When Giving Gets Personal
Sermon
MONEY AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD
Can The Rich Be Righteous; Can The Righteous Be Rich?
To tell the truth, I had wondered whether the reports I had read were exaggerated. Writer after writer wrote of the emotion it aroused when they saw it. Newscasters commented about its power to evoke feelings in thousands of people. A minister friend told me how he wept openly in its presence.
By now throngs had made their way to this unusual serpentine Washington monument, so unlike those dedicated to Jefferson or Lincoln. And the day came - in gray February - when I, too, approached the now fabled monument with a mixture of curiosity and wonder and skepticism.
It would be inaccurate to say that I suddenly was overcome with a torrent of emotion or overwhelmed with uncontrollable feeling. Slowly, very slowly I made my way along the black granite wall, reading carefully, selectively, the names engraved there.
At the foot of the wall, there were, from time to time, items placed in honor and homage of the departed. Some worn combat boots were there. A locket, a picture, a faded bouquet of flowers emitting their last beauty and fragrance were there.
And yes, there were people, by the hundreds probably, tracing with tender fingers, the inscribed names of their beloved who gave the ultimate sacrifice of blood in battle. And most tender of all, a mother and a beautiful little girl, six years old, perhaps, with her innocent little fingers in the tracery of her father's name. And, to tell you the truth, I would have to say the reports were not exaggerated. I, too, felt the trembling within, the overwhelming grief, the tremulous sadness, and the unexplainable sense of gratitude which comes in the presence of personal sacrifice.
However, this was not a solitary experience. Some years ago, my wife and I were on our way to Australia for a world church convention. We were fortunate to stop in Hawaii a while. On a morning tour we stopped at the famous cemetery where so many World War II veterans are buried. And later, we took the boat out to the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial marking the underwater tomb of the Pearl Harbor attack.
The guide was impressive in the recitation of the surprise attack. He recounted how many had lost their lives and that now over 1,500 men were buried beneath us, entombed in the Arizona - men whose dreams of embracing wives and sweethearts were buried there; men who looked forward to their sons' football games and their daughters' ballet recitals, submerged there; men who in a rush of patriotic duty and vision of freedom willingly served a larger cause than self. As I watched, even yet splotches of oil rose up from the sunken Arizona, and I felt the emotion well up within and turned my head to hide the emerging tears. When giving is personal, it's powerful.
I.
But selfishness gets powerful, too. And the story of our lives and the life of our nation could be that of our tug--of--war between giving and grasping, sharing and accumulating, gratitude and greed. If World War II was marked by unusual selflessness and patriotism, Vietnam was marked by cynicism and a sense of wasted life and a nation, which until recently, rejected the very soldiers it sent off to die in its name.
If earlier generations, in the idealism of John F. Kennedy, were intent on doing all they could for their country, later generations have been content to take all they could from their country, their community, and even their church.
A distinguished critic of American society, Christopher Lasch, author of The Culture of Narcissism, described the hardened selfishness which had become the almost obsessive--compulsive patterns of many Americans. The culture of acquisition and accumulation, the thrust to satisfy every craving and to stimulate every nerve ending - again and again - led to an emotional emptiness and spiritual void in the lives of many.
Many, like the vacant--eyed models in many of our magazines, gave the impression of sated sophistication and certain weariness with mere bourgeois sensualism. Overused sexually and overpaid for what was essentially an accident of beauty in birth, they manage, nevertheless, to pose provocatively to invite us into their privileged, if well used, pleasure if we will just buy the garment for our oversized collection. And our dollars roll out and their dollars roll in.
Before his death, Christopher Lasch finished another book titled The Revolt of the Elites and The Betrayal of Democracy. In an excerpted article in Harper's Magazine, Lasch says the chief threat of our time comes not from the poor, unwashed masses. Nor does it come, thank God, from that much--maligned, favorite whipping boy of sociologists, that disgusting bourgeois, middle--class, middle--aged, middle--America which still, in the stereotyped vision of the sociological elite, is behind the stereotyped white picket fence of Muncie, Indiana.
No, the chief threat to our country is not there, says Lasch. The chief threat now comes from America's elite classes, "those who control the international flow of money and information, preside over philanthropic foundations and institutions of higher learning, manage the instruments of cultural production, and thus set the terms of public debate" (Harper's, November, 1994, p. 39).
These are they, says Lasch, who have "lost faith in the values, what remains of them, of the West." Thumbing their noses at the now somewhat demeaned values of bourgeois Western civilization, the elites, say Lasch, identify more with their elite counterparts in other cultures and nations. They like to forget that their own country - this country - is the result of a long series of sacrifices and self--giving and hard work of generations and predecessors.
The elites came from that group of people in the upper twenty percent of the income structure who control half the country's wealth. And it is only this group who, in the last twenty years, has experienced any real growth in net personal income. The middle class, in contrast, declined and is still going down.
The upper middle class often distinguishes itself from the rest of the population in a way of life that is glamorous, gaudy, and indecently lavish. They maintain themselves in a state of "perpetual youthfulness, eternally attractive and remarriagable," says Lasch, whereas ordinary people have a more highly developed sense of the tragic elements in human life and history.
It is this upper twenty percent which increasingly withdraws from the public sector, putting children in private schools, building private enclaves with private security guards for a private perpetuation of paradise while the middle class diminishes in size, influence, and respect, and the lower classes increase and languish.
Many of the virtues of aristocracy have been ignored by this new elite who feel little obligation to give to ensure the survival of the social infrastructure. Many do not uphold common values and a common frame of reference, which enable a civilization to endure. At least the middle class, says Lasch, provides a common ground, a common set of standards, a common sense of sharing and giving which gave stability to our nation and hold at bay the overwhelming power of greed and selfishness.
We need that again, says Lasch and others. We need again the power of personal giving.
II.
If we need the power of personal giving to combat the selfishness and greed of the elite, we also need the power of personal giving to combat our own greed and selfishness.
Most of us are in favor of giving and generosity and thoughtfulness, especially if it is the other fellow doing it. Most of us agree that "what the world needs now is love, sweet love," as long as the other fellow is giving it and we are getting it.
But to talk of giving and self--giving and even self--sacrifice seems to fly in the face of our need for self--esteem and self--affirmation and self--fulfillment and self--realization. Indeed, the shelves of bookstores are loaded today with self--help books by the hundreds devoted not to helping others, but to helping ourselves.
Consequently, the classic Christian notions of self--denial and self--giving may not find a receptive mind or heart in today's population. Women rightly complain of how many of them have been exploited for centuries because they were expected to deny themselves and to think of others, namely men, rather than themselves. People smitten with bouts of low self--esteem may find it regressive to think of self--giving and self--denial and self--sacrifice just when they are beginning to walk straight and tall in the world.
And yet, it is in the act of giving oneself for a higher purpose and nobler cause that the self is awakened to new realities and called out of the smoldering embrace of smugness and conceit. Self--giving - which is a form of love - has the power to open the self, make it gracious and supple, approachable and pliable. Self--giving enables us to see the world with compassion and to sense with new appreciation the weight of suffering and the almost eternal sadness in the hearts of millions.
When we make ourselves the center, we commit again and again in perpetuity, the primal sin of Adam and Eve. When we make the self the center, we limit our growth and development by fixating on too small a goal. With self at the center, the past often becomes not only the norm, but the prison. As philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once said, "Good people of narrow sympathies are apt to be unfeeling and unprogressive, enjoying their egotistical goodness" (quoted in The Spirit and the Forms of Love, Daniel Day Williams, p. 207).
But as usual, Christ who denied himself, even in the sacrifice of the cross - Christ who in self--giving love gave up his own dreams of the Messianic Kingdom for the larger role God had for him - this same Christ calls us, his followers, to give up our lesser selves, our narrow, egotistical selves, our selves circumscribed and fixated on self--perpetuating self--images - it is this Christ who challenges us to open up to the life of thoughtfulness, generosity, and giving.
In his excellent book, The Spirit and the Forms of Love, theologian Daniel Day Williams says, "It is the trivial faiths and pseudo--religions which offer satisfaction to the self as it is ... The truth in the Gospel which cuts into all our loves is that every love must be offered up to the creative transformation which God is bringing about in the whole creation" (ibid., p. 209).
Indeed, at the very heart of our Christian faith is the vision of a self--giving Christ, a Christ who loves and even suffers and dies for what he loves, to redeem it, to bring it into the higher reality for which it was intended.
Fortunately, for most of us, God does not ask us to sacrifice our very lives for love's sake as our country has for freedom's sake. But he does ask us to give - to give of our wealth, to give of our time, to give of our energies and abilities for his cause in the world.
And that's what we ask at stewardship time - that you will open up your heart and your checkbook and schedule to give generously for the Church's sake and yes, for your sake. For as author Maya Angelou has said, "The gift given expands and opens up the heart of the giver." Indeed it does. Not only will your generosity bless the church and community for generations to come, it will bless you.
Come back with me now to Washington, D.C., to the Vietnam monument, and put your fingers in the traceries of the names graven in granite. And come to Pearl Harbor with me, atop the watery grave of the U.S.S. Arizona and the 1,500 dreams of a better future buried there.
And then come with me to the ancient wilderness Tabernacle of ancient Israel in the desert where once a year animal blood and flesh were offered to bring peace and reconciliation with God. And then come with me to Jerusalem, to Golgotha, where it is not the mysterious essence of life in the blood of a bull or goat or lamb that is given, but the mysterious essence of the very life of the world's first authentic man - giving himself in love, opening himself up, making himself vulnerable, sacrificing himself to God to begin a new age of a new people for a new humanity.
It was that time in history when giving got really personal and powerful. And we've never been the same since.
Prayer
Almighty God, Maker of the world and our Maker, whose nature it is to create all things in self--expression, and whose character it is to give in self--forgetfulness, we bow in your presence to praise you for a universe glorious and marvelous, and to give thanks for the earth so bountiful and beautiful. You have blessed us beyond imagination and in your providence have given to us beyond our deserving.
In your loving presence we must confess our difficulty in emulating your generosity. Anxious about many things, we never seem to have quite enough to make the soul secure. Worried about having enough for the future, we often cling too desperately to what we have in the present. Having worked hard to gain what we have, we remain yet concerned about what we have not.
Forgive us, O God, for our lack of faith and our unwillingness to take risks in giving. Remind us again of the miracles of seedtime and harvest, and of how much you multiply the seed sown, forty, sixty, and a hundredfold. Give us courage to be venturesome, to be visionary, to be open to the new worlds of opportunity. Release us from fear and its companion, greed, and help us to give and to share so that a harvest of goodness and kindness and virtue might be realized in generations to come.
Look now with mercy upon the many needs and requests we bring before you. Some of us have been battling with depression and despair. Lift us up and strengthen us. Some of us have been struggling with powerful temptations. Release us from their enticing grip. Some of us are in troubled marriages or relationships, and need your wisdom, which comes from above. Some of us face important decisions, unsure which way we should go. At the crossroads, point out to us the road that should be taken. Be pleased to bless us with that special blessing we need this day. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
By now throngs had made their way to this unusual serpentine Washington monument, so unlike those dedicated to Jefferson or Lincoln. And the day came - in gray February - when I, too, approached the now fabled monument with a mixture of curiosity and wonder and skepticism.
It would be inaccurate to say that I suddenly was overcome with a torrent of emotion or overwhelmed with uncontrollable feeling. Slowly, very slowly I made my way along the black granite wall, reading carefully, selectively, the names engraved there.
At the foot of the wall, there were, from time to time, items placed in honor and homage of the departed. Some worn combat boots were there. A locket, a picture, a faded bouquet of flowers emitting their last beauty and fragrance were there.
And yes, there were people, by the hundreds probably, tracing with tender fingers, the inscribed names of their beloved who gave the ultimate sacrifice of blood in battle. And most tender of all, a mother and a beautiful little girl, six years old, perhaps, with her innocent little fingers in the tracery of her father's name. And, to tell you the truth, I would have to say the reports were not exaggerated. I, too, felt the trembling within, the overwhelming grief, the tremulous sadness, and the unexplainable sense of gratitude which comes in the presence of personal sacrifice.
However, this was not a solitary experience. Some years ago, my wife and I were on our way to Australia for a world church convention. We were fortunate to stop in Hawaii a while. On a morning tour we stopped at the famous cemetery where so many World War II veterans are buried. And later, we took the boat out to the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial marking the underwater tomb of the Pearl Harbor attack.
The guide was impressive in the recitation of the surprise attack. He recounted how many had lost their lives and that now over 1,500 men were buried beneath us, entombed in the Arizona - men whose dreams of embracing wives and sweethearts were buried there; men who looked forward to their sons' football games and their daughters' ballet recitals, submerged there; men who in a rush of patriotic duty and vision of freedom willingly served a larger cause than self. As I watched, even yet splotches of oil rose up from the sunken Arizona, and I felt the emotion well up within and turned my head to hide the emerging tears. When giving is personal, it's powerful.
I.
But selfishness gets powerful, too. And the story of our lives and the life of our nation could be that of our tug--of--war between giving and grasping, sharing and accumulating, gratitude and greed. If World War II was marked by unusual selflessness and patriotism, Vietnam was marked by cynicism and a sense of wasted life and a nation, which until recently, rejected the very soldiers it sent off to die in its name.
If earlier generations, in the idealism of John F. Kennedy, were intent on doing all they could for their country, later generations have been content to take all they could from their country, their community, and even their church.
A distinguished critic of American society, Christopher Lasch, author of The Culture of Narcissism, described the hardened selfishness which had become the almost obsessive--compulsive patterns of many Americans. The culture of acquisition and accumulation, the thrust to satisfy every craving and to stimulate every nerve ending - again and again - led to an emotional emptiness and spiritual void in the lives of many.
Many, like the vacant--eyed models in many of our magazines, gave the impression of sated sophistication and certain weariness with mere bourgeois sensualism. Overused sexually and overpaid for what was essentially an accident of beauty in birth, they manage, nevertheless, to pose provocatively to invite us into their privileged, if well used, pleasure if we will just buy the garment for our oversized collection. And our dollars roll out and their dollars roll in.
Before his death, Christopher Lasch finished another book titled The Revolt of the Elites and The Betrayal of Democracy. In an excerpted article in Harper's Magazine, Lasch says the chief threat of our time comes not from the poor, unwashed masses. Nor does it come, thank God, from that much--maligned, favorite whipping boy of sociologists, that disgusting bourgeois, middle--class, middle--aged, middle--America which still, in the stereotyped vision of the sociological elite, is behind the stereotyped white picket fence of Muncie, Indiana.
No, the chief threat to our country is not there, says Lasch. The chief threat now comes from America's elite classes, "those who control the international flow of money and information, preside over philanthropic foundations and institutions of higher learning, manage the instruments of cultural production, and thus set the terms of public debate" (Harper's, November, 1994, p. 39).
These are they, says Lasch, who have "lost faith in the values, what remains of them, of the West." Thumbing their noses at the now somewhat demeaned values of bourgeois Western civilization, the elites, say Lasch, identify more with their elite counterparts in other cultures and nations. They like to forget that their own country - this country - is the result of a long series of sacrifices and self--giving and hard work of generations and predecessors.
The elites came from that group of people in the upper twenty percent of the income structure who control half the country's wealth. And it is only this group who, in the last twenty years, has experienced any real growth in net personal income. The middle class, in contrast, declined and is still going down.
The upper middle class often distinguishes itself from the rest of the population in a way of life that is glamorous, gaudy, and indecently lavish. They maintain themselves in a state of "perpetual youthfulness, eternally attractive and remarriagable," says Lasch, whereas ordinary people have a more highly developed sense of the tragic elements in human life and history.
It is this upper twenty percent which increasingly withdraws from the public sector, putting children in private schools, building private enclaves with private security guards for a private perpetuation of paradise while the middle class diminishes in size, influence, and respect, and the lower classes increase and languish.
Many of the virtues of aristocracy have been ignored by this new elite who feel little obligation to give to ensure the survival of the social infrastructure. Many do not uphold common values and a common frame of reference, which enable a civilization to endure. At least the middle class, says Lasch, provides a common ground, a common set of standards, a common sense of sharing and giving which gave stability to our nation and hold at bay the overwhelming power of greed and selfishness.
We need that again, says Lasch and others. We need again the power of personal giving.
II.
If we need the power of personal giving to combat the selfishness and greed of the elite, we also need the power of personal giving to combat our own greed and selfishness.
Most of us are in favor of giving and generosity and thoughtfulness, especially if it is the other fellow doing it. Most of us agree that "what the world needs now is love, sweet love," as long as the other fellow is giving it and we are getting it.
But to talk of giving and self--giving and even self--sacrifice seems to fly in the face of our need for self--esteem and self--affirmation and self--fulfillment and self--realization. Indeed, the shelves of bookstores are loaded today with self--help books by the hundreds devoted not to helping others, but to helping ourselves.
Consequently, the classic Christian notions of self--denial and self--giving may not find a receptive mind or heart in today's population. Women rightly complain of how many of them have been exploited for centuries because they were expected to deny themselves and to think of others, namely men, rather than themselves. People smitten with bouts of low self--esteem may find it regressive to think of self--giving and self--denial and self--sacrifice just when they are beginning to walk straight and tall in the world.
And yet, it is in the act of giving oneself for a higher purpose and nobler cause that the self is awakened to new realities and called out of the smoldering embrace of smugness and conceit. Self--giving - which is a form of love - has the power to open the self, make it gracious and supple, approachable and pliable. Self--giving enables us to see the world with compassion and to sense with new appreciation the weight of suffering and the almost eternal sadness in the hearts of millions.
When we make ourselves the center, we commit again and again in perpetuity, the primal sin of Adam and Eve. When we make the self the center, we limit our growth and development by fixating on too small a goal. With self at the center, the past often becomes not only the norm, but the prison. As philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once said, "Good people of narrow sympathies are apt to be unfeeling and unprogressive, enjoying their egotistical goodness" (quoted in The Spirit and the Forms of Love, Daniel Day Williams, p. 207).
But as usual, Christ who denied himself, even in the sacrifice of the cross - Christ who in self--giving love gave up his own dreams of the Messianic Kingdom for the larger role God had for him - this same Christ calls us, his followers, to give up our lesser selves, our narrow, egotistical selves, our selves circumscribed and fixated on self--perpetuating self--images - it is this Christ who challenges us to open up to the life of thoughtfulness, generosity, and giving.
In his excellent book, The Spirit and the Forms of Love, theologian Daniel Day Williams says, "It is the trivial faiths and pseudo--religions which offer satisfaction to the self as it is ... The truth in the Gospel which cuts into all our loves is that every love must be offered up to the creative transformation which God is bringing about in the whole creation" (ibid., p. 209).
Indeed, at the very heart of our Christian faith is the vision of a self--giving Christ, a Christ who loves and even suffers and dies for what he loves, to redeem it, to bring it into the higher reality for which it was intended.
Fortunately, for most of us, God does not ask us to sacrifice our very lives for love's sake as our country has for freedom's sake. But he does ask us to give - to give of our wealth, to give of our time, to give of our energies and abilities for his cause in the world.
And that's what we ask at stewardship time - that you will open up your heart and your checkbook and schedule to give generously for the Church's sake and yes, for your sake. For as author Maya Angelou has said, "The gift given expands and opens up the heart of the giver." Indeed it does. Not only will your generosity bless the church and community for generations to come, it will bless you.
Come back with me now to Washington, D.C., to the Vietnam monument, and put your fingers in the traceries of the names graven in granite. And come to Pearl Harbor with me, atop the watery grave of the U.S.S. Arizona and the 1,500 dreams of a better future buried there.
And then come with me to the ancient wilderness Tabernacle of ancient Israel in the desert where once a year animal blood and flesh were offered to bring peace and reconciliation with God. And then come with me to Jerusalem, to Golgotha, where it is not the mysterious essence of life in the blood of a bull or goat or lamb that is given, but the mysterious essence of the very life of the world's first authentic man - giving himself in love, opening himself up, making himself vulnerable, sacrificing himself to God to begin a new age of a new people for a new humanity.
It was that time in history when giving got really personal and powerful. And we've never been the same since.
Prayer
Almighty God, Maker of the world and our Maker, whose nature it is to create all things in self--expression, and whose character it is to give in self--forgetfulness, we bow in your presence to praise you for a universe glorious and marvelous, and to give thanks for the earth so bountiful and beautiful. You have blessed us beyond imagination and in your providence have given to us beyond our deserving.
In your loving presence we must confess our difficulty in emulating your generosity. Anxious about many things, we never seem to have quite enough to make the soul secure. Worried about having enough for the future, we often cling too desperately to what we have in the present. Having worked hard to gain what we have, we remain yet concerned about what we have not.
Forgive us, O God, for our lack of faith and our unwillingness to take risks in giving. Remind us again of the miracles of seedtime and harvest, and of how much you multiply the seed sown, forty, sixty, and a hundredfold. Give us courage to be venturesome, to be visionary, to be open to the new worlds of opportunity. Release us from fear and its companion, greed, and help us to give and to share so that a harvest of goodness and kindness and virtue might be realized in generations to come.
Look now with mercy upon the many needs and requests we bring before you. Some of us have been battling with depression and despair. Lift us up and strengthen us. Some of us have been struggling with powerful temptations. Release us from their enticing grip. Some of us are in troubled marriages or relationships, and need your wisdom, which comes from above. Some of us face important decisions, unsure which way we should go. At the crossroads, point out to us the road that should be taken. Be pleased to bless us with that special blessing we need this day. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
