Last year for Christmas, Kay Reiswig, who is a long time member of this congregation, got our family a clear acrylic bird feeder that hangs in the window so that we could watch birds feed, which was really great. But, in the spring, one of the birds decided that it shouldn’t really be a bird feeder, but would be a better place to have a nest. At the start she wasn’t really successful in that enterprise because the other birds didn’t really think a nest belonged there, and so they kept coming to eat and messing up everything that she was working on. But, eventually her persistence paid off and she got her nest built in the feeder, which we actually thought was going to be pretty cool to watch, especially after she laid her three eggs and began to sit on them. Unfortunately, one of the times she flew off, presumably and ironically probably to find some food, a much larger bird came to see if there was food and sit on the top of it and they were just heavy enough to dislodge the suction cups from the window causing everything to fall to the ground, and the eggs didn’t survive, which while sad was also another learning point for the children about life.
But the point of that story is not the sad loss of baby birds, but instead about the nature of nest building. Now when we talk about nests for humans, it’s about security and protection. We build a nest egg in order to provide for ourselves, to make sure we are protected for the future. In some ways it’s the story of the parable we heard from Luke this morning about Lazarus the beggar and the rich man, who is, contrary to some presentations, unnamed. And the rich man is actually possibly practicing extravagant generosity, as he is feasting sumptuously, except he’s only being generous with himself and friends, not with those who are in need. His nest egg is for self-protection. But, that mother bird building a nest as we watched it was not building it for herself; she was building it for future generations. Her nest egg was not about her and her security, but about protecting and building for generations to come. And what’s even more impressive is that the mother bird will take care of whatever eggs are in the nest, even if they aren’t hers. And that is an example of extravagant generosity that’s closer to what we’ve been talking about and what we do here as a congregation.
Now part of that passage we heard today from First Timothy
is, as I said in the worship preview on Friday, probably the most misquoted
piece of scripture that we have, because what we think it says, ad what people
quote all the time is that money is the root of all evil. And just to quote
Huey Lewis, if money is the root of all evil, I’d like to be a bad, bad money.
But that’s not actually what the writer of first Timothy, who is not Paul, says
“the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.” Money itself has no
value, it’s neither good nor bad, what gives it value is how we relate to it
and what we think of it. An old saying was show me someone’s checkbook and I’ll
show you what they value and where there heart is. You can’t really do that
with a checkbook today, for most people, but perhaps with a credit card
statement or their QuickBooks or mint account. But the results are the same. As
I said last week, God is not provoking us to give as a quid pro quo exercise,
but God gives us the opportunity, the chance to give in order for us to see our
values and priorities. Because our resistance to giving, or a possible
inability to give as we might want, exposes us to the financial realities of
our lives and also the stumbling blocks we have to seeing everything as
belonging to God. Because one of the things we can see in scripture, and
possibly in our own lives, is how wealth can lead us away from God.
And we see those warnings throughout scripture, including in
today’s passages, that while money is not a sin, it can be a problem. It
doesn’t have to be, but it can be. Because while we often hear Jesus’ response
to the rich young man as we heard it in Mark that he is to sell everything he
owns and give it to the poor and then come follow him, that is not an absolute
rule that Jesus is laying down. That was the instruction to that man because of
his ill placed reliance upon his possessions for security and identity at the
very least. Wealth led him, and can just as easily lead us, to believe that we
don’t need God. Why do I need God if I have the financial resources for provide
for myself? To feast sumptuously every day? Why would I pray for my daily bread
when I can just go down to Smith’s and buy another loaf? But that’s the
problem. We put our trust and our hope and our faith and our allegiance and
even our future not in God, or seeing that God has given us what we have, even
our own lives, but instead we put trust and hope and faith and our future, in
the nest egg we have created, and therefore we are prone to wander away from
the faith.
But again, no judgment is made specifically against those who have wealth. And just to be very, very clear here, by the standards not just of the 1st century, but against the standards of the world today, all of us are rich. So don’t be thinking that I’m just addressing a small group here, or only talking about the top one percent of the country, this is addressed to all of us, including me. And so the writer says “tell those who in the present age are rich”, all of us, and then the advice is to “not be haughty” or “put our hope in riches” which can come and go in a flash, but instead to trust in God who richly provides, and to be “rich in good words and generous, ready to share…. So that they make take hold of the life that really is life.” That real life is not a search for riches, which leads to that path of destruction, of all kinds of evil, not all evil, but some of it because it leads us away from God, because it leads us to seeing money, or riches in whatever form as an end in themselves, and not as a means to an end. And when something becomes an end then there is nothing we can ever do to get enough, we can never have enough, which we can never have that contentment that we hear about at the beginning of the passage, we will never have contentment in God, because we will fall into temptation that leads us to following senseless and harmful desires.
That leads
us from forgetting that we came into the world with nothing and will leave with
nothing, except for God. And so we are told, rich and poor, that we are to shun
the temptations and follies of the world, the things that lead us away from the
true life, and instead to pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love,
endurance and gentleness, and we do that, to reiterate, by being rich in good
works and generous, ready to share. That means we are not building up our nest
egg to protect ourselves, but we are building nests in order to prepare for
those who are yet to come. That doesn’t mean our nest can’t be cozy or
comfortable, but what is the purpose of that? If it’s for us, then it’s a
misplaced temptation, but if it’s for bringing in others, of raising up new
generations, then it’s leading to real life, contentment in God and God’s
reign.
And here’s the truth of the matter, people know the
difference. We know the difference between those who are generous and those who
are not. We know the difference in churches too. We never refer to someone as
generous who are doing things only for themselves. Even though the rich man
feasted every day I suspect that few, if anyone, described him as generous,
even his friends, because it was all about him. People can sense in churches
that are doing things only for themselves because they don’t actually have a
generosity of spirit. Because generosity, extravagant generosity, as I said
last week, is about so much more than the amount that we give. The widow in the
Temple is extravagantly generous contributing just two pennies, because it was
all she had, but she gave from a position of abundance, not from scarcity. She
gave from a position of contentment rather than from desire. When we are
generous of spirit in pervades everything that we do, and infuses everything
that we are, there is no way of getting away from it.
And so last week we asked you all to write down what it is
that you love about this congregation, and for those in the sanctuary if you
didn’t look at them on the way in, I would encourage you to do so as you leave.
But look at them not just as answers, but look at them through the lens of
generosity, because what people said they loved was friendliness and welcoming,
of mission and service, of study opportunities, which is really about spiritual
growth and maturity, it’s about how we give of ourselves for one another and
how we give of ourselves to the community and the world. It’s about how we
build our nest and why we build our nest, not for ourselves but for the
proclamation of the good news to the world. As Bishop Robert Schnase says,
“Extravagantly generous congregations emphasize mission, purpose and
life-changing results rather than shortages, budgets and institutional loyalty…
They know that God moves people to give in order to find purpose and accomplish
things for Christ.”
I think that’s who we are. I hope that’s who we are. And that means that our giving should be a reflection of our values. Our individual values and also our corporate values, and it’s been awhile since we’ve explicitly talked about or values as a congregation, and that’s my fault. Although you can find them on the banner as you come into the church, and they are also on the top of the front page of the worship guide, we need to remember them and talk about them more. And so I am going to invite us to say them again together: we are, Christ centered, prayerful, inclusive, growing spiritually, compassionate and caring and in service and mission. As I said, giving reveals our values and priorities, and these values all have a space and sense of generosity in them, but they also lead us further to make sure they are filled with extravagant generosity, a giving of ourselves that is above and beyond what people expect, so that we come to be known by these things. That these are the things we strive for, so that we seek to take hold of in order to build that good foundation for the future, the foundation upon which we strive first for the Kingdom of God and for God’s righteousness, that we might be rich in good words and generous to all. I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters. Amen.
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