One Heaven Of A Party
Sermon
Sermons On The First Readings
Series I, Cycle C
Moses saw that look in their eyes. He saw that glimmer of hope on their faces. For when those words dripped like honey from his mouth, the people of God dreamed about what it was going to be like. At first glance, they really do not seem to be very exciting words, but for those who had been toiling in the wilderness, these words were like living water to a parched soul: "When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it ..." (v. 1).
When those words tickled their eardrums, all kinds of thoughts blossomed in their minds: thoughts of a land of their own with crops as far as the eye could see, thoughts of luscious food that would nourish their bodies, and thoughts of living life without fear or famine. They had waited so long for that moment when they would be able to say good-bye to the same old manna and enter the Promised Land. So with high hopes and delightful dreams they went forward, anticipating how Moses was going to complete the sentence: "Is he going to tell us to throw a party? Is he going to tell us to gather all the food and wine and eat and drink until our heart's content? Don't we deserve a little celebration, considering all we have been through?"
God wanted them to have a celebration but probably not the kind for which they were hoping. Moses instructs the Israelites that the first thing they are to do when they come into the Promised Land is to take their first fruits and present them to the Lord. That sounds fair enough. God was going to give them this land, so the least they could do is say a little prayer before the big banquet. But just a prayer over the food was not all God expected. In verses 11 and 12, we find that Moses tells the people that after they present the food and thank God for it, they are to celebrate by giving it all to the Levites, aliens, orphans, and widows. How's that for a celebration -- taking the first bounty you have been dreaming about for years and giving it away to the needy?
I think it is fair to say that when we imagine a celebration, this is not the image that comes to mind. Extravagance and indulgence, these are the things we envision at a celebration; a time to spend money on a nice dress or suit and show up ready to forget the cares of the world for a little while. But gathering up all the food from lavishly decorated tables and driving to a nearby mission to feed the hungry is usually not an activity which appears on an engraved invitation.
What is God saying to us through this challenging text? In order to receive the full impact of Moses' words to the Israelites, we need to appreciate the essence of "celebration" as it comes to us in this text. In effect, God was telling the Israelites through Moses to give out of their fullness, which is what celebrating is all about. The Israelites were being told that when they entered the Promised Land and were filled with joy and bounty, they were to let it spill over so others would share it too. Then they would experience what it means to celebrate life.
Honestly, I wonder if the Israelites were spiritually and emotionally ready for this kind of generosity? This is a probing question for those of us who live in a consumer culture. It seems that in our world a desire to experience the joy of giving is a rare virtue. Our culture spreads the gospel of greed, and many people are converted to it daily. Since childhood, the words, "That's mine, not yours," have shot from our mouths in one form or another. Ownership and possession seem to be what everyone is selling their souls for these days. "The one with the most toys wins." Is this not right? But there is a price to be paid when living a life governed by having and not giving. And the price is having an unbearable itch that is never scratched. The price is realizing that all our possessions will never bring lasting fulfillment. The price is the disappointing discovery of having gone against our creative destiny as those who bear the image of God.
When Jesus told the parable of the rich fool, he was offering this very insight. In the parable Jesus communicates how tragic it is for a person to be void of generosity. Jesus describes a man whose foolish greed caused him to miss out on life's most meaningful action: giving. The man looked upon all of his inherited possessions and became obsessed with hoarding them. At the end of the man's life, Jesus asked the inevitable question, "The things you have prepared, whose will they be?" (Luke 12:20). This pointed question reminded the greedy man that it was useless to keep all of his possessions, for he could never take them with him.
C. S. Lewis wrote of waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to fall back asleep. At the time, he was a bachelor and a college student and remembered how dark and still his dorm room was at Magdalene College. He recalled how there was no way for him to experience anything outside himself. He felt alone in a black hole. Suddenly, it dawned on him that what he was experiencing was the logical end to a self-centered life.1 And "So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God" (Luke 12:21).
This is the very thing from which God was trying to protect the Israelites as they entered the Promised Land. God realized that receiving so much after they had gone without for so long might cause them to become dangerously independent. God realized that their tendency might be to store up their bounty selfishly and forget those who were unable to gather food for themselves. God realized that if they failed to remember that what they possessed was not their own, but only entrusted to them, they would probably fail to remember that they were not their own and be on their way toward ruining what they had been graciously given.
I have always been deeply struck by the damaging effects of selfishness. If we stop and think about it, selfishness is the cause of more pain, chaos, and destruction than any other human vice. All it takes is some overblown pride fertilized by blind insensitivity for corruption to rear its ugly head. History teaches us this. How many individuals, cultures, and civilizations have been destroyed by the simple, yet consuming demon of selfishness? We know this demon exists in our own hearts. After we have hurt a loved one, we look surprisingly at the wounds we have inflicted and confess, "I do not know what happened. I do not know what got into me. I guess I did not think how it would affect you." And we realize that, for a little while, we were not ourselves, and it scares us.
We were not intended to live only for ourselves. We were created as images of a generous God. The eloquent preacher and writer John Claypool shares an insight about our connection to God through generosity:
I never tire of contending that generosity is the most basic of all the virtues. In the time before time, the Bible suggests that God said, "This wonder of aliveness is too good to keep to myself. I want others to get in on this ecstasy and to experience this wonder." This is the biblical answer to the question, "Why something and not nothing?" Creation is at bottom an act of generosity -- God sharing the bounty of what he was and what he had.2
When reflecting on this great truth, we should conclude that we are never more like God than when we are generous. When we give with grateful and joyous hearts, we are somehow sharing with God the ecstasy of generosity. And as we allow ourselves to share what we have, we are imitating the very character of God.
The glorious gift of creation beckons us to reflect the generosity of God. Unfortunately, many of us do not take the time to notice. Consider trees. We walk and drive by them everyday, but do we ever consider how they inherently share and give back to the world in which they live and grow? Gaze at a tree sometime and reflect on the beauty, food, shade, and shelter it gives. Climb a tree and remember how it becomes fuel to warm us, timber to house us, medicine to heal us, and material to clothe us. Yet that is only the beginning. Remember that a tree serves as a homegrown air-conditioner by absorbing enormous amounts of heat. In addition, an average shade tree serves as a humidifier for our environment, releasing 75 to 100 gallons of water into the air per day. A tree is also an air-filter, removing one-quarter pound of dust particles from the air everyday. And that is not all. An average tree supplies all the oxygen needed by ten people in one year and removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.3 A tree demonstrates the generous cycle of life. It receives life and gives back life. Is it any wonder that the psalmist compares those who follow the laws of God as "trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season" (Psalm 1:3)?
I read a true story about a woman who yielded her first fruits in a very generous way. The story attracted so much attention that it appeared in the Boston Globe. The story began with her entering a Hyatt Hotel with her fiancé to plan their wedding reception. They looked over menus filled with sumptuous gourmet food. They pored over a wide variety of china and silver. They even studied catalogs of flower arrangements. When they finally made all their selections, they received the bill. As they looked at what they owed, they discovered that they had very expensive tastes. The bill came to $13,000. They winced a little, wrote a check for half that amount as a down payment, and went home to work on wedding announcements.
A day or two after the announcements were mailed, the groom got cold feet and the wedding was canceled. When the distraught bride returned to the Hyatt to collect her refund, the events manager poured salt on her wounds by telling her that their contract with the hotel was binding. They could only receive $1,300 dollars back. She only had two options: forfeit the rest of her down payment or go ahead with the reception.
An incredible idea swept over this disappointed would-be bride. She thought to herself, "Why not go ahead with the reception?" But wait, whom would she invite, and what would she be celebrating? Suddenly, she knew exactly whom she would invite and why she would invite them. Ten years before, this same woman was down and out, living in a homeless shelter. Fortunately, she was eventually able to find a good job and, over time, set aside a sizable nest egg. Standing in the lobby of the Hyatt, she remembered this and had a gigantically generous notion that she would use her savings to throw a big bash for all the homeless people of downtown Boston. She sent invitations to rescue missions and homeless shelters and made sure everything was ready.
So in June of 1990, the Hyatt Hotel in downtown Boston hosted a party of Kingdom-like proportions. People who normally dug through garbage cans for scraps of food savored the taste of chicken cordon bleu. Those with ragged and torn clothes were served hors d'oeuvres by waiters in tuxedos. Bag ladies, vagrants, and addicts lived like royalty for one night by drinking champagne, eating wedding cake, and dancing to big-band music until well after midnight.4
As the hostess looked upon the celebration and experienced the ecstasy of generosity, I imagine she felt a little of what the hymn writer felt when he wrote these words:
O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths
Its flow may richer, fuller be.5
Try generously giving away the first fruits of the life God has given you. And as you share a laugh with a lonely person, see contentment from a hungry person, receive a hug from a wounded person, you just may close your eyes, hold back a tear, and pray, "Lord, now I know what you mean."
____________
1. Copyright 1993, 2000, John Claypool. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Stories Jesus Still Tells by John Claypool; published by Cowley Publications (p. 15), 907 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02139, www.cowley.org (800-225-1534). Used by permission.
2. Ibid., p. 120. Used by permission.
3. James Earl Massey, Sundays in the Tuskegee Chapel: Selected Sermons (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2000), p. 62.
4. Philip Yancey, What's So Amazing About Grace? (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1997), pp. 48-49.
5. George Matheson, "O Love That Will Not Let Me Go," The Covenant Hymnal: A Worship Book (Chicago: Covenant Publications, 1996).
When those words tickled their eardrums, all kinds of thoughts blossomed in their minds: thoughts of a land of their own with crops as far as the eye could see, thoughts of luscious food that would nourish their bodies, and thoughts of living life without fear or famine. They had waited so long for that moment when they would be able to say good-bye to the same old manna and enter the Promised Land. So with high hopes and delightful dreams they went forward, anticipating how Moses was going to complete the sentence: "Is he going to tell us to throw a party? Is he going to tell us to gather all the food and wine and eat and drink until our heart's content? Don't we deserve a little celebration, considering all we have been through?"
God wanted them to have a celebration but probably not the kind for which they were hoping. Moses instructs the Israelites that the first thing they are to do when they come into the Promised Land is to take their first fruits and present them to the Lord. That sounds fair enough. God was going to give them this land, so the least they could do is say a little prayer before the big banquet. But just a prayer over the food was not all God expected. In verses 11 and 12, we find that Moses tells the people that after they present the food and thank God for it, they are to celebrate by giving it all to the Levites, aliens, orphans, and widows. How's that for a celebration -- taking the first bounty you have been dreaming about for years and giving it away to the needy?
I think it is fair to say that when we imagine a celebration, this is not the image that comes to mind. Extravagance and indulgence, these are the things we envision at a celebration; a time to spend money on a nice dress or suit and show up ready to forget the cares of the world for a little while. But gathering up all the food from lavishly decorated tables and driving to a nearby mission to feed the hungry is usually not an activity which appears on an engraved invitation.
What is God saying to us through this challenging text? In order to receive the full impact of Moses' words to the Israelites, we need to appreciate the essence of "celebration" as it comes to us in this text. In effect, God was telling the Israelites through Moses to give out of their fullness, which is what celebrating is all about. The Israelites were being told that when they entered the Promised Land and were filled with joy and bounty, they were to let it spill over so others would share it too. Then they would experience what it means to celebrate life.
Honestly, I wonder if the Israelites were spiritually and emotionally ready for this kind of generosity? This is a probing question for those of us who live in a consumer culture. It seems that in our world a desire to experience the joy of giving is a rare virtue. Our culture spreads the gospel of greed, and many people are converted to it daily. Since childhood, the words, "That's mine, not yours," have shot from our mouths in one form or another. Ownership and possession seem to be what everyone is selling their souls for these days. "The one with the most toys wins." Is this not right? But there is a price to be paid when living a life governed by having and not giving. And the price is having an unbearable itch that is never scratched. The price is realizing that all our possessions will never bring lasting fulfillment. The price is the disappointing discovery of having gone against our creative destiny as those who bear the image of God.
When Jesus told the parable of the rich fool, he was offering this very insight. In the parable Jesus communicates how tragic it is for a person to be void of generosity. Jesus describes a man whose foolish greed caused him to miss out on life's most meaningful action: giving. The man looked upon all of his inherited possessions and became obsessed with hoarding them. At the end of the man's life, Jesus asked the inevitable question, "The things you have prepared, whose will they be?" (Luke 12:20). This pointed question reminded the greedy man that it was useless to keep all of his possessions, for he could never take them with him.
C. S. Lewis wrote of waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to fall back asleep. At the time, he was a bachelor and a college student and remembered how dark and still his dorm room was at Magdalene College. He recalled how there was no way for him to experience anything outside himself. He felt alone in a black hole. Suddenly, it dawned on him that what he was experiencing was the logical end to a self-centered life.1 And "So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God" (Luke 12:21).
This is the very thing from which God was trying to protect the Israelites as they entered the Promised Land. God realized that receiving so much after they had gone without for so long might cause them to become dangerously independent. God realized that their tendency might be to store up their bounty selfishly and forget those who were unable to gather food for themselves. God realized that if they failed to remember that what they possessed was not their own, but only entrusted to them, they would probably fail to remember that they were not their own and be on their way toward ruining what they had been graciously given.
I have always been deeply struck by the damaging effects of selfishness. If we stop and think about it, selfishness is the cause of more pain, chaos, and destruction than any other human vice. All it takes is some overblown pride fertilized by blind insensitivity for corruption to rear its ugly head. History teaches us this. How many individuals, cultures, and civilizations have been destroyed by the simple, yet consuming demon of selfishness? We know this demon exists in our own hearts. After we have hurt a loved one, we look surprisingly at the wounds we have inflicted and confess, "I do not know what happened. I do not know what got into me. I guess I did not think how it would affect you." And we realize that, for a little while, we were not ourselves, and it scares us.
We were not intended to live only for ourselves. We were created as images of a generous God. The eloquent preacher and writer John Claypool shares an insight about our connection to God through generosity:
I never tire of contending that generosity is the most basic of all the virtues. In the time before time, the Bible suggests that God said, "This wonder of aliveness is too good to keep to myself. I want others to get in on this ecstasy and to experience this wonder." This is the biblical answer to the question, "Why something and not nothing?" Creation is at bottom an act of generosity -- God sharing the bounty of what he was and what he had.2
When reflecting on this great truth, we should conclude that we are never more like God than when we are generous. When we give with grateful and joyous hearts, we are somehow sharing with God the ecstasy of generosity. And as we allow ourselves to share what we have, we are imitating the very character of God.
The glorious gift of creation beckons us to reflect the generosity of God. Unfortunately, many of us do not take the time to notice. Consider trees. We walk and drive by them everyday, but do we ever consider how they inherently share and give back to the world in which they live and grow? Gaze at a tree sometime and reflect on the beauty, food, shade, and shelter it gives. Climb a tree and remember how it becomes fuel to warm us, timber to house us, medicine to heal us, and material to clothe us. Yet that is only the beginning. Remember that a tree serves as a homegrown air-conditioner by absorbing enormous amounts of heat. In addition, an average shade tree serves as a humidifier for our environment, releasing 75 to 100 gallons of water into the air per day. A tree is also an air-filter, removing one-quarter pound of dust particles from the air everyday. And that is not all. An average tree supplies all the oxygen needed by ten people in one year and removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.3 A tree demonstrates the generous cycle of life. It receives life and gives back life. Is it any wonder that the psalmist compares those who follow the laws of God as "trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season" (Psalm 1:3)?
I read a true story about a woman who yielded her first fruits in a very generous way. The story attracted so much attention that it appeared in the Boston Globe. The story began with her entering a Hyatt Hotel with her fiancé to plan their wedding reception. They looked over menus filled with sumptuous gourmet food. They pored over a wide variety of china and silver. They even studied catalogs of flower arrangements. When they finally made all their selections, they received the bill. As they looked at what they owed, they discovered that they had very expensive tastes. The bill came to $13,000. They winced a little, wrote a check for half that amount as a down payment, and went home to work on wedding announcements.
A day or two after the announcements were mailed, the groom got cold feet and the wedding was canceled. When the distraught bride returned to the Hyatt to collect her refund, the events manager poured salt on her wounds by telling her that their contract with the hotel was binding. They could only receive $1,300 dollars back. She only had two options: forfeit the rest of her down payment or go ahead with the reception.
An incredible idea swept over this disappointed would-be bride. She thought to herself, "Why not go ahead with the reception?" But wait, whom would she invite, and what would she be celebrating? Suddenly, she knew exactly whom she would invite and why she would invite them. Ten years before, this same woman was down and out, living in a homeless shelter. Fortunately, she was eventually able to find a good job and, over time, set aside a sizable nest egg. Standing in the lobby of the Hyatt, she remembered this and had a gigantically generous notion that she would use her savings to throw a big bash for all the homeless people of downtown Boston. She sent invitations to rescue missions and homeless shelters and made sure everything was ready.
So in June of 1990, the Hyatt Hotel in downtown Boston hosted a party of Kingdom-like proportions. People who normally dug through garbage cans for scraps of food savored the taste of chicken cordon bleu. Those with ragged and torn clothes were served hors d'oeuvres by waiters in tuxedos. Bag ladies, vagrants, and addicts lived like royalty for one night by drinking champagne, eating wedding cake, and dancing to big-band music until well after midnight.4
As the hostess looked upon the celebration and experienced the ecstasy of generosity, I imagine she felt a little of what the hymn writer felt when he wrote these words:
O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths
Its flow may richer, fuller be.5
Try generously giving away the first fruits of the life God has given you. And as you share a laugh with a lonely person, see contentment from a hungry person, receive a hug from a wounded person, you just may close your eyes, hold back a tear, and pray, "Lord, now I know what you mean."
____________
1. Copyright 1993, 2000, John Claypool. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Stories Jesus Still Tells by John Claypool; published by Cowley Publications (p. 15), 907 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02139, www.cowley.org (800-225-1534). Used by permission.
2. Ibid., p. 120. Used by permission.
3. James Earl Massey, Sundays in the Tuskegee Chapel: Selected Sermons (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2000), p. 62.
4. Philip Yancey, What's So Amazing About Grace? (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1997), pp. 48-49.
5. George Matheson, "O Love That Will Not Let Me Go," The Covenant Hymnal: A Worship Book (Chicago: Covenant Publications, 1996).
