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 Loving God Back |
5 August 2007 This is an amazing congregation! For the past four years, we have commissioned and supported at least one member of the congregation to take part in some form of global ministry in a country outside of the United States. As Ruth Bulger lifted up for us in this week’s UCCSV Spirit News, we have helped 350 families with emergency assistance over the past six years. That’s more families than we have in this entire congregation! This year alone, we have provided support to 52 families at a time of crisis so that the family can get back on its feet. We have regular crews cooking and serving at the soup kitchen year round. On an annual basis, we take responsibility for providing meals at the Community Based Shelter, for back-to-school supplies for the Shaw community ministries, for Christmas gifts for children in that same Shaw community. We provide Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners with all the trimmings for specific families, as well as Christmas gifts for the children of those same families. Most years, we also send a work crew to Mon County, West Virginia as part of our commitment to Habitat for Humanity. That doesn’t even count the untold hours that Pat Armstrong spends writing notes of support to friends and members of the congregation, or the number of bulletins folded and stapled that Floyd Price and Cathy Manning take care of every week, or the personal care extended by our Caregivers in Called to Care. This is an amazing congregation! Through its abundant outpouring of compassion and support for others within and beyond our church, this congregation gives witness to our amazing, generous God. It is a witness to be proud of. Just last week, as she was preparing information for the most recent issue of Spirit News, Ruth commented that UCCSV’s remarkable generosity makes her feel good about this church. Scientists at NIH wouldn’t be surprised. Their research is affirming what people of faith have known for millennia: quite literally, it feels good to be altruistic. I’m sure many of you saw the articles a couple of months ago in the Washington Post and elsewhere making just that point. Neuroscientists at the National Institutes of Health have found that one of the most primitive areas of the brain—the part that usually lights up in response to food or sex—also is activated when the volunteers placed the interests of others before their own.[1] Right down to our genes, we are hardwired to be empathetic. The Post article went on to say that one of the implications of this NIH research is that “morality is not merely about the decisions people reach but also about the process by which they get there.”[1, italics added] Jesus’ parable, the one our Bibles title the “Parable of the Rich Fool,” is almost a case study of that process. Look how it starts: Jesus is asked to mediate between two siblings, so that the estate left to one of them is shared between the two. You know the situation…the one where one child is allowed to divide the piece of pie and the other child gets first choice as to which piece to take. But Jesus doesn’t get drawn in. Instead, he invites his audience to consider a rich man so focused on his own holdings that he can’t even imagine what to do with the abundance of his crops…except to build bigger barns in which to store them. It goes without saying that to do with more than enough is not a concern that plagues the poor—they are too caught up in the efforts it takes simply to survive. But those who are blessed with abundance beyond their own needs are faced with a dilemma: what do we do with the excess? Now, we don’t have a life history on the questioner in the crowd, but the sibling isn’t portrayed as someone who is starving or in want. In fact, Jesus’ response suggests that for the questioner, the issue isn’t one of need, but of greed. And on that point, Jesus is disconcertingly clear: greed kills. This is the spiritual and psychological nub of the story, the O’Henry twist. Only we aren’t dealing with a single, cherished gift that is ours to give—a pocket watch or brown tresses that would be the envy of the Queen of Sheba. We are the questioner in the crowd; we are the man with the abundant harvest, blessed with gifts beyond measure. Do we who are blessed with abundance choose to share, to redistribute what we have so that others may eat and be satisfied? Or do we eye the good fortune of our sisters and brothers and demand a portion of their abundance too? Scrooge or Feziwig? Which will it be? We don’t even need the drumroll….because there is no question: this congregation is so very clear in its answer. We choose to love God back by mirroring God’s extravagance with abundant giving of our own. Ruth is absolutely right—it makes us feel good. St. Francis of Assisi is absolutely right: “it is in giving that we receive.” And what we receive is life. When I was in high school, our small but active youth group went on a work camp every year. You’ve heard me speak of at least one of them before. Those work camps were so transformative that they became the markers for the year. Not the programs or the discussions or the field trips or the retreats or any of the other activities we did, but the work camps. Golden. Elk City. Spirit Lake. Work camps where we taught Bible school even to tiny classes of two and three children, where we dug latrines and painted churches and classrooms. Work camps where we camped out and made do in leaky tents and rainy weather because the pindot places we served counted on our coming, prepared for our being there. I know we did some good with our efforts. But just as important as the good we were able to do for those we served, we did something at least as important for ourselves. By giving of our abundance of time and talent and treasure, we grew giver’s hearts. And we are doing the same thing here at UCCSV. Even with our ministry of Emergency Assistance. There’s no question that we could pool our money with the other agencies in this area that are dedicated to helping with emergency needs. It might even be more efficient. But I can virtually guarantee that in doing so, it would become a challenge to sustain the same level of giving. Not because the needs are any less real, but because we ourselves would no longer be involved directly in the ministry through the efforts of people like JC Ilg and Ruth Bulger and Jim Van Prooyen and Marilyn Tuori. Efforts that are resourced through the generosity of this congregation. That sense of connection is hardwired too, but connections can atrophy, just as they did for the man with the bumper crops. So we need to exercise. We exercise in order to remain physically healthy. We need to give in order to remain spiritually healthy. On that front, we have a very healthy congregation. What a gift! Thanks be to God. * * * [1] http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content.... “If It Feels Good to Be Good, It Might Be Only Natural,” Shankar Vedantam, Monday, May 28, 2007, A01. |