Giving is Loving

 

Matthew 22:34-46. NRSV

34 When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, 35 and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37 He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

41 Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them this question: 42 “What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” 43 He said to them, “How is it then that David by the Spirit calls him Lord, saying,

44 ‘The Lord said to my Lord,

“Sit at my right hand,

    until I put your enemies under your feet”’?

45 If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?” 

46 No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.

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Good morning!  I am back, all rested and relaxed from 10 days with no Facebook or other electronic disturbances.  I hope you all enjoyed the guest preachers the last two weeks. I certainly did.

Today is the last Sunday of our annual Stewardship Campaign, which we call Consecration Sunday because it is the day we bless the pledges we have received so far.  The Quarantine Qrew will be doing a special blessing later in the service. Most of the pledges received will be monetary.  Some will be a commitment to give time or talents to the service of God.   You might have noticed that I said we are blessing the pledges we have received so far.   That’s because, unlike your ballots in the elections, there is no due date for your pledge.  It is not too late to send it.  It will be accepted and added to the total whenever it gets here.

(And speaking of ballots - please vote.  It’s important.  Every vote counts. Vote for whomever you choose, just please vote.  This has been today’s public service announcement.)

The two greatest commandments.  Most of you are very well aware that on any given Sunday I will most likely mention these at least once, and probably also the commands in Matthew 25 to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and so on.  It is said that every preacher really only has one sermon - and this is mine.

The Pharisees and the Sadducees. Two different schools of theological thought.   Sadducees did not believe in resurrection at the end of time, or an afterlife, or any kind of spiritual realm - angels and demons and so on.  They followed a very literal interpretation of scripture - if a law could not be found in the Tanakh (the Hebrew Scriptures) it had to be manmade and therefore non-binding.  The Pharisees accepted both scripture and oral tradition as authoritative, believed that all persons would be resurrected in their bodies on last day, that there was life after death, as well as angels and demons and so on.  They were both politically powerful, both were represented in the Sanhedrin, the supreme court of Judaism.  Their rivalry was so fierce that, if they were college football teams, they would be Army and Navy. 

So when the Pharisees heard that Jesus had shut down the Sadducees, well, you know, they had to test Jesus themselves, with the thought that they could catch him out with some legal question, cause, you know, they could certainly come up with better questions than the Sadducees.  They had no objection to his reply about the greatest commandment, but then he asked them a question.  Who is the Messiah - whose son is he? When they said David, he pointed out that David referred to the Messiah as Lord, and how could a king call the son of a king “Lord”?  This had not occurred to them before, obviously, because it totally stumped them.   Matthew tells us that “No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.”.  This certainly had to add to their dislike of and disdain for Jesus.  There is, after all, little that academics hate more than being shown up by someone without their credentials, their level of formal education - and Jesus was definitely not educated in the same way they were.

Jesus was nearly always respectful of others.  He didn’t laugh or make fun of the Pharisees or Sadducees when he pointed out fallacies and contradictions in their arguments.  He rarely called anyone names - unless he was really angry, temple courtyard table tossing angry.  In this way he showed them the kind of love that he kept talking about, which was to treat others as you would want to be treated.  To care for others as you would want to be cared for.  Helping the man on the side of the road.  Giving your last mite to the Temple, not out of obligation, but out of love.

Giving is loving.  You know that we sometimes have special offerings, to support our Regional Church, colleges and universities, the Pro-Reconciliation Anti-racism effort, or to help victims of natural disasters.  Those special, extra offerings help our larger church walk into God’s vision for the world, where there is no more oppression, and no one has to suffer alone, and hatred has been replaced with love.  The gifts we give to those special offerings are over and above our regular offerings so that God’s vision may be carried out on a much larger scale than just what we can do here, in Selma.  Our regular offerings help us to do our best work here, in this city, to combat hunger and to carry God’s word to the people who need to hear it outside our congregation.  Whatever we can give in love helps us to walk into it, and fulfill God’s vision.

Gwen was a a tiny, white haired bundle of energy.  A pillar of church. From the time she was in college right up until the day of her death, she devoted nearly all of her time to doing social justice work.  She was actively involved in the Civil Rights movement, and the Farmworkers movement, and the fights for Women’s rights and Gay Rights.  By profession a teacher, by inclination a lifelong learner, she attended classes, workshops, and lectures on pretty much everything.  If there was anything at all happening at the church, Gwen was there to help out.  One day she told me that she and her late husband had stopped tithing decades earlier.  After I stopped mentally freaking out - because I couldn’t imagine them giving less than the full 10% - she said that they gave so much of their income to the church and other charitable organizations that, as school  teachers with 4 children, the IRS had trouble believing it.  When she said they were not tithing, what she meant was they were no longer limiting themselves to 10%.  Giving is loving, and Gwen may have been the giving-est and the loving-est person I ever met.

June once told me that she gave 20% of her retirement income to the church, but admitted she had very few expenses - she lived with her sister and brother-in-law who supplied pretty much everything she required.  She wasn’t well enough to do much else to help out, so she gave as much money as she could so the congregation could continue doing God’s work in our community and beyond.  Giving is loving.

As for me. . . At that time I was lucky to be able to give 2%, maybe as much as 5%. It was expensive to live in Southern California, and I was over whelmed with debt - student loans, medical bills and credit cards.  Today my situation is much better but then I simply could not give more. I know many people share that reality, especially right now in the middle of a recession.  Giving is loving.  We can only give what we have to give.

Eusebio had very little.  His income as a dishwasher did not stretch far enough for first and last month’s rent, so he slept in the doorway of the church until he had saved up enough for a deposit on a room.  He spent many hours every week cleaning up and fixing up anything around the outside of the church that needed attention.  He even re-painted the stripes in the parking lot with paint he found in a dumpster.  No one asked him to do these things. This was his gift, his pledge, given in love and gratitude, so that the congregation could focus on other things.  Giving is loving.

Because we love God, we want to do those things that are required of us.  We want to love our neighbors as best we can. In love and gratitude we want to give our best - our finances, our gifts and talents, our time, our willingness just to show up.  The gifts we give, no matter what those gift might be, will help us to walk into God’s vision for the world, a world where justice is tempered with mercy, God’s peace fills every heart, and God’s love is shown to all persons.  Let us then, give as generously as we possibly can, let us give our very lives to God - for giving is loving, and we are commanded to love.