submit to the upside down way of generosity, recognizing that it is more blessed to give than to receive.
Among Stearns’ greatest contributions are his urgent call to the church in America to respond to the global AIDS crisis in the early 2000s and the widespread influence of his first book, The Hole in Our Gospel, winner of the Evangelical Publisher’s Association 2010 Book of the Year award. Toward the end of his tenure, Stearns boldly called the church to engage in the global refugee crisis and to follow Jesus into the most difficult places in the world, helping alleviate human suffering and care for the world’s most vulnerable children.
Rich Stearns, the president of World Vision, calls it the domino theory of spiritual impact. Imagine a long line of dominoes. When one falls, it starts a chain reaction that can cause dozens or hundreds more dominoes to fall. For instance, Jesus set up 12 dominoes (his disciples), mentored them, empowered them with the Holy Spirit, and then sent them off to go and do likewise. Now there are over 2 billion followers of Christ in the world. That's a lot of dominoes!
Stearns provides the following story about the spiritual impact that one person can have. In the 1880s, Robert Wilder, a missionary kid from India, was preparing to return to the mission field. During college, he even signed a pledge along with friends to become a missionary. But because he was so physically frail, he never fulfilled that pledge. Instead, he encouraged others to take up the task.One domino fell.
During a preaching tour that took Robert through Chicago, he spoke to an audience that included Samuel Moffett. Samuel also signed Robert's pledge, and within two years he landed in Korea.Another domino fell.
A few years later, Samuel shared the gospel with a man who had become disillusioned with his Taoist practice. Kiel Sun-chu trusted Christ, and quicklyanother domino fell.
In 1907, Kiel was one of the leaders of the Pyongyang revival. In January of that year, spontaneous prayer and confession broke out during regular church meetings. Thousands of dominoes fell. Those days of fervent prayer are now considered the birth of an independent, self-sustaining Korean church.
When Kiel died in 1935, 5,000 people attended his funeral. The church in Korea now numbers about 15 million, and it sends more foreign missionaries than any other country outside the United States.Millions of dominoes continue to fall.
Stearns concludes:
As Christians, we are all dominoes in the chain reaction set off by Jesus 2,000 years ago. The amazing thing about dominoes falling is that the chain reaction always starts small—with just one, seemingly insignificant domino. Whether you are sponsoring children, filling backpacks for children in inner-city schools, talking to your own children, or praying earnestly for [people around the globe], you have no idea what how big the impact will be as God multiplies your faithfulness.
Rich Stearns, "Spiritual Dominoes," World Vision Magazine (Winter 2011)
This, to me, is a beautiful picture of what the upside down way of generosity can look like. Caring for others, spiritually and physically, can change a family, a community, even a nation.