"A Generous People"

First Congregational Church – Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
23rd Sunday after Pentecost -- 23 October 2005
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[Texts: I Thessalonians 2:1‑8/Matthew 22:34‑46]

Expectations¼.all of us have them, great or not. Expectations bring a sense of comfort and familiarity to the constantly changing world around us. For example, when we go into a McDonald's we have a certain set of expectations of what the food, the service and the price will be like. We have a different set of expectations if we're heading into say one of the finer dining establishments, like Bartolotta’s or Eddie Martini’s for dinner, don't we? Because of those expectations a hamburger, fries and a coke taste fine at a Mickey D's, but if we'd get that meal at a “good restaurant,” we'd be disappointed to say the least. In fact, we're less disappointed when we have a bad experience at McDonald's than at a very fine restaurant. Why? Because we expect more. As Shakespeare says in All's Well that Ends Well, "oft expectation fails, and most oft there where it promises most."

Expectations, then, provide parameters based upon our experiences and the shared experience of our culture.  We want things to meet expectations, I'd go so far to say that we expect them to, but we're pleased and surprised when things exceed expectations. For example, when Julie and I were traveling in Australia several years ago, we decided that we had to eat lunch in a McDonald's, just to compare. Know what? The food was almost identical but the tomatoes and lettuce were outstanding! When I was in school in Germany ages ago, I did the same thing. Know what? They serve beer in McDonald's! Talk about civilized! Those fast food meals exceeded my expectations and I still remember them as a consequence.

The Pharisees have a certain set of expectations of what the Messiah is supposed to look like and, quite frankly, Jesus doesn't fit them. So, as we've seen in the Gospel readings over the last several weeks, they carry on a campaign to trip‑up or discredit Jesus in the eyes of the common people. Today they come with yet another question, of all the commandments which is the greatest?

You and I know the answer to that question. It's been a part of us since we were very little. However, did you know that Jesus isn't providing a new teaching when he tells them what the greatest commandment is? What Jesus does here is to summarize the Torah’s 613 commandments – 248 positive (thou shalt) and 365 negative (thou shalt not) – into two very positive statements. Appropriately enough, he quotes Scripture to make the answer.

First, he quotes Deuteronomy 6:5, which forms part of the Shema one of the prayers Jews pray daily. It goes like this: "Hear (Shema) O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might." So Jesus takes the essence of this prayer, love God completely. Interestingly enough, the word for 'might,' in the Greek dynamis (from which we get our words 'dynamite,' 'dynamic,' and dynamo') is exchanged for dianoia, 'mind.' I think that's an important distinction, it reminds us – I believe – that God expects us to use the rational capabilities we have in our service. This, too, has been a hallmark of our Congregational Way. As the old saying goes, the doors of meeting houses were built tall so folks would know they didn't have to leave their heads outside!

We also have to understand that Jesus is not calling us to a dreary set of obligations here. As one author has said, "But all together, they can neither limit nor even foresee all concrete applications. To love – with all one's heart, with all one's soul, and all one's mind – has nothing to do with discharging a series of predetermined obligations. Love is constant attention to the other; it is inventive and does not let us ever consider ourselves free of its demands. With all one's heart, with all one's soul, and with all one's mind means that particular obligations jotted down on a calendar – for instance, the dates of birthdays, anniversaries, etc. – are mere reminders, not the bill of expenses to be paid so as to be released from all debts. God is not like a faraway person who keeps rigorous accounts of our actions and omissions." Thank God for that mercy!

Second, Jesus quotes Leviticus 19:18, "you shall love your neighbor as yourself."

I'm not sure that many of us really ever understand this one. To love someone as we love ourselves is an incredible thing. When we look around our world, our town, our church, I sometimes think we have a lot of folk who are engaged in self‑hatred. Why? Because we see the way they treat other people.

This command of Jesus, to love our neighbor as ourselves, means that we do to others only those things we would want done to us; I believe that Jesus said that somewhere too, didn't he? And in that, too, he quoted another great rabbi, Hillel. The story goes that a gentile seeking to convert came to another great rabbi and said, "Give me a summary of the whole law that I can say while standing on one foot." The rabbi scoffed at him as a mocker and had his disciples throw him out. The man then went to Rabbi Hillel and asked the same question. Hillel smiled, told him to stand on one foot and said, "Do not do to others those things which you do not wish to have done to yourself." Then he accepted him as a convert and told him, "Now go; study and pray!"

Jesus exceeds expectations here because he shows that there is more than mere obligation to the observance of the law. What is more, he shows us that we come to love God in loving our neighbor. That's why when he then turns to ask the question on who they think the Christ is he again exceeds their expectations. They think the Messiah is only the Son of David, and thus can only be an earthly king. Jesus – pardon the expression – blows their minds when he shows them, again by quoting Scripture, that the Messiah, the Christ is not just son of David, but Son of God.

What Jesus teaches them, and us, is really a revelation about the Holy Trinity. No one has ever seen the Father. The Son has become our brother, one of us, through his taking of flesh in the incarnation and, what is more, we continue to find him present in our neighbor, which is the action of the Holy Spirit. Three of my favorite spiritual writers said it like this:

To love our neighbor in charity is to love God in man. (Francis de Sales)

He alone loves the Creator perfectly who manifests a pure love for his neighbor.

(Bede the Venerable)

Though we do not have our Lord with us in bodily presence, we have our neighbor, who, for the ends of love and loving service, is as good as our Lord himself. (Teresa of Avila)

And, St. Augustine sums it up fairly well when he writes:

The love of God is the first in the order of precepts; the love of neighbor is the first in the order of practice. For he who prescribed this love in two precepts has not recommended neighbor first and God second, but God first and neighbor second.                                                  

As for you, because you do not see God yet, you merit to see God by loving your neighbor. By loving your neighbor, you purify your gaze to see God. This is what St. John says very clearly, "For whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen."

Here is what is said to you, "Love God." If you tell me, "Show me whom I must love," what shall I answer but what John says, "No one has ever seen God." But do not imagine that you are absolutely excluded from God's life. John tells us, "God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him." Therefore, love your neighbor; look within yourself whence this love of neighbor comes; there you will see God in the measure in which this will be possible for you.

The Holy Spirit is found in the depths of our hearts and directs us toward our neighbor. As G. K. Chesterton once wrote: “We make our friends, we make our enemies; but God makes our neighbors.” It is impossible, then, to find the Father in prayer and the Spirit in the secret of our hearts if we do not recognize and serve the Son in the sisters and the brothers with whom he identifies himself.  Now, we see what God expects of us.

Moses was the bringer of the Law, but he couldn't keep it. He couldn't meet, much less exceed, what God expected, even though he was the greatest of the prophets. That's why he ended his life gazing at the Promised Land on tiptoe, as it were, from the top of mount Nebo. Jesus came to give us the grace, the means to fulfill what God expects. In that he exceeded the expectations of the one for whom they had waited so long. He continues to exceed our expectations, because even when we fail, when we fall short or wander off from the way of loving concern, he brings us back.

One of the means he leaves for that is his body, the church – the place where we can find acceptance, love, kindness, trust, and forgiveness. When Paul came to the Thessalonians he didn't come among them with "beguiling speech," as did the competing philosophers of the time. Rather, he came preaching this message of great expectation in the love of God and neighbor through Jesus Christ, the message that exceeds all expectations when we allow it to take root in our lives. The message Paul preached at Thessalonica is the same today for us in our communities, it gives the same answer that Jesus did to that long‑ago question, and it exceeds all our expectations.

Now what does this have to do with our being a generous people? Everything, because generosity exceeds expectations, it touches us and should move us to respond in the same manner. John Calvin talked about loving God and neighbor in his monumental Institutes of the Christian Religion, which helped to form Congregational theology. He said, “Unless you give up all thought of self and, so to speak, get out of yourself, you will accomplish nothing here. For how can you perform those works which Paul teaches to be the works of love, unless you renounce yourself, and give yourself wholly to others? “Love,” he says, “is patient and kind, not jealous or boastful, is not envious or puffed up,

does not seek its own, is not irritable,” etc. [1 Corinthians 13:4-5] If this is the one thing required—that we seek not what is our own—still we shall do no little violence to nature, which so inclines us to love of ourselves alone that it does not easily allow us to neglect ourselves and our possessions in order to look after another’s good, nay, to yield willingly

what is ours by right and resign it to another. But Scripture, to lead us by the hand to this, warns that whatever benefits we obtain from the Lord have been entrusted to us on this condition: that they be applied to the common good of the church. And therefore the lawful use of all benefits consists in a liberal and kindly sharing of them with others. No surer rule and no more valid exhortation to keep it could be devised than when we

are taught that all the gifts we possess have been bestowed by God and entrusted to us on condition that they be distributed for our neighbors’ benefit [cf. 1 Peter 4:10].” What we have, even what and that we are, is a gift from God and God expects us to be as generous with these gifts as God has been in giving them.

Let’s go back to McDonald’s to look at what it means to be a generous people. We talk about being stewards of God’s gifts. Well, a steward is like a manager of a local McDonald’s Restaurant who carries out the aims of the owners, maximizes profits, while handling all the problems. The world around us is our store to manage and God asks that we simply return a portion of that entrusted to us so that God’s work can continue and the ‘franchise’ can grow.

Staying at the restaurant, but with a different angle, let me tell you a story I heard called "Who Owns Your French Fries?"  It is the story of a man who buys his little boy some French fries. Then the father does what all fathers do, he reaches over and takes one French fry to taste it. The little boy slaps his father’s hand and says, "Don’t touch my French fries." The father thinks that his son is selfish. The father knows that he bought the French fries and they belong to him. The father knows that his son belongs to him. The father could get angry and never buy his son another French fry again to teach his son a lesson, or the father could "bury" his son in French fries. The father thinks, "Why is my son selfish, I have given him a whole package of French fries; I just want one French fry."

God has given us money, when God asks for a portion, people figuratively slap God’s hand and say, "Keep Your hands off my money." They may think that they are just telling those people at the church to “take a hike,” but our being a generous people is ultimately about how we respond to who God is and what God has given us. You see, God owns everything we have. God wants us: 1. to manage what we have for God’s glory. God expects us to manage our time, talent and treasures. 2. To give back a portion of what God has given us. We have agreed to this as part of our covenant relationship, but there are those who give nothing and expect to receive everything. No one is ever turned away from here, there is no fee for service or cash register, but it would be good if we could exceed expectations of always doing the minimum, of “what can I get by with this year,” and give as we have been given.

So, what's the expectation? First, love God, with all our heart, all our soul, and all our mind. Second, love our neighbor as ourselves. If we do that, every day, every action, every thought, will be marked: "exceeds expectations," and so will our lives. Then we will be a generous people. God has shown us how to be generous and now calls us to express it through our service to our neighbor, beginning here with the household of faith. In my heart of hearts I know that we are capable of exceeding expectations and being a generous people and for that I say, “Thank God!”  I also say, “Thank you!”