What Do We Mean When We Say "God"?

Text: Mark 12:28-34

Jesus teaches us that the greatest of the commandments is to hear, to take heed and obey, that the Lord our God is the only God (that’s what he means by God is one.) and to love the Lord our God with our whole heart and with all our soul and with all our mind and with all our strength, and secondly to love our neighbours as ourselves.  This is a very powerful statement of what we call monotheism – belief that there is only one God as opposed to many, or polytheism.  Now, I’ve been around the block enough to know that what people mean when they say the word “God” is quite different.  Let me throw some scenarios out to you and see what you think.

            In World War II Allied leaders such as Mackenzie King, Roosevelt, Truman, and Churchill readily spoke of and called on “God”, blessed our people and our troops, and indeed portrayed that “God” was on our side in this global struggle with evil…but so did Adolph Hitler.  HItler readily referred to “God Almighty” in his speeches and claimed “God” was on the side of the German people and with them in their struggle to overcome the unfair hardships that were imposed upon them by the Allied powers after World War I.  In the European Theatre of WWII all the nations, Allied and Axis, were Christian, had the support of their “national” churches, and for all shapes and purposes were referring to the same “God”.  Did one of us not have the right God?  Speaking from an Allied perspective, had “God” abandoned the German people for being evil or something?

            When Stephen Harper and Barak Obama finish speeches by saying “God bless Canada” and “God bless America” do they mean the same God given that Canada and the States have a completely different track record in the world?  What if Justin Trudeau were to say it?  Does the way a nation “loves’ its neighbour and itself through governmental policy and practice say anything about what they believe the word “God” means?

            When we in the predominantly no longer but still nominally Christian West refer to “God” is it the same “God” that much more devout Muslims world over refer to as “Allah”?  When Muslims say “Allah Akbar” which means “God is great” are they saying the same thing we are saying in the simple table grace we no longer teach our children to pray that goes, “God is great.  God is God.  Let us thank him for our food”?  We’re both monotheists rooted in the faith of Abraham, the Father of the Jews and Muslims.  If we are all monotheists, are we or are we not referring to the same “God”?  What about when it’s the Taliban or ISIS saying “Allah Akbar” or white supremacist Christian militias in Montana somewhere, are these groups referring to a different God than the One True God which monotheistic faiths profess?

 Well, I dare to take a risk and say that if we are truly going to be monotheists and say there is only one God, then there indeed is only one God and all these different groups whether good or evil look to the same God.  The problem is that we have different ideas about God that profoundly affect what our faith looks like in practice.  Let’s unpack this a bit.

One thing that sets humans apart from the rest of creation is that God created us to be in a personal, life-grounding relationship with him so that we can live as his image in reflection of his glory in his creation.  We are the priests of creation who are to give voice to the Creation’s worship of its Creator.  To do this we are the part of the Creation that must know God, but we in our sin have messed all that up.  We put ourselves in the place of God.  Due to our created purpose and the nature as being God’s image-bearers we humans, for a lack of a better way to say it, have a hole in us that only God can fill.  Whether or not we are aware of it, the hole is still there and we will consciously or unconsciously either embrace or struggle against it.  We have sought to fill this hole on our own and created religions and served gods that are in our own image.  But to really fill it we must be found by God and God must reveal himself to us which God has done among the descendants of the man Abraham as Jesus of Nazareth the Jew, a people of whose history he is an integral part.  If we want to know who God is we must look at Jesus and what we find is that the One God is actually Trinity – One-in-Three, Three-in-One – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Our God-shaped hole is only filled by our participation in the Trinity’s giving himself to us through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit.

Well, I’m going to wind up getting way too theological for you at this moment so I’m going to back up and come at this from a different angle and talk about the word “God” and what it means.  God never revealed his name to us as “God”.  We call God “God” because that is the English form of the word that the Germanic peoples had that Christian missionaries coming into Europe way back when adopted to talk about God.  In their ancient language “God” means ultimately “to call on” or “to invoke”.  These missionaries used an early form of the word “God” to translate the Latin word for deity which was “Deus” which in turn was the word the Romans used to translate the Greek word for deity which was “Theos”.  “Theos” was the Greek word used to translate the the Semetic word El or Al which for lack of a better word means “God”.  Arabic speakers used the word “Allah” which means “the God” to do the same.  Long before there ever was Islam there were and still are Arabic-speaking Christians who called and still call God “Allah”.  So, please don’t think that the name “Allah” is strictly a Muslim thing.

Jews are reluctant to call God by any name, but in the Old Testament God has three names.  The first is El which was the highest-ranking God in the Canaanite pantheon.  The second is Elohim which is the plural form of El and means “God of gods.”  Third is Yahweh, the name that God revealed to Moses from the burning bush which means “I am who I am and I will be who I will be.”  This was God’s way of telling Moses that Moses could have no power over him as if he were just some god that could be controlled by ritualized magic.

God had a particular relationship with the Israelite people that began with Abraham through which he has revealed himself.  The Jews are his people and he is their God.  God even, at times, called himself their Father.  When Jesus said “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is the only God we are to hear an emphasis on your – the one true and living God has made himself known to all peoples through his relationship with the Israelite people.  Into this relationship comes Jesus, God the Son become human who reveals to us that at the heart of the very nature of God is not all-powerful domination but rather giving of oneself in self-emptying love for the sake of others even to the extent of dying for others. This is the way God is in his very self as Trinity.  The Father gives of himself in the Holy Spirit and there is the Son.  The Son gives of himself in the Holy Spirit to the Father and there is Love.  The Father and the Son give of themselves in the Holy Spirit and there is Creation and Salvation and our inclusion by adoption and real participation in the relationship of God the Father and God the Son.  The Trinity is God’s self-revelation to us that has come to us through his relationship with Israel.

Gregory of Nazianzus who was one of the drafters of the Nicene Creed once said, “When I say God, I mean Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”  He meant to distinguish what and who Christians believe “God” to be.  God is a loving communion, a community of persons who give their self’s to each other in self-emptying love so completely that they are One – One-in-Three, Three-in-One – and this is completely incomprehensible to us and only makes sense if we love one another as God has loved us.  Doing community in the name of Jesus according to the way of Jesus through the indwelling presence and power of the Holy Spirit in self-giving love according to the love and will of the Father is our purpose as the church.  It is the image of God, the Trinity, restored in us.  If we focus on anything other than overflowing in the love of God for one another and our neighbours, we are missing the boat.

Finally, it is very easy in monotheistic faiths to go to war if our understanding of God is unitarian rather than trinitarian.  Christians, Muslims, and Jews have all done and continue to do atrocities in the name of "God" whom we understand as simply an all powerful Creator and Judge.  How different it would be if we truly accepted God’s self-revelation as Trinity over and above our ideas of “God” and focused on being healing and reconciling communities in his image of loving Communion.  Amen.

Salvation 'Right Now'

Text: Mark 10:46-52

Blind Bartimaeus is one of my favourite people in the Bible.  He is one of those insignificant characters in the Gospels who only show up once to show us what faith is.  We’d think that would be the role of the disciples, but oddly they only show us an incomplete faith.  They hear Jesus’ call and quite remarkably leave everything behind to follow him yet they never quite get who he is or his mission of bringing in the Kingdom of God.  Neither do the religious authorities show us faith.  Though they should be the experts on what faith is, they actually wind up showing us “anti-faith”, a very distant relationship with God that they (we) controlled by rules, rituals, and judging others.  Leaving everything behind and following a vagabond “prophet” had no place in their “religion” because they believed “their” religion was the underpinning of their society.   But here’s Blind Bartimaeus, the insignificant outcast.  He has the audacity to approach Jesus because he knows that Jesus alone can bring “salvation” to him.  He has faith.

Do you ever think about what salvation is?  If someone were to ask us, “are you saved?” our first thoughts are about going to heaven when we die.  We tend to think of salvation as simply going to heaven when we die because of believing Jesus died for the forgiveness of our sins.  But, this definition of salvation is rather truncated in comparison to what the Bible says it is.  I encourage you to go and check for yourselves on this: the Bible never speaks of salvation in that way in.  Rather, from the Old Testament to the New the Bible presents salvation as an act of God that brings to a person or people healing, freedom from oppression, or freedom from demonic possession in order to restore them to authentic human community.  Salvation is an act that either gives or restores life.  In its biggest sense, salvation is bodily Resurrection into a New Creation and a New Humanity where there is no longer sin and death and this is what God has started in, through, and as Jesus Christ and is working in us right now by the power of the Holy Spirit.  That’s the big picture, but most frequently salvation as we find it in the Bible is a “right now” event in a person’s life in which God delivers us from what ails us or oppresses us and he then brings us into the authentic loving community of his people.

Blind Bartimaeus is a prime example of salvation.  Though he was blind he was “looking” for salvation, a real act of God in the “right now” of his life that would restore him to true life.  He was a blind beggar.  In his day any physical disability was seen as punishment from God for some great, secret sin.  People with disabilities were believed cursed and were ostracized.  All they could do to live was beg. 

Bartimaeus sat there at the roadside and when he heard Jesus of Nazareth was passing by he began to cry out as loud as he could, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!  Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!  Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!  Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!  Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”  The crowds, annoyed by him, commanded him, “Shut up!”  What right did this cursed blind beggar have to address the Messiah?  But, Bartimaeus had faith.  He could not see Jesus.  He couldn’t just go to him.  The only thing he could do on his part was to keep shouting, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!  Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”  Jesus heard him and stopped the roadshow and gave the command, “Call him!” and out went the good news to Bartimaeus, “Take courage!  Get up!  He is calling you!”  In an image of Resurrection, Bartimaeus shed his cloak, the clothes of his old beggarly self, and jumped up from his roadside grave alive in hope and sets off groping in his blurry darkness to find Jesus. 

Suddenly Bartimaeus heard a voice, “What do you want me to do?”  The last time Jesus said that it was to John and James, who several days before had come to Jesus asking him to do whatever they asked of him.  Prideful and self-assured of their own worth they thought themselves worthy of sitting at Jesus the Messiah's right and left when he became king.  They were power seeking, trying to use Jesus as the means to fulfill their own ambitions.  But, Bartimaeus his request was for salvation, an act of God that would restore him to life.  “Let me see again!” he said.  Now, this is something only God could do.  Bartimaeus sees that Jesus isn't simply Israel’s Messiah; he is somehow the Lord God of Israel.  “Give me back my sight so that I can live again.  Give me back my worth in peoples’ eyes.  Give me back my human dignity.  Restore me to community.  Have mercy on me.”  This is something only God can do. 

Jesus’ answer was brief and to the point, “Go!  Your faith has saved you.”  Immediately, Bartimaeus began to see again.  Bartimaeus was blind yet in faith he saw the faithfulness of God working in Jesus the Son of God and he trusted it.  Indeed, he regained his sight.  He regained his life.  Bartimaeus the blind man saw that Jesus was indeed the Son of God and clearly understood Jesus’ ministry of salvation. 

It is likely that Bartimaeus was not blind from birth, but somehow in life he stopped seeing.  If we want to play out this analogy of “seeing” being life-giving faith arising in the midst of blindness, we could say that for whatever reason Bartimaeus had to lose his life, his sight, so that he could discover faith and truly come to know God through Jesus in order to have true life.  Things happen in life that challenge our “sight” – the death of parents, spouses, or children; marital infidelity and divorce; being rejected by our children; losing jobs; life threatening illness, addictions – these are things that take our lives away and often wipe us clean of any sense of faith we may have had in life or God or ourselves.  But the example of Bartimaeus, of his faith is the one we should hold on to.  In times of grief, anger, and shame, crying out to Jesus for salvation in the “right now” is our only hope because…seriously…when the time is right, he answers.  It might take days, months, even years of crying out but he answers and he saves us, he calls us to himself and he gives us “new sight”, a new way of seeing life as being filled with him.  Some of you have been through this blindness and know what I am saying is true and have reason to give thanks.  So give thanks, but also tell about it because there are people everywhere around you who need to know that there is hope.  Some of you are blind at this very moment.  Cry out.  Jesus does hear and will come to save.  Often, he doesn’t come immediately because he’s using the blindness and the crying out to heal even deeper hurts than the ones we are presently suffering.  Call out to Jesus.  Don’t let anyone try to silence you.  In time he will call you and you will be healed.  I’ve been there I know.  Amen.

Giving Worth

Text: Mark 10:35-45

It is an unfortunate fact that we often judge a person’s worth by the work they do.  The more important a person’s work or role in the community, then the more worth she has.  If a person does nothing or does work that is otherwise unnecessary, like being a minister, then we tend to regard that person as having no worth or even worthless.  We are insidious about this.  One of the first things we do when we meet a person is judge his worth either consciously or unconsciously with the question, “Of what use is this person to me?” Have you have ever judged a retail employee worthless because they could not help you?...or that cigarette-smoking, angry-looking teenager walking down the side of the road to nowhere?  I have.  This is an appalling trait of ours.  And, it gets worse.  We’ve been known to judge a person’s worth by standards like race, where they come from, wealth, gender, physical ability.  Judging a person’s worth runs deep in our Western mindset.

This works-based idea of worth has also found its way into our Christian belief system with a popular misunderstanding of what sin is.   Many say that sin has made us worthless with respect to the purpose for which God created us.  We are unable to be and do what God created us to be and do and therefore we are worthless even in God’s eyes.  I remember a fellow student of mine in seminary saying just that in a class discussion.  Our professor stopped him and said, “Wait a minute.  We are unworthy, but we are not worthless.  There is a difference.  If we had no worth in God’s eyes, then God the Father would not have sent the Son to die for us that we might have life.  That is quite an extreme act for something worthless don’t you think?”  We indeed are of worth to God, but none of us can say we deserve the value he places on us.

I bring up this talk on worth because it is one of the core motifs nestled behind this passage in Mark.  It is part of a small section that began at 10:13 with Jesus blessing children and saying that whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will never enter it.  Children in those days had little worth in and of themselves.  On the scale of social hierarchy they were stationed much the same as slaves.  When they came of age all that changed.  Yet, Jesus calls these “worthless” children to him and honours them above all others and blesses them – gives them worth and dignity.

Then at 10:17 a rich young man comes to Jesus wondering what he must do to inherit the eternal life.  This man was of great worth in society.  Yet, Jesus’ answer to him was basically to give up everything and become worthless.  Jesus tells him “Give up your status and power in this world and you will be worthy of the Kingdom of God and the inheritance of the life eternal.”  This rich young man could not do that.  Jesus tells his disciples, “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the Kingdom of God…It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle (which was a very small gate in the wall of Jerusalem) than for someone who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God.”

Right after that, Peter asks Jesus, “What about us who have left behind everything to follow you?” – in other words, “What about us who have made ourselves “worthless” for you.”  Jesus assures him that they will receive a hundred fold, but…many who are first will be last and the last will be first.  Then Jesus goes on to tell them that there is more to the cost of worth in the Kingdom than just giving up stuff and going on a messianic roadshow.  He tells them that in Jerusalem the powerful will treat the Son of man as if he were a worthless criminal – mock him, spit on him, flog him, and kill him.  Being in conflict with the values of this world will entail suffering.  They should expect to suffer the same.

And finally, James’ and John’s question, “can we sit at your right and left when you establish your rule?”  (Matthew has the boy’s momma ask the question.)  James and John were blatantly after what they considered to be the most powerful positions in Jesus’ kingdom.  For some odd reason they thought themselves worthy of such honour.  The others became angry and indignant.  Jesus tells the two they have no idea of what they are asking.  Their thinking of the way the nations do things, where power is lorded over people.  Not so in the Kingdom of God.  In God’s way worth is found in servitude.  A disciple of great worth, indeed power, in the Kingdom of God is one who is slave to all.

According to Jesus, in the kingdom of God we do not judge a person’s worth according to standards of power or wealth or youth or health or success.  Rather, we determine worth according to the standards of “worthless” childlike faith; by renouncing one’s “worth” by leaving everything behind to follow him, a worthless visionary, on what appears to be the useless cause and learning his worthless way of life even if it means suffering on his account; and…by being a worthless slave to all. 

This part about being a slave is very important.  You see, Jesus said he came not to be served but to serve.  Please allow me to say something about the “worthless” nature of service in the kingdom of God for it is defined by giving one’s life as a ransom for others. 

The word ransom to us means paying a sum of money to a kidnapper to get them to release a person whom they have wrongfully taken possession of.  The kidnapper works with the question, “What is this person worth to you?”  That’s not exactly what ransom would have meant to Jesus.  He would have thought more in terms of the Old Testament’s teaching that a ransom was what was paid to restore worth to a life that had been wasted.  If you remember the reading we had from Exodus where it said that if a person’s bull or ox accidentally or of habit gored a person and the person died the owner would have to pay a ransom, a life price, for the redemption of the victim’s life.  What seems to be going on is that either by accident or an act of negligence life has been wasted; the life associated with the bull and the life of the bull’s owner, and most of all the life of the victim.  Therefore, a price must be paid in order to restore worth to the life that has been wasted albeit symbolic because life cannot be valued according to money.  Paying the life price symbolically restored worth to a life that had been needlessly wasted.  

Jesus gave his life as the life price that restores our worth.  He gave his life so that it might pass through death and come out the other side into resurrection and now he gives us his resurrected life in and by means of the Holy Spirit.  Now, we, like him, are children of God whose worth and dignity is restored.  We all through sin have wasted the life God entrusted to us, but Jesus has paid the life price of his own life and restored our worth, a restoration that will come to the fullness of its value when we join him in glory at the resurrection. 

For now, when Jesus talks about us serving each other he means that we too must give our lives as ransoms for others.  We must devote ourselves to restoring worth and dignity to those who have needlessly lost it.  We in accordance with the love that God has poured into our hearts with the gift of the Holy Spirit must regard and treat each other and indeed all people in such a way as to give worth to them.  To befriend and love another person unconditionally is to give them worth. 

Restoring worth and dignity to others is our work as the “worthless” slaves of Jesus Christ.  We must love and serve everyone in the same way that Jesus has loved and served us wanting them to come to know that by him, in him, with him they are also worth-filled, beloved children of God…even if they don’t act like it, even if they don’t “Go and sin no more”, and even if it costs us dearly to be for them.  We, the worthless slaves of Jesus, are not ever to dismiss a person as worthless no matter who they are, what they are, or what they’ve done.  That’s the way broken humanity does things.  Because our life is in Jesus because he has given us the Holy Spirit to live in us, we must not ever judge another person worthless.  That doesn’t reflect well on our master and his ways.

What does this look like in real life?  Well, the answers to that question are as numerous as the situations of your own lives.  Don’t be afraid to love and make sacrifices for people the world judges as worthless.  Give your life a ransom for many.  Amen.

Live to Give

Text: Matthew 6:24-34
          Have you ever heard the phrase “like a dog worrying a bone”? That’s Southern for describing the way a dog goes about gnawing a bone. For the dog, this seems to be some sort of stress relieving compulsive obsession. They get this determined blank stare that says content but obsessed. They will gnaw until their mouths bleed. A dog worrying a bone fairly well describes the way worry gnaws away at us. Worry is as irrational and compulsive as a dog blankly gnawing away and most people do it in an odd attempt to comfort themselves.
          Worry is a powerful, intrusive sub-person within us. At least that is how I experience it. It is like having another person in me. There’s my voice and then there’s this other thing that keeps throwing fearful scenarios at me causing me stress. Sometimes, it seems we are powerless before worry. In fact, I would offer that we are addicted to worrying both emotionally and physiologically because it releases certain hormones and what not in us that our bodies actually become dependent on having in the system. Then, if we do not get them we will go into withdrawals and go and find something to worry about to get them back. Worry can only be silenced by the truth but to get to the truth of why we worry we must look beyond the circumstances that we are worried about and start asking ourselves “Why do I need to worry?” and, more importantly, “Why do I, a beloved child of God, need to worry?”
          That’s a good question because it leads us to think theologically about worry. As I see it worry is the exact opposite of faith. As faith is the proof that we belong to God so worry is the proof of our broken relationship with God and that leads us to talk about sin for a moment. We tend to think of sin as simply being morally bad behaviour, but that’s just reducing a disease to one of its symptoms. Sin is a spiritual disordering of the mind with respect to our relationship with God that exhibits itself in broken trust and broken behaviour in all our relationships. The story of Eve and the Serpent in the Garden of Eden describes this fairly well. The Serpent came to Eve and they had a conversation by which they made the loving-kind God out to be an irrelevant, power-mongering, jealous liar who could not be trusted. And then, Adam and Eve having reasoned themselves into not trusting God strove to become gods themselves and ate the fruit God said not to eat. Thus enters the mental disorder we call sin and its mental evidence, worry, has been with us ever since. Worry is like the Serpent it is a cunning and deceptive rational sounding irrational voice within us that tells us if there is a God we cannot trust it, so be your own god.
          Looking here at Mathew’s Gospel, in verses thirty-one and thirty-two Jesus is doing the exact opposite of the Serpent he’s confronting us with the truth that we don’t need to worry and can trust God. Jesus’ first point is that we who know that God is our loving-kind Father because we know Jesus should know God knows our true needs even before we ask and will provide. This is the Truth. Therefore, we do not have to worry and we do not have to strive in an unfulfilling pursuit of meeting our own needs like non-believers do. Rather, we can now strive first for God’s kingdom and his righteousness.
          Jesus uses two words for striving in this passage and that is a clue we should dig deeper. The first word is epizeyteo. It means to strive wishfully, with no aim. It means to seek but not know what you’re really searching for. It is a wishful way of life that is ambiguous, worrisome, and indeed prone to idolatry. This is the striving of the Gentiles. It is the striving that we do when we serve the idol known as Wealth, the striving to provide for ourselves out of a lack of trust in God and take to ourselves more than we ought.
         But, we who know the Truth that God is loving-kind, cannot serve two lords. A slave cannot have two masters. Therefore, Jesus says that we who know the Truth must strive first for God’s kingdom and his righteousness. The word Jesus uses here for striving is zeyteo rather than epizeyteo. Epi- means beyond. Zeyteo means to strive with a purpose or result in mind, the purpose of knowing. It means to seek as if it was a scientific pursuit. Seeking the kingdom of God and his righteousness is not a futile pursuit. We can know them both. We can actually know God, his kingdom and his righteousness. They are part of our observable reality and not simply subjective matters of personal belief and metaphysics. They exist. If you want to know an orange you must observe it and interact with it indeed eat it and it will reveal its orange-ness to you. So, it is with God, his kingdom and his righteous, loving-kind rule. We must interact with God and pursue his kingdom and God will reveal himself and his reigning power of transforming love to us.
          So, how do we strive for the kingdom and thereby counter worry? Well, looking at the context that this passage finds itself in, Jesus talks about worry when he talks about giving, prayer and fasting and more specifically when he talks about our attitude towards wealth. This passage on worry comes immediately after Jesus says, “You cannot serve both God and wealth.” His point is quite obvious. We can either live in faith, striving for God and his Kingdom and experience ourselves wonderfully and beautifully and adequately cared for by our heavenly Father or we can pursue wealth and experience worry.
          Let’s talk about wealth. Let’s face it folks. On a global standard, we Canadians are materially wealthy (or at least appear that way. It’s a pattern in our culture for people to go into excessive debt in order to appear wealthy). The amount of disposable income that we have in comparison to most of the rest of the human population is pert nigh vulgar. We may not consider ourselves to be wealthy particularly if we’re living paycheck to paycheck. Nevertheless, compare us to most of the rest of the world and we look filthy rich and there’s a down side to this. Wealth and the opportunities it presents have had a dramatic affect in our culture particularly on community. Wealth and the opportunities it presents have made us more isolated. With respect to how it affects our faith lives it is at the top of the list as to why even long-time committed Christians are attending church less than they did just a few years ago. I would even go as for as saying wealth and the opportunities it presents is the number one reason why congregations struggle financially. It seems it would be the other way around but its not.
          There is a way to counter the effects of wealtholatry. It’s called live to give. We have a lot of disposable income in comparison to the rest of the world. What if instead of spending that excess on stuff that we don’t need, or spending more than we need to on scaled up versions of the things we do need, or banking it so that we can pride ourselves on how much money we have, what if we disciplined ourselves to give it away. I call it live to give. It’s based on how Jesus gave his life. He the Son of God became poor with respect to his divinity and became human, a servant who gave his life on the cross so that we may be rich in the God-stuff. We are to live the same way giving of ourselves and the wealth he has entrusted to us which means ordering our lives, disciplining ourselves to live a lifestyle in which we are able not just to give but to give more and more.
          You know, people budget to save. You go to the financial advisor who tells you you need to save x-amount a year to retire and not starve. You look at her and laugh because there ain’t no way. But, realizing you need to save you start with a percentage you can afford and strive to simplify your life so that next year you can save a little more until you’re putting away the amount you need to. I would propose doing the same sort of budgeting for giving as well. Start with a percentage of your income you can afford to give and strive to simplify your lifestyle so that next year you can increase the percentage. This is giving to the extent that we have to simplify our lifestyles to be able to afford it.
          With that kind of giving in mind I would suggest that the local church is a good place for us to discipline ourselves to support financially. Giving to your local church provides face-to-face opportunities for growth in Christ through worship, fellowship, outreach, service, and study—opportunities that would not be there if the local church ceased to exist. The church is different than a club. We’ll pay dues and fees to be a part of other organizations and occasionally those amounts have to go up. In some ways churches are like that. But it’s different. Churches don’t charge dues and fees. We trust in the Lord to move his people to generosity and that they grow in generosity giving more and more to support the bricks and mortar and ministries of your church. These are difficult days for churches. Church boards and treasurers are monthly facing difficult decisions as to which bills to pay and which to let slide. If your own personal financial situation has ever been so that your family had to live under those circumstances, then you know what a living hell it is. Why do we have to let our church family live that way? These are difficult times for the church, but times in which we can grow in Christ and grow in generosity. I’ll leave it at that. Amen.

Abundance, Need, and Kenotic Giving

Text: 2 Corinthians 8:1-15
Audio Recording

If I told you that you could really participate in God’s extension of real grace to others through which you would grow richer in grace, would you want to know how?  Would it change anything if I told you it involves what you do with wealth?  Well, brace yourselves.  I think what Paul is saying here is that how we handle the wealth at our disposal can indeed be a real participation in God’s real extension of grace to others.  When we who are rich in abundance give to others who are “rich in need” (who have poverty) we are really participating in God’s real extension of grace not only to others but also to ourselves. 

Well, that all seems pretty straightforward.  Right?  Giving has its benefits.  Right?  It makes us feel good and all that.  Right?  Yeah, but, Paul isn’t talking about the benefits of altruism for healthy self-esteem.  He’s actually talking about our growing richer in our actually knowing and experiencing God, not healthy self-esteem.  And, he’s saying that giving away the wealth we have at our disposal so that we take to ourselves the poverty of others can help us to know the very nature of God.   When we give from our abundance to those who are in need we grow through experience in knowing who God is in his very self.

Let me build my case.  In verse nine Paul makes an astute observation about the nature of God as self-revealed to us by Jesus.  Paul writes: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.”   Paul fills this out a bit in Philippians 2:6-11.  He writes:  “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus ‘Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he emptied himself, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.  And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!”  Basically, if we are going to say that Jesus reveals the nature of God fully to us, then we must set everything we think about God, all our ideas about God aside, and accept the fact that God in his very nature is self-emptying love.  Jesus who is in very nature God emptied himself to become a human who in self-emptying humility serves the true needs of humanity by emptying himself of his human life on the cross an act which in the end defeats sin and death in God’s good creation and it sets in motion resurrection. 

God’s empties himself in love for us and the entire Creation.  The big theological word for this is kenosis which is the Greek word for emptying.  If I had waited another day to send the bulletin to Willa for printing the title for this sermon would read “Abundance, Need, and Kenotic Giving”.  What is kenotic giving?  Well, it is giving according to the nature of God as revealed in Jesus Christ, giving that participates in the self-emptying life of God.

Looking at our passage, Paul says the Macedonians were doing this kenotic giving in the way the gave to his collection for Judean Christians who were suffering famine.  Paul says in verse 2: “In the midst of a very severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity” (NIV).  In the midst of persecution they gave according to their means and beyond because they knew that this act of sacrificial giving would be a blessing or a grace to them to help them grow in Christ-likeness.  Their sacrificial self-emptying of their money resulted in their growing rich in generosity.

Paul has accolades for the Macedonians and the example they’ve set, but when he looks at the Corinthians he has a challenge for them, a challenge that I think is very relevant for us because we have a lot in common with the Corinthians.  When Paul offers the Corinthians this challenge he starts by noting their abundance.  The Corinthians were well off.  Corinth was a port city and the churches there weren’t suffering like the Macedonians to their north.  Yet, material abundance isn’t what Paul notes.  He points out that they were rich in faith, rich in being able to proclaim the word, rich in their knowledge of the faith, and rich in Paul’s love for them.  They were also rich in willingness.  A year prior when they heard of the need of the Judean Christians they were the first to say “we’re in.”  But a year later they’re having a little problem in following through.  So Paul offers the challenge that he would like to test the genuineness of their Christian love against the Macedonian’s.  He want’s to know will they put their money not just where their mouth is but where their love and willingness is.  Will they give kenotically?  Will they take to themselves the blessing of knowing Jesus more fully by taking to themselves the poverty of the Judean Christians and eliminating it with the material wealth that they have at their disposal? 

So, how does this apply to us?  Well, the opportunity to give to others in need is a gift from God for us to grow in Christ-likeness.  I would push the extent of this and give the advice, not the command that we need to incorporate into our lifestyle regular kenotic giving as a means of growing in Christ.  This looks like giving to the extent that we have to simplify our lifestyles to be able to afford it.  Let’s face it folks.  On a global standard, we Canadians are materially wealthy (or at least appear that way.  It’s a pattern in our culture for people to go into excessive debt in order to appear wealthy).  The amount of disposable income that we have in comparison to at least 80% of the rest of the human population is pert nigh vulgar.  Affluence and the opportunities it presents has had a dramatic affect on community in our culture.  It’s made us more isolated.  It is at the top of the list as to why even long-time committed Christians are attending church less than they did not long ago.[1]  I would even go as for as saying affluence and the opportunities it presents is the number one reason why congregations struggle financially.  

In the face of that of I would suggest that the local church is a good place for us to discipline ourselves to support financially through kenotic giving.  Giving to your local church provides face-to-face opportunities for growth in Christ through worship, fellowship, outreach, service, and study—opportunities that would not be there if the local church ceased to exist.  I would suggest starting with a reasonable percentage of our income that we can afford to give and each year increase that percentage so that all the while we are disciplining ourselves to live on less.  We have a lot of disposable income in comparison to the rest of the world.  It amazes me that we will spend that income on shit we wind up throwing into the corner of the garage, when there are hungry, ill-clothed, ill-fed children in our communities just around the corner…and we confess Jesus Christ as Lord.  We can afford to give and to give kenotically.  But will we put our money where our Christian love and willingness is?  As Paul says there is a blessing in it.  When we take the poverty of others to ourselves through emptying our pockets to help others simply live, we come to know Jesus as he in his very self is.  Our choice is quite obvious: more crap in the corner of the garage or knowing Jesus? Or worse continuing to excessively stockpile money in bank accounts or knowing Jesus?  Amen.

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[1] See Carey Nieuwhof, “10 Reasons Why Even Committed Church Attenders Are Attending Church Less Often”, http://careynieuwhof.com/2015/02/10-reasons-even-committed-church-attenders-attending-less-often/