Sermon: From Abundance to Abundance

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From Abundance to Abundance

By Charles Rush

November 18, 2007

[ Audio (mp3, 4.4Mb) ]

e day in 1888, a certain Norwegian businessman reached for his morning newspaper. Flipping through the pages, he received the shock of his life: he saw his own obituary.

Surely he must have thought, like Mark Twain, ‘the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.' It was a terrible mistake of course. The businessman's brother had died and a careless reporter, confusing the two of them, had composed an obituary for the wrong man. But because of that blunder, the businessman got a rare and disturbing glimpse of how he was viewed by the world, of what the world would say of him when he died.

He did not like what he read. To be sure, the facts of his life were described accurately enough, and all his impressive achievements were laid out in detail. Yet there was nothing there of his high principles- his beliefs, his values, the things he held most dear. Instead, the obituary focused on his inventions, his factories, his patents, and his great wealth. Decades before, he had created an explosive that he called ‘dynamite', and this weapon of destruction had made him wealth and famous beyond his wildest dreams. The Norwegian businessman was the world-renowned Alfred Nobel.

But it was on the day that the read his own obituary that Alfred Nobel began a new life. He realized, reading about his won death, that the world saw his life as founded on violence and war, on blowing things to bits. Shocked, Nobel decided that this experience had given him a second chance, that it was an opportunity for resurrection and redemption. He began giving his money away. He made provision in his will for the Nobel prizes, rewarding those who had made the greatest contributions to humanity and peace. Today he is best remembered for his humanitarian work, for the Nobel Peace Price. Alfred Nobel, in effect, rewrote his own obituary.

Thank God for second chances. Thank god that there are some occasions in life when we are given the sheer grace to see ourselves as we really are, to discern that something is wrong and to fix it.

Alfred Nobel was given a second chance, a second chance to use his money not for destruction but for joy, not for violence but for happiness. Stewardship gives all of us that same second chance.

‘God loves a cheerful giver' writes St. Paul to the Corinthians. What a concept- that giving things away will make us happy. But it is true. Anyone who has ever dug down deep enough to give a sacrificial gift, a gift that really cost them something in time, money, or effort, and then has watched the smile of gratitude in the recipients, know what it means to be a cheerful giver. It wills wonderful to give things away, if by giving we bring joy.

When Paul describes a ‘cheerful' giver, the “Greek word he uses- hilarion- is related to our word ‘hilarious'. In some ways, I like ‘hilarious better, for cheerfulness seems so low key, so ordinary. Cheerfulness sounds like ‘always looking on the bright side', ‘keeping the sunny side up', ‘starting each day with a smile'.

‘Hilarious', on the other hand, is tears streaming down the cheek. It is the whole body shaking. It is rolling in the aisles.

Paul seems to suggest that we really have a second chance with our money, a chance to give things away that can fill us with giddy laughter. This is not the tight-lipped attitude toward money in general, or the ‘we interrupt the normal broadcast of your PBS station to bore into you until you finally pony up'. No, there might just be some good news here.

Alfred Nobel had lots of money to give away, but it is not really the quantity that matters. Any of us can do it, even the poorest among us. The standard that we hold up in the church is proportionate giving. That is giving based on a percentage of your income, giving that is on its way to a tithe. In a few cases it is even beyond a tithe. Even if you're on one of those infamous ‘fixed incomes'; you can still give a fixed percentage of what God has given you. It's the act of opening the hand instead of closing it that is important; of seeing a need, large or small, and joyfully declaring ‘I'm gonna take care of that'.

Paul believes that we can be hilarious givers by living out of our abundance, not our scarcity. He wants us to focus on the future not the present.

There is an East Indian fable about a rich man who is traveling far from home. A poor man notices his fine clothes and his bulging money bag, and decides to travel with him and look for a way to steal his treasure.

Every night, in the humble inns along the roadside, the poor man unrolls his bedroll and pretends to sleep. Then, as the rich man leaves the room to get washed up and ready for bed, the thief rummages through his belongings in search of the treasure sack. But he can never find it. As soon as he hears the rich man's footsteps, he leaps back into his bedroll, certain he's just moments away from finding the treasure. Every morning, the poor man once again pretends to sleep, until the rich man goes down for breakfast, yet morning is the same as evening: the thief never can find the money bag.

Day after day this goes on, until the two men reach their destination. As they are parting ways, the thief's curiosity gets the better of him. He admits to the rich man what he has been up to. ‘How have you eluded me for so long?' he asks. ‘Did you guess that I was out to rob you?'

‘Yes', said the rich man, ‘I guessed that the very first night.'

‘Then where did you hide your treasure?'

“It was very simple', replied the rich man, ‘Every night, while you went to get cleaned up before bed, I skipped into the room and put my treasure in your pillow, and every morning after you had rifled through my things, I got it back.'

That is a good word for those of us like to think we are poor just because our liabilities run near our income. Sometimes, in our anxiety over finances, we too miss the treasure that is close at hand. If we are ever to become hilarious givers, we've got to stop chasing after treasure in every imaginable place, and realize that we have plenty of treasure right at hand.

We live in and out of abundance. That is a spiritual fact. Curiously, it is hard to catch that vision for some of us. ‘Do we', writes Parker Palmer ‘inhabit a universe where the basic things that people need- from food and shelter to a sense of competence and of being loved- are ample in nature? Or is this a universe where such goods are in short supply, available only to those who have the power to beat everyone else to the store?

For us, scarcity or abundance is largely a matter of how we look at life. Brother David Steindl-Rast has another slant on the matter. ‘Abundance', he says, ‘is not measured by what flows in, but by what flows over. The smaller we make the vessel of our need… the sooner we get the overflow we need for delight.'

Almost all of us, at some point in our lives, get caught on the same treadmill of consumption that wearies our American souls. As soon as ‘our cup runneth over,' what do most of us do? Why, we go out and buy a bigger cup! That means we are always living with the illusion of scarcity, always bemoaning the gap between what's in our cup and the rim- when in reality we, of all the people on the planet practically, are the most blessed financially. That goes for us on fixed incomes, those of us still breaking into a career, those of us with kids in college, even those of us on food stamps.

If we believe that we live in a world of scarcity, it is a sure thing we will find giving to be a chore, a threat, even an insurmountable challenge. Yet if we catch the vision of abundance, hilarious giving can be our joy. Think abundance, live abundantly.

And look to the future. Alfred Nobel never saw a single one of his prizes awarded; the terms of his will stipulated that they would not begin until five years after his death. The Nobel prizes were his gift to succeeding generations. Hilarious giving always makes possible a future for others.

There's an old Jewish fable about an elderly man who spent all his spare time planting fig trees. ‘You're a fool, old man,' the villagers would tease, ‘why are you planting fig trees? You're going to die before you'll ever bite into a single fig!'

‘You are quite right', replied the old man. “Yet I have spent many happy hours sitting under fig trees and eating their fruit. Those trees were planted by others. Why shouldn't I make sure that others will know the same enjoyment I have had.'

That sounds pretty hilarious to me.

In downtown Seattle a few years back a man was walking down the street just a few days before Christmas. He came upon one of those Salvation Army kettles. As he approached the volunteer ringing the bell, he felt an unaccustomed spirit of generosity wash over him. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out all his change. He dropped ever last coin into the kettle with a smile.

The man turned to leave, but then he stopped. He reached into his back pocket, pulled out his wallet and emptied every last bill into the kettle as well.

Grinning like an idiot, he walked away with a bounce in his step. But about two blocks later, the bounce wore out. Suddenly it hit him! ‘What have I done? He asked himself.

The man turned around, walked back to the old woman and asked for his money back. He got it, and left again, walking very quickly, head down, looking neither to the right nor the left.

‘For two blocks' wrote a friend, ‘that man walked in the Kingdom of God. For two blocks he was free of the burden of his possessions. For two blocks he put other people above himself. For two blocks he was self-giving and generous. For two blocks he was blessed; but like most of us, he could not stand the uncertainty that goes with that much blessing. He wanted to continue to think that he is in control. He walked back, out of the realm of God and back into the well-worn grooves of his weary world.'

This season, I hope you will open yourself to walking in the kingdom of God. I hope you become a hilarious, abundant giver. It is not about getting, it's about giving. Make some one else's future possible. Pass it forward. Amen.