(!) GENEROSITY

A Sermon in the Fruit of the Spirit Series

by Thomas R. Henry

August 14, 2005

Texts: Proverbs 11: 17-21; 23-25 / Mark 12: 41-44

I have to make a confession. I intentionally left out one verse of one of today¹s scripture readings. If you look in your bulletin, you will see that in Proverbs the reading goes from verse 21 to verse 23, specifically skipping verse 22. I didn¹t like that verse. I didn¹t know what to do with that verse. So, I decided to leave it out of the reading. But then I said to myself, “Hey, you can¹t just leave out verses you don¹t like.” (Even though both liberals and fundamentalists have been known to do that.) I didn¹t know what to do with that verse. So, I decided to make Proverbs 11:22 the text for this sermon.

Proverbs, the eleventh chapter, the twenty-second verse reads:

Like a gold ring in a pig¹s snout is a beautiful woman without good sense.

Now do you understand why I left it out? Like a gold ring in a pig¹s snout is a beautiful woman without good sense. That gets your attention. Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson come immediately to mind. But not to my mind. Not to my mind as I was thinking about this sermon. What came to my mind was the poor widow and her two small copper coins, worth about a penny. The poor widow Jesus observed while he was sitting in the marketplace sipping a Grande Iced Vanilla Skim Latte with a double shot. That poor widow was a beautiful woman without good sense.

Mark tells us in his Gospel:

Jesus sat down opposite the treasury (the temple treasury was a collection for the poor which would later be called in Christian churches, “the poor box.” and still later, “the benevolence collection.”) And he watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny.

Between sips, Jesus commented to his disciples that many people had contributed out of their abundance, giving perhaps a very small percentage of what they had to give, but…she…put in everything she had, all she had to live on. Definitely a woman without good sense.

Generosity…the fruit of the Spirit for this day in our Summer Sunday Sermon Series… often does not make good sense. But good sense is what we strive for; what we have been taught; what we teach our children; what we admire and even envy. Good sense.

Good sense teaches us to be generous to a point, but not beyond that. It certainly is without good sense to give everything we have, all we have to live on. And yet, there is something in that attitude of all-out generosity which makes a person beautiful, like a gold ring in a pig¹s snout. But, but, on the other hand, generosity taken to what we would call the extreme, as in the case of the poor widow giving away all she had to live on, may make us beautiful, but it still does not make good sense. It¹s all well and good for Jesus to be impressed with the widow¹s generosity, but what happens to her later in the day when she has nothing left to live on? It¹s all well and good to tell this story of woman with a beautiful attitude and a giving spirit, but now 2000 years later, we still have to deal with it. And it still does not make good sense.

In fact, all of these fruits of the Spirit we have been preaching about this summer do not make good sense in the Real World. Not forgiveness, not peace, not patience, not kindness, not love, not even joy. There is a “Yeh, but…” response that follows along behind every single one of them. And that “yeh, but…” comes into our minds and out of our mouths, not because we are bad, but because we are human and life is complex. We are not pure and perfect. Life is not clearly good or evil. We are a strange mixture of experiences and emotions. We are human. We are human as God has created us to be, and today we American humans live in a media world where having good sense is marketed to us on a daily basis. It is fed to us in self-help books, even in religious books; it is taught to us by financial counselors and by caring parents; and it is urged upon us by politicians who strongly, and quite effectively, can use our good sense against us in order to further their own agendas.

We can be convinced that it makes good sense to pay for war, but that it does not make good sense to commit the same resources to foreign aid. Good sense is also preached to us by television preachers. They counsel us to have good sense about everything…except for the donations we are to send to them.

We are human and we all have some very real and honest “Yeh, but…” feelings that come from our experience. Some of our “Yeh, buts…” are a very necessary caution. Very necessary. Good sense is not bad. It¹s good, but not purely and perfectly good. We have to face the fact that some of our “Yeh, buts…” are lame excuses. Personally, that is why I need to hear about the poor woman at the poor box now and again. That is why I need to be told by the apostle Paul what the fruits of the Spirit are.

These fruits of the Spirit are not completely attainable or even sometimes desirable. Yet, into our humanness comes the divine, messing around with our good sense. In Jesus Christ, God became flesh and dwelt among us. The fruits of the Spirit are the marks of divinity, dwelling among us and within our humanity. The fruits of the Spirit are, in fact, the Spirit dwelling within us. God within us, drawing us out of ourselves and toward others. And that is certainly true of today¹s fruit of the Spirit…generosity.

Webster defines generosity as liberal in giving and that is how we usually think of it. But the dictionary also defines it as free from meanness or pettiness. And that is even harder for me sometimes than to be liberal in giving. Free from meanness or pettiness. Free from Schadenfreude, that wonderful, descriptive German word which means taking satisfaction or delight in someone else¹s hardship. Being free from Schadenfreude is what makes a person as beautiful as a gold ring in a pig¹s snout.

In fact, I think that being free from meanness and pettiness is often what prompts us to be liberal in giving.

A substantial old lady with white hair and pearls once said: Giving frees us from the familiar territory of our own needs by opening our minds to the unexplained worlds occupied by the needs of others. Barbara Bush said that and the poor widow at the poor box lived that. That widow was no doubt quite familiar with her own needs, but by somehow, somehow, in spite of her poverty, and being freed from meanness and pettiness, she could open her mind to the worlds occupied by others and give all that she had to them.

In order to be generous, we have to be free from the familiar territory of our own needs, even for just a short while. We have to be free from our own very familiar needs enough, just enough, so that we can let some of the unexplained (and often unfamiliar) worlds occupied by the needs of others occupy us. Occupy our thinking and our concern. Being generous may involve our money; it may take our time; it may demand our vote; it may mean a change of attitude. Sometimes it will feel like it is taking all we have to give. Time. Attention. Resources. Energy. And that makes no good sense.

But God is not always the God of good sense. Sometimes, oh, yes, but not always. And I personally find that to be maddening. The God of the Gospel punches all of our buttons. And seldom are they Easy Buttons. They¹re almost always Hot Buttons. Wherever we have lodged ourselves on the political or economic continuum, the God who was in Christ makes all of us uncomfortable at times with how we live our lives and how life is being lived. Our pointing fingers sometimes get turned around so that we are pointing right back at ourselves. The God who was in Jesus Christ makes us all squirm now and again.

Jesus makes us squirm.

I don¹t know why Jesus just had to see that widow in the marketplace. I don¹t know why he just had to tell his disciples. And they just had to pass along the story. And someone just had to write it down. Because now we just have to listen to it. We just have to listen and try to let some of the divine Spirit become flesh in our humanness…as God continues to make us beautiful people.

Beautiful like a gold ring in a pig¹s snout.