LIVING WITHOUT LIMITS
SCRIPTURE
You will
remember that a few weeks ago a man entered an Amish school in
There is a
follow up to that story that is as startling as the event itself. The follow up was for those grieving parents
whose children were the victims of that massacre to forgive the man who robbed
those children of their lives, as well as his own. The parents went still further in their
forgiveness and attended the funeral of the killer. Half the people who attended that service
were Amish. If that were not enough, the
Amish community helped to establish a fund for the assassin’s family.
That is
incomprehensible to many of us. How many
times do we hear of families in court seeking legal revenge for the pain they
suffer at the hands of someone who has robbed them of a loved one? You see, the Amish do not separate their
faith from their practice. They believe
what Jesus said about turning the other cheek.
They have
learned to live life with no limits on their capacity to forgive as Jesus
forgave when he said from the cross, “Father, forgive them for they know not
what they do.”
I am a
child of the Great Depression even though I was born eight years after 1929
when the great crash came. My views on
limits were shaped by that great economic disaster, as were a lot of the views
of others gathered here today who are part of my generation. Our parents’ and grandparents’ views of the
economy were shaped by that great financial upheaval. They always expected another big one to come
along, just as those people in
Several
years ago I helped, along with others, a friend of mine clear her mother’s
house after her mother’s death. In the
course of that venture we found several years supply of bath soap, canned goods
that would have filled a food pantry, and twenty six thousand dollars in cash
stashed in various places from cookie jars to books. This woman thought in terms of limits. She could not have enough rain gear when that
rainy day came.
In the
gospel text for today we are presented with an entirely different view of
someone who gave not out of a sense of scarcity, but out of a sense of
abundance. We find Jesus and his
disciples in the
There was
Jesus watching the wealthy drop their bags of money into the treasury
receptacles. Yes bags of money, because
there was no direct deposit or checks or even banks. Along comes this poor widow with her two
copper coins, the smallest denomination of currency there was. She caught Jesus’ eye when those who gave
much larger sums escaped his notice.
They, he said, “contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her
poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”
She had no
depression mentality, she held nothing back.
There was no reserve, no larder to draw on, and no rainy day funds. Yet she gave everything she had. Now that seems an impractical model for us,
for we have responsibilities. The lesson
that comes from this is that she did not think in terms of limits, of
scarcity. She thought only out of
abundance.
We’ve just
come through another election season.
Thank God! These election cycles
bring with them our worst instincts, and I’m not just speaking of dirty tricks
and ads which distort the opponent’s views.
Candidates always appeal to our sense of scarcity. They always want to cut taxes. They want to cut government expenses. I agree that our resources, our tax money, ought
to be used responsibly and carefully.
But friends, here we are, the richest nation in the world, and we can’t
afford decent health care for everybody.
We complain about our property taxes and don’t see that our public
schools and colleges are money in the bank for our economy. We fail to see our abundance and only see our
scarcity. We want decent roads and
public safety services, both fire and police, and we complain about our tax
burden.
I am a
homeowner and taxpayer, and I know if I want those things I must pay for
them. I look around and see people who
have so much more of this world’s goods than I have, but I’ve never voted
against a school referendum because I feel richly privileged to live in a time
and place like this.
This is, of
course, Stewardship Sunday. You have
heard my pitch for proportional giving.
I’ve written about it in The Open
Door, and I’ve preached about it from the standpoint of how you go about
figuring what you are going to give, but I wanted to save the spirit of giving
sermon for today. If you haven’t
prayerfully made your decision about what you will give this year, I appeal to
you to think about your circumstances and see if your situation is one of
abundance and act with generosity. I
hope this will help you to examine your means and your motives as you think
about what God has given you.
I think our
attitude toward our possessions and wealth needs to be examined in terms of our
abundance and not scarcity. For the Christian,
it needs to be examined in terms of God’s generosity toward us as shown in the
life of Jesus Christ.
God does
not impose limits on us because we have not taken good care of God’s creation,
but we will have to live with the consequences of our prodigal misuse of our
world. God does not call grace off
because we have not been gracious to one another. God continues to shower us with love even
when we have been unlovable. God calls
us to live without limits on our love even as we have experienced the
unlimited, unconditional demonstration of God’s love in Jesus Christ.
It may seem
strange to us that the Amish could find so much forgiveness in their community
for one who brought such grief to them.
Jesus did. We may see it as
strange that someone would show such self sacrificial giving as the poor widow
in our gospel lesson for today did as an outpouring of love for God. Jesus did.
That is our standard, not to think in terms of limits, but out of the
abundance of love that God extends to us.
Sermon
preached by Reverend