The Point of Giving, a sermon

(This sermon is available in audio format - Click here.)

A number of you in my first year here have sat down with me and gone over your funeral plans.  I know that someone other than myself was the one to prompt you to do so, but I appreciate that you are taking the initiative.  It shows you care about how you will be remembered, and you are providing a role model to others.  Far too many people leave such things to their grieving loved ones.  What sort of decisions are they going to make on our behalf, at a time when they are so full of stress and pain!

I was listening recently to the NPR program, Marketplace Money with Tess Vigeland, who was interviewing Linda Stern, a financial correspondent for Reuters who recently penned an article entitled, “Lessons from my mother’s money.”  Vigeland and Stern offered the advice to listeners to get one’s affairs in order, make sure that papers are ready, providing details to others for what to do in case you have a devastating illness or die, and bank accounts that someone you trust might use in order for your needs to be met while you are incapacitated.

Another portion of the show included Tess and economic editor Chris Farrell were offering advice to a listener who was mired in credit card debt... eighty-five thousand dollars worth.  The listener did not begin by announcing the hole he was in.  He simply admitted that he and his wife were in a hole, paying more than their monthly minimum on their cards, but that the credit card companies had bumped their annual percentage rates to nineteen percent and above, and now they were challenged to pay even the minimum anymore.

Tess and Chris expressed her concern and offered the twofold suggestion that the debtor – any debtor – should examine whether or not they could pay off their debt in about five years or less, and that if not, they might want to consider bankruptcy.

No matter what, they strongly suggested, the couple should look into credit counseling and see whether their counselor might work out a deal with the credit-issuing banks in order to expedite the payoff of the debt.

The point of Marketplace Money that day was the point of that program every time it airs, and the point of so many other, competent, personal finance radio and TV programs:

• Do not render yourself a victim.  
• Or, if either someone else or you yourself have managed to make a victim out of you, then work to turn the tables.

Now, I know I say "work to turn the tables" at the risk of sounding like someone pitching the plot of the next Bruce Willis movie.  When I say, “turn the tables,” I don’t mean revenge.  I mean self-improvement. 

And – tough as it may be for many of us to hear – self-improvement, self-reliance, is the point of just about the entire platforms, of the Republican Party, the Libertarian Party, and many populist movements.  With political rhetoric sounding the way it is in the country, lately, we can sometimes forget the fundamental and genuinely good, affirmative bases on which certain groups were built.

That anti-victimhood message is also, incidentally, the same point of every twelve-step program in existence – to recognize that you’ve fallen BUT THAT YOU CAN GET UP!  It’s the reason for counseling and spiritual direction and psychoanalysis – to discover the patterns that we have inherited or come to practice, and to DEVELOP NEW, HEALTHY PATTERNS.  It’s why it’s so important for us to learn to eat healthily, to exercise regularly.

We cannot afford to be victims.  No one can afford to be a victim. 

I don’t even refer to people with cancer or HIV or any other debilitating illness they’re trying to shake as victims, if I can avoid it.  You see, victims are eventually overwhelmed by their circumstances.  Victims suffer or die at the hands of others who are out to get them.  And to say that cancer or HIV or any other debilitating illness should create a victim implies that the disease has a personality, the way ancient people used to speak of demons.

Granted, our circumstances may seem overwhelming at times, but it is absurd ever to speak of Christians as defeated.  It is contradictory to speak of Christians as victims.  To a person, in the case of every disciple, we may have been knocked down, but we’re getting up.

This is the point of the gospel... the good news.  Is.  That one whom we had assumed to be a victim was actually the victor.  And so it is for us.

So, the point of giving, for Jesus, is that the ability to give implies agency; it implies power.  The point of giving is to demonstrate that we are not poor, no matter how bleak our situation may appear. 

By giving, the oppressed person can assert that he or she is no longer beset by circumstances.  By giving, the outcast may announce that she or he cannot be marginalized.  By giving and giving and giving again, with full knowledge that what they do may not budge those who seek to ignore them, the weak become strong; the broken attain wholeness; the empty are filled by the abundance of God.

We can do as we do, because we can afford to.  Nothing shall be impossible for God, and therefore everything shall be affordable for us.

Somebody might take that wrong, and think that I am saying we should all live opulent lifestyles.  I’m not.  In fact, the argument is for a simpler lifestyle whose basis is generosity.  Look at all Christ says we can afford:

(From Luke 6) 27 Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.  29 If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt.  30 Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again.  31 Do to others as you would have them do to you.
      34 But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return.  36 Be merciful, just as your Abba is merciful.
      37/38 Do not judge, do not condemn; forgive, and give; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.

This is the reason why, this time of year, the Stewardship Committee and I remind us of what may be possible – the step up, the approach to, or the achievement of, the tithe.

The point of giving is to liberate the disciple from the captivity of victimhood.  You cannot believe in Jesus Christ, you cannot find healing in his name, you cannot believe the testimony of the empty tomb, and still imagine yourself a victim!

This is the point of giving, says Jesus.  This giving is the action that makes the good news authentic.  This is the way we turn the tables on our victimhood.  This is the way we turn things around.

The world economy is pathetic right now.  Worse than that, it’s scary.  Millions of people are in debt; the governments of many countries are on the brink of default; this is the worst economic slump since the Great Depression.  It’s making victims of a lot of people.
 
But that economy is not our economy.  That economy is market-based.  Our economy is God-based.  And God has enabled us to step out from the tombs which once held us captive.  We can step up, as our Stewardship Committee representative here has encouraged, and let our giving be a measure of our faith. 

Maybe it’s not yet the measure we would have it be.  We may have spent differently, invested differently, because of choices we made based on that market economy.  That will monetarily effect how we participate in God’s economy.

Things change, though.  That’s why we’re here in the church, isn't it.  Because things change.  Even for the better, things change.  Things have changed for us, and we know we can count on things to keep right on changing.

The point of giving and giving and giving endlessly, the way our Abba does it, is so that we may count ourselves blessed – not victims but victors – and know that we will give as we will, because we can afford to. 

God has made giving affordable for us.  Indeed, we have nothing to lose, based in God’s system.  Nothing shall be impossible for God, and therefore everything shall be affordable for us.
Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Remembering "Peace Be Upon You!' - September 11, 2011

Our Peace Be Upon You! event on September 11 may not have been profoundly noticed in the press, but its impact on the wider interfaith community has been recognized in a number of settings. 

Publicity and posters were distributed throughout the St. Louis area, to churches and other faith-based groups and organizations, and leaders of numerous communities have expressed their regret that they were unable to attend.  However, there were a lot of activities scheduled for the day by a number of different institutions, organizations, and faith communities.  In addition to our own event on the tenth annual observance, there were two major sports events occurring, a community remembrance service sponsored by Gerber Chapel, and, scheduled at the same time, concerts at Webster University and Sheldon Auditorium and a United Way day of service attended by numerous members of the St. Louis Muslim community.

So, attendance at afternoon workshops stood at about 40, including presenters and the participants in their opportunities for children, youth, young adults, and adults. 

Children explored the ideas of kindness, cooperation, and peace with First Congregational Director of Religious Education Tracey Harris.  Youth heard from representatives of Cultural Leadership, a program for African American and Jewish students in our area to unite them on the common ground of Civil Rights.  Young adults and I considered the commonalities and differences of Christianity and Islam.  And keynote speaker Dr. Khaled Abdel-Hamid, a popular Islamic lay leader in the St. Louis area who is well-versed in Qur’anic studies, shared with adults his insights on current events and Islam.

For the keynote address, entitled “Peace Be Upon You!” and attended by about twice as many people as the afternoon’s workshops, Dr. Hamid walked listeners through passages from the Qur’an which encourage cooperation and understanding especially between the Abrahamic “people of the Book” who practice the faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  He sought to offer hope for a more enlightened culture, like that of 10th to 14th Century Spain, for which so many moderate and liberal Muslims are nostalgic.  During that period in history, the Moors – a North African Islamic people – ruled Spain and permitted religious freedom and citizenship for Jews and Christians.

The time for questions included an objector of Egyptian origin, like Dr. Hamid, who challenged the speaker’s interpretation of the Qur’an, which in its second chapter allows destruction of nonbelievers and is used often by oppressive Islamic governments to practice cruelty against non-Muslims.  The objector, who may have been a Coptic Christian remembering persecutions in the land of his birth, refused to assent to Dr. Hamid’s sympathies that attacks on Christians and Jews by Muslims are criminal even according to the Qur’an.  But he also raised the awareness of the group about just how polarizing the malpractice of religion can make the oppressed as well as their oppressors.

In a more relaxed conversation after the conclusion of the event, Dr. Hamid noted that, if the objector was in fact a Coptic Christian refugee from Egypt, then the two of them had much more in common than they had separating them.  “I came to America,” he said, “because of the way I saw my religion being misinterpreted and misused in my homeland.  I prefer to be the citizen of a country where religious freedom may be practiced by all, rather than religious tyranny practiced by a some.”  (Some participants believed that they had heard the man say he was a convert from Islam to Christianity, which, if his conversion happened while he lived in Egypt, would have made him even more likely a victim of persecution than had he been born into a Christian family.)

Concluding the event, I observed that I am disinclined to continue Peace Be Upon You! as a September 11 observance.  I then referred to a community service event sponsored by the United Way on September 11, and populated strongly that day by supporters of the St. Louis chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR).  I suggested that September 11 might more suitably become a day of service similar to the Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday in January, and urged First Congregational and other Christian communities to partner with CAIR and Jewish community service groups on both those days, for the sake of bridging interreligious divides.

Peace Be Upon You! as an annual discussion about interfaith concerns for peace and justice may continue, hosted by our church, but maybe we can find a less potent day.

The text of Dr. Hamid’s keynote address is available from the media table in the Narthex or by clicking here.  A copy of his English and Arabic parallels of the second chapter of the Qur’an, are also available for download here.