2017-10-24
Brooke Strong
Scripture: I Thessalonians 1:1-10
Reformation Series: Sola Caritas
Three boys are in the school yard bragging about their fathers. The first boy says, “My Dad scribbles a few words on a piece of paper, he calls it a poem, and they give him $50.” The second boy says, “That’s nothing. My Dad scribbles a few words on a piece of paper, he calls it a song, and they give him $100.” The third boy says, “I got you both beat. My Dad scribbles a few words on a piece of paper, he calls it a sermon, and it takes eight people to collect all the money!”
Ah, stewardship! Next Sunday is Commitment Sunday as we make our pledges to Federated’s annual program. The giving you and I do supports the mission and countless ministries of this church. And our hope is that it will take at least eight people to collect all the money!
It’s fitting that my stewardship sermon—sometimes called “the sermon on the amount”—should happen today. Today is the culminating Sunday in our series on themes that predominated in the Protestant Reformation 500 years ago. During this series, we’ve looked at the importance of the church, scripture, the glory of God, Christ, grace, and faith. Today we conclude the series by exploring the theme of love and how central it is in the church and in the world. As it turns out, unsurprisingly, love and stewardship are intimately related.
The love we’re talking about begins and ends, of course, with God. Our love is only possible because God has first loved us. Human love can only happen because we have been treasured by God. Our vocation as human beings, though, is to live out that love with each other. And it’s that love—our love for each other—that we’re going to focus on today.
In English, the word “love” covers a lot of ground. We say we love ice cream or the Metroparks or Halloween. We love our spouses or the Cavs or even, if you’re a person of enormously high character, the Browns. Our single word “love” is used in all sorts of ways.
Ancient Greeks, though, had at least five words for love. There’s “philia,” the love we have for our friends. There’s “epithumia,” the love we have for food and drink—our appetites, in other words. There’s “storge,” the love we have for our children. There’s “eros,” the urge we have to unite with other people—hence the English word “erotic”—but also the urge toward art and music. And then there’s “agape,” which is the highest form of love. Agape is self-giving love, love that makes a sacrifice for someone else. And while they each have their own flavor, what joins all these words for love together is the drive to be reunited with whatever it is from which we’re separated. In all of these, the common factor is a drive to connect—with friends, food, art, children, lovers, strangers, and God. All love is ultimately about reunion.
Agape is the virtue most often associated with followers of Jesus. It’s what happens when we give to something beyond ourselves. When we stay up most of the night with a sick child, that’s agape. When we take a good chunk of the day to prepare a special meal for our spouse, that’s agape. When we go out of our way to join someone who is struggling or is victimized by larger cultural forces, that’s agape.
The apostle Paul twice uses the word “love” in today’s reading. In writing to his friends in Thessalonica, he commends their “work of faith and labor of love” (1:3). And a verse later, he reminds them that they are “beloved by God” (1:4). Both uses of “love” there are rooted in the word “agape.” Paul is praising the way his hearers have reached beyond themselves to practice sacrifice and care in their common life.
When we make pledges to support this church, we are making a kind of sacrifice, aren’t we. It’s a sacrifice to give because that same money could be used for any number of other purposes. With that same money, for example, we could buy a fancier car, or remodel our kitchen, or take a vacation to Prague or Cancun. Why shouldn’t we spend that money on shirts and shoes and boats and toys and dinners at fancy restaurants?
And the answer is: there are lots of fun things to spend a good part of our money on. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with enjoying the fullness of what life offers—traveling and eating out and going to concerts. A Spartan life of deprivation is certainly not the goal of Christian discipleship. God gave us fun, and I dare say God invites us to enjoy it.
But here’s what’s central: none of that other stuff matters at all if there isn’t love in our lives. What use is a nice car if we don’t have fulfilling relationships? What glow is there in a nice vacation if we don’t have people with whom we can laugh and cry and play together? What richness is there to life if we live it all by ourselves?
And it’s not just love shared with family and friends that matters either. Ultimately the question is: what satisfaction and real happiness is there for any of us if the world smolders in hatred, if races and religions live in tension, if women and men live with barely disguised scorn and disgust? Life without harmony and cooperation is grim and dingy.
Here’s what matters: when I offer you something and you offer me something, life pops and carbonates. And this is true even, and especially, when life is difficult and painful and full of challenges. The “labor of love” is the way Paul puts it. Contrary to popular opinion, in which love is conceived to be little more than butterflies and rainbows and unicorns, real love has about it a quality of sacrifice, of relinquishing, of giving up something dear for the sake of a greater good.
“Sacrifice,” as you may remember, comes from the same word as “sacred.” To make a sacrifice is to do something sacred. It’s to do something blessed and holy. It’s the heart of life. Sacrificial love changes the world, one little bit at a time.
What’s love? As with a friend of mine who’s recently fought breast cancer, it’s a daughter delaying college for a semester while her mother goes through chemotherapy; and it’s a son taking time from his friends and job hours away to come and help his ailing mother move into a new home. Being present with someone who’s sick: that’s love.
What’s love? It’s when Federated members and friends deliver and serve a meal at St. Paul’s UCC on the near west side for Loaves and Fishes. It’s when Federated youth do a “reverse trick-or-treat” and take gifts to elders at Hamlet Village. It’s when Forest Hill Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights takes in an undocumented immigrant and gives her sanctuary while she works out how to secure a visa. Reaching out to others and taking risks on behalf of justice: that’s love.
What’s love? Jenny Peters tells a story about her father Don, a beloved saint of Federated who died a few months ago. “I was in junior high school and old enough to stay by myself (or so my parents thought). I had been learning to drive with one of my folks in the car but I only had my learner’s permit at the time. Mom and Dad had gone out for a while [one evening] and I somehow got the notion to take my mother’s car and drive to a friend’s house. No harm, no foul, right? Well, I was very pleased with myself because I did drive all the way to Chesterland and visited for a while and got back home before my parents returned. I had a little trouble pulling the car into the garage so it was straight, the way my mom parked it. In trying to adjust, I hit the side of the garage and really did a number on both the front left quarter panel and the garage! There was no hiding the damage to the garage so I just left the car where it was and retreated to my room to await my certain doom.
“When they got home, my mother was the first to come up to my bedroom to inquire what in the world had happened. I tearfully told her how stupid I had been, apologizing profusely and offering to pay for the damage out of my allowance! I then heard my father coming up the stairs and I braced myself for what I expected would be an expression of disappointment; that they had trusted me and I let them down (which was all true, of course). Instead, my dad leaned in my bedroom doorway and said, ‘Hey Jen—you know what happened the first time I took my dad’s car out for a spin? I hit the garage.’” Making an attempt to understand and forgive each other: that’s love.
And then there’s this. On the day our younger son, Taylor, graduated from college, the columnist E. J. Dionne was the commencement speaker. Not too long ago, Taylor reminded me that Dionne ended his speech that day with some advice on how to live a happy life. “And remember this,” Dionne concluded: “It is mathematically impossible to tip too much.”
A number of years ago, a minister and seminary dean named Michael Jinkins wrote a book of letters to his children about living a Christian life. In one of his letters, he told them that we are “blessed to be a blessing.” “This,” he said, “is why I think that stewardship is at the core of human life—generosity of spirit and purse toward others, and caring for the world in which we live.” And Jinkins went on to say, “If I were going to translate this spiritual teaching into the vernacular, I might say simply, ‘Tip extravagantly.’” Why? “It’s because there’s something in the nature of tipping extravagantly that smacks of the character of God.”
“I believe,” says Jinkins, “that when we are generous, we express the character of God revealed in Jesus of Nazareth.” And he tells this story: “Last year we had a luncheon to honor a former chair of [the seminary’s] board of trustees. Several members of his family spoke, including his daughter. She related something that had happened that very morning as they were driving [to the luncheon]. Having forgotten to fill the tank before leaving Houston, they ran out of gas partway to Austin. A phone call later, a young man from a gas station in the next town found them, got them enough gasoline to get to the filling station, followed them there, and filled up their car. After the bill was settled the man handed his daughter two fifty dollar bills to give the young man. She said, ‘Daddy, I’m sure he would be more than happy with one of those [fifties].’ He said, ‘I don’t want him to be happy. I want him to be ecstatic!’”
Jinkins goes on to say, “I believe the meaning of life is being a good steward, which is another way of saying that the meaning of life can only be expressed in words like gratitude and generosity. . . I think we’re [meant to see Christian faith] as a lifelong expression of gratitude toward God that takes the form of generosity toward others. When I think of the phrase ‘meaning of life,’ this is what I think of more than anything else—not a tally of philosophical propositions, but a way of embracing life as a gift that can only be enjoyed through being given away” (Called to Be Human: Letters to My Children on Living a Christian Life, pp. 107-109).
Next Sunday, we’ll all be invited to make financial pledges to Federated. These pledges aren’t just one more item in our family’s budgetary spread sheets. They are centrally acts of devotion and sacred generosity and holy love. They make manifest our adoration of God, our belief in the mission God has for us, our conviction that giving some substantial part of our income for the work of justice and love is precisely what we most need to do. Let’s make God’s heart not just happy but ecstatic. Let’s give in overflowing love.