Sermon for the 4 th Sunday after Trinity, June 27, 2010
Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful. Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven: give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over. ”
SOMETIMES the most valuable thing we might give and the least welcomed by the one who is the lucky recipient of the gift is the gift of advice. I therefore hesitantly launch another weekly attempt to wrap this box in bright foil and flouncy ribbons and bows for you to unwrap in your leisure and consider keeping or rewrapping and giving to someone else on their birthday. But if you gave this gift away, especially today's little package , you just might have got it right. We will see…
Every time I end a sermon, it's my office to remind us all of Jesus' words that it is better to give than to receive . That familiar old saw can resonate in our minds without evaluation or real agreement, though we may even quote it to each other . But is it true? Is it really better to give or to receive ? Make the gift a million dollars, and are you better off to give it or to get it? Our worldly minds reel to think in those terms, and yet, what would that mean ? Yes, you would be a million poorer in accountant's terms, but you would have had to possess the million before you handed it over. You were a millionaire a moment ago. Somehow you received that portion from somewhere, either inheritance or a whale of a good paying job, wise investment, a bank robbery or a lucky day panning for gold. In any case, your first million came to you and that's something.
I once rode an hour in my car with a man who had recently found Christ and was excited. He told me that he'd been a successful businessman and had even earned then lost a fortune at least a couple of times. Now it was all about the Lord and he noticed a funny thing: the best thing he had ever owned was now hard to give away, to people not sure they wanted it when he generously offered them his favorite gift. He said to me, “If it were only money, everyone would understand and be willing to receive it. If salvation were only a matter of possessing a million dollars, and you knew of a warehouse where anyone could simply go in and be given a sack with $1 million in it, wouldn't you call every phone number you knew to let all your friends, relations and acquaintances know where they might pick theirs up? And wouldn't they go get their own?”
He was referring here to another aspect of that million dollar gift. It's something to wake up one day to find you have a fortune. To have and to hold such wealth truly would be amazing, as the money – a symbol for the value you might now use to obtain things, services, lifestyle, or mobility you never previously had – could open doors to your life once shut because you lacked the means. But then you have a second awakening when you look around at your fellows and realize they could use the same doors opening for them , and you have the wonderful thought that your million might make more people happy than just yourself. You see eyes brighten as your fortunate ones read the amount of your check to them, blinking up into your face and mouthing thankful words that won't form, sucking in air and tearing at the corners… “for me?” And you know your life's worth living because you have just made somebody else rich.
Now, having been able to get a million and having given it away , you set about to get another million and choose someone else whose life would benefit from your generosity. You're a rich person, not by what you held on to, but because you were the source of freedom for another. And you're beginning to understand what Jesus was all about.
St. Paul wrote the Corinthians, “As ye abound in every thing, in faith, and utterance, and knowledge, and in all diligence, and in your love to us, see that ye abound in this grace also… For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich.” 2 Cor 8:7-9 Jesus came to give away all He had to the impoverished people He found on earth. Nothing of earthly fortune was found in His pockets when the soldiers rummaged through the dying man's clothing, for He had never had money. In fact, the one who held the money for Him had hung himself earlier that day and we may only guess where that small fund had gone. But the riches that Christ possessed and that He gave away were readily and profoundly seen and heard on the hilltop in that dark hour. “ Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Jesus couldn't have given any more valuable gift to humankind than the forgiveness of heaven won for all of us by His Passion, His shed blood, and His prayer from that cross. A million dollars is chump change by comparison. A million can't compare to such a rich, impressive gift.
If we, who have received the gift of salvation through our Savior's life and teaching, His holy example and wonderful sacrifice, have the most valuable thing anyone might have, does it make sense to give it away? It doesn't make sense that we don't. Call everyone with the address of the warehouse full of million dollar packages—that would be easy to imagine. But call everyone with the truth of where we go after this life, either with Jesus or without Jesus, and of how simple it is to realize and receive that treasure: why is that so hard? The empty seats in churches belong to the friends and relatives we didn't mention our faith to, and who haven't really made their choice for Him because it wasn't told to them. We're afraid to seem religious , and that's a mark of this age. But seeming religious has been unwelcome in every age. How do we overcome that?
The most successful evangelist since St. Paul has been, of course, Billy Graham. His approach was simple. Tell them the good news of Jesus Christ, let them connect with the sinfulness we all share, to our shame and desperate need, and then show them that forgiveness, new life, and a clean slate awaits them if only they will get up from their stadium seats and walk down to the platform where someone is waiting to pray with them and help them receive the salvation Jesus offers us all. And as the choir sings “Just as I am without one plea,” the folks stir and pour down the aisles and stairs to mass on the grassy field or basketball court, and everyone feels the tug. I've been there and felt it. It was hard not to go down myself, even though I figured I was a Christian and didn't need to do this all over again. I might have greatly profited by doing it back then, now I realize, with the hundred thousand in the L.A. Coliseum.
But what did Billy offer the thousands who came? Forgiveness . And why is that so welcome? We all carry around a kind of a checkbook full of red ink entries. We started with some puny amount, but wrote checks against that measly sum that soon broke our bank account, yet we wrote more and more checks. What do some people say? “Of course there's more money in my account; I still have checks, don't I?” So there's this enormous deficit and we carry the evidence in our purse or back pocket and we're afraid to let anyone see the number we've most recently entered, fearful of even looking at it ourselves. A million dollars down . Debt we can't imagine paying back. Broken promises, rubber checks, failings and falsehoods and foibles stand like ghosts in our minds pointing accusatory fingers back at us. Don't we all have a bill that's run too far into the red? Aren't we all afraid to know what's on our tab? So we pretend, we buy things to seem okay to others, if we can't fool ourselves, and we pose like starlets for photo ops, smiling. Everybody's doing fine here, thanks. It's great being me.
Then Billy touches our checkbook register with loving hands and reminds us we're broke, busted flat, overdrawn and helpless. And then he offers us a way, the only way.
Now, how does that translate into our lives ? If we have Christ, we've made that transaction, but it might be good to remind ourselves of it from time to time. That's what the confessional is about, for we need to balance the book and have Him pay off again our recurring indebtedness. Every week we have an altar call as good and as effective as Billy's Crusade where we come forward to kneel at this altar and receive Christ's Body for our health and identification with Him, and Jesus' Blood to wash us of our sins. If all that is alive and well, the next move is to give it away. We may never fully appreciate the wealth of our redemption, the value of our faith, the treasure of our salvation and the golden gift of eternal life until we give it away. To be the means by which another soul gets his or her checkbook cleared, paid off, filled up with untold fortune—to be that lucky one who has made a way for another to have this blessing is wealth beyond a bank account. And how can we do it? We're not Billy Graham. We can't preach, nor would it be well received if we did.
To give and to forgive can be that way. When a fallen sinful person first receives the light of the Lord, one of the most attractive and honest fruits of their new life can be for them to go to everyone they know and ask their forgiveness. “I've been a lousy friend to you and I want to ask you to forgive me.” It's funny how people may react to that, but it certainly changes your standing with them if then you tell them what you've found . It's humbly offered. It's offered from below, not above. And it's still a million dollar gift, but not from some moneybags of a rich relative, rather this invaluable gift comes from the poorest person they know. That person just asked for you to let them off the hook, to grant them forgiveness. They're not angling for some obeisance from you, some admission of need or guilt. They are just showing you what they found that caused them to change the way they see you and everything else around them. It makes the gift of everlasting life something to consider, to seek for yourself. See how that turns the tables and might allow your proud friend or brother to want what you know he needs?
To give and to forgive. These were Christ's commandments, summed up. We are to love one another as He loves us, and that is giving of ourselves to the end of our entire bank account, the balance of our lives turned over to our fellow faithful lovers of Christ. And we are to love anyone and everyone as much as we love ourselves, so we give them all we have that they'll receive. And were we to do that while bearing them a grudge, while judging their sins, while considering them less that we are, it would kill the deal, and injure our souls as well. To give, to forgive, to love and to live are the ways of Christ. Jesus looked at the rich young ruler and knew what he needed most: “One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me.” Mark 10:21 If it only were money, we'd get it. If we only knew we have, not a million, but a billion dollars today, right now, ready to give away…
PFH+