In the 12th chapter of Mark, in a story we didn’t touch on in our series on Mark, but with which most of us are familiar, a scribe comes to Jesus and asks what is the greatest commandment? There is a parallel story in Matthew, although the set-up is a little different. In answer to that, Jesus quotes from the passage from Deuteronomy that we just heard: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” And then he says, quoting from Leviticus, “The second is this, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” And then concludes “There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:28-31) Now the first of those commandments is known as the shema, coming from the Hebrew word hear, and is one of if not the most important prayer within Judaism. Following this commandment, it is the prayer that is said when rising in the morning, and it is the prayer said when going to sleep. If you see Jews with items strapped to their foreheads and arms in prayer, known as tefillin this is part of the scripture contained in those, as well as in mezuzah, which are the small scrolls at the entryway to a Jewish house. It is centered around the love of God; everything else comes out of that. Now it could be said that if we are to love God, then we are to also love our neighbor, as God commands that, and so maybe that’s not necessary, although it would be easy to forget as we forget other things that God tells us to do.
But, for us as Christians, it’s concluded not just in Jesus saying both are important, but also in the commandment that he gives to the disciples, to us, on his last night that we are to love one another, and that by the love that we show we will be known as his disciples. That is our faith is based in and flows out of love for God and love for neighbor, or love for the world. And why do we love God? Because God first loved us and God has already given to us. We see that too in the passage from Deuteronomy because of the promise that the Israelites are moving into a land flowing with milk and honey. The bounty they have received in their lives has been given to them by God, and so the only appropriate response to that is to love God and to praise God and to teach not just their children about what God has done for them, but even their children’s children. I think that’s a pretty amazing and strong injunction, and they make this teaching a key part of every moment of every day of their lives. You cannot be separated from the call to love God with all your heart, and all your soul and all your strength. There is nothing held back. It’s with everything we have, and this is how we will be known, by how we live in that love and how we give.
Quite a few years ago, Bishop Robert Schnase wrote a book
called the Five Practices of Fruitful Living, which then also became the Five
Practices of Fruitful Congregations. And those practices were hospitality,
worship, faith development, mission and service and generosity. But what Bishop
Schnase said was that while all of those practices were fine and good, you
really need adjectives to describe them, to define them, to take them beyond
themselves to truly life changing practices, or fruitful practices. And so he
added in the adjectives of radical, passionate, intentional, risk-taking and
extravagant. He said it didn’t matter which adjective went with which practice
because all of them would elevate, but for the purposes of this series he put
extravagant with the practice of generosity. And so that’s what we are going to
be talking about for the next few weeks is extravagant generosity. And I’ll be
honest that as I was thinking about a stewardship series and what we might do,
I decided to choose to do this for the very simple reason that Bishops Schnase
will be our new bishop starting January 1, and so I’m trying to do a little
sucking up here, and so if he comes here I want you to tell him that we did his
stewardship series. Although I’m not actually following it the way it was laid
out, or using the material that would make him money, so perhaps its best if
you don’t say anything. But, anyways that’s what we’re doing.
Now we didn’t do a stewardship campaign, or have a
stewardship series last year, which I know some of you were very happy about,
although it should really be seen as a dropped ball by me. Not because it meant
we didn’t have people give estimate of giving cards, but because it meant we
weren’t talking about something so crucial to our discipleship journey, giving.
Indeed, one of the things that Phillip Ortega, our faith development director,
was tasked with when we brought him on staff was to create a discipleship
pathway, or the things we do to deepen and grow in our faith and stewardship
was one of the areas on that list, because it’s so important. It is a sign of
spiritual health and growth, and that doesn’t have to do with the amount you
give right? Remember that the woman at the temple who only put in two pennies
was praised for her generosity, because she gave from a sense of abundance,
rather than from a place of scarcity, and so perhaps that is a great story to
illustrate what extravagant generosity is about. A giving that is way above and
beyond what might be expected, even from those we think of as being generous.
And that starts first with understanding and working from a
sense of abundance, that it belongs to God, and second from understanding what
we have already received and the blessings and bounty that surround us. I think
it’s much easier to be generous, or extravagantly generous, when we see it in
relation to what has been already given to us. that’s part of what the story
surrounding the Shema is telling us to see the promises of God taking place
around us, and seeing the land flowing with milk and honey as a gift from God
already freely given to us. God is not trying to get something from us by
provoking us to give. This is not about a quid pro quo, but instead God is
giving us the opportunity to give to show us our priorities and what we value. As
the love of God already freely given to us, not given because we have to give
first, but our giving is a response to that. There are no stories in scripture
that tell of people leading God-filled, or spirit filled lives, while being
greedy or self-centered. Knowing God, loving God, leads to generosity, or
learning to give, because God is a giver. And we are constantly surrounded by
that reality.
Bishop Schnase says, “every sanctuary and chapel in which we
have worshipped, every church organ that has lifted our spirits, every pew
where we have sat, every communion rail where we have knelt, every hymnal from
which we have sung, every praise band that has touched our hearts, every church
classroom where we have gathered with our friends, every church kitchen that
has prepared our meals, every church van that has taken us to camp, every
church cabin where we have slept – all are the fruit of someone’s extravagant
generosity.” And what is also true of all of those things is that they were
given not for the proclamation of the gospel for one generation, but the
proclamation to their children and their children’s children. To proclaim the
gospel in rising up and lying down, at home and away, and while we don’t know
for most of those cases whose extravagant generosity paid for those things, we
can also see them as an expression of their love for others. And that’s the
other piece is that there is a person or a couple or a group behind all of
those gifts. They didn’t just magically appear, people not only gave those
things, but they gave of themselves through those things. Because there were
people serving in worship, and people singing in those choirs, and people
playing those instruments, and people driving those vans, and staffing those
camps and teaching those Sunday school lessons. It was the people’s extravagant
generosity of themselves that made a huge difference. And those are the things
we remember as we recognized All Saints Day today.
While we have come to think of saints as the giants of the faith, people like the Wesley’s or St. Augustine or Mother Theresa, if we look at how Paul uses the term it applies to all those who are living lives of faithfulness, and so we celebrate not just the saints that we have lost in the past year, but also the saints who are with us here and who make a difference in our lives. And so last week we asked you to name those people in this congregation who have made a difference in your lives, and for those in the sanctuary if you didn’t look at them as you came in, I would encourage you to do so. There were the ones you’d expect to see, and some that might be a little more surprising. There are those who have been here for a long time, those who have passed on and some who are new to us, which is just a demonstration that showing extravagant love has no sorts of boundaries or categorizations but instead is found in all of us, because we all have the same call to love the Lord our God with all of our heart and all of our souls and all of our strength and to love one another. And we do that, and we are called to do that extravagantly because of the extravagant love and blessings that God has already given to us. And so we celebrate our saints, I celebrate all of you, as we seek to respond to God’s call on our lives, to respond to the difference that this congregation has made in our lives, and practice extravagant generosity in all aspects of our lives. I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters. Amen.
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