Who is our enemy?

(Please excuse the ramble...I'm still processing this through.  Your thoughts, as always are welcome!) 
         As I continue to reflect on the conversations I've been having with others around what it means to "love our enemies" one thing becomes especially clear to me.  We all define that word "enemy" differently.  I've heard people talk about "enemies" as people who hold power and use it in ways they believe to be wrong or hateful towards others. Enemies, then, can be politicians who are doing things that harm others, or they can be people we know and interact with personally.  If an "enemy" is anyone who injures others, some will have faces and names and others won't. Many people have told me they have no enemies.  But for others, enemies are very personal: specific faces and experiences come to mind of people who have done personal injury to that person or to a loved one.  I think how you define "enemy" will change how you learn to love that enemy.
        Personally, I undoubtedly define enemy differently depending on the context of the conversation as well as the person with whom I am speaking.  Still, if someone were to ask me if I believed myself to have enemies, I would have to say "yes".  There are people who would choose to do me or those I care about harm; there are people who have, intentionally, chosen to do me or people I value harm; and there are people who, out of a sense of revenge, anger, hatred, or fear intentionally hurt me, or other people that I value.  For me, those are the people I identify as "enemies".  If you intentionally seek to hurt me or other people whom I value, you put yourself in that category.
         What does that mean for me?  Well, it doesn't mean I hate you. I choose not to hate my enemies  because that would be "returning evil for evil".  It also doesn't mean I will try to "get you back" because that, too, is against what I believe and against what I practice.  I take the call to turn the other cheek very seriously - not just for the other person, but because I believe I allow the "enemy" to do more damage to me if I allow them to infect my soul with anger or hate.  I won't go there.  Some may say, "well, then how are they an enemy?"  For me, that term is helpful because it helps me to name the reality of these people in my life, and the call for me to work towards something different. Again, I do not and will not choose to treat them as such.  But it does me and my family no good to lie to myself about the intentions of some people with their harmful words or behaviors.  I am certain that some would/will label me as less than "holy" or less than "whole" because of the very labeling of others as enemies.  And perhaps they are right. When people like the Dalai Lama, Ghandi, MLK, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, or even Mr. Rogers use the term "enemy" it is always in the context of building bridges with those folk, getting to know them, seeing them as the real people they are, so that they might be transformed from being enemies into being something else.  But they are better people than me. The call for me is to strive to love and work towards bridges with these people.  But I am also all too aware that I do not have my heroes' gifts of being easily able to transform those relationships, or of being able to cross those bridges easily.  For me, naming them as "enemies" sets before me the call and challenge of working to love that enemy.  The term does not let me off the hook, it calls me to work harder to transform those relationships and to cross those bridges.
       Again, I have to recognize that I cannot successfully do this with everyone.  When I can't turn an enemy into a friend, "the other" becomes simply the object of my prayers: prayers for transformation of hate into love, of fear into trust, of greed into generosity: prayers for healing; prayers for wisdom; and prayers for reconciliation.  Mostly I pray that I might be given the wisdom, courage, strength and insight so that I can do my own work towards healing and reconciliation in these difficult situations.
      I wish there were no enemies.  But until the world has been made perfect, there will always be a need for us to face that which is hard.  For me, that starts with the call to love our enemies.

The Tragedy of the Commons

Exodus 3:1-15

Matthew 16:21-28

               While we were on vacation, I took my family to the Exploratorium.  They have an exhibit currently on social dilemmas in which people are invited to look at times when they choose for themselves and their own best interests, vs times when they choose for the good of everyone, the common good, the highest good for others.  The exhibit entrance starts with a look at what was originally called the tragedy of the commons.  The tragedy of the commons describes a situation of cattle herders sharing a common parcel of land on which they are each entitled to let their cows graze, (this used to be the way it was done in English villages).  If a herder puts more than his allotted number of cattle on the common, overgrazing may result. For each additional animal that a herder adds to the common, that individual herder will benefit, but the whole group will suffer from the damage to the commons. If all herders were to make this individually rational economic decision, the common would be depleted or even destroyed, which would harm every herder there, including the one seeking self-betterment by putting more than his fair share of animals on the land. 

           The tragedy of the commons has been used to study many things including sustainability, care for the environment, economic systems and human psychology.  And, depending on who does the study and how the study is done, the results vary between communities where people put their own self-interest above others and communities where people truly work together for everyone’s best interest. In the United States, the study tended to show people to be more selfish and self-oriented, taking advantage of what was common to serve themselves above others, and only really understanding, too late that what was harmful for others, also was harmful to themselves. 

               Another part of the exhibit explored a study called the Career criminal dilemma: The scenario is as follows: Two members of a criminal gang are arrested and imprisoned. Each prisoner is in solitary confinement with no means of communicating with the other. The prosecutors lack sufficient evidence to convict the pair on the main charge. They hope to get both sentenced to a year in prison on a lesser charge. Simultaneously, the prosecutors offer each prisoner a bargain. Each prisoner is given the opportunity either to: betray the other by testifying that the other committed the crime, or to cooperate with the other by remaining silent. The offer is:

If A and B each betray the other, each of them serves 2 years in prison

If A betrays B but B remains silent, A will be set free and B will serve 3 years in prison (and vice versa)

If A and B both remain silent, both of them will only serve 1 year in prison (on the lesser charge)

       Obviously the best self-interest of each alone is to betray the other, though if they have a bigger view of connection or care for the other, then neither will betray the other.   Interestingly, usually in this situation, neither does betray the other.

               I’ve shared with you before one other example of this.  I have a family member who was a psychology professor at Cal State East Bay.  Every semester for his many years of teaching he used to do an experiment with his psychology class.  He would tell the class that everyone would have a choice about how many points they would get for attending class that day.  They could choose to get 5 points or 25 points.  However, if more than 15% of the class were to ask for 25 points, everyone in the class would get zero.  What do you think the results were?  Always the entire class would receive no points.  Every single time it was almost exactly 70% of the people in the class who would ask for the 25 points for themselves.  Even when they knew the results of other classes in which Gene had offered the test, the percentage was the same.  There was, however, one thing that could change that percentage.  If the professor told the class that those students who asked for the 25 points for themselves would have their names read aloud, the effect went away.  The fear of loss of social status was the only thing he found that was greater than the fear of not getting ahead in points.  That fits in with our other two examples.  In the prison dilemma, both would have been aware of what the other had chosen, so the pressure to act in a way which benefits the other is strong.  This is opposed to the tragedy of the commons in which people could probably find reasons to justify and ways to hide the choice to be more selfish.  These experiments also show us that much of the issue here has to do with personal connections.  People act and vote and generally choose behaviors that benefit those of their own community – their own family, their own economic class, their own race… people generally act in the best interests of people they understand, can relate to, who look like them and share cultural commonalities.

               My children recently found and purchased a book entitled Hyperbole and a Half (Simon and Schuster, Oct 29, 2013).  In one section, author Allie Brosh wrote,

“I like to believe that I would behave heroically in a disaster situation.  I like to think this because it makes me feel good about myself.  Conveniently it is very unlikely that I will ever actually have to do anything to prove it.  As long as I never encounter a disaster situation, I can keep believing I’m a hero indefinitely.  Similarly, I can safely believe that I am the type of person who would donate a kidney to a loved one, give a million dollars to help save the animals, and survive a biological disaster due to my superior immune system and overwhelming specialness.  As long as no one I love ever needs a kidney, I don’t become a millionaire, and my immune system is never put to the test by an antibiotic-resistant super flu, these are just things I can believe for free.

It gets a bit trickier when I want to believe a thing about myself that actually requires me to do or think something.  The things I am naturally inclined to do and think are not the same as the things I want to believe I would do and think.  And I’m not even slightly realistic about what I want to be.  …I desperately want to believe I would seize the opportunity to help a loved one without a second thought for my own well-being but I’m almost certain it wouldn’t play out like that. …   What I am is constantly thrust into my face while I’m trying to be better than I am.  Even if I’m actively doing all the right things, I can’t escape the fact that my internal reactions are those of a fundamentally horrible person. I don’t just want to do the right thing. I want to WANT to do the right thing. … being aware of not wanting to do the right thing ruins my ability to enjoy doing the right thing after I’m forced into doing it through shame.“

               The point is that these feelings are pretty normal, I think.  If you realize that 70% of us, at least in the United States, choose selfishly for themselves in a class room of highly educated people, that means that probably 70% of folk struggle with that sense of wanting more for ourselves and focusing predominantly on caring for ourselves and our loved ones rather than for the “least” of these.  I say in the United States because we know there are other cultures that do not behave this way.  For example in South Africa, there is a word they use: Ubuntu.  It means, “I am because we are.”  The belief behind it is that they understand that each person does not and cannot exist in isolation.  How this manifests in South Africa: if someone asks for something, they are given it because you exist together and what serves one serves all.  An anthropologist had been studying the habits and customs of this tribe, and when he finished his work, had to wait for transportation that would take him to the airport to return home. He’d always been surrounded by the children of the tribe, so to help pass the time before he left, he proposed a game for the children to play. He’d bought lots of candy and sweets in the city, so he put everything in a basket with a beautiful ribbon attached. He placed it under a solitary tree, and then he called the kids together. He drew a line on the ground and explained that they should wait behind the line for his signal. And that when he said “Go!” they should rush over to the basket, and the first to arrive there would win all the candies. When he said “Go!” they all unexpectedly held each other’s hands and ran off towards the tree as a group. Once there, they simply shared the candy with each other and happily ate it. The anthropologist was very surprised. He asked them why they had all gone together, especially if the first one to arrive at the tree could have won everything in the basket – all the sweets. A young girl simply replied: “How can one of us be happy if all the others are sad?”

               But in the United States, we are a culture that is more focused on individualism.  As a result, it is harder for us to remember that we truly are all connected and that what hurts you hurts me.  One of my favorite quotes as a result is: a good person fights for themself and their own. A Great person fights for everyone else.

               What does all of this have to do with our faith?  Today we heard two stories.  The first was about Moses who was called to set the people of Israel free from their enslavement.  It is important for us to remember the context of who Moses was, because although he himself was born of an Israelite mother, he was raised by the Pharoah’s daughter.  He was brought up with all privileges and advantages of being in the royal palace with those in charge.  But from that place of privilege, he gave up all he had to fight those who had raised him, those who had loved him, those who had cared for him in order to set free the people of Israel.  Moses gave up his security, his privilege, his house and wealth and riches and travelled in the desert for 40 years.  He died there, following God’s call, after having given up everything to help lead people out of slavery. 

Then we have Jesus.  Jesus gave up his life loving us, caring for us.  But he also told us that we are called to follow.  In this passage he is very, very clear.  “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.” 

When we are willing to die caring for Jesus, caring for God, caring for the ones God loves, caring for God’s children, we will find our lives.  When we put our own self-interests first, we will lose our lives.  We will be lost.  The tragedy of the commons says the same thing: when we put our self-interest above the self-interest of others, all of us lose out.  ALL of us.  We go down as well.  According to the experiment that my brother and law always did, only about 30% of folk get that.  The rest?  Not so much.  But our faith calls us to act on behalf of the least of these, the poorest, the most oppressed, the most displaced, as Moses did, as Jesus did, even when we don’t feel like it, even when we want to do only what is best for ourselves and those closest to us, even when we are afraid. 

               This desire to care for others should affect every single decision that we make.  How do we spend our money?  Where do we shop?  Does the places we shop and the things we buy use child labor?  Do they damage or harm others?  How do we vote?  Do we vote in ways that lift up the poor, the oppressed, those suffering?  How do we decide what to do with the money we “earn” that has been entrusted to us by God to use for the glory of God?  How do we treat the “least of these” – those who are poor or oppressed or struggling?  How do we treat those who make us uneasy, those who are cruel, those who are mean, those with whom we disagree?  How do we behave in our cars towards others who are unkind or who make mistakes?  How do we behave even when we are afraid?  Do we take from others to save ourselves?  Or do we willingly put ourselves at risk in order to care for God’s “least of these” in whom, we are told, we will find Jesus?

               As I was working on this sermon, a praise song came to mind, written by Matthew West, “My Own Little World”:

               In my own little worls, it harldy ever rains

               I’ve never gone hungry, I’ve always felt safe.

               I got some money in my pocket, shoes on my feet

               In my own little world: population me.

               I try to stay awake thru Sunday morning church

               I throw a twenty in the plate but I never give ‘til it hurts

               And I turn off the news when I don’t like what I see

               Yeah, it’s easy to do when it’s population me.

               What if there’s a bigger picture

               What if I’m missing out

               What if there’s a greater purpose

               I could be living right now

               Outside my own little world.

               Stopped at a red light, looked out the window

               I saw a cardboard sign that said, “help this homeless widow”

   Just above this sign was the face of a human

               I thought to myself, “God, what have I been doing?”

               So I rolled down the window and I looked her in the eye

               Oh how many times have I just passed her by

               I gave her some money then I drove on through

               In my own little world there’s population two.

               I’m going to break my heart for what breaks Yours

               Give me open hands and open doors

               Put Your light in my eyes and let me see

               That my own little world is not about me…

               Jesus is clear: we must be willing to lose our very lives for our enemies as well as those we love if we want to find them.  That is what it means to follow in the way, to follow the call of Jesus, to follow the God of Love.  It isn’t easy, but when we practice what is hard, it does become easier, it does become clearer.  The call is for all of us.  Amen.

Sunday's Sermon - Preparing for the Unknown

Mal. 3:1-4

Luke 3:1-6

            How many of you have seen the movie “French Kiss?”  The movie begins with Meg Ryan’s character, Kate, acting as a typical middle class person, saving money, planning for the future, working hard to make the dreams of many a typical middle class person come true.  She is engaged to a Doctor, and living in a home away from home, which for her is Canada, hoping to become a Canadian citizen.  She has saved enough money to buy a wonderful house and she is dreaming and planning for the family and kids she hopes to have.  She seems happy and excited about her life and the only clue we are given that things are not all that they seem is that she is terrified of flying.  So when her fiancé invites her to go with him to France, she declines, despite all his urgings.  The crisis in the movie comes just a few minutes later when her fiancé calls from France to tell her that he has met a “Godesse” in France and that he will not be returning to her.  She feels the secure walls of her life begin to crumble and she pushes herself to fly to France, despite her terror, in a desperate attempt to “get him back!”   When she arrives in France, she is met by a number of people who block her attempts to connect with her fiancé and finally everything she has is stolen from her.  She finds herself across the world from her home, without fiancé, without possessions, without security, “without my vitamins!!” as she declares, and on top of that because she left Canada to fly to France before her resident visa was approved, neither Canada nor the United States will give her a new visa.  She has in the span of a day, gone from being a complete “has” to being a total “has not.” 

            At first she is devastated.  But as she later explains, “I thought, there is no way that everything I was building for would be destroyed ... and so I bought a plane ticket, got on the plane, somehow made it over the big blue ocean,... and then the most extraordinary thing happened.  Everything went wrong.  I was wandering the streets of Paris, penniless, without a hope in the world.  And let me tell you, you can do a lot of soul searching in a time like that and I realized that I spent most of my adult life trying to protect myself from exactly this situation.  And you can’t do it.  There is no home safe enough, there is no country nice enough, there’s no relationship secure enough.  You’re just setting yourself up for an even bigger fall and having an incredibly boring time in the process.”

            Throughout the movie Kate learns to let go of her fear, to the point that towards the end of the movie she gives away her life savings to someone she expects to never see again - out of love - just because.

            The lesson in the story is pretty clear.  Out of our fear of losing the security, the wealth, the status that we have, we sometimes fail to appreciate the most important thing of all: the gift of life that God has given us. We fail to really live that life, but instead are controlled by our need for security. Still, most of us are not put into the situation where we are forced to reevaluate and reexamine our priorities, our fears, and our use of resources....

            Unless, of course, we are Christians who take seriously that this is a part of God’s call for our lives.  Especially during times like advent and lent, times of preparing, we are called to reexamine our lives, and to make some significant changes.

            Today’s passage in Luke tells us that we are to prepare for Christ’s coming.  More than that it tells us HOW we are to prepare.  John, we are told, was proclaiming a baptism of repentance.  We are to prepare for Christ’s coming by repenting.  Repenting does not mean being sorry for something you’ve done.  It does not mean wallowing in guilt or shame.  It literally means turning the other way, choosing a new direction.  It means committing to a radical change and then doing it, living out that change.  This passage in Luke details what that path is to look like.  We are told to make straight the paths for God’s coming.  In other words, we are called to repent, or rather, to really look at our ways, look at our actions and our behaviors, and then change them, being focused and direct in our behaviors, no longer taking roads to the right or left that are distractions and are all over the map.  The rest of the passage from Luke also helps explain this.  Luke continues, quoting Isaiah, by telling us what God’s coming will be about.  God will raise the valleys and bring low the mountains.  Raising up the valleys and bringing the mountains low: what is that all about? 

            This passage is talking about systemic change.  It is talking about even-ing out of the playing field.  It’s about confronting and not allowing suffering; lifting up the poor, the marginalized, the oppressed, bringing them into physical, emotional, societal ... complete relief. We are all for that.  Of course we are.  As people of faith, we want the oppressed and those suffering to be okay.  However, he doesn’t just talk about raising up the valleys.  He also talks about bringing down the mountains.  It is also about bringing low the high and mighty: liberating the famous from their burden of constant attention, the powerful from their total control, and liberating the rich from their excess stuff.  And while we may not be powerful or famous, we are, in comparison to the rest of the world, very, very rich.  And while I know it sounds funny to talk about liberating the famous, powerful and rich, the reality is that God is about that, too.  These things that we seek after imprison people.  The famous really do loose their privacy, and sometimes their sense of self, because the person everyone sees and adores (or hates) is not the real person whom it takes time and intimacy to know.  The powerful carry the burden of huge responsibility and what it means to choose life for some, and often death or poverty for others.  And the rich, well the more people have, the more they fear to lose.  They end up becoming owned by their stuff, controlled by their fear of losing that stuff.  Now they have to have an alarm system or systems to protect their stuff.  Now every stranger is a potential danger.  And we live in fear of not having a high enough paying job, of something happening that will cost us more than we “can afford” if we want to maintain the style of living to which we are accustomed.  We’ve talked before about how the poorest people in Central America, for example, a family with six kids who live in a one room house with dirt floors, will give you their only chicken as a meal: will serve you truly the best they have, and they will feel honored, happy, proud in the best sense to have been able to offer that kind of hospitality.  In contrast a person living in a million dollar home here will begrudge a poor homeless person a dollar for something to eat.  We may feel we own our stuff, but it is at least a mutual owning and often times I think our stuff has ultimate control.  So in this passage from Luke we are told that God is about redeeming all people: the poor will have more than one chicken to share, the oppressed will regain their dignity and respect.  The powerful will be relieved of their burdens, and the rich will no longer have so much that they live in the fear of losing it.  ALL flesh, as it says here, will see the salvation of God.

            We then prepare for God’s coming in two ways.  First, we are called as part of our repentance to understand our part both in the current situation of haves and have-nots, but also in the new creation that we are told God will bring.  Even those of us who are “poor” in this room are richer than most of the world.  We are called to repent our having at the cost of others who have not.  And we are called to look at the promise God makes to bring the hills low and raise the valleys, recognizing that even-ing out for most of us will mean we have less.  We will be liberated from our nice cars, from our fancy computers and phones, from all of our electronic toys. The good news for us is there really will be freedom in that, no matter what our current fears.  Not easy to see from where we sit.  But remember God wants us to be as whole as we can be and this will be part of that wholeness.

            Second, this passage says we are called to prepare for Christ’s coming by making the way straight.  Making the way straight, preparing for God’s coming looks like choosing to be part of that world where all have enough, because we are not so rich anymore. It is a call to us for just action on our part.  We make the way straight by no longer bending the road to the distractions of that luxury over there, or this status over here or that entertainment over there.   In other words, we make the way straight by being part of bringing that justice to the world.   We are called to prepare for Christ’s coming by caring for one another, at the deepest level.

            This is more than charity. Because sometimes charity keeps the needy needing.  Charity keeps some as givers and some as receivers.  It doesn’t ultimately raise the valleys and bring low the mountains.  I’m not saying that charity isn’t important.  It is a good start.  Teaching a person to fish is pointless if their stomach is so empty they can’t see the fishing pole.  But this passage calls us to something much more than charity.  It calls for systemic change in the way we treat one another, in the way we see one another, in the way we interact with one another.  That person who is poor is your BROTHER.  That woman who is crazy and angry and even violent is your SISTER.  And we are called to LOVE HER with respect and care.

            Part of what keeps our preparations for Christ’s coming less in the realm of total change and more in the area of shopping and baking cookies, is that when we prepare for Christ’s coming at Christmas, we tend to be imagining Christ as the Christmas stories show us: as a baby. 

            That is important and good.  There is a great gift in seeing God enter the world helpless, in innocence, in vulnerability, in humility.  There is incredible joy and peace in seeing Christ as a baby, someone we cannot help but love and adore, someone who depends on our care for survival and who is therefore everything good that a baby can be.

            But the passage we read today from Malachi calls us to something different.  This passage from Malachi says that God’s coming will be as unlike a baby as we might imagine.  Malachi describes God’s coming how?  Like a refiner’s fire: a fire used to purify metals like gold and silver: very hot, very true, very intense.  Malachi also says that it will be like fuller’s soap, which is a very harsh soap: it cleans deeply and purely, but not without pain or cost.

            God comes to us then in different ways.  Yes, as a baby.  But also as one who calls us, commands us even, to act with justice and love towards our enemies.  And God comes as the one who will clean us into the righteous behavior, into that love, sometimes in uncomfortable ways.  There are many ways God comes to us. Preparing for God is always, then, preparing for the unexpected.

            One evening about eight years ago, my family and I were sitting around the dinner table talking about our experiences of the day.  We were feeling down and were talking about some of the terrible things we had heard in the news that day.  Natural disasters, violence, war.  Closer to home, another parishioner was seriously ill, there was a conflict in the church with a neighbor, road rage was getting all of us down.  It was a lot to hear and experience in one day.  I found myself sitting there feeling helpless, wondering what we were supposed to do, how we were supposed to be God’s voice in the world in the midst of the pain and chaos, when Eldest, then only three years old, suddenly piped up, “I heard God talk to me today.”  I’ve shared with you before about Eldest’s conversations with God, and this was one of them.  As I’ve said before, when it comes to children hearing God’s voice I do not doubt this reality.  Call me superstitious if you will, but I deeply believe that children have a connection to the Divine that many of us have lost.  So when Eldest told me she heard God’s voice, there was no doubt in my mind that she actually had. And I wondered what God’s message to her, and perhaps to all of us present might be.  So I turned and said, “Yes?  And what did God say to you?”

Her eyes opened really wide and she leaned forward and said in an intense whisper, “This is my World.”  “This is my world.”  This is God’s World.

            God appears to us sometimes as one convicting us of failing to love one another fully.  Other times God appears to us as a baby, newly born, dependent on our love and care, trusting us, reaching out to us.  And sometimes God just shows up in the unexpected moments of our grumpiness, in our helplessness, in our fear or pain or joy or confusion.  We need to keep our eyes open.  For God is there, calling us to care completely with all that is ours.  For this is God’s world, and we are called by that to act with justice, to act with humility, and to look for God’s coming in unexpected and amazing places, to make the paths straight. 

            I invite you this Advent to prepare by looking at the ways in which we support the system of haves and have-nots.  I invite you to look at your life and scrutinize the ways in which we fail to bring the mountains low and raise the valleys up.  I invite you to see in what ways that failure is holding you back from becoming the whole person God calls you to be.  And then I encourage you to change, to repent, not out of guilt, but out of a recognition that we are called to be part of making the paths straight for God’s coming.

            God does come, God will come, in wonderful, glorious, awesome ways.  God’s coming will, no doubt, be surprising.  God’s coming will, no doubt, happen, again and again.  So prepare for it, through repentance, through justice, through peace, through love.  In Christ’s name we pray.  Amen.

Yesterday's Sermon - Giving from our Need

Ruth 3:1-5, 4:13-17

               Mark 12:38-44

There once was a very poor man who found himself in desperation making a deal with God before a priest and several parishioners.  “I promise, God, if you let me make some money, I will give you a dollar for every ten I make.”  Sure enough after a time he found a ten dollar bill, and just as he promised, he gave one of those ten to God. The man’s riches began to grow.  After a while he found himself making $1000 a month, and still he kept to his word, giving $100 to God, just like he promised.  His riches grew even more and in time he was making $100,000 a year.  This meant though that he was giving $10,000 a year back to God.  This began to feel like a whole lot of money that he was giving up.  He did it, but much more grudgingly.  By the time he made $1,000,000 he became very uncomfortable about giving $100,000 of that to God.  He went back to the priest and asked if there was any way he could get out of his deal with God.  The priest thought about it for a minute and finally replied, “I don’t think so, but if you would prefer to go back to giving only a dollar, I’m sure God would be happy to reduce your income back to 10!”      

Isn’t it easier to give more when you have less?  Statistics prove this out – that the poorest people give a much greater percentage of their incomes to charities, especially the church, than wealthier folk.  But we can see it for ourselves, sometimes in incredibly profound ways.  Jack Shriver told me about his mission work on the border handing out food, water and medicines to those crossing into the United States.  He said that the volunteers who were trying to help avoid more deaths and dying, especially in the children, would call out announcing that they had food and medicine and water to share and that sometimes people would come, though many times, out of fear, they would stay hidden.  One time, however, those hearing the group calling, “food, water, medicine”, came timidly out, with their tiny bags of belongings.  They had misunderstood the call “food, water, medicine” as a cry for help.  And they came out with the little amounts they had, the tiny amounts they had, apologetically offering everything they had left, while knowing that if they gave away the little they had, they might not survive the journey.  Even so, assuming that the group that had come down to help was in fact in need, they offered what they had.  Even in the face of the tiny amount they had to survive, they offered it to those they believed were also in need. 

I experienced the same thing when I was with a group touring Guatemala and Nicaragua.  We met some of the poorest of the poor -  people who lived bunched together in homes put together from what they could find; people who struggled daily just to live.  None the less, these people would gather whatever food resources they had to offer us, wealthy Americans, the best food that they had, food they could not afford, but that they gave from their hearts, just because we were there to hear them, to meet them, to be with them. 

This doesn’t just happen in other cultures either.  There have been several videos circulating recently that have looked at some of the behaviors of the homeless in our own culture.  In one video a man, well dressed, clean, clearly with resources, was asking people on the street for hugs.  Not money, not anything except a hug.  But as he passed all the people heading to shop or to work or to wherever they were going, no one passing would give him a hug.  Not one person.  They were afraid or they were wary.  Whatever it was, they avoided him, said no, walked (ran) away.  So he approached a bunch of homeless people.  And in contrast, not one of them turned him away.  They don’t have resources, but they still had care and affection to give. 

In another video, a man approached a homeless man and gave him a $10 bill.  The homeless man was taken aback and asked him why he had done this.  The first man said he just thought the homeless man could use the money.  The homeless man stared at him for a minute and then said, “Please, sit down for a minute.  Just a minute!  I’ll be right back!”  The first man sat, not knowing what to expect, but in a minute the homeless man returned, with two lunches that he had bought at the nearby store, one of which he gave to the first man.  The first man now was the one who was stunned.  He said, “Why did you do this?  You could have saved that money to spend on a second lunch tomorrow!”  But the homeless man said, “Well, you see, I could.  I had the money and I would like to share this meal with you.”  Out of the little he had, he gave half to someone who wasn’t even asking for it, just because he could. 

In the book, “Richistan”, the author, Robert Frank discussed several studies which showed that no matter how much money a person earned, no matter how much, whether it was $10,000 a year or $10 billion a year, most people felt that if they only made exactly twice what they were making now they would be okay.  Most people, regardless of their income, felt that they just didn’t have nearly enough.  This points to the reality that as humans we NEVER are satisfied, we never feel we have enough, we always think we need more.   The book also showed that actually making more money did not increase happiness, having more money did not increase a sense of well-being.  Money does not in fact make us happier.  It does, however, increase our sense of what we need.  What we perceive to be our needs often grows beyond our incomes, no matter what they are.  We can see it happening in our lives and in the lives of those around us, but it is hard to stop it.  In contrast to the stories I have just told about poor people around the world, a person I know whom I will call “Sally” has an income that exceeds mine by over five times.  Sally spends a great deal of time and energy worrying about her money, and is right now in a place where she absolutely finds it impossible to be generous with time, talents or money.  She is often found lamenting how trapped she feels, how tight things are financially.  She is often found complaining that she doesn’t know how the bills will be paid next month.  And the truth is that she isn’t making this up.  She really does struggle to keep up her expected standard of living.  Her investment properties, her cars, her get away homes, the time she spends with friends of like economic status at vacation spots, expensive restaurants, her home remodel – all of these things do take every bit of the income that she brings in as well as every extra minute of her time.  Of course, for those of us who don’t live like that, it is easy to see the other side.  How much of that is necessary spending?  How much is luxury?  But this is what Sally is used to, what she knows, what she has come to believe is necessary. 

She has forgotten the bigger picture…the picture that says that none of her resources are actually her own.  They are all God’s and therefore should be used for the good of all rather than the good of just Sally.  She has lost touch with the fact that one of the meals she eats out in a month at these luxurious restaurants could feed a family overseas for six months and that this is a better use of God’s resources.  Sally has become owned by her possessions and lost in her material wealth.  And she is poorer because of it.  We do the same.  If each of us were to commit to eating out one less time a month, or giving our coffee money for one week of every month to those who really need it, we could make an amazing difference in the world.  But we stop seeing these things as luxuries.  We forget that we don’t NEED these things.  And we forget that all of these resources are God’s, entrusted to us for the good of the world.

But the reality is that I don’t actually want to guilt you into giving money to the church.  Because we are not called to give out of guilt.  We are not called to give out of guilt.  We are called to give out of gratitude.  Everything we have has been given to us from a God who loves us beyond our imagining.  And that is cause for giving and for celebration.

In today’s scripture the poor widow put more in than all the rest.  She put in everything that she had.  I don’t think she was sitting there calculating what percentage of her things she was contributing to God.  I don’t think she put that money in out of guilt or even a sense of obligation.  She gave all that she had because she loved God, because her faith is what made her rich, not her money.  She was grateful for that day in her life, for the blessings that she had, though others might see them as few, and so she returned to God what she had been given.  How powerful is that?  How faithful is that to return to God all that you have, knowing that God will use that gift – that gift of all of you – for the good of all people?

We are called to lift up our joys every week as a way of remembering the blessings God has given us.  We are called to serve God with everything we do – choosing work that empowers God’s people and takes care of God’s creation.  We are called in every interaction to be loving and caring and warm.  We are called to give back from our talents, from our resources, from our money, from our gifts – not because it is “the right thing to do” (though it is), but because we remember that God has blessed us and continues to bless us in every moment and because of that insight, because of the wealth that our love of God gives to us, we are grateful, we are so grateful, that we can hold nothing back.  It is all God’s and so we are given the opportunity to give it back. 

At a church meeting a very wealthy man rose to tell the rest of those present about his Christian faith. "I'm a millionaire," he said, "and I attribute it all to the rich blessings of God in my life. I remember that turning point in my faith. I had just earned my first dollar and I went to a church meeting that night. The speaker was a missionary who told about his work. I knew that I only had a dollar bill and had to either give it all to God's work or nothing at all. So at that moment I decided to give my whole dollar to God. I believe that God blessed that decision, and that is why I am a rich man today."

He finished and there was an awed silence at his testimony as he moved toward his seat. As he sat down a little old lady sitting in the same pew leaned over and said to him: "I dare you to do it again."

That dare, that challenge applies to us as well.  But not out of guilt.  God has blessed us and we are in gratitude and love given the gift of being able to offer it back.  That is a joy.  And it is a privilege.  Amen.