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Proper 6

Matthew 10

40"Anyone who welcomes you is welcoming me, and anyone who welcomes me is welcoming the Father who sent me. 41If you welcome a prophet as one who speaks for God,£ you will receive the same reward a prophet gets. And if you welcome good and godly people because of their godliness, you will be given a reward like theirs. 42And if you give even a cup of cold water to one of the least of my followers, you will surely be rewarded."

Genesis 22

9When they arrived at the place where God had told Abraham to go, he built an altar and placed the wood on it. Then he tied Isaac up and laid him on the altar over the wood. 10And Abraham took the knife and lifted it up to kill his son as a sacrifice to the Lord. 11At that moment the angel of the Lord shouted to him from heaven, "Abraham! Abraham!"

"Yes," he answered. "I’m listening."

12"Lay down the knife," the angel said. "Do not hurt the boy in any way, for now I know that you truly fear God. You have not withheld even your beloved son from me."



"It is better to give than receive." Jesus: quoted by Paul in Acts 20.35

"The Lord loves a happy giver." 2 Corinthians 9.7

"For it is in giving that we receive." St. Francis of Assisi

"If you give, you will receive. Your gift will return to you in full measure, pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, and running over." Luke 6.38

"It is more blessed to give than receive; for example, wedding presents." H. L. Mencken

"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." P. J. O'Rourke

Google "giving" and you will surely receive plenty. I tuned to Google to discover the source of the first quote ("It is better to give than receive") only to find–to my horror–that these were Jesus' words. I say "to my horror" because I should have known the source of such a saying. I thought I had an out when I realized that it was an indirect quote (Paul quoting someone quoting Jesus) but that would be a pathetic excuse considering the quote from Luke 6 that says essentially the same thing: "If you give, you will receive."

All of this, of course, is to link to the Gospel lesson for today. In three short verses Jesus concludes his discourse on the practice of discipleship with a bit of a summary:

40"Anyone who welcomes you is welcoming me, and anyone who welcomes me is welcoming the Father who sent me. 41If you welcome a prophet as one who speaks for God,£ you will receive the same reward a prophet gets. And if you welcome good and godly people because of their godliness, you will be given a reward like theirs. 42And if you give even a cup of cold water to one of the least of my followers, you will surely be rewarded."

"If you give even a cup of cold water to one of the least of my followers, you will surely be rewarded." You would be amazed how thoroughly this quote finds itself in commentaries and literature around giving. This seems to happen for a couple of reasons: first, it functions as a shorter and more accessible summary of Matthew 25 (the sheep and goats passage) that ends "if you did this for the least of my brothers and sisters, you did it also for me." Second, it is visual, and resonates with a deep human longing for clean water.

On the second point, it is interesting to note some changes that have happened in the world of fundraising. The art-based biblical resource I use, "Imaging the Word" presents an all-too familiar picture to go with this passage: an aid worker, a young Caucasian woman, is holding a sickly looking Black child and helping him drink from a cup. At first glance this seems perfectly appropriate. As a matter of fact, many aid groups still present photos or video of starving African children as a key motivator for giving.

What we have come to realise, however, is that these images do more than motivate us to give, they reinforce a set of assumptions that we tend to carry around with us. In this case that little Black children are desperately poor and in need, and that white people from the north will step in and help. This picture has one other difficult flaw: the gloves. It is hard to imagine that assisting a child with a cup of water poses a health risk to the young woman, but it does reinforce the separation that exists between the two.

Yet another troublesome thing about the picture and the resource is how quickly we move to a place where we are the givers and it is others who receive. It is both our "comfort zone" and the way we most often face this question of giving and receiving. Our role, as people of privilege, and as people who want to appear and be regarded as successful, is to give. We give because we have. We give because we can. It is better to give than receive (we are told) and we have internalized this massage when you are the giver, you keep all the power.

This was not, of course, what Jesus was on about when he said it is better to give than receive. He has trying to create a new mindset, a new approach that runs counter to the desire to receive, acquire, possess, and cling to the things of this world. It was also a call to service, reminding the disciples that the spiritual journey they were on was not for them and their personal fulfillment, but rather for the sake "of the least of these." They were to give without thought of reward, a message that we have adopted and cling to for both practical and psychological reasons: practical because we need lots of givers and psychological because of that aforementioned need to be the giver rather than the givee. Again, givers have more power.

***

Abba James of the Desert: "It is better to receive hospitality that to offer it."

I don't think this is permission to be inhospitable. "Go away," you will say, "because Michael found this great quote that says it's better to receive hospitality that to offer it." Sometimes it pays to listen in church. Lets leave Abba James for a moment, listening to another voice as we try to discover why it may be better to receive that to give.

Henri Nouwen: "A lot of giving and receiving has a violent quality, because the givers and receivers act more out of need than out of trust. What looks like generosity is actually manipulation, and what looks like love is really a cry for affection or support."

Clearly giving is a dangerous game. There are issues of power and deep-seated need: there is the risk that we are trying to manipulate an outcome or fill some void because we want to imagine ourselves as a particular type of person. We may be giving in the hope that we will receive in return, a desire that will often go unfilled. A couple of other famous philosophers:

I'll give you all I've got to give

If you say you love me too

I may not have a lot to give

but what I've got I'll give to you

For I don't care too much for money

For money can't buy me love
Back to Henri Nouwen, he insists that it is only possible to give yourself to others without expecting anything in return when you have been "fully received." He says that it is "only when you know yourself as unconditionally loved–that is, fully received by God– can you give gratuitously. He goes further:

Giving without wanting anything in return is trusting that all your needs will be provided for by the One who loves you unconditionally. It is trusting that you do not need to protect your own security but can give yourself completely to the service of others. (p. 65)

It is better to receive than to give if in receiving we learn the true value of all the God-given gifts that surround us. It is better to receive than to give if it allows us to give up the desire to seek approval or earn affection through the giving of gifts. It is better to receive than to give if it fills our hearts with a sense of the Ultimate Giver of all that is.

***

I don't want the story of the sacrifice of Isaac to pass unrecognized. If I did sermon titles, I would call this one "The Sacrifice of Isaac's Pink Hair" and see if he gets the hint. That's not true son, I like your pink hair. Even a colourblind man can see and enjoy your pink hair.

The most common sermon preached on the "sacrifice of Isaac" (which is really a near-sacrifice), also sometimes called "the binding of Isaac," is a sermon about obedience to God. God said to Abraham "prove your stuff by giving up that which is most precious to you" and sure enough he was willing to do it.

In perhaps the most dramatic moment on scripture, the knife is raised high in the air, the reader begins to wince, and a voice says, "stop." The angel then says "Lay down the knife...do not hurt the boy in any way, for now I know that you truly fear God. You have not withheld even your beloved son from me."

Preachers can preach the "radical obedience" sermon because God didn't really want the sacrifice, they would say, because he stopped at the very last moment. The dramatic scene with the ram caught in the thicket is a handy substitute and the practice of human sacrifice came to a tidy conclusion.

Comforting, but not true. Read the last half of Judges 11, the story of the sacrifice of the little girl Mizpah, and you will see that the practice continued. Did God want this to happen? Was the little girl's father victorious in battle because he was willing to make such a sacrifice? It can't be. This would not be a God that I could love and serve. But scripture poses all sorts of challenges to us, and we read and try to understand.

The connection between Part A and Part B is Abraham's willingness to give, and how troubling this truly is. By the time he and Isaac set out on this trip, Abraham had received God's blessing on six separate occasions. Surely this was enough for Abraham to feel confident that all the promises would come true. Surely he could have said "wait a minute God, why this test, when you have already promised me as many offspring as sand on a beach." Perhaps God's response may have been "fair enough, Abraham. I wasn't really going to make you go through with it anyway." Abraham continued to try to earn and earn and earn when this may have been the moment when he needed to resist. Of course, many scholars argue that Abraham had no intention of going through with it, and that the clues are in the dialogue with the servants and his son.

***

Set aside the cup of water–important as it is–and imagine that the most important message that we need to hear is this:

"Anyone who welcomes you is welcoming me, and anyone who welcomes me is welcoming the Father who sent me."

When we are received, when we accept the gracious gifts of others, we are the Christ. When we are received, and when we accept the gracious gifts of others, we are received as completely filled with the God that deserves our recognition and praise. We bring God to others as we allow them to serve us and extend the gift of hospitality to us. In this way, it is better to receive hospitality that to offer it. We become divine messengers, tangible reminders that God in Jesus Christ is present in our world and walking our path still and yet, still and yet. Amen.

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 4:02 PM