My big brother, Trey, is a lanky 6 foot 6 agronomy professor at Michigan State University. Trey often tells his students, many of whom grew up on farms, that life boils down to one simple question:
Are you a chicken, or a pig?
Because when it comes to breakfast, the most important meal of the day, the chicken is a critical contributor, but the pig is committed. He’s all in.
If Jesus had been from Arkansas, he might have used this analogy with the rich man in our gospel story. Instead, he was a bit more blunt.
When the wealthy man approaches Jesus on the road, the man seems desperate. He has wealth, he has security, he has followed all the rules – but now there’s this talk of “eternal life”. He has everything he thinks he needs in this life, so now he needs to know how to secure the next life.
The first thing we’re told Jesus does in response to the man’s question is love him. Love him.
But then, what Jesus tells him seems of no comfort. He tells a man who thinks he has it all and has done it all just right, “You lack one thing: go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”
We’re told the man goes away “shocked…and grieving, for he had many possessions.” I find Jesus’ words troubling as well. I know I won’t be able to bring myself to give everything away. I like to think of myself as generous, who doesn’t, but am I willing to engage in the sacrificial giving that Jesus calls on the man to do? It’s a tall order.
I think the rich man’s problem in this Gospel, though, and therefore ours, is that he doesn’t listen to the second half of Jesus’ formula for receiving what he lacks: after giving it all to the poor, Jesus tells the man, “then come, follow me.” Later Jesus tells the disciples that no one can save themselves: “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.” Jesus loved the man. What the man lacked was full acceptance of that love. What the man needed to do was shed himself of what kept him from accepting that love and following Jesus. Jesus asks the man, as he asks each of us, to give up our reliance on wealth, or status, or self, or whatever it is that keeps us from God, and instead to accept God’s divine love and live into the grace God pours freely upon us, and to live in its abundance.
Paul, in his letter to the Hebrews that we heard this morning, sums it up perfectly: “Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”
No matter where we come from, or what we have, we all can approach the throne of grace with boldness. In my brother’s words, be a pig. Be all in, with whatever it is you have been given in abundance – wealth, talent, time, compassion.
I had the privilege of attending the annual Project Hope Rise & Shine breakfast last spring. Project Hope is a Boston-based program that serves poor and homeless women, providing everything from emergency shelter to job training and placement. Christ Church’s own Circle of Hope is an important partner in Project Hope’s mission. We provide not only clothing for women and their children in shelter, but also business clothing to the women in the job training program. The Rise & Shine breakfast celebrates these women, the Ambassadors of Project Hope, women who overcome personal setbacks and struggles to persevere on the path to economic self-sufficiency.
The keynote speaker at the breakfast was television personality and evangelical preacher Liz Walker. She spoke about the abundance of grace that we receive when we recognize that life is a gift, a gift of God’s boundless love. It is not an “achievement”. It is a gift to be celebrated and shared. And when we awaken to this grace, we return grace. And she spoke of Project Hope, a place where people give so freely of their time and their resources to help the neediest among us, as being a place where grace abounds.
This is the time of year, the season of Christian stewardship, when we give thanks for the grace we have received and think about our gifts to the church for the following year. We will soon receive a letter with a pledge card, asking us to carefully consider our gift for the coming year and to please be as generous as we can – to be our most generous selves, as Skip says, in what we give of our treasure and of our time. But if you’re like me, you’ll put that card in your bill pile, the one pile you know you have to go through at some point in the coming weeks. And you’ll sit down to pay your bills, and get either a little or a lot anxious about the ever increasing expenses of taxes, utilities, tuition, food – all of those expenses of daily life. And you’ll worry that you can’t afford to be as generous as you would like. I’m maybe not my most generous self at that moment.
Or maybe instead of with your bills, you’ll put that card with other requests from various charities for monetary gifts. You’ll look at your overall budget for charitable giving, and give the church what you consider to be a generous share. But none of these other charities are asking what the Church asks: that you give of all that you have – treasure, time, talent. So you may not be your most generous self in this setting either.
You could approach your stewardship pledge one of these ways, but I think in today’s Gospel Jesus is showing us a better way. Jesus is telling us that grace comes from being all in. The United Methodist Foundation defines Christian Stewards as “those who awaken to God’s abundant, freely given grace permeating all creation…every dimension of their lives becomes a witness of the living Christ and a channel of God’s grace poured out to all.” Being all in means being open to receiving God’s grace through giving: of our wealth, of our time, of our hearts – of all that we have, and of all that we are.
I suggest this year that we live into that grace, that we try to be all in. So try this: Keep that card near you at all times, pray with it, and wait. Wait to fill it out when you encounter one of those little moments of grace that abound at Christ Church:
- maybe after you make a delivery for Circle of Hope to a family shelter in Boston, or drop off clothing donations to Barbara Waterhouse and experience her enthusiastic gratitude; I know that’s one of mine.
- maybe after you sit in on a presentation by Emilie Hitron and the medical team returning from Haiti, or you go to Haiti yourself
- maybe after you drop your food donations downstairs for Shelter Cooking, or accompany Nancy Langford on a Monday trip into the Cathedral
- maybe after you set the altar for the next day’s service with Liz or Bea or one of the other members of the Altar Guild
- maybe after you receive the gifts of the bread and wine on Sunday morning in communion with your brothers and sisters in Christ
- maybe after you witness the joy of seeing your children learning the stories of God’s people in Children’s Chapel
- maybe after you receive words of sympathy and reassurance from Julia when you put a loved one’s name on the Parish prayer list
- maybe after you receive laying on of hands and prayer for healing at the rail on Sunday morning
- maybe after Skip or Lynn or one of our lay Eucharistic ministers brings you communion in the hospital, or the Pastoral Response Committee brings you a meal if you are homebound after surgery, or from illness or loss
- maybe after you experience the community of the Women’s Spirituality retreat, or the Men’s Cuttyhunk retreat
- maybe after hearing the choir sing a particularly moving or glorious anthem, or the children sing “Let There Be Peace on Earth” as we all did in the service a couple of weeks ago.
- Or maybe after hearing a really good sermon.
And then just imagine with me the grace that will flow when we follow Jesus’ call to be all in. All in. Our money, our time, our hearts.
May this be the year we approach the throne of grace with boldness – together. May this be the year we receive God’s grace, and pass it on.
And may Christ Church always be a place where grace, amazing grace, abounds.
Amen.
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