Tag Archives: generosity

Live like this God: generously (16th Sunday after Pentecost, 9/28/2025)

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Readings (Track 1)

One of my favorite sayings about optimists and pessimists runs like this: the optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist agrees. In that context, we might hear Paul’s words as hopeful: there are alternatives.

On the one hand, Paul tracks with the cynic and stoic philosophers: choosing contentment is key to happiness. Then and now that means swimming upstream in a culture that constantly and stridently proclaims that happiness depends on always having more. (It takes effort to swim upstream, hence our collect’s “running to obtain your promises.”)

Notice that the problem is not wealth, but the desire for wealth. Good work can produce wealth, but when the desire for wealth replaces a commitment to good work, it’s never pretty, as in the typical grocery store: too many products that are simply bad for our health, produce like tomatoes that retain the name, but not the taste.

But Paul sets his invitation to contentment in the context of our confession of God as generous Creator (“God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment”). Luke Johnson puts this provocatively: “human existence is in itself a gift from God that cannot in any significant fashion be improved by material possessions.”

But preacher, doesn’t “contentment” mean “boring”? Well, notice how Jesus does contentment, spending so much time at the table that his enemies: “Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!” (Matt. 11:19). OK, preacher, but doesn’t “contentment” mean stagnation? Here the historian Lynn White Jr is helpful: technological progress—harnessing water and wind power—is driven by the monastic commitments to find an alternative to slavery (the source of this power in the classical world) and to live out Paul’s injunction “to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share.” Contentment—Paul thinks—frees us to mirror God’s creative generosity.

“God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.” That’s deeply rooted in the opening chapters of Genesis, and it’s easy to forget how counter-cultural it was/is. Israel, remember, lived between the two cultural powerhouses of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) and Egypt, with Mesopotamia being more relevant in this context.

The creation stories in Mesopotamia ran something like this: sowing, harvesting, keeping the canals dredged: that’s backbreaking work, and finally the minor gods had enough and revolted. The major gods solved the problem by creating humankind—to do the work no one else wanted to do. So if you’re wondering why life is the way it is…

In that context—and that’s the context in which these chapters of Genesis took their present shape—one of the big surprises is that we humans aren’t created to solve a divine problem. So if we weren’t created for that, what were we created for? Genesis—and the rest of Scripture—wonders about that question.

But back to our reading. Living like the gods is a common human dream. And Scripture happily encourages it—as long as we remember how the Living God lives. “God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.” So go and do likewise: “do good…be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share.”

Jesus’ story in our Gospel reading covers much the same ground as our second reading. No surprise: Jesus and Paul are drinking from the same wells. We might notice the last bit: “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” As Christians our faith is properly centered on this someone. But if “they” aren’t listening to Moses and the prophets, that “someone” isn’t going to be convincing. Moses and the prophets: to hazard a summary: the generous Creator expects us to live generously. If “they” find that unbelievable Jesus isn’t going to register. This is why the quality of our parish life is so important: the world badly needs to be able to see what living generously looks like. Our common life is an intrinsic part of our message.

We can imagine responding to Jesus and Paul in good weather; what about in nasty weather? I’m thankful for Jeremiah. In the middle of the Babylonian siege Jeremiah’s cousin comes to him asking him to buy up some family property—a field. The timing could not be worse, for that field is almost certainly currently occupied by some unit in the Babylonian army. Responding to the request and to the divine word, Jeremiah buys the property and dots all the legal i’s and crosses all the legal t’s so that the family’s ownership will remain undisputed. Even in nasty weather by God’s grace Jeremiah is able to act generously, in imitation of this generous God.

Now, a sidebar. While today’s texts have a lot to say about what we do, our images of God are equally important. Jesus is not the Son of just any god, but of the God revealed in Moses and the prophets, the generous God who digs very deep for our healing. Do I believe in that God? Most days that’s a work-in-progress. And what image of God reigns in my gut profoundly shapes what I feel, think, and do.

We might wrap all this up by noticing that the story Jesus tells is open-ended. On the personal level it challenges us: how are things around my gate? On the local, state, and national levels, who are getting our votes? Those concerned that the rich man continue to feast undisturbed, or those concerned that Lazarus not lay at the gate indefinitely. We pray “God bless America;” what are we doing to encourage God to think that’s a good idea?

It turns out that imitating God and encountering God dovetail in surprising ways. “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink?… And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me’” (Matt. 25:37-40).

Edema, Gratitude, Generosity (12th Sunday after Pentecost, 8/31/2025)

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Readings (Track 2)

We’ll start this morning by recalling the first part of today’s collect:

“Lord of all power and might, the author and giver of all good things: Graft in our hearts the love of your Name; increase in us true religion; nourish us with all goodness; and bring forth in us the fruit of good works…”

What’s worth noticing about this and many of our collects—the prayers that collect our thoughts and intentions at the beginning of our worship—is that it implies a story. There’s a past: God, “the author and giver of all good things.” There’s a future: “the fruit of good works” which have yet to ripen. We’re in the middle of the story. And who we are, what we should do, what we can hope—all of that is determined by what story we’re in the middle of.

We’re in the middle of a story. We’re not at the beginning, so there’s no question of starting with a blank sheet of paper. And we’re not at the end, which is why despair is never an appropriate response.

The “author and giver of all good things” in our collect also points to a theme that runs through our readings: gratitude and its proper expression.

Today gratitude is seriously under-rated as a virtue; we may even think of it as a sign of weakness. Other times and places got it right: The Roman politician and philosopher Cicero claimed “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.” The modern psychologist Abraham Maslow: “[The most fortunate are those who] have a wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder, and even ecstasy.” And Albert Einstein: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

The “author and giver of all good things.” If that’s who God is, if that’s what God has done, if that’s the story we’re in, then gratitude is the fitting response. And, conversely, it’s the failure of gratitude that regularly gets us into so much trouble.

Creation invites us to gratitude. Many of our psalms give us words to express this. “All of them look to you / to give them their food in due season.” Or we can attend to the conversations in the hard sciences. It turns out that a good number of physical constants like the strength of gravity need pretty fine tuning for life to be possible. The fine tuning of our world is so improbable that to avoid thanking the Creator we have to postulate a virtually infinite number of universes, with us happily in the one that holds together. (Google “John Polkinghorne” and “anthropic principle.”)

Equally, as Christians God’s project of restoring all creation elicits our gratitude. From the First Family on, God has responded to our rebellion with ever more daring attempts at reconciliation, culminating in taking human flesh in Jesus. So our word ‘eucharist’ is simply the Greek word ‘thanksgiving.’

The theme of gratitude runs just below the surface in our second reading from Hebrews. On the surface it’s about what worship is pleasing to God. If we think of worship as primarily what happens in the sanctuary, we’re surprised, because the text talks about what we do out there as worship: mutual love, hospitality to strangers, holding marriage in honor, contentment, sharing what we have. All this can sound rather much if we’ve forgotten what came before our reading: “since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks!” Gratitude.

Our Gospel reading: the lectionary prescribed verses 1 and 7-14, eliminating the man with dropsy in vv.2-6. The Pharisees would have been happy to eliminate him; with apologies to the lectionary editors I’ve left him in.

Jesus has gotten an invitation to eat with some leading Pharisees on the Sabbath. And “just then, in front of him, there was a man who had dropsy.” Today we use ‘edema’ rather than ‘dropsy’, swelling caused by the retention of fluid. There’s a predictable argument about what work is lawful on the Sabbath, and Jesus heals the man. Jesus then shifts the conversation to what he’s watched the Pharisees doing and starts giving them some unwelcome advice: don’t keep jockeying for the places of honor, stop limiting your invitations to those who can reciprocate. God’s in the business of humbling those who exalt themselves and of exalting those who humble themselves.

So we’ve got a healing and Jesus admonishing the Pharisees. Outside of it all happening at the same meal, is there anything else that holds it together? Turns out there is, for in that culture edema—various parts of the body all puffed up with extra water combined with an insatiable thirst—served as a metaphor for greed, the sort of behavior the Pharisees are exhibiting, the antithesis of gratitude.

Most groups have a pecking order: who defers to whom. We all learned this on the playground. As we get older, negotiating that pecking order gets more subtle, but rarely disappears. In 1st Century culture, meals were prime opportunities to display the pecking order: who’s closest to the host? Who’s at the head table? So, predictably, a lot of jockeying takes place. Likewise, lunch and dinner invitations are a prime opportunity to cement and maybe even augment one’s rank. It’s very easy for it to become a form of greed, not for food or for money, but for status.

As you may have noticed, the man with edema is introduced abruptly: “Just then, in front of him, there was a man who had dropsy.” It’s surprising, and commentators wonder about how he got there. Well, once we realize that the Pharisees are suffering from their own form of edema, we can see that the surprise is intentional: we don’t expect someone who’s ritually unclean in the home of a leading Pharisee; we don’t expect the Pharisees, spiritual athletes every one, to be so afflicted with greed for status. But there we have it.

The text as Luke’s given it to us is a gem. It turns out to be about what Jesus can heal easily and not-so-easily. Jesus can easily heal the man with the physical edema; he finds it harder to heal the Pharisees’ greed for status—they don’t think they’re sick. It turns out to be about what sorts of work are appropriate for the Sabbath. Healing, just like pulling a child or even an ox from a pit, is appropriate for the Sabbath; the work of jockeying for status is not.

The text is a gem, but there’s also a sharp pointy end to notice: “He said also to the one who had invited him, ‘When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.’” We usually think of gratitude as a sort of reciprocity: we receive something from someone; we reciprocate. Here Jesus breaks it open: don’t confine your generosity to those who can pay you back: include those who can’t pay you back. That’s where Jesus’ vision of God’s generosity has been heading. God gives generously to us, but not to set up another closed circle! Recall God’s words through Isaiah: “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the LORD; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats” (1:11). God gives generously to us so that our gratitude is expressed in giving to others.

What we’ve got here is the logic implicit in Jesus’ joining of the two commandments to make the Great Commandment. “Love the Lord your God” alone can be—well, is often—misunderstood as setting up a closed circle: just me and Jesus. “And your neighbor as yourself” reminds us that loving this God is about creating open, ever-expanding circles.

So, to try to pull all this together! The story we find ourselves in has as its center a breathtakingly generous God, to which our proper response is gratitude. Because strong currents in our culture discourage gratitude, we often need to be intentional in nurturing gratitude. But—here’s the sharp pointy end—we’re not talking about generic gratitude, which can settle into a comfortable closed circle, but a gratitude expressed in generosity toward those who are currently in no position to reciprocate.

As we prayed in this morning’s collect “Graft in our hearts the love of your Name; increase in us true religion; nourish us with all goodness; and bring forth in us the fruit of good works.” Amen.

Jesus: God is generous; be like God (9th Sunday after Pentecost, 8/10/2025)

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Readings (Track 2)

Today’s Gospel contains a promise, a warning, and a surprise—more than enough for one sermon!

The promise: “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” It’s probably originally addressed to the disciples, to whom last month we heard Jesus say “See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves” (Lk. 10:3).

“Do not be afraid.” Not because there aren’t things to fear, but because all these are no match for the Father’s good pleasure.

“Do not be afraid.” Our efforts often seem to have no effect; this kingdom is pure gift.

What kingdom are we talking about? Recall Daniel’s vision: four beasts (empires) rise from the chaotic sea, each more inhuman than the last. The Ancient of Days deals with them. Then: “I saw one like a son of man / coming with the clouds of heaven. / And he came to the Ancient One / and was presented before him. / 14 To him was given dominion / and glory and kingship, / that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him” (7:13-14).

That was an important vision for Jesus, the reason he often referred to himself as “the son of man.” It was important enough that Jesus needed to correct it; vision and reality often don’t correlate exactly. The vision: “that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him.” Jesus: “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mk. 10:45). And if this is what Jesus is about, it’s what his followers are to be about. Recall Jesus’ words leading up to that: “42 ‘You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. 43 But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. 45 For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many’” (Mk. 10:42-45).

That’s the kingdom the Father is pleased to give to the disciples, to us. Lambs in the midst of wolves, we hang onto it. And we’re greatly encouraged to have Abraham as our adoptive father (our first lesson). Descendants as numerous as the stars at his age? About as believable as us receiving the kingdom. But he believes and it happens.

The warning: stay alert (in the short parable about the waiting servants). What’s that about? In today’s Gospel Jesus doesn’t explain it, but starting with “Be dressed for action” he assumes his absence. His return is certain, but the timing unknown. Stay alert, first, because with the timing unknown it’s not prudent to put off the more difficult parts of discipleship until tomorrow. Stay alert, second, because it’s too easy to fall into the habits of Jesus’ opponents.

A few weeks ago our Gospel text from Luke centered on the Lord’s Prayer. Luke then described multiple conflicts with Jesus’ opponents. Jesus to a Pharisee: “Now you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness” (11:39). So our current chapter (chapter 12) begins with Jesus warning the crowd: “”Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees, that is, their hypocrisy” (12:1). Surprisingly, in the middle of his teaching someone calls out “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” We heard that last week. To Jesus it sounds like the same greed he encountered among the Pharisees, so tells the parable of the rich fool and transitions into a longer teaching about the Father’s generosity and pointlessness of worry (the last bit of which we heard today).

Stay alert. The Gospels record Jesus’ critiques of the Pharisees not because the Pharisees were particularly bad, but because we too easily fall into the same errors, as twenty centuries of Church history sadly attest. Circling back to “it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom,” the last thing we want to do is take that as license to “lord it over” others, to be “tyrants.” Stay alert.

The surprise. Let’s return to that short waiting servants parable. “Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes…” However we expect it to continue, it isn’t with “truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them.” Jesus is really serious about this “not to be served but to serve.” The Table: not where we feed God, but where God feeds us. What might this do to our imaginations? I’m intrigued by Miroslav Volf’s suggestion regarding the New Jerusalem: “God has now made the world such that God does not need to rule” (The Home of God p.214).

Finally, a short postscript. This coming of the Son of Man “at an unexpected hour:” that’s about the end of this age, right? Well, yes and no. Yes, that’s primarily what “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again” is about. But recall Jesus’ parable towards the end of Matthew:

“’Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me’” (25:37-40). That also is a coming of the Son of Man. That also is a reason to stay alert.

How to build a secure portfolio (8th Sunday after Pentecost, 8/3/2025)

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Readings

There are two sermons here. They have the same beginning, but split midway depending on whether Track 1 or Track 2 in the readings is followed.

“Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” Putting that question to Jesus was perhaps not the guy’s smartest move, as seen by Jesus’ follow up: “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” ‘Greed’ is a common translation of the Greek; ‘insatiableness,’ ‘avarice,’ or ‘covetousness’ are also quite possible. A standard dictionary (BDAG) gives this definition: “the state of desiring to have more than one’s due.” While we won’t be focusing on this, “one’s due” comes into play because greed does tend to blur the line between what’s mine and what’s not mine. Anyhow, greed, one of the foci of this sermon as we notice some of the issues Jesus’ words raise.

Jesus follows up that “Take care!” with a short parable that ends “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.” And here we might recall that bit from Matthew’s “Sermon on the Mount:” “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal” (6:19-20).

“Store up…. treasures in heaven.” How are we supposed to do that? If we’d asked that of Jesus’ audience, I suspect that the common reply would have been “Read Tobit!” Tobit, a lovely short story we relegated to the Apocrypha. Early in the story Tobit, thinking he’s near death, gives this counsel to his son:

“To all those who practice righteousness give alms from your possessions, and do not let your eye begrudge the gift when you make it. Do not turn your face away from anyone who is poor, and the face of God will not be turned away from you. If you have many possessions, make your gift from them in proportion; if few, do not be afraid to give according to the little you have. So you will be laying up a good treasure for yourself against the day of necessity” (Tob. 4:7-9).

In fact, just over half of Matthew 6 (the middle chapter in Matthew’s “Sermon on the Mount”) is devoted to almsgiving and generosity. Recall: don’t give alms to get more status (vv.2-4); store up treasures in heaven (give alms!) (vv.19-21), generous vs. greedy eyes (vv.22-23); don’t try to serve two masters (v.24; the likely source of the equation of greed with idolatry in our Colossians reading); don’t worry about possessions/seek the Kingdom (vv.25-34).

What are we supposed to do with Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel? Perhaps at least three things. First, recognize that Jesus, Tobit, and most of the Greek and Roman moralists were swimming upstream. That T-shirt “The one who dies with the most toys wins” would have translated very easily into Aramaic, Greek, or Latin! Recognize how much of the constant flow of advertising in all media depends on stoking our greed, insatiableness, avarice, covetousness. Lean into the moments that allow us to acknowledge “this is enough.”

Second, wonder about how generosity and greed are playing out in our decisions, in our checkbooks. Our almsgiving can be a useful indicator. (Stewardship of possessions is about all our investments and expenditures, not simply what we give to the parish. Nothing in the New Testament encourages us to ignore Tobit’s (or Jesus’!) counsel.)

Third, we might wonder about how we respond to Jesus’ words as a community. We were never meant to figure out how to individually respond to, say, the Sermon on the Mount. Rather, the challenge/invitation: how do we order our community life so that Jesus’ words make sense? At the national level programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid were attempts to do this. Recall Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor under FDR for 12 years, who had a major role in shaping the “New Deal,” and whose feast we celebrate May 13. But national programs are vulnerable to political winds, and this might be a time to wonder what more we might be doing on the parish, diocesan, or national church levels.

Now, what of our other readings?

Track 1

Colossians works with a strong set of spatial images. In baptism we’ve been raised with Christ, who is “seated at the right hand of God.” Our life “is hidden with Christ in God.” And there are times when we need to hear that, to hold onto that. But our Gospel reading reminds us to hold Paul’s “the things that are above” vs. “the earthly” in tension with the quite wondrous effect of almsgiving: the gift to the poor here registers as a deposit there. Or, recalling another text from Matthew, Jesus is “seated at the right hand of God” and hidden among the hungry, thirsty, strange, and naked—to the surprise of both the sheep and the goats (Mt 25:31-46).

Meanwhile, our first reading from Hosea, gives us, as it were, Jesus’ Father’s experience in Jesus’ parable. The rich man with the fertile land isn’t a bad picture of Israel, whose history God recites in the opening verses. “They kept sacrificing to the Baals,” for the common wisdom was that if you really wanted abundant harvests, Baal was the ticket. God responds in anger, but not only anger: “My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.” We keep choosing death, reducing life to “the abundance of possessions,” and God will stop at nothing to get us back on track, as we are about to celebrate again at the Table.

Track 2

Both the first lesson from the Old Testament and the Psalm are chosen to accompany the Gospel. Both are products of what we call, broadly, Israel’s wisdom traditions; both—perhaps in keeping with those traditions—raise as many questions as they answer.

“Even though honored, they cannot live for ever; / they are like the beasts that perish.” Not a bad summary of Jesus’ parable. But consider v.4: “Why should I be afraid in evil days, / when the wickedness of those at my heels surrounds me…” Is the death of the wicked in itself reason enough not to fear? Probably not. The psalmist warns us that this text is a riddle (v.3), and leaves the riddle in our laps: why shouldn’t fear get the last word?

As you may recall, the lectionary gives us only the first half of the psalm. It’s not that the answer to the riddle is in the second half, but v.15 is certainly a hint: “But God will ransom my life; / he will snatch me from the grasp of death.” What’s the psalmist talking about? Commentators—predictably—disagree. But what we can observe is that in the psalmist’s imagination God’s agency—unbound by the assumptions of the wicked—is reason for hope. A popular commercial asks “What’s in your wallet?” This psalm asks us: “What’s in your imagination?”

What of our first reading from Ecclesiastes, which claims Solomon as its author? With the Gospel’s “for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions” and “You fool!” ringing in our ears, we do wonder whether Solomon is among the wise or the foolish, a question Scripture itself leaves open. The rich man and Solomon: both remembered for their building projects, for their stored up treasure. Jesus’ parable doesn’t describe the rich man’s treatment of his underlings; the Book of Kings tells us that Solomon’s taxes were so heavy that most of Israel revolted immediately after his death.

The point here is not to trash Solomon, but to observe how Jesus’ parable touches even Solomon. We often think of wisdom and folly as being miles apart; in practice the border between them can be razor-thin. From the Book of Proverbs: “Do you see persons wise in their own eyes? There is more hope for fools than for them” (26:12). Jesus’ parable throws Solomon into question; how soundly should I be sleeping?

“Take care!—Jesus tells us—Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

Life with this generous God (15th Sunday after Pentecost, 9/1/2024)

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Readings (Track 1)

For the next five weeks the second reading is from the Letter of James. The James who authored this book is St James of Jerusalem, Jesus’ brother, leader of the Jerusalem church, and martyred about ad 62. We celebrate his feast on October 23.

The letter is a long exhortation to the churches. If there’s a unifying theme, it’s the insight that friendship with God and with the world are mutually exclusive. James uses ‘world’ not for God’s good creation, but for the arrangements we impose on this creation that systematically distort and disfigure it—and us.

So why are God and world in this sense mutually exclusive? The world we’ve created is a zero-sum game: if you have more, I have less, so envy, competition, aggression are only logical. How does James bring God onstage? God is the one “who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly,” and–in the verses we read—“Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.” It’s of a piece with what his Brother used to say: “Look at the birds of the air… Consider the lilies of the field…” Our God is a generous God. If we live both believing that and treating life as a zero-sum game, we’re consign ourselves to incoherency. James uses words like ‘double-minded’ and ‘adulterers’.

This sort of incoherency is something many of us have plenty of experience in, and I speak from experience. We track our finances on a piece of computer software called Quicken. It’s all there: checking accounts, savings accounts, credit cards, investments. When I’m working with it it’s difficult not to assume that what’s on the screen is what’s important about our family’s fortunes in the present and the future. Maybe an incense burner next to the computer would help, or a program that would send those birds that Jesus was talking about across the screen periodically. The comfort in all this is a remark Karl Barth makes in the midst of his massive Church Dogmatics, that the difference between the Christian and non-Christian is not that one is righteous and the other a sinner, but that the Christian is a sinner with an uneasy conscience.

Anyhow, back to James. Let’s walk through the text together, as James works at what it means to be a friend to this generous God.

“Every generous act of giving” is from the Father of lights. God is the generous giver. And what does God give? Well,—verse v.18—life: “he gave us birth by the word of truth.” The Father gives birth. There’s a flexibility in the biblical image of God the Father that we’ve lost. Or, if you’re looking for an image of God as Mother, here it is.

“…so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures.” A different fertility image, and also a hint that what God is doing in us is for the benefit of all God’s creatures.

“Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger, for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness.” The prophets had used fruit as an image for the righteousness God sought in Israel; James uses that image: God’s still looking for fruit & your quick speech and quick anger won’t produce it. But I suspect there’s more here. James has just given us the image of God giving us birth. There’s mystery there, and if we’re attentive to that mystery we realize that quick speech and quick anger don’t cut it.

Let me stay with this for a moment. We realize instinctively that there’s mystery, something sacred, in birth. At the same time, we tend to assume that there’s no mystery to the people we interact with every day, or even the one we see in the mirror. What James is doing with this image is helping us to recover that sense of mystery and the sacred. Each one of us is someone God is birthing. We know we don’t understand God; why are we so quick to assume that we know all we need to know about what God’s birthing?

This works the other way, too. We may struggle with a sense of God’s absence. Well, one place to start is by attending to the mystery in God’s creatures. Attend to the mystery of God’s creatures; attend to the mystery of God. Who knows where that might lead?

Back to James. “Welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.” This picks up the word from the birth image and urges us to care for it. We might recall Jesus’ parable of the sower and the different soils into which the seed falls. Guard that seed, that word, Jesus’ brother tells us. (You may recall Mark Twain’s comment that went something like this: “Some people say, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. I say, put all your eggs in one basket, and watch that basket.” That’s what’s in play here.)

How we guard that seed is developed in the following verses: “be doers of the word, and not merely hearers.” Again, James is working themes common to Jesus’ preaching, as in the conclusion to the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew: hearing the word and obeying it is like building your house on the rock; hearing and not obeying is like building on sand.

The last two verses contrast true and false religion: “If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” True enough, we might say, but what an odd combination of themes.

“And do not bridle their tongues.” Why talk about this? His hearers need to hear it? True enough. We could also observe that in practice the tongue regularly has a role when we’re hearing but not doing the word. We may not be doing it, but we’re talking about it. This doesn’t confuse God, but it often confuses us.

[“If any one thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this man’s religion is vain.” There’s another dimension to this worth noticing, one I ran across in the middle of Revelation: “the accuser of our comrades has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God” (12:10b). That description of Satan is worth chewing on. Of all the ways John could have described him, he focuses on Satan as accuser. And this description brings us full circle back to some of Satan’s earliest appearances in the Old Testament: the accuser of Job (“Job just worships you because you bless and protect him”), the accuser of Joshua the high priest (see Zechariah 3), and, in the garden, the accuser of God Almighty (“God’s prohibiting you this tree out of selfishness”). All these accusations—through the tongue. So let us watch our own tongues. How often do we accuse, lowering others and thereby—conveniently—raising ourselves up? That’s a habit to discourage—before our noses begin to complain of the smell of sulfur. ]

Pure and undefiled religion? “To care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” We might recall Jesus’ many arguments with the Pharisees: mercy, not sacrifice. More, caring for orphans and widows reflects God’s generous character. And it’s in this context that we need to hear the last part: “to keep oneself unstained by the world.” James hasn’t changed the subject. The world tells us that we’re in a zero-sum game, so more for the orphans and widows means less for me. Believing that, acting on that, is getting stained by the world. Stained by the world: believing that more for the poor means less for me, that acknowledgement of your needs means that mine go unmet, that the most important information about me is in Quicken. Stained by the world: losing any sense of mystery and the sacred as we encounter one another.

I’ve focused this morning on our second reading. What happens if we pull back the camera? At least two things; perhaps you’ll discover others as you reread these lessons later today or later in the week. First, the first reading from Song of Songs and the Psalm give us a more specific image for this generous God: God as Lover. So these readings encourage us to experience God’s generosity as the generosity of a lover. Second, Jesus’ argument with some of the religious leaders ends with a list of things that defile: “fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice” etc. Notice how many of these result from that zero-sum game orientation. If we allow that vision of God’s generosity to form us, to transform us, we’re simultaneously draining the power of a number of these temptations.

“Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.” This, if our eyes are open, is the world we live in. We often say in our dismissal “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.” We can say that also because in this world God is already loving and serving us. In the week ahead we have the opportunity to discover this anew.

The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost: A Sermon

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Readings (Track 1)

One of my favorite sayings about optimists and pessimists runs like this: the optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist agrees. In that context, we might hear Paul’s words as hopeful: there are alternatives.

On the one hand, Paul tracks with the cynic and stoic philosophers: choosing contentment is key to happiness. Then and now that means swimming upstream in a culture that constantly and stridently proclaims that happiness depends on always having more. (It takes effort to swim upstream, hence our collect’s “running to obtain your promises.”)

Notice that the problem is not wealth, but the desire for wealth. Good work can produce wealth, but when the desire for wealth replaces a commitment to good work, it’s never pretty, as in the typical grocery store: too many products that are simply bad for our health, produce like tomatoes that retain the name, but not the taste.

But Paul sets his invitation to contentment in the context of our confession of God as generous Creator (“God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment”). Luke Johnson puts this provocatively: “human existence is in itself a gift from God that cannot in any significant fashion be improved by material possessions.”

But preacher, doesn’t “contentment” mean “boring”? Well, notice how Jesus does contentment, spending so much time at the table that his enemies: “Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!” (Matt. 11:19). OK, preacher, but doesn’t “contentment” mean stagnation? Here the historian Lynn White Jr is helpful: technological progress—harnessing water and wind power—is driven by the monastic commitments to find an alternative to slavery (the source of this power in the classical world) and to live out Paul’s injunction “to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share.” Contentment—Paul thinks—frees us to mirror God’s creative generosity.

“God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.” That’s deeply rooted in the opening chapters of Genesis, and it’s easy to forget how counter-cultural it was/is. Israel, remember, lived between the two cultural powerhouses of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) and Egypt, with Mesopotamia being more relevant in this context.

The creation stories in Mesopotamia ran something like this: sowing, harvesting, keeping the canals dredged: that’s backbreaking work, and finally the minor gods had enough and revolted. The major gods solved the problem by creating humankind—to do the work no one else wanted to do. So if you’re wondering why life is the way it is…

In that context—and that’s the context in which these chapters of Genesis took their present shape—one of the big surprises is that we humans aren’t created to solve a divine problem. So if we weren’t created for that, what were we created for? Genesis—and the rest of Scripture—wonders about that question.

But back to our reading. Living like the gods is a common human dream. And Scripture happily encourages it—as long as we remember how the Living God lives. “God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.” So go and do likewise: “do good…be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share.”

Jesus’ story in our Gospel reading covers much the same ground as our second reading. No surprise: Jesus and Paul are drinking from the same wells. We might notice the last bit: “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” As Christians our faith is properly centered on this someone. But if “they” aren’t listening to Moses and the prophets, that “someone” isn’t going to be convincing. Moses and the prophets: to hazard a summary: the generous Creator expects us to live generously. If “they” find that unbelievable Jesus isn’t going to register. This is why the quality of our parish life is so important: the world badly needs to be able to see what living generously looks like. Our common life is an intrinsic part of our message.

We can imagine responding to Jesus and Paul in good weather; what about in nasty weather? I’m thankful for Jeremiah. In the middle of the Babylonian siege Jeremiah’s cousin comes to him asking him to buy up some family property—a field. The timing could not be worse, for that field is almost certainly currently occupied by some unit in the Babylonian army. Responding to the request and to the divine word, Jeremiah buys the property and dots all the legal i’s and crosses all the legal t’s so that the family’s ownership will remain undisputed. Even in nasty weather by God’s grace Jeremiah is able to act generously, in imitation of this generous God.

Now, a sidebar. While today’s texts have a lot to say about what we do, our images of God are equally important. Jesus is not the Son of just any god, but of the God revealed in Moses and the prophets, the generous God who digs very deep for our healing. Do I believe in that God? Most days that’s a work-in-progress. And what image of God reigns in my gut profoundly shapes what I feel, think, and do.

We might wrap all this up by noticing that the story Jesus tells is open-ended. On the personal level it challenges us: how are things around my gate? On the local, state, and national levels, who are getting our votes? Those concerned that the rich man continue to feast undisturbed, or those concerned that Lazarus not lay at the gate indefinitely. We pray “God bless America;” what are we doing to encourage God to think that’s a good idea?

It turns out that imitating God and encountering God dovetail in surprising ways. “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink?… And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me’” (Matt. 25:37-40).

Re the Daily Office Readings 4/23/2020

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The Readings: Exodus 16:10-21; 1 Peter 2:11-25; John 15:12-27

The people are in the wilderness, transitional or liminal space between slavery and having land. And, as in the Native American vision quest, perhaps learning what they need to learn for their future responsibilities. These days’ readings: the “whatsit,” a.k.a. “manna” (our transcription of the Hebrew word that might translate as “Whatsit?”). I wonder if the whatsit doesn’t turn out to be about divine generosity and human stewardship, passable themes for Earth Day + 1.

Most days—we meet the other days in tomorrow’s reading—they gather what they need for the day (an omer, or about two quarts, per person). The divine generosity: the whatsit’s there. And the generosity extends to the gathering process: “…some gathering more, some less. But when they measured it with an omer, those who gathered much had nothing over, and those who gathered little had no shortage; they gathered as much as each of them needed.” The weak do not go hungry.

Human stewardship: it resists hoarding. “And Moses said to them, ‘Let no one leave any of it over until morning.’ But they did not listen to Moses; some left part of it until morning, and it bred worms and became foul.”

After a long stretch of slavery and its distorting effects, the whatsit is a reintroduction to this G-d’s creation: there is enough for everyone, it is dependable, hoarding is counterproductive.

Fast-forward several centuries: how much of the societal sickness diagnosed by Israel’s prophets came from not having learned from the whatsit?

Fast-forward several centuries: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal… do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” (Matthew 6:19,-25) Same G-d, same creation, same lesson to be learned.

“Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins.”