|
|
|
Back to Sermon Archives
"Living Abundance: Get ‘til It Hurts, Give ‘til It Helps"There is so much good news to tell you guys! I just want you to know you are worth far more than fifteen minutes to me! Going back to the "dancing" sermon two weeks ago, I was tempted to teach a new one this morning, a bun dance, but my mom is here! Sometimes discretion becomes even my better part. The source of our abundance, our sense of the goodness of life we receive day by day, is not any nation, nor any corporation. Abundance comes from our God, our Creator, our Source, and from the resources of God, including us human resources all over the earth! For we are those made in the image of God, redactors, reflectors, reminders of God’s likeness, as re-sources are to the Source. Someone is at work, someone sacrifices, someone even suffers, for every good thing we receive. The only free gift, the only free giver, is God! I keep trying all the time in my life to comprehend that everything comes from something. Everything in all creation has been here in some form from the very beginning! Where else would anything come from? Where else would anything go? When we say we are going to "throw something away," what do we mean? Where does it go? Where is "away?" There is no "away!" Everything’s here to stay somewhere, now and forever. Nothing comes from nothing. Literally, there is nothing new under the sun. Ecclesiastes got it right. To be fully human, to live faith-fully to the Creator and to creation, we must become as recyclable, and as recycling, as we can possibly be! Whatever we get, even when we get so much it hurts, and whatever we give, even when we give so much it helps, we get and give back! We get and we give to recycle. Jesus lives the most recyclable life of all. I think that is what it means to be "saved" today. Nothing, and no one, is wasted, save what Paul Tillich calls "holy waste," waste to make known the utter extravagance of God’s grace! For what the world needs now is not only love, sweet love, but love in action! Not only love felt but also love organized! We need the sustaining love of one another, and of this creation we share, -- a style of enjoying without emptying, of using fairly, without using up. What do the gospel writers point to in this oft-told story of Jesus feeding so many with so little? Jesus comes to us in our emptiness, both spiritually and materially, and restores us to fullness of life! Everyone gets a piece of the action! Everyone gets a piece of the pie! Not "pie in the sky by and by." But God’s kingdom come, God’s will be done, where? On earth, as it is in heaven. Is that not the promise of God as "good parent" to all of God’s children? Can anyone please tell me this morning of anyone else in this whole wide world whom we know to be standing outside that promise of God to be parent to all? Anyone to whom the grace of God does not apply? Anyone here to whom the grace of God does not apply? Jesus tips his own hand completely in John 10:10. It is the whole key to Jesus’ mission, as I see it, the whole secret of Jesus’ success. Jesus, unlike so many we know, always tries to keep his success a secret! He knows we will always expect him to do for us what we can and are called to do for each other! Have you heard about the difference between people eating at table in hell and in heaven? In hell each one is trying and failing with these long, long spoons to feed themselves. In heaven each one has learned to be fed by another! Jesus says, "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly!" Will you say that with me, please? "I came that they may have life. And have it abundantly!" Jesus is all about generosity! All about grace-FULL-ness! Wherever he finds grace-empty-ness. Do we not see at least some grace-empty-ness wherever we look today? Including most deeply within ourselves? Are we not in need of God’s all-filling, all-flowing grace? The simple question this story puts to us: Is God’s grace sufficient, or not? Is there "enough?" Is there always "enough?" How much is "enough?" The story says, "And when they had eaten enough!" There really is an "enough!" A point of fullness! Of richness! Beyond which it hurts us to go! Beyond which lies more than our share in the whole! And yet, there are pieces left over. And people left out. To be gathered up, and in. That none may be lost. Scholars call this the Parable of the First Doggie Bag! We will not know "enough" ‘til we try. Until we try how to get the most out of all that we have! All that we have been given. Until we know how to recycle it all. For no one is disposable. There is no one, and nothing, to waste! Julia Butterfly Hill lived two full years at the top of one ancient redwood tree, named Luna, to save it. Of necessity she learned in that vigil just about all there is to learn about recycling! When she and her organization, Circle of Life Foundation, (Please look them up on the internet.) gave an all-day music and mission event in Golden Gate Park on Easter, whereas typically one dumpster at such an event is filled by every 1000 people, 10,000 people that day filled just half a dumpster! It can be done. It must be done. There is no place to put any more anymore. Brothers and sisters, according to Jesus, and his economics, some might say, his Jubilee economics, all that we have we have to share! There is nothing more simple, more natural, more human than that. Kids do it all the time! No wonder it seems to be the youngest person present who offers the bread and the fish for the crowd. Possessiveness, protectiveness, property, profit have to be carefully taught. And our competitive consumer culture does a great job of conditioning us from the get-go! How many commercials do our children grow up watching? May we not grow to love and learn from some other cultures, including some native cultures and some Pacific Island cultures? Our experience has been with Fijians in San Rafael. What a joy to meet up with Tongans here! Some cultures remain much more "gift-centered" than others. Gifts are not so much to consume, to end up with more of, like that bumper-sticker saying, "Who dies with the most toys wins!" (Substitute "weapons" and many things!) Gifts are to circulate and to pass on to another! Naked we come into this world, right, mom? And naked we go out. We have nothing to show for ourselves but ourselves. Everything else stays right here. In fact, we do, too! We just become part of it all all over again. Not so much "reincarnating," perhaps, though that holds some real fascination. But recycling. Reconstituting. Restoring and renewing. All living is re-living. As if for the very first time! What needs to be so withheld? Elizabeth O’Connor says the worst sin is withholding ourselves. What needs to be so kept and so hoarded, protected, defended, all to ourselves? Does God? The Bible? The Church need so much defending? Isn’t that what divides us so? We grow up in school learning that to share answers with others is "cheating." So we grow up, it says in the news this week, to be "intelligence" officers who cannot, who dare not share information with one another! Jesus here, once again, breaks himself open, pours himself out, like God, for us. For you! For me! For us! For them! Whoever "they" may be. Jesus never meets a crowd of us he does not like. Or at least love. With compassion. With solidarity. Until a crowd of us has him killed for his trouble. And he becomes some kind of "king" at last. Where are we sheep ever to find another shepherd like him? His word is to us this morning, we find him in ourselves. We find him in one another. We find him in sharing the whole of our lives. Bonhoeffer reminds us, "It is our daily bread that we eat, not my own. We share our bread. Thus we are firmly bound to one another." Passover is at hand, says John! Time of our liberation from whatever keeps us bound to anything other than one another! Liberation from affluence, which some have called "affluenza!" Liberation from competition and consumption! Liberation from acquisition and accumulation! Liberation to live for abundance! Getting only until it hurts. Giving only until it really helps. Some say the glass is half-full. Some say the glass is half-empty. Some say only, who drank my damn water?! But the youngest among us, the boy with the loaves and fishes, has not yet learned, God love him, to assume the worst. To assume the scarcity of God’s abundance. There cannot possibly be enough for us all. We must prepare for disaster. We must save for a rainy day. But the rain of God, r-a-I-n, like the reign of God, r-e-I-g-n, falls, or here in Reno, fails to fall, equally on us all, -- on the just and the unjust alike, the rich and the poor alike, the black and the white, the male and the female, the gay and the straight, the native and the foreign-born, the Arab and the Jew, alike, and alike, and alike. Whether "like us," whether we "like it" or not, for all are in the "likeness" of God! It’s all about justice, not "just us!" [Vital witness of communion every Sunday!] "Love is something if you give it away, give it away, give it away. Love is something if you give it away, you end up having more! "It’s just like a magic penny! Hold it tight and you won’t have any! Lend it, spend it, and you’ll have so many! They’ll roll all over the floor!" Repeat chorus. Amen!
|
|
209 West First Street
Reno, Nevada 89501 |