Welcome to stewardship season! I know that for some of us, stewardship feels like it’s all about money, and asking for money for the church. And you’re partially correct – we do that. But my hope, for this year at least, is that we can use these three weeks as part of a larger conversation about generosity, and how we can believe generously and act generously in a cultural moment when we’re all a little nervous about opening ourselves up.
But we’re not going to start there. Today, we’re going to work through God’s generosity.
Scripture: John 3:1-17, NRSVUE
Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with that person.” Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?
“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen, yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.“
Let’s talk about Nicodemus. He was a Pharisee, a sect of priests and scribes that was hyper-focused on ritual purity and maintaining obedience to the law of Moses. Jesus and the Pharisees butted heads a bit over their interpretation and expansion of that law, but those kinds of arguments were pretty par for the course in that era.
Nicodemus was not only a Pharisee, but one of the leaders of the Jews – he had power and influence in his community. Nevertheless, he was nervous enough that he didn’t go to speak with Jesus in the daylight, or engage with him in public.
Think, for a moment, about how much pressure he must’ve been under. He was curious, at the very least, about this new teacher and what he had to say. But he couldn’t just start questioning the system he’d devoted his whole life to. He couldn’t risk the social and political backlash of being seen with ‘that guy.’ So Nicodemus went to find Jesus in the dark.
All the way back in January, a friend of mine gave me a book and said “you need to read this.” It’s called ‘God’s Gift of Generosity,” by Karl Travis.
To be brutally honest, it sounded like every other book on church fundraising I’d ever read. And for those unfamiliar, they are not usually the most inspiring reads.
So it sat on my shelf for a few months, until they asked if I’d read it yet, and so I finally picked it up.
Turns out it was not just like any other church fundraising book. The very first argument this author makes is that God’s fundamental attitude, God’s fundamental relationship with the world and everything in it, is generosity.
He writes: “I have come to believe in my bones that the biblical story outlines the contours of God’s nature, and that God’s nature is emphatically, eternally, and passionately generous, forever seeking creative relationship with us and the cosmos.”
God gave. God gives. God promises to give yet more.
This is the generous God we first see in Genesis 1, where God’s very breath gives life and being to every complex biological process that sustains the world around us, and this is the same generous God Nicodemus encounters in Jesus, who says “God so loved the cosmos that he gave his son.”
And if we read Scripture closely, that’s the heart of all of it: God so loved the world that God gave.
Travis writes again:
“God so loved that God made the world, created the cosmos-planets and plankton, stars and starfish, rocks and hills and oceans.
God so loved the world that God chose to place God’s very image upon the earth’s surface— human beings.
God so loved the world that God gave a promise to a particular family always to be their God, and to bless all families upon the earth through them.
God so loved the world that God sent prophets to God’s people, again and again, prodding them to consciousness and righteousness, inciting their instinct for justice, beckoning them back.
God so loved the world that God gave God’s only son.
When the world was itself no longer enough, when God’s gifts of prophets and land and law had not yet won the hearts and the trust of God’s people, then, well, God gave even more. God gave of God’s very self, gave a part of God’s inner being. “God so loved the world that he gave his only son.”
God so loved the world that God gave Jesus the courage to confront injustice and corrupt, misguided religion.
God so loved the world that God gave Jesus the passion to speak truth to power.
God so loved the world that God gave Jesus the freedom to give, to give even himself, and, crucially, the freedom not to.
…God so loved the world that God gives yet more, even more, ever more, always more: resurrection, redemption, forgiveness, another chance, eternity.”
When we are “born from above,” as Jesus says, we have the chance and the choice to see the world through God’s eyes.
We could look out our windows, through our screens, to see a world that is irredeemable, full of violence and hatred and pollution, not worth risking anything that’s precious for.
Or, we could look through those same windows and screens and see what God sees: a world filled with people who are messy and misguided but beloved and mostly trying. A world where there are Octobers, with vibrant fall leaves and sunny days to enjoy outside. A world that is worth taking a risk to help, to guide, to encourage, to teach and learn, to hope for and invest in something better.
In your bulletin, there is an orange card with a question on it. I invite you, as we continue in the service, to fill it out and either put it in the offering plate or place it in the basket that will be in the center aisle as you come up for communion.
Beloved people of God, we worship a loving and generous God. Let us give thanks and praise as we prepare our hearts to receive even more of God’s good gifts.
Thanks be to God. Amen.