Grateful Living, Generous Giving
By Charles Rush
November 18, 2012
Psalm 100 and Lk. 12: 32-34
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w that the worst of the storm is past us, our local news reporters have been roaming the streets of our hardest hit neighborhoods, looking, it would appear, for Mr. Grumpy Gus. And he has been easy to locate. We have Rudy from Rockaway, “They say this is the greatest city in the world but I can't get no juice. I can see Manhattan right there but no juice.” And he huffs off from the camera.
I flip to
another channel, and we get Rudy's wife, Grumpy Gloria. “What are we here in
the third world or sumpen?” She asks. I love the New York grimace.
I understand.
There is a lot of loss, a lot of grief. But who can be angry at Mother Nature
when you have the guys from the Long Island Power company or the yahoos from
FEMA that so wonderfully fit the bill.
And we all get
it because every single one of us has had a moment like that, tired of cold, lines for gas, trains that are late. It gets old
quickly.
That is why I
was really struck on Sunday night watching '60 Minutes' on the families that
live in Belle Harbor in Far Rockaway. It is middle class community, lots of cops,
firemen, and first responders. They lost plenty of neighbors on 9/11, had a
plane from LaGuardia ditch onto their block killing people a few years later,
and now their homes were filled with sea water, many completely wiped out. They
had a bunch of guys in a room to ask them how they were doing and their immediate
response was ‘we are the lucky ones'. We are here. We have our family. We have
our friends. We will go on” It is the beauty of the human spirit.
They are
standing in the middle of devastation and they are grateful. That is the
nobility of the human spirit. And to a certain extent, we have to invoke that
spirit or we have to return to the perspective of gratitude because the small
and grumpy in us is always there clamoring for our spiritual attention.
I got a note
from Jesse Hermann this week that could have come from most of our homes. They
weren't devastated. But a few months ago, Jesse had surgery and then he had
some complications from surgery and he lost some sensation in his legs as a
result. Then the storm came and knocked out power and heat. Then the hot water
heater broke and leaked all over the basement so they had to throw out carpet
and basement furniture. The house is freezing, so his teenage son is in bed
with him and his wife… As all fathers of teenagers are thinking right now,
‘this is when most of us revert to our default Grumpy Gus speech about what a
pain in the arse our life has become and all the things that are wrong in our
world.
But his wife
gets into bed and says, “Man are we lucky”. He is
laying there wanting to ask more, but like most intelligent husbands afraid to
actually speak… He knows better than to directly challenge her interpretation
of the events of their life, so he just cuts her the eyes like, “Splain this to
me dear.”
And she says,
“Well we weren't going to stay here because you aren't feeling well but we only
did because our son Matt has an extra early practice. So I got up to wake him
for practice and heard the water running downstairs and if he hadn't had the
practice early it could have run for another hour or two and if we hadn't been
here, the sump pumps wouldn't have worked, so the basement would have really
filled up with water and ruined everything, so really we are pretty lucky that
things have worked out as well as they have…”
Jesse is laying
there in pain, looking out over downed wires, waiting for the snow storm to
hit. He looks at his wife, starts laughing and says, “You know I guess we are
lucky aren't we?”
What a beautiful thing gratitude is. Gratitude is what is poured
into the glass to make it half full. And thank God for our spouses reminding us
of the better way to see the world.
I was flipping
channels this summer and came across a program from Europe. It was a town in
Belgium I believe right near the Battle of the Bulge. They had a parade and an
amazing number of people that had gathered for this occasion. The Mayor of the
town was presenting the keys to the city to a group of elderly guys, mostly in
hats and a few in very old uniforms. He was thanking them for liberating their
city from the Germans somewhere between 1942 and 1945. At one point during the
speech I noticed that everyone had removed their hats in a gesture of honor. He
read a piece from a journal that a young mother had written at the time where
she described the Allied soldiers from Britain and the States as “Angels”. I
was so moved by the respect, the honor, and the gratitude still remembered, lo
these many years later, that I welled up for a moment.
One of the men
from town had a photograph of himself at 3 years of age, a beautiful little
kid. It turns out, a couple G.I.'s had found this kid, who had been separated
from his mother during the chaos of battle. They took the time to find his
mother and reunite them before they went on to the next battle further east.
His mother took a photo of the two G.I.'s and this little kid.
Years later she
tells her grown son the story, about how he was nearly lost from her for good
during the war, about how these two guys about 20 years old at the time, found
him, brought him back to her. And every year, when the town had this
celebration of Thanksgiving, this man would take this picture around and show
any American he could find the photo and ask them if they recognized either of
these soldiers. A couple years ago, some guy stared at the photo, and said, “I
knew both of them”. He gave the man their names. The man looked one up, found that he had died a few years ago. He looked the
other one up, got a phone number in Florida, and called him up on the phone.
An octogenarian
picked up the phone and the man started to talk and became overwhelmed with
emotion but he got his story out and he was able to tell him ‘thank you for
saving my life'. Don't you wish you could have seen that phone call? That is
the real deal. That kind of thankful gratitude is what is really real.
The real way to
look at your life is to remember all of the blessings that happened to you
before you were even aware that you were being blessed. You remember your
ancestors who came to our shores that you might live, one day, in the most
interesting metropolis of our era. You remember the generation before you that
sacrificed that you might become educated. You remember a former generation
that built all that is around you that you might have this marvelous backdrop
and infrastructure to live your life. You remember people that loved you, that
believed in you, that you might grow and become and be confident enough to
branch out and find who you really are and what you are supposed to be about in
this world.
You remember and
you give thanks and- after you get past a certain age- you start to do it every
day. That is the first step in the spiritual life and I'll guarantee you it is
the last thing in the spiritual life before you exit this wonderful ride that
you've been privileged to call your life. It is so real because it puts us in
touch with the grace that precedes us, the grace of God that sustains us and
gives us that vital sense of being alive.
It is that grace
that makes you feel expansive, that makes you feel generous, that
fills you with abundance no matter what your circumstances. “We are the lucky
ones”. And that is what is really real.
What I hope for
you is that you live out of your gratitude, your grace, your generosity. That
is what Jesus meant when he said, “I come not just that you might have life
(not just that you exist) but that you have life abundantly.” Abundant life is
the concentrated living that makes our lives worth living.
I remind you of
this as we enter the season of Thanksgiving and giving, when we intentionally
turn again to live out of our abundance as ‘the lucky ones'. As Jesus says in
our text this morning, you need to give in ways that ‘do not give out'.
You need to
give. It is not optional, this is an intrinsic part of
the spiritual life. And the older I've gotten, the more I realize the negative
and the positive reason we simply need to give.
The negative
reason is that giving keeps us from becoming too attached to things that aren't
as real spiritually. We love big sturdy houses, full of interesting, expensive
objects because they make us feel secure, they make us feel safe and good about
ourselves like the serious portfolio they are supposed to represent. I know. I
grew up in a family that ended up with one of those substantial homes in Connecticut
and they are wonderful.
A few years ago,
my father died, my mother had Alzheimer's, so we had to move her. In short
order, we had to downsize her from 15 rooms to 2, still more than she could
handle.
It is like
settling the estate, only my Mother is still living. I go down to this big
house with many rooms, attic, and basement. And I have to go through all this
stuff.
I got my
mother's antique collections boxed up and shipped to my sisters where they've sat
in boxes until now. And very shortly they will go to an estate seller because
none of us in my generation are antique collectors. It is beautiful stuff,
interesting stuff, but I couldn't help thinking to myself that it is just
expensive stuff if you didn't collect it, if you don't have a personal
connection to it.
And then there
was lots of furniture that I'd grown up with, all of it brought back memories,
but only a couple of pieces were so special that one of us wanted them, so I
had a yard sale and then I took the rest of it to give away to people in need.
And then I gave whatever anyone wanted in the neighborhood.
And then… I
still had twenty truck loads that went to the dump, just an amazing amount of
stuff that really no one would want or use, fifteen
year old alarm clock radios that broke and someone was going to fix but never
did, files from my Dad's business that went bust, unread magazines…
It was a very
sobering process, a very important ritual of grieving. I sat for hours
sometimes looking through boxes of photos, remembering my life. But I came away
from that long process with just two genuine mementos--a watch from my father
and one from my great grandfather. This large house and in the end, what passes
from one generation to the next is a couple mementos, a few photographs,
unfortunately no journals to remind me of what they were like.
So there were a
few things to sell to help pay for my Mother's care and this vast collection of
your stuff just
gets recycled. I'm sweeping up the last pile, lock the back door. I'm standing
out in front of the place with everything gone. For just a moment the
existential thinness of our existence shot through me and I realized how short
our time on this earth is and how really insubstantial all that stuff is. It is
all leased and nothing is permanent.
But what is real
is the caring for people. I found a photograph of my mother holding me when I
was a baby. She had that glowing face full of unconditional love at 23, beaming
a full smile at me like I was the best thing that had ever happened to her. I
still take that photo out and look at it once in a while.
The negative
reason is that you don't need nearly as much stuff as you think you need. And
that stuff gets you focused on the wrong things, like they provide more
security and safety than they really do. Left unchecked, it can get you to
underestimate how important people around you really are. The bible says we
should give away 10% of everything we are making right now because we only need
the 90% to live on- and too much focus
on what I need and what I want gets us concentrating in here
and we miss what is most important in our lives.
And what is most
important is nurturing a gracious community around us. A previous generation
built all of this for us so that we could enjoy this community today. We need
to give back so that the next generation can know the same quality of community
that has made our lives so touching to live.
The Church is
not just another charity among many, although it can be if we aren't really
engaged in the community it has to offer. These are our people and this is our
time. This is a primary way that we give back to God and nurture this community
because we can and we want to leave our mark for the next generation to have
the same wonderful experience we had. We want to give them substantive people
to surround them with substantive values and become the beloved spiritual
community that gives back to the world around us.
The Jewish sages
used to say, “Tithe so that you might become wealthy”. They didn't mean that
God would bless you materially because you give back. What they meant was that
you will become invested in the right things that will make your life really
meaningful, a life you wouldn't want to trade if you could.
Live generously.
Bless those around you. Give with grace. Nurture our community here at Christ
Church, infuse it with your love and with the most important money you earn,
because you can and you want to. Commit yourself here and let's create a
meaningful life here and now. You need to give…
And as you turn
towards the Holidays, what I hope for you is that you can find the grace to
host, invoke the Spirit so that all the preparation, all the clean up, doesn't
fill you with dread, but that you can see it as creating the space of love for
your generation and you can be free to lead and take the higher ground. It is
the only way I know to deal with your lazy, no good brother.
I hope for your
spouses and siblings, for many hands make light the work but every time you see
it as a burden and a hassle, stop for a minute, remember again what a privilege
it has been to have these crazy people to love, re-invoke your gratitude, and
be extravagantly generous with your love and your money.
Start in
gratitude, pray to stay in grace, and live generously. Live in the abundant
key. Amen.
