Sermon for Sunday, October 21, 2007THE SPIRITUAL PRACTICE OF GENEROSITYRev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz |
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Scripture: Luke 6:37-38 37 "Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; 38 give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back." We have talked on other occasions about how busy our church building is every day of the week and I saw another example of that last Monday morning about 8 AM when I walked into our church kitchen and found four people baking to beat the band. They were part of a new team of volunteers working with long time baker Hank Stambaugh preparing cakes, cookies and desserts to take that day to the downtown Streetreach program which feeds several hundred poor and homeless people every day. I was really impressed with seeing the kitchen full of happy, enthusiastic bakers, some of them new to our congregation, and I was reminded again of how generous the people are who are part of this church. By the way, we are beginning to talk about plans for the next building phase of our complex and we do intend in the final phase of our plans to have a much larger kitchen! I saw that same generous St Andrew spirit at work when I learned that a new team of volunteers had been involved in preparing lunch for the group of folks working on our Second Habitat for Humanity home that is under construction right now. This is a congregation of very, very generous people and we believe that generosity is one of the hallmarks of following Christ. We believe that generosity is a spiritual discipline, a spiritual practice. St. Paul defines it that way when he lists in his letter to the Galatian congregation the behaviors that we expect of each other, the fruits of living in the spirit of Christ: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. Generosity is one of the traits we expect to see in each other. It comes from a belief that God has blessed us so we can be a blessing to others. It comes from the statement that begins the best selling book by Pastor Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life, when he opens his book by saying, “It is not about you.” You and I are not the center of the universe. We are put here for the purpose of making a difference, the purpose of serving God and others. That posture is where we begin every October and other times of the year because we encourage the seven habits of following Christ all the year around. Generosity is a habit that we want to instill in each person who identifies with Christ. The amount of our time and money we begin to give to others is not what matters—it is that we begin to practice that habit of generosity. Last Sunday we had the great joy and honor of welcoming 33 young persons who were confirming their faith in God and promising to follow Christ. They promised to offer their prayers, presence, gifts and service to support the work of Christ. And they brought to the altar table some cards promising their financial support. In the total scheme of our current operating budget of $3.2 million, the amount of money pledged by our confirmands is not going to make or break us. Our youth typically pledge $5 to $15 a month to the ministries of our church. What is most important is that we are involving them in the habit of generosity, we are teaching them and each of us to begin the spiritual discipline of sharing with others. We cannot go through life just getting and receiving. There are times when we need to do that. There are times when all we are capable of is just receiving, and that is what we need to do. We all begin at that place in our relationship with God—the place of just receiving and being cared for. That is why we ask each other to come to the communion table with open hands: our first act in relationship to God is to receive what God wants to do for us. Then, most of us are able to move beyond just being recipients to being participants and disciples and givers to others. Most of us will want to move past that beginning place of being what Father Dick Ling calls being “sitters and gitters” in church to being disciples and to the practices of service and generosity. It is normal to begin at the point of “sitting and gitting”; all of us begin there. If we want to move ahead, then we move to being servants and sharers. Most of us can do that serving and sharing wherever we are in life. It depends on our perspective. Most of us feel that whatever our financial circumstance might be right now, we have still been blessed. I was joking with one of our other members like myself who is over 60 this week about what constitutes a good day, and we agreed that a good day is one when you wake up and you are on this side of the grass and you can tell God thank you for another day of life. We need to keep a healthy perspective about that. Sometimes life will point out to us what is most important and what is just not important and how blessed we are. Like most of you, I have been so pleased to read all the stories about the Rockies team the past few days and to see how the national press is finally discovering who we are and how the team got to where it is. One of the most inspiring articles was in USA Today on Wednesday and featured some of the story of Clint Hurdle and his personal and professional career and his ups and downs. Rockies general manager Dan O’Dowd said that manager Clint Hurdle has “great perspective”. And then the reporter tells us what has gone into creating that great perspective. Clint and Carla Hurdle have two children. Their five year old daughter Madison has an incurable genetic disorder, Prader-Willi syndrome. It can cause developmental delays and over eating. The Hurdles are involved nationally in raising awareness about that disability. But listen to how their experience as Madison’s parents give them a deeper perspective on life: Before the first game of the National League Championship series, Clint Hurdle spoke of a time this season when he heard a radio commentator use the words “crushing” and “debilitating” to refer to a Rockies loss. Clint Hurdle, the man with perspective, disagreed. Here is what he said. “That day I had gotten a call from a mother at Children’s Hospital who wanted me to come by and see her son before he would die that night. That was debilitating. “Crushing” was when a doctor told me my little girl was born with a birth defect. Baseball is a game, and I’ve learned that.” Perspective. It takes some tough times in life to create that kind of mature perspective. We were helped to have a broader perspective last Sunday when we heard from two fellow Methodists in Belize where we have worked together on mission trips for several years to build a pre school, a school that now, they told us, is a training center for other pre schools in Central America. And we heard this week from those two colleagues about how blown away they have been with how much we have and all the abundance they see from just taking a short trip to a Target store. Each of us is very fortunate, very blessed, and whatever our circumstance may be, most of us have enough to be generous—most of us have enough to share with God and others. The spiritual practice of generosity, the habit of sharing with others instead of just getting and grubbing only for ourselves, is alive and well. Let me tell you about another couple of sports figures who can show us that. There was another news article last week about Dwayne Wade and Steve Nash, two of the hottest guards in the NBA right now and two players who have longed practiced the discipline of generosity. Dwayne Wade, according to the news article, has long believed in community service and even started his charitable foundation in his rookie year. His family instilled in him a spirit of giving and sharing. Even when he was a teenager he would give away some of his Christmas presents! As a kid growing up in Robbins Illinois, when he would get clothing and shoes for Christmas, he said he said, “I have enough clothes—I will give some of these to kids who have less” and he took some of his week old presents to a shelter to share with others. Now his foundation hosts an annual week long free summer camp for 600 kids. Steve Nash’s charitable foundation touches people in Phoenix and Canada and Paraguay and even in China. And Joe Sakic was mentioned in Monday’s paper for his family’s efforts since 1998 in providing 8.5 million meals for people through the Food Bank of the Rockies program. Some people might talk about how easy it is to give to others when a person has millions, but that habit of generosity starts right where we are with whatever we have. Next week, on Consecration Sunday, we will be given a chance to come to the altar table as an act of worship and lay our promises here to share and give and to grow in the spiritual practice of being generous. There is a chart in your bulletin that can help you locate where you are in the journey toward tithing and sacrificial sharing. We hope you can move ahead on that chart and take some new steps of faith. Let me close with a story from the Rev. Robert Fulghum. Do you remember Unitarian Minister Robert Fulghum? He is the author of the best seller from about 20 years ago, Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. He also wrote other books including It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It . (Isn’t that a great title!) Fulghum has just written a new book: What On Earth Have I Done? He was present a couple of weeks ago at Tattered Cover bookstore promoting the book, and I had a chance to hear him speak. I loved one of the stories he told that is not in his book. It was about the time he was in seminary in his twenties. He worked most of the time he was in seminary. However, there was a time in his seminary career when he was out of work and was taking such a heavy load that he could not work much. He went to meet with the seminary dean to ask for help. When he told the dean his sad story, the dean was willing to help financially for a while. The dean told him to go and prepare a family budget listing his needs and to bring the budget back for the dean to look over. Fulghum did this. He brought back to the dean’s office a pretty minimal spending plan for the next few months and left it with the dean’s assistant. When he came back the next day to check on whether it was approved, the assistant said that the dean felt the budget was not acceptable and wanted Fulghum to try again. He went home and pared down the spending plan further and took it back for approval. In checking back the next day, the dean’s assistant relayed the dean’s disapproval again and told him to submit yet a third budget. Distressed, Fulghum went home and cut back on the plan in such a way that would have him surviving only on beans on most days. He left it with the dean’s assistant and came back a day later, sure that it was economical enough to pass muster. The dean was in that day. He met with Fulghum to tell Fulghum that the latest spending plan was unsatisfactory as well. Fulghum was greatly distressed and asked what else he should do. The dean’s answer was surprising: “This budget is unsatisfactory because there is nothing in it for joy, and there is nothing in it that lets you share with others. Bring back a revised plan that has room for joy and has room for you to be generous with others, and we will underwrite that plan for you!” Fulghum returned with a spending plan that let him buy cheap symphony tickets and that let him give some money away for others, and the dean funded that schooling plan. Do you make room in your spending plan each month for joy? Do you make room in your spending plan to give generously to God so you can share the blessings God has given to you? |
