November 17, 2024
Clothe Yourselves with Generosity
Deuteronomy 15:7-11
2 Corinthians 9:6-8
Deuteronomy 15:7-11
7 If there is among you anyone in need, a member of your community in any of your towns within the land that the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted towards your needy neighbour. 8 You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need, whatever it may be. 9 Be careful that you do not entertain a mean thought, thinking, ‘The seventh year, the year of remission, is near’, and therefore view your needy neighbour with hostility and give nothing; your neighbour might cry to the Lord against you, and you would incur guilt. 10 Give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so, for on this account the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake. 11 Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbour in your land.’
2 Corinthians 9:6-8
The point is this: the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. 7 Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. 8 And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.
For several weeks we’ve been in a sermon series about Christian virtues. The Apostle Paul said, in the letter to the Colossians, “clothe yourselves with…” and then he lists several virtues of the life of Christ. I love his imagery of clothing because it’s so easy to imagine. We have clothes in our closet. We wear some by habit, and some we almost never wear, and other we forget we even have. Paul is encouraging us, as God’s beloved ones, in whom the Spirit is at work, to reach into the closet and choose the right clothing: clothing that fits the life of Christ.
This series has highlighted several virtues that I believe are important and relevant clothing for our lives today as disciples: wisdom, humility, gentleness, forbearance, courage. Today we’re concluding this series with the virtue of generosity.
When I planned this Sunday, I imagined that this virtue would fit nicely with the upcoming celebration of Thanksgiving and the season of Christmas. It’s the right time to think about generosity. Also, when this series was planned, today was supposed to be Stewardship Sunday. This was going to be the culmination of our annual stewardship campaign, when each of us is asked to make a giving commitment to the church for the next year.
But… “the best laid plans of mice and men go oft awry”, and Hurricane Helene changed everything. Considering the storm, and how it has upended our community and placed every aspect of our lives into transitional space, the session wisely decided to postpone this year’s stewardship campaign. We asked colleagues in Florida, who know something about hurricanes, how do you do stewardship in the aftermath of a hurricane? They said, “If possible, you don’t. You wait until January.”
So, we’re waiting until January. In the meantime, the session is asking each of us to continue giving at the same level, or more if we’re able, until the pledge campaign is underway. Some of us give in advance at the end of the year, and if you do, thank you. Please do so this year; those advance gifts help us tremendously in the early months of each year.
So, even though today is not Stewardship Sunday, we are still going into Thanksgiving and Christmas, and it is still the right time to think about generosity as an important virtue for today’s life of faith. In fact, because today is not Stewardship Sunday, maybe we have a chance to think together more broadly about what generosity is.
At its most everyday level, generosity is about living with an open hand: we are generous when we share what we have with others who have need. This is the kind of generosity we see in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. Paul was a missionary who planted the very first churches around the Mediterranean world. In this letter, he is asking the church in Corinth to give money to Christians in Jerusalem. Now, the Corinthians were sophisticated people, and Corinth a large trading city with a great deal of wealth. In other words, the Corinthians had the capacity to be very generous, but they needed a little encouragement.
And Paul was sneaky about it. He told them that the church in Macedonia, another place that was much poorer, had given very generously, and Paul had said to them that they could expect their siblings in Corinth to also make a big gift. This would have been news to the folks in Corinth, so Paul sent some representatives ahead to break the news. He wanted them to have time to take up the collection before he arrived. That way no one would be caught empty-handed and embarrassed. He was playing on their faith, and their pride. Paul was a missionary but also quite an operator.
The point of his machinations is that this group of developing Christians, who happened to live with great wealth, would learn the basic lesson of generosity: those who sow sparingly will reap sparingly, those who sow generously will reap generously.
This is basic life wisdom: the more you give, the more you receive. And Paul goes a little deeper, to say that generosity toward others is an act of faith in God. Why? Because God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so you never need to worry about running out because you’re too generous.
We have seen so much of this kind of generosity in our community in the last two months. In the wake of historic wind and water, we’ve experienced a flood of giving.
Neighbors have shared food and electricity and water. Volunteers have distributed supplies, cleaned buildings, and cleared trees. Restaurants have set up tables on the sidewalks to give away free food. We could go on and on.
Like those Jerusalem churches for whom Paul was collecting, this congregation has been entrusted with over $150,000 in relief funds to distribute into our community. You can read in your bulletin an announcement that the session has created a task force to do this, wants to hear from you if you know of individuals or organizations that have need.
In addition to gifts made by those outside our church, many of you have given generously to support our congregation during this time. As soon as we knew that our regular activities were going to be disrupted and that the needs in our community were going to be greater, some of you stepped forward with special gifts to ensure that the church has what it needs to continue with ministry and mission in Christ’s name.
This is exactly what Paul was trying to teach the folks in Corinth. You have preached his sermon with your actions. Those who sow generously will reap generously. Don’t worry about running out, God will bless you with everything you need. This is generosity at the most basic level, sharing our resources with one another in times of need.
So let’s go a bit further, beyond the generosity of the hand to the generosity of the heart. Generosity, in truth, is a disposition of the soul, a habit of life. The tangible things that we give away – the time we volunteer, the talents we share, the money we donate – those are the just tip of the iceberg. They are the fruit of a heart, and soul, and mind that is truly generous.
In the lesson we read from Deuteronomy, the writer of this ancient law shows us that generosity of the hand flows from generosity of the heart. Deuteronomy is a book of law for the people of Israel to live by as they entered the new land which God had promised them. The basic framework of that law is what we know as the Ten Commandments, given to them in the wilderness on the way to the promised land. The book of Deuteronomy elaborates on those ten commandments to create a wide-ranging ethical framework for their whole lives.
In chapter fifteen, we find the implications of the commandment to honor the Sabbath.
Honoring the Sabbath meant more than not working of the Sabbath Day. It meant resting in mercy of God and showing God’s mercy to others.
So, when we read instructions related to the Sabbath, we come to these words: “If there is among you anyone in need, a member of your community in any of your towns within the land that the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor. You should rather open your hand, lending enough to meet the need, whatever it may be.”
Do you notice the order and the connection there: hard-hearted or tight-fisted. I love the visual, visceral imagery of the Hebrew scriptures. Do not live with a hard heart. Do not have a heart that is like stony and hard ground. Do not have a heart that cannot be penetrated by the face or stories of others. If you have a heart like that, you will also ball up your hand and show the world a fist. Instead, soften your heart. Let your heart be penetrated by the stories of others, broken open by their struggles and needs. Then, you will open your hand and share what you have.
Hearts and hands are connected. The connection continues in the passage: “Be careful you do not entertain a mean thought… viewing your neighbor with hostility and give nothing.” The thoughts of the mind and the gifts of the hand are linked. Then once more, in verse 10, “give liberally and be ungrudging when you do…”. The act and the attitude are both important.
If you have a grudging heart, if you are envious or resentful or angry, you will not share much of what you have. On the other hand, if you look at your neighbor with kindness and empathy, if you are generous with your thoughts, you are much more likely to be generous with your hands. Hearts and hands are connected.
I would venture to say that we need, today, a revolution in generosity that begins with the heart. As American citizens and neighbors, we need to do more than give money to each other in need. We need to see one another ungrudgingly, without entertaining mean thoughts. We need to see one another with generosity that begins in the heart.
Several decades ago, a medical anthropologist named Paul Farmer coined the term “hermeneutics of generosity” to describe this way of seeing. Paul Farmer was a medical physician who dedicated his life to improving the healthcare of the poorest people all over the world. His great gift – as a physician and a person of faith – was to encounter different peoples and culture with a spirit of generosity.
He called it a hermeneutic /ˌhər məˈno͞o dik/. The word hermeneutic simply means an “interpretive lens.” It’s how you see things – people, experiences, culture. Most of us live with what is called a hermeneutic of “suspicion.” If fact, if you are a product of higher education, you were taught to employ a hermeneutic of suspicion. Don’t believe everything you read or every story you hear. Be skeptical. Look for hidden agendas and ulterior motives. Proceed with caution.
Paul Farmer, on the other hand, said that – especially when we are dealing with other people who are vulnerable and struggling – we need a hermeneutics of generosity instead of suspicion. What did he mean by that?
He meant that we should assume the best in others, especially those who are in vulnerable circumstances. We should assume they mean well, that they have goodwill and dignity, rather assign blame or make judgments.
He meant that we should see each person in light of the whole picture. Each of us is shaped by a context. We are especially shaped by things like poverty, inequality, and historical injustice. Those forces are bigger than our individual lives and choices. The generous person will see the individual in the bigger picture of the whole.
He also meant we need to reject simplistic narratives as ways to explain others, especially simplistic narratives that make easy judgments about people who are different than we are.
You and I know that we are swamped today by simplistic narratives about each other. These narratives say things like: these people are just racist, or those people are just lazy; well those people are the elites, or those people are just uneducated; these people are rural, those people are working-class, or those people are urban; that’s just Gen Z; well, you know those Boomers.
We are flooded by simplistic narratives that try to explain others with an easy shorthand, but which always fall short. We need a revolution in generosity toward one another that begins with the heart. We need generosity that engages with others in the full complexity of our human experience.
All of us have a complex story of how we got to be who we are and believe what we believe. All of us want to be given the assumption of goodwill and dignity. Each of us can name the blessings and the struggles that are part of our story. Each of us wants to be understood in the bigger picture of our lives. We need to engage with one another with generous and softened hearts.
The author of Deuteronomy got it right: “do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward your needy neighbor.” Give with the heart as well as the hand.
This is the essence of God’s love for us: a love that not only reaches out with the hand but shares with the heart. The whole heart of God is shared with us in Jesus Christ. God loves by sharing our lives, getting inside our stories, becoming one of us — and as one of us, saving us.
Beloved of God, God loves you and has chosen you and has filled your closet with good clothes. Spirit-designed and empowered clothes. The kind of clothes that Christ would wear.
These are tender days. Our lives have been upended by a storm we did not expect. A national election, which we did expect, has added to our concerns. We are going into a holiday season – families gathered around the table and the tree, there will be tense moments and empty chairs and tender memories. Some of us are excited and some are worried.
What do you plan to wear? Wisdom, humility, gentleness, forbearance, courage, generosity. You will look really good in those clothes. Just like Christ.
Rev. Patrick W. T. Johnson, Ph.D.
First Presbyterian Church
Asheville, North Carolina