Generosity (Audio)

Upside-Down Living

Jesus lived in a way that is totally foreign to the average human when it came to his view of God, of the earth, of our role as humans and of temporal goods.

He lived with an upside-down view of the world and He shares this view with His disciples, with us, and He wants us to change our view to also become upside-down.

Jesus knows that unless we start living upside-down, we never in reality start living, at least not the “good life”.

Let’s listen to Jesus’ upside-down philosophy:

In the gospel of Luke Jesus said “Don’t be anxious about your life - what you should eat; or about your body - what you should wear.

“Life is more than food! The body is more than clothing”

Then He seems to get real beatnik and says that we should slow down and observe the birds and flowers.

The birds have everything they need and yet they don’t sow seed, they don’t harvest and they can’t store food in barnhouses because they don’t have them, and yet God notices them and provides for the most insignificant bird.

The flowers are beautiful but they don’t create their beauty because they work hard and weave flower cloth for themselves. They simply recieve God’s goodness without any toil or worry and are beautiful as a result.

If God notices and feeds the most insignificant birds or if He put’s such painstaking attention to clothe a flower that gone within 24 hours, how much more will He take care of you.... then Jesus adds to assist with our dullness, “you little-faith lot!”

Then Jesus points out that when we worry about the temporal things like food and clothing we act no different to the world which worries about the same things.

BUT

Instead of searching for the things that are here today and gone tomorrow we should search to live out God’s kingdom, and when we do, the rest will follow and our every need will be supplied!

Jesus then reassures us that the Father delights to gives us the kingdom and in light of that we should sell our possessions and give to charity knowing that if we invest in heaven our reward will never fade, but if we only invest here on earth then we expect that every enjoyment will fade into the distance.

Then Jesus get’s to the core: “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Wow!

Was Jesus a kind of hippy guru?

Was he promoting a careless and/or carefree lifestyle?

The world that Jesus saw was that the Father was a generous host and that He had provided abundant resources for all creation, especially the humans out of a heart overflowing with love.

That no matter the circumstance, God was generous and that as we participate in that generous way of living, all things we need will be provided for.

Just remember that Jesus’ audience were people living under tyrannical rule of the Romans, they were in constant fear, they were losing their lands and posessions because of the high taxes of the time, and yet Jesus comes out with this kind of teaching.

It’s mind-blowing! I would be like, “Jesus, that was totally inappropriate man!”

But this teaching was to be taught in the midst of human dread, anxiety, anguish and fear. Jesus is inviting us to look and participate in the world the same way He did!

Jesus meditated on the Hebrew scriptures and when He read Psalm 104 He saw that:

Creation is presented as a safe-place where God is the generous host.

The overabundance seen in nature that provides for all His creatures needs comes from a Creator who shows that same generosity toward us humans, and when we realise and believe this, it releases us from a mindset that fears releasing our resources to others.

Jesus lived as if the new Eden, God’s kingdom, had already arrived!

Jesus had nothing and yet took the responsibility of His disciples for over 3 years knowing that His Father as the generous host of the earth would provide for their every need.

And not only were their needs satisfied, but Jesus could see abundance where His disciples couldn’t and with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish could believe that He could feed over 5,000 people. And then feed 4,000 people with seven loaves of bread!

He lived as if He was living in Eden with God providing abundant resources for us to receive and to share, and as we share, we receive more to share.

Self-Preservation or Identiy Crisis or Both?

Made to be Generous

The way Jesus is seen to be understanding the world and living is the way that human were born to live.

In Genesis 1 & 2 God creates humans and blesses them and gifts them with a garden home made out of a wasteland.

They were made to co-rule the earth with God and take care of it.

God was the generous host who provides food, a beautiful home, meaningful and dignified occupation for the humans, and humans are basically guests in a world full of opportunity and abundance.

Humans were made to reflect the generous host in keeping the party going and continuing the spread of generosity and goodness throughout the earth.

This is in striking contrast to other Near Eastern Cultures creation narratives where hierarchial structures were imbedded into the gods having upper-class, middle-class, and lower-class deities and that the purpose of humans was to slave as a toiling servant and to do the most menial, back-breaking tasks so that the lower-class gods didn’t have to.

But the gods still don’t like humans because they make too much noise, they’re messy, and they breed like rabbits and have overpopulated so they plan to send a flood to annihilate them.

Humanity only survive because one of the upper-class gods warns one human about the flood and he then builds a great boat for his family and animals.

What a difference!

You know what though? We live either one of these narratives.

We either live like our purpose is to be a slave and toil for the approval of money, occupation, and other humans who we may feel don’t even appreciate us and we live compromised lives,

Or

We live in a way that trusts that generous Host has provided us with abundance and opportunity and to share and spread that generosity in the earth knowing that IS enough to go around.

But the worldwe live in is not like that? We live in a world marked by scarcity and struggle instead of abundance.

What went wrong? Keep listening for Part 2 of Generosity!

Re-cap

In the first part of our Generosity talk, we looked at how Jesus viewed in lived in the world and that it was “upside-down”!

Also looked at how the way we live and view the world has to do with what identity we have taken for ourselves.

We either have a “slave to the gods” identity where we are created only to serve menial lives for the higher powers who we often are not even sure appreciate or even like us as humans;

OR

We have an image of God identity that believes God is the generous Host and provided humans with abundance and opportunity to fill high and dignified occupations and share His generosity throughout the earth knowing that there is plenty to go around.

But if God created humans with such abundance and opportunity, why is it that we see so much scarcity and struggle in the world?

Scarcity Mindset

For those who don’t know what a scarcity mindset is:

“It refers to people seeing life as a finite pie, so that if one person takes a big piece, that leaves less for everyone else.”

Therefore, with this mindset, you MUST think about yourself first and primary before anyone else and you need to worry because there may not be enough for me!

In Genesis 3 we see why we as humans struggle with this scarcity mindset:

The serpant undermines God’s generosity when he suggests to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from ANY tree in the garden?”

After this, the serpant portrays God as holding out on humanity, witholding knowledge and good things when he says to the woman, “You won’t die at all. Rather, God knows that on the day you eat of it, your eyes will open and you’ll become like gods, knowing good and bad.”

Eve believes the serpant and also believes that God is not as generous as she thought and that she needs to take this opportunity for fear it may never be given to her from God.

Ever since we have struggled with a mindset that distrusts God as a generous Host and will take, even at the cost of ourselves, our relationships, and our happiness.

We live with a mindset that has been instilled into us from the fall that:

Distrusts Yahweh as a God who is generous and good enough to supply my every need.

And will get what I desire because I believe that there is not enough for everyone. There’s not enough possessions, positons, money, time, expertise, etc.

This mindset leads to greed, arrogance, self-preservation and ultimately to anxiety and disatisfaction.

Nothing can satisfy this mindset, because for the poor they are tempted to covet the wealth of the rich, and for the rich, they are tempted to believe that they never have enough and need more.

The prophet Ezekiel says some words about Israel that I think can be applied to anyone who has this scarcity mindset:

“Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She amd her daughters were arrogant, overfed, and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.”

Instead of participating in God’s generosity to share it, they believe that it is theirs by right, or provided for by their own hands and failed to be generous with God’s blessings, and eventually it was taken away from them because life is not sustainable when lived like this!

A New Way to Live