Scripture: Luke 16:10-13

Text: 1 Timothy 6:17-19

Weekly Bible Study: Bible Study Blog

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Your mother, Justin Timberlake, and Randy Spleth have something in common.  They all know the old adage, “What goes around, comes around.”  Three weeks ago, Randy began a sermon series about stewardship called “Extravagantly Generous,” based on the 1 Timothy scripture you heard just moments ago.  If you were here for the first installment, you heard Randy thank the staff and stewardship committee (tongue in cheek) for selecting the theme and challenging scripture passage for him to preach when he came back from his summer sabbatical.  He read the first line of the selected verse, “Tell those rich in this world’s wealth to quit being so full of themselves and so obsessed with money…” and decided we were going to make this particularly hard for him to preach.  I stand before you today with the task of finishing this stewardship series while Randy is away.  He came into my office a few weeks ago to let me know I’d be preaching this weekend and said my title would be “Extravagantly Generous: Good Life.”  Randy had to ask for your money but I have to ask you for your life.  Thank you, Randy.  I guess what goes around, does in fact come back around.

 

All kidding aside, this series has been a powerful one for many of us.  It has challenged us to consider some adjectives for our lives that we normally don’t want to think fit us.  Nearly all of us have raised our hands and admitted in the past two weeks, “I am rich!”  I’m just a young man starting out with a wife and daughter and another little one on the way and I still had to confess, “I am rich!”  Many of you have confessed the same.  And how could we not?  We’ve heard the statistics; half of the human race lives on less than $2 a day; those making $35,000 a year are in the top 4% of wage earners in the world and those taking in $45,000 annually rank in the top percent of the world’s wealthiest people.[1]  As much as we may struggle with managing our finances we are well above the average having probably spent our daily two-dollar-a-day allowance just to get to church today… we are rich.

 

While we are uncomfortable with bearing the “rich” label, I think it’s safe to assume we would love to bear the label “extravagantly generous”.  Randy and the writer of this text from Timothy share that this label comes through demonstrating good character and through doing good for others.  You may imagine the person that helped you in a time of great need who did so anonymously or did so quietly, humbly, without any strings attached; not expecting anything in return; extravagant generosity.  Ah, but there may be a string attached after all… but not the kind we anticipate.  1 Timothy says “to be rich in helping others, to do good, to be extravagantly generous. If we do that, we'll build a treasury that will last, gaining life that is truly life.”  The string that is attached is the outcome of our generosity…gaining life that is truly life.  That’s what we really want, isn’t it?  Life that is truly life?  I don’t want a fake life, an empty life, a lacking life.  I want life that is truly life.  But we get attached to the “one day syndrome”.  One day, life will be easy.  One day, I’ll have enough.  One day, I’ll give back.  Time passes and we concede to be content with the “one day” life that will come in eternity after death for today’s living will never truly be life.  But is that all the hope we have as people of faith?  It is why some Christian theologians have said, “We can tell the world that there is life after death, but the world really seems to be wondering if there is life before death.[2]”  Finding life that is truly life is the kind of conversion that happens to us not because of how we talk but because of how we live.

 

A.J. Jacobs, an Esquire magazine editor, is one guy who decided to try to live a biblical life in search of finding life before death.  He has a new book titled, The Year of Living Biblically:  One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible. For one year, he would live his life adhering strictly to every law, commandment, and concept found in Scripture.  Jacobs grew up in a secular household in New York City.  “I’m officially Jewish,” he said, “but I’m Jewish in the same way the Olive Garden is an Italian restaurant.  Which is to say:  not very.”  Jacobs got the idea from his uncle Gil, who he says is a spiritual omnivore.  Gil has claimed nearly all religions possible including Judaism, Hinduism, and fundamental Christianity.  Being an agnostic himself, Jacobs became intrigued when his Uncle began to attempt to live out a completely literal interpretation of the Bible and the challenge was on. 

 

Living this biblically literal life became more of a task than Jacobs anticipated… after all, how would he get away with something like stoning an adulterer?  He decided the Bible did not specify the size of the stones used so he could get away with “severely pebbling” an adulterer.  He still found it difficult to throw even small pebbles at another person so he asked one gentleman if it would be okay.  This man, when learning of his experiment, admitted to being an adulterer and asked, “So are you going to try to stone me?”  “Could I?” Jacobs responded with excitement at the possibility of fulfilling this requirement.  The way the man’s faced wrinkled up after his response, Jacobs thought he might get punched in the eye which would have then given him a shot at completing an “eye for an eye” in retaliation but he fled the scene instead. His quest is very interesting with many turns.  Concerning his journey to live a biblical life, Jacobs speaks of the unexpected detours.  “I didn’t expect to herd sheep in Israel.  Or fondle a pigeon egg. Or find solace in prayer.  Or hear Amish jokes from the Amish.  I didn’t expect to confront how absurdly flawed I am.  I didn’t expect to discover such strangeness in the Bible.  And I didn’t expect to, as the Psalmist says, take refuge in the Bible and rejoice in it.”[3]

I saw Jacobs interviewed on television recently and he was asked what practices he would maintain in his life following this experience.  Two things, he said.  One, to keep the Sabbath as he and his wife found that time set aside for renewal was beneficial to their marriage and secondly, to continue a life of extreme gratitude for the life of blessing he has and, as a result, to be generous to others.  From one who claims to have bumped up his religious affiliation from agnostic to reverent agnostic, he still sees in the Bible the key to gaining life that is truly life:  to live generously. 

 

We get this idea.  We likely support it.  We want our politicians, our teachers, and our ministers to believe it.  But when it gets real, when it pries open our wallets or opens our calendars, we don’t want to think about extravagant generosity.  Let’s play the honesty card here.  What do you love most in your life… what talks to you… what’s the bottom line when you have a decision to make?  Is it God?  Is it your family?  Is it money?  Listen to what Dr. Luke says in his gospel as he lays it out for we who read his work.  “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth,^* who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth” (Luke 16:10-13)

 

You cannot serve both God and money.  How do we spend our God?  How do we serve our money?  Sounds kind of messed up, doesn’t it? We are caught in this wealthy web of confusing the two all the time.  Our American currency says “In God we Trust.”  We put God on our money but we don’t put our money on God.  Finding true life reverses that notion.  If it is “in God we trust” then money wouldn’t be so oppressive to our lives.  It would not consume our thinking or our worries.  If we trust in God then we trust in the soul of others, we see the beauty of the spirit.  True life is found in God’s spirit at work in one another and not in the material.  And yet, knowing this is true, we still buy things we don’t even need with money we don’t even have to impress people we don’t even know.  ^*Forty percent of the American people spend 110% of their annual income each year.[4]  We are in debt and we live most fully for that to which we are indebted.

 

It is easy to decide, I can’t help that I live in America and in America, the dollar rules the day.  It is easy to say, that’s just the way it is, and though we wouldn’t admit it, we are benefiting from this system so let’s just let it be.  It is that perspective that keeps us from being extravagantly generous.  As long as we are convinced we can’t help but to be caught up in money, we have no chance at being generous.  Perspective is everything.  Though the country was mostly disappointed that a small market team like the Colorado Rockies got into the World Series, I have begun to back the Rockies in the series.  Because I have admitted such, I will likely begin receiving death threats from the Red Sox nation.  I get involved in the story lines as much as I do the baseball.  I was reminded of the value of perspective when I read a story last week in USA Today about the Rockies manager, Clint Hurdle.  Their five year old daughter Madison has an incurable genetic disorder, Prader-Willi syndrome. It can cause developmental delays and overeating. The Hurdles are involved nationally in raising awareness about that disability.  Before the first game of the National League Championship series, the coach spoke of a time this season when he heard a radio commentator use the words “crushing” and “debilitating” to refer to a Rockies loss. Hurdle, the man with perspective, disagreed. Here is what he said: “That day I had gotten a call from a mother at Children’s Hospital who wanted me to come by and see her son before he would die that night. That was debilitating. ‘Crushing’ was when a doctor told me my little girl was born with a birth defect. Baseball is a game, and I’ve learned that.”

 

Perspective is everything.  It is deciding for yourself what is important and what is not.  Paul, or the writer of our Timothy text, encourages all who read this work to “fight the good fight”… knowing that the temptation and pitfalls of our wealth are battles that hinder us from finding life that is truly life.  Keeping in perspective your investment of time, energy, and money will help you fight well.  Consider how you spend your money and your time.  On an average day where does it go?  Does your yearly Starbucks spending (roughly $1,175.30 for average Starbucks fans) surpass your giving to the church?  Does your stinginess suffocate your generosity?  Does your time serving others even show up in your mind when you consider your average day?  When you see your average day in your mind, would you say that you are finding life that is truly life?  Finding that life is the result of being extravagantly generous… of being rich in helping others and in doing good.  It is the realization that your life is not your own.  It is God’s and it is to be used to serve others in his name.  In so doing you will find life. 

 

Hoda Kotb is one of the anchors of the new extended Today Show hour on NBC.  Having spent much of the past year dealing with a breast cancer diagnosis alone, she came public last week with her story.  She was in denial for a time and later didn’t want to draw attention to herself.  She didn’t want to be “that woman with cancer.”  Two events convinced her to share her story with America.  The first was meeting a stranger on a plane who said to her, “Don’t hog your journey.”  “And when he said that, my eyes just opened wide,” Kotb said. “He told me that I could keep everything for myself or I could use it to help people. So right then and there I told myself that when it’s time, I’m going to do it.”

 

A second event confirmed her decision.  In May, Kotb was heading to Central Park in New York City for her daily run when she happened upon hundreds of women — some who had undergone surgery, some holding pictures of people who had lost their battle, all wearing pink — walking together to raise money and awareness for breast cancer research.  Tears began to run down her cheeks.  “I was totally connected and nobody knew,” Kotb said. “They were all connected to each other. They didn’t know I was connected. And I felt like I was standing on the sidelines, and I thought, ‘Why am I standing on the sidelines?’ Like, get in the game … The game is to help survivors, too. We’re all in it together.”[5]

That’s what happens when you find life that is truly life.  It is the moment you realize you are standing on the sidelines…disconnected, living for yourself and living alone and choosing to do something about it.  Don’t hog your journey.  Don’t hoard your wealth, your time, your life.  Commit to being in this thing together.  When we come together with all that we have and all that we are, we make a witness that stands out like a sea of pink shirts.  When we serve together, when we worship together, when we tithe together, the witness that exudes from our lives and this place is one that will stretch the love of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth.  And so I guess I will go ahead and ask for your life.  Not because Randy told me to, but because it is the call on our lives as Christians.  Can you imagine the strength of this ministry, this witness, if we committed to that?  Wouldn’t it be something?  That’s the key to finding life that is truly life.  When you give your life and share it with others, you’ll find Life coming back to you and through you that is rich and blessed.  So I guess it is true, “What goes around, comes around.” 

 

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