TO LOVE AS HE DOES

I was out for breakfast recently with a group of old college friends.  We got on the topic of taxes.  Most of these guys are poised to retire within the next few years, and it’s a time of life to be taking a good hard look at what to do with accumulated wealth.  For some that’s a pretty hefty amount; for others not so much.  But we’re all becoming aware that we can’t take it with us.  So how to decide?  What do we keep?  What do we give away?  To whom?  Why?

I think all of us do a fair amount of charitable giving each year, but one of the guys noted that the tax laws make it very difficult to realize much of a benefit at all unless we go through a lot of loopholes or unless the amount is very large.  In my own case, the personal payback from charitable giving is not likely to be very much of anything.  In fact, it’s more like just giving money away without anything coming back in return. 

Which in turn calls the question why I’m doing it at all.  And when I do so, is it more about supporting an organization in whose mission I believe?  Or is it more about forming me in becoming the kind of person I wish to be?  In other words, who drives my decisions to be generous: me, or somebody else?  The difference is really very important, because I don’t have any control over anyone but me.  And giving shouldn’t be done on the basis of who has the flashiest ad. 

There are all kinds of worthy causes beaming across the TV these days, not a coincidence, – among them involving chronically ill children or abused animals.  Others featuring the elderly or the environment or education.  They all want my financial support because of what they are doing.  All good things, hopefully, but it’s not up to me what they are doing.  I can only be responsible for how I am giving, and why. 

And what happens when I’m asked to support organizations or causes that I don’t like or that I don’t agree with?  Well, presumably that’s when my gifts stop… and wouldn’t it be fairly absurd if it were any other way?

Well, not in Jesus’s world, where our Gospel is inviting us in to that very strange place in which we are commanded to give to all of those people who stand before us in need, notably the ones who hate us and who take more than they have any right to, for our enemies, for those who strike us as not particularly virtuous, for those who are ungrateful at the world and those who judge us.  Why in the world would we be tempted, let alone be persuaded to give to people like that?  Why in the world?  Because the decision to be generous is not to be made as the result of who or what somebody else is.  That would be handing over my own responsibility for following
God to someone who should never have that authority.  Charity is ultimately about my own decisions and about forming my own life in to one that is as large as the God whom I seek to serve.  This is my sacred calling, this is my duty, and it can only be me that does that.

But let us have no doubt about how nonsensical that will appear sometimes both to us and to the world around us.  Jesus came in to this world not to issue his stamp of approval on things as they are.  He came, rather to turn that world on its head in a way that we easily find baffling.  Spending my wealth on those whom I neither know nor care about?  And even more strange, doing so for people I don’t like or whose agenda I disagree with for no reason other than their need and my own dedication to be as closely conformed to God as I can be.  And that’s honestly something that only I can do, and sometimes it’s going to make me look silly, because that’s exactly how God is. 

Today’s scriptures give us two stories of exactly what this is about in practice.  The Old Testament Book of Samuel finds David having the opportunity to kill King Saul, who is on a mission to kill him.  David finds Saul sound asleep with his legion around him and his weapon at his head, but he decides not to take Saul’s life.  Why in the world would he do that when he had the weapon right there?  Because this isn’t about who Saul is.  It’s about the man that David is striving to become in the sight of God, and this is exactly the length and breadth of love and its demands. Only David can say yes or no to that for himself.  But in saying yes, it’s not difficult to imagine a whole battery of soldiers around him wondering whether David was insane. 

God’s generosity is not like ours; neither is God’s world.  And in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is very straight forward with the same message.  If we want to be a part of this new world, the one that is transformed by the Kingdom of God, we had best not be ignorant of its demands.  A lot of it has to do, he says, with money and possessions, but it’s also about the need to love the enemy, give solace to the sinner and kindness to the world, and to forgive when you don’t have to, and to suspend judgment even when you have every right to judge.   Even something as simple as giving resources on a tax return, just because there’s a need.  Even when there’s nothing in it for me.  Who would do that, and why?  Only the one who is seeking to make his/her life as closely conformed to that of Christ is possible – a decision that he or she alone can make, because it’s not about anybody else. 

Who can’t understand and applaud such lofty goals as that?  Frankly, a whole lot of people can’t applaud that – like the biblical ones who thought that perhaps Jesus was out of his mind – the ones who wanted God’s way of being in the world but who had no idea what that commitment meant.  To whom do I give?  What’s in it for me?  Maybe nothing.  Who’s going to decide, and who will remain firm when the Disciples are utterly misunderstood?  And they will be; we will be, as he was.  Who’s in control of my destiny to Christ and to the Kingdom?