Today, we’re continuing with our Stewardship series, focused on the gift and practice of generosity. If you were with us last week, you’ll remember that we zeroed in on God’s relationship to humanity and the world, as we bounced all over Scripture, looking at all the ways our relationship with God is rooted in God’s generous giving. From the breath of life itself to the gift of Jesus to the gifts of resurrection and eternity, because God loves, God gives.
Today, we’re going to ask the next logical question: “what is my role in all this?”
Now, if you’ve been in the church a while, you will recognize this story from the gospel of Luke. But this time, as we listen and follow along, I want to invite you to listen for the choices. What choices is each character asked to make, and what do they choose?
Scripture: Luke 15:11-32
Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the wealth that will belong to me.’ So he divided his assets between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant region, and there he squandered his wealth in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that region, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that region, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, and no one gave him anything. But when he came to his senses he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.” ’ So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate, for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.
“Now his elder son was in the field, and as he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf because he has got him back safe and sound.’ Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command, yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your assets with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’”
The younger son makes a lot of…questionable choices. He chooses to ask for his inheritance early, which even now would be a jerk move. He chooses to leave home and go off somewhere else to party. When he loses everything, he chooses to get a job. And then, he chooses to humble himself and go home, to ask for a little piece of grace and safety from his family.
The father also makes some…interesting choices. He chooses to give his son his inheritance early. When his wasteful son comes home, he chooses to welcome him as a beloved child, running to him, embracing him, throwing him a party. When his older son protests, he goes to him and begs him to come inside and celebrate.
The older brother, on the other hand, seems to have made all the right choices. According to his own telling, at least, he chose to obey his father, to work the land, to do what was expected of him and not ask for more. But when his brother comes home, he makes an unexpected choice: rather than celebrate, he stages a protest outside. He refuses to participate.
But his father comes out to plead with him, one more time: come and join the party, because what was lost has been found, and what was dead is alive!
And we never find out what the older brother chooses, because that’s where the story ends. We don’t know whether the older brother stormed off to his room or if he went inside and reconciled with his younger brother. But the story ends there because this invitation to come and party was never about a fictional character: the invitation is for us.
Pastor and author Karl B Travis presents us a different kind of choice in his book God’s Gift of Generosity. He talks about our response to God’s generous giving in two ways: generosity for God, and generosity with God.
Generosity for God is rooted in obedience and reciprocity. God gives to us, and so we give back to God. This isn’t an inherently bad model. It has driven church giving and stewardship for generations. It forces us to think about all the good gifts God has given us, acknowledge God’s provision in our lives, and think about how we can share those gifts with others.
But there is a second option for thinking about our generosity in light of God’s giving – what he calls ‘generosity with God.’
He writes:
“God yearns for relationship, craves relationship, was born and has died to embrace us within a relationship worthy even of forever, and worthy not only of eternity; worthy of divinity itself. This relationship—this burning, changing, growing, dynamic, progressive relationship—is initiated by God, sustained by God, nourished and tended by God. …Now, we need only understand that our embracing of this relationship inevitably leads us into lifestyles of lavish, extravagant, and dare we say prodigal generosity.”[1]
God desperately wants to be reconciled with us, and for us to be reconciled with each other and the world around us. So rather than thinking of stewardship as a once-a-week math problem where we figure out how much God wants back, God invites us to become generous people, in every way, every day, with every resource available to us.
“To be generous with God,” Travis writes, “is to become progressively more generous from the heart to the bone. It is to participate in the very life of God. …To practice generosity is to engage in God’s transforming power to make something that we do into something that we are.”[2]
Generosity is not all about money, or even possessions. At the risk of just reading this whole book to you aloud, I want to quote Rev. Travis one more time, because he says it so beautifully:
“Generosity includes a kind deed, unexpected, unrequested, unremarkable. Generosity inspires a large tip at a restaurant, or it might listen patiently amidst another’s quandary, or it might turn the other cheek. Generosity waits patiently upon the belligerent child and tends lovingly to the aging parent. Generosity absorbs another’s criticism without defensiveness, searching their insights for truth. The older I get, the more I value basic kindness, and yet, we must never reduce Christianity to mere kindness, to being gentle, to Pollyannaish platitudes. Still, people possessed of the sacrificial love of God become themselves loving, and forgiving, and gracious, qualities they share bountifully, offer generously.
And this generosity includes money.”
This generosity does not always come easily. Especially in a divided and distrusting and chaotic culture, we are tempted to draw ever smaller circles of safety around ourselves, to build ever-higher emotional walls, to hang on to what we have lest it all fall apart.
But many of us have known relationships and communities with this kind of generosity at the center, where we have learned what interdependence and thriving look like, feel like – and every day, I am more and more convinced that those days are not gone forever.
Y’all, I could not make this up. I was sitting at Panera in Standale yesterday afternoon, putting the finishing touches on this sermon, holding up my copy of this book and typing out quotes, flipping through it and typing.
I was not paying any attention to anything around me.
But suddenly, a couple got up from a booth a few feet away, and the woman came over and said “can I see the title of the book you’re reading?”
As I reoriented myself to the world around me, I said “of course!” and I showed her the title and told her how much I loved it. She said “I’m one of God’s people, too, and I love to see other Christians out and about. So here’s $10 for you, just to cover part of what you paid for the book.” And she put this $10 bill on the table.
I was so stunned that my brain glitched a little bit, and I managed to get out a “oh my goodness, that’s so kind of you”, and then she was gone as quickly as she had appeared.
Now, I got this book for free from the Presbyterian Foundation, so the $10 is going in the offering plate today.
But what a generosity of spirit, to take the time out of her day and the cash out of her wallet to connect with an absolute stranger in Panera, to even unwittingly be part of the way God shows me and all of us that the dream of a generous community is not dead.
Stewardship, as goes the old saying, is everything I do after I decide to follow Jesus.
So in your bulletin again this week is a card, inviting you to share all the ways you are participating in God’s generosity outside of these four walls. You can include Parkwood things on there, too – but my hope is that we can display these for the next couple weeks as a celebration of all the ways this community is generous with our time, talent, and treasure, participating in God’s generosity to the whole world.
I invite you to fill that out with whatever you want to share, and leave it in the offering plate. Or you can take your time and put it in the baskets on either side of the center aisle as you leave today.
Friends, God’s mercies are new every morning – and so is God’s invitation to come and party, to participate in God’s generosity, to be transformed by love.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
[1] Travis, 37.
[2] Travis, 39.