Generosity of Spirit

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0:00 I am glad you guys found some time today. I hope that that hand was encouraging. It always is for me, thanks for sharing it for its family. After Mother's Day, two mothers out there. World, worth recognizing. Thinking two of the friends of mine who would like to be mothers. We are saying special prayers for you all today.

0:30 God will give you wisdom on how to go forward. Of course, mothers need wisdom on how to go forward today too. A lot of your kids last several weeks. We're continuing this morning in this book that Jordan Prandell gave me. Jordan, if you are here with us this morning, this is very deep. This book takes a couple of readings to figure out what the guy is saying.

1:00 But man, it's like when the text, when it clears up, when it's like the clouds partying, you can see, oh my gosh, I can't believe I couldn't see that before. I was looking right at it, but the clouds are in the way. This book is really deep. I'm excited to get into it. And the way into it this morning in this section, he's talking about his back, the story that we talked about last week about the woman caught in the act of adultery. We talked a little bit on the Zoom call after this last week.

1:34 Just reminding you that if you look that up in the paper text, it is going to say that that story is not included in the most earliest manuscripts we have. And that's true. It's pretty clear that the story wasn't in the earliest writings of John that we have. And it uses some phrases that don't show up in John's other places in John's account of the gospel. So it's pretty clear that it was added after John wrote it. But one of the things I love is that that means that that story had been preserved in the oral tradition of our people,

2:10 that maybe folks were there. It's a really dramatic story. Like all these people gathered around the temple steps, Jesus teaching and the scribes and the Pharisees, the church people, hauled this woman in front of into the middle of the crowd, stopped the teaching and try and get Jesus to start stoning her. It's like a really dramatic teaching. So you can imagine if you were there, you would have told that story to your kids and they would remember it and they would have told it. It's a story that was passed down from mothers to daughters from grandmothers to grandchildren. And then when they were finally circulating the story of the life of Jesus,

2:43 it was when they didn't want to leave out. They thought we got to get into the text. And so it made its way into the text. I'm so glad it did because it teaches us so much about who Jesus is and what his motivation is in the world. And one of the things I was thinking about as I thought through that story for us last week was a new thought that the woman, remember that the church folks caught her in the act of adultery, which is like a dubious thing to do to begin with. Did you set her up?

3:14 And they didn't bring the guy though the law would have required that they brought the guy. They left the guy alone. They just brought her. So it's a whole kind of convoluted situation that's clearly not with pure motivations. But they bring her in and they try and get Jesus to stoner. And Jesus, they say, what should we do? Should we follow the law or let her off the hook? And Jesus doesn't answer either way. He says he was without sin cast the first stone, which some theologians think that you could only stone somebody for a sin that you were not guilty of yourself.

3:44 You could only start the stoning. You could only be the first one to throw the stone if you hadn't committed the sin for which you were stoning. And so that Jesus might be saying to all these people who had gathered, if you haven't committed the sin of adultery, go ahead and start the first stoning. And then the rest of us will follow and all of everyone, the officer's don't walk away. And then the woman is standing there. Jesus very dramatically and beautifully looks at her and says, is there no one here to condemn you? He says, nobody. He says, okay, then neither do I. But the new thought that occurred to me and looking at this story was that the woman stayed.

4:17 Like everyone else leaves. And you could imagine a situation where the woman kind of ashamed and embarrassed, notice that everyone else is leaving and then takes her opportunity to just kind of hit it, book it back home. Because Jesus apparently has been down like playing in the sand or something, and he stands up and then he looks at the woman. So he didn't notice that everybody had gone. He stands up and looks at the woman. Oh, is there nobody here to condemn you? She could have just took off, but she didn't. And conspicuously then I thought the inverse is true of everyone that Jesus said he is without sin cast the first stone.

4:52 He didn't say, if you can't cast the stone, go ahead and leave. I don't want you around me. But they left. Anyway, they just decided there's no reason for me to be here and they left. And I was thinking about what if they had stayed as the woman had stayed? What if they dropped their stone and dropped to their knees and said, I'm guilty to. If you stone her, you stone me. I was thinking, would they have gotten the same words from the Savior of the world? Would he have looked at them the way that he looked at the woman and said, oh, I don't condemn you.

5:28 Go and leave your life of sin. And so that got me thinking, why did the woman stay and everyone else leave? And it doesn't take much thinking to come to the idea that the woman had nothing left loose. This gets at the heart of our book. The woman realized the desperate nature of her situation. She was already caught in the act. She was already ashamed.

5:59 She had been living this life that maybe she was happy with. Maybe she wasn't. Jesus tells her to go and change her approach to living. She had nothing left to lose. And so she might as well stay and see that Jesus has to offer risk that he'll start stoning her in order to lay down her life in order to take what maybe Jesus has to offer. And it's also then equally obvious that everyone that left still felt like they had something to their name, that they were not poor with respect to spiritual things, that they could salvage their dignity, that they had some honor, some prestige, some position that needed to be protected,

6:45 that they weren't willing to put everything on the line to give up all they had acquired and see what Jesus could give. That this is the nature of what it means to be poor in spirit. And it's what this author just keeps hammering home for us today. In this little chapter that we have today called, I'm trying to get to the name of it, the poverty of being human, the poverty of being human, freely accepted.

7:20 What he's going to do is take this like case he's been making, that to be human is to be limited, to be poor with respect to all things spiritual. And he's going to turn and make it really applicable for us like action oriented. It's kind of amazing. It took me a while to get it. But the first step is to realize what this poverty of spirit means that to be poor of spirit is to mean you are willing to lay down everything that you have in exchange for what Jesus might give you.

7:59 It's to realize that the things that you can acquire are not really worth saving to begin with. That the life that you can muster up is destined to end. And so no matter how accomplished or comfortable or entertaining of a life you can amass that has a limitation on it. And in view of those limitations to give it up. Remember Jesus says this on multiple occasions in several different ways.

8:36 That he who loves his life removes it, that he who loses his life for the sake of Jesus will find it. And I see that that woman, the woman caught in the act of adultery is a model for us. Because face to face with her own limitation, she does not run and try and cobble together a life that has some semblance of dignity in the eyes of the culture or wealth or worth in the eyes of even the religious elite.

9:10 Instead she waits and takes whatever Jesus will give her. The model for us in what poverty of spirit looks like. But then the thing that I like about this author and especially in this section is he goes further and he said that poverty of spirit is not a virtue that you acquire. Like, oh look how poor of spirit I've become. I'm so proud of myself that you can only possess it.

9:43 It's like an internal thing that you believe that meets its way out in your actions. It's maybe a version of humility. But the story that I want to get to for us is in Matthew. It kind of demonstrates it for us. If you will go there with me, if you have a copy of the scriptures around you, it's in Matthew towards the back. Matthew Mark Luke John, Acts, Romans 1 and 2 Corinthians.

10:18 If you have a paper copy, Matthew chapter 25 verse 40. Well, we're going to go to verse 31. Jesus is telling the story about what the final judgment looks like. It's like saying that he's going to return and at the return he'll separate out God's people from not God's people. The people who are God's live with God forever.

10:51 People who are not God's live with how God's forever. It's kind of like a day where it's like decided, okay you're God's you're not God's and then you live with God or you live with God. Verse chapter 25 verse 31. When the Son of Man comes in his glory, I love the word glory just to brief. It's a church word so we don't really think through what it means often. I think glory means things are revealed as they truly are. So when the Son of Man comes and it's no longer disputing that he is the beginning and end of all things.

11:25 The source and the culmination of justice, joy, beauty, love, servitude, humility. When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. It's worth mentioning just really briefly in this analogy or metaphor that Jesus uses that when he comes down to separate God's people from not God's people, it's not like he's separating the good sheep from the bad sheep.

12:05 It's not like there's a deep act of discernment that's required to decide who God's people are and who are not God's people. It's very clear. It's not like parsing some nuanced doctrine. It's like looking at there are two species here. There are sheep and goats, God's people and not God's people. God's people go over here, not God's people go over here, sheep and goats. And he will place the sheep on his right but the goats on the left.

12:36 And then the king will say to those on his right, come you who are blessed by my father and here at the Kingdom of the Fairview from the foundations of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came to me. That's a pretty good deal to serve God in that kind of way. It's interesting that God would be naked and hungry without a place to live but they served him.

13:10 He was in prison and he came to visit me. Then the righteous will answer him saying, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you or naked and clothed you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you? And the king will answer them, truly I say to you, as he did it to the least of these, he did it to my brothers. As he did the least of these my brothers, he did it to me. Then he will say to those on the left, hey, depart from me.

13:40 You cursed into the eternal fire, prepare for you and the devils with his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food. I was thirsty and you gave me no drink. I was a stranger and you did not welcome me naked and you did not clothed me sick and in prison and you did not. And then they also will answer saying, hey, Lord, when did we see you hungry, thirsty or a stranger or a naked and sick and in person? It did not minister to you. I think if I saw God, I would serve him. I don't think I would have missed that opportunity. They're saying, when he wants to them, truly I'll say to you, you did not do it to the least of these.

14:12 You did not do it to me. These will go away in a term punishment, but the righteous to eternal life. The author of our book says the beautiful thing about the nature of what it means to be one of God's is that faith is always in flesh. Proximity. This is not like some magician trick that Jesus is doing for the righteous where like it was actually him and he like put a mask on and they didn't recognize him.

14:50 He's saying, you will find God in the people around you and the ones who recognize their limitations, who are fully human, will not think they're things or their life, something to grasp and hoard onto, but will give and serve to those around them. I was thinking about, it's almost a cliche that the poor are more generous.

15:27 You go to developing country and they make a feast for you even though it's all the food that they've got. It's like become a cliche, it happened so much. When you think about the church as an organized structure, it even bears itself out in church. They say that the wealthier population, the least less likely they are to be involved in church.

16:01 If you want to go to places where churches are in trouble, you go to the wealthiest areas. There's this challenge to engage in the reality of faith when you are convinced you can handle life on your own. There's a famous story of Jesus with his disciples where they're standing in the temple and all of the church leaders, very ceremoniously drop off huge gifts, accurately measuring out 10% of all they have.

16:36 And they see one woman quietly come up and drop in just a few pennies and Jesus told the disciples that she gave more than all of them put together because it was all that she had. There's something about recognizing your poverty that moves you to generosity. This is true of all spiritual things as well. Remember when Jesus said don't store up for yourself's treasure on earth where moth and rust destroy instead, store up for yourself treasures in heaven where they will not be destroyed.

17:13 As though he's saying, remember what matters in the world. And when you start to see your life and your things in proper perspective, in the perspective of an eternity with God, it changes the nature of how you interact. And Jesus is telling us in this metaphor of the last days that the ones who are his come in through this doorway of poverty of spirit and it changes the way that they interact in the world. You think about his beatitudes, they become the meat.

17:45 They become the ones who mourn with the injustice around them. They become the ones who usher in the reign of God in the world, but they come in through this poverty of spirit, this recognition of their own limitations which transforms the way they interact with the people around them, the way they understand their work, their money, their time, right? Their love, their position, there is a generosity and a service that is enflashed and proximate and modeled by the incarnate God himself.

18:20 You see, poverty of spirit is not like an esoteric spiritual idea intended for you to meditate on and grasp intellectually. Nothing about the faith of Jesus is that way. Jesus models for us what it means to be one of God, it's to be enflashed and proximate in solidarity with the poor because we are poor ourselves. Moved in generosity because we need the generosity of God ourselves.

18:53 This is a sneaky thing especially for us in our culture, but right now is like a unique time for us to get a glimpse of our own poverty. I don't remember if I shared it with you all, but it's an analogy, a picture I got shortly after the stay at home orders were issued, actually just before the stay at home orders were issued because in like a matter of three days, revenue at our coffee shops dropped by like 70% and I was trying to figure out what to do with church and coffee shops and nonprofit work and all of it was kind of up in the air and it had like come to a standstill at one moment and also there was like this churning concern

19:42 or panic driving underneath what was like a not a lot of activity. And in my head, this image was because I had been managing a lot of things all at the same time and I had this picture of myself, though I don't serve. I wish I did. I still have time to remedy that. Maybe that's why I had the image of myself surfing like like I'm riding this wave like my life with all of its opportunities and obligations and benefits with all of its work and relationships.

20:21 And I was enjoying the wave and I was enamored in my riding with the board that I chose, right, and the line that I cut in the wave and I was like, like experiencing how nice it was to be on this wave and proud of myself for the way that I was surfing it. And then all of a sudden, with this pandemic, the wave went away. And I'm just like, this was the picture. I was riding the wave and amored with the board and the choices I was making, completely taking for granted that it was the wave that was making me move.

20:54 Thinking that it was the choices I had made, they got me such a great ride. Instead, it's the work of God building up and driving, connecting and fueling the life that I am leading. And now, when everything stops, you have a moment, a potential moment of deep clarity that ought not to train anxiety, but ought to fuel a deep rest to realize. The whole reason I was moving to begin with was the prerogative God.

21:26 And when the time is right, you'll move me again. I am in the same boat with all the people around me. So now, when I get back up on that wave, I don't need to hoard my techniques and strategies. I don't need to keep all the things like it. I can give it to all of the people around us saying, this wave is here for all of us. When you recognize your own limitations and the great generosity of God, you become generous yourself, like these sheep.

22:03 Look at the story of these sheep. Look at the accolades, he gives to them. Come to me, you are blessed by my father and a herit, the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. One, I remember a conversation I had with my granddad years ago. He lost one of his sisters. He was the last sibling of five alive still is.

22:36 But this one several years ago, he coded to me this line and then a hymn that he loved based on it, tearing up. I can't wait to go to the land that's been prepared for me, the foundation that we're going to look forward to being one whose two whom that is said. Come to me, you are blessed by my father and a herit, the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

23:08 And then listen to the description, I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited, I was in prison and you came to me. And the righteous went to Lord, they didn't even know that they'd done it. And for a long time, I strategically have avoided passages like this because I don't really like going to prison. And it says that they went to prison and God was there, feeding people.

23:41 There's a lot of work in here that I have trouble motivating myself to do. But what I found years ago is that when I recognized my limitations and said, Lord, there is much of my heart that is cold to the injustice around me. Or there is much of my heart that is callous to the needs around me that is not generous, merciful, servant oriented. The response was, but not all. The work of God has been begun in you.

24:19 And there is capacity for compassion in you somewhere. And when we go to that place with God, recognize our limitation and spend time in the places where we are compassionate, your compassion will grow. You can be the sheep of God. This is what the Easter season means. He came into flesh and death through the grave into resurrection in order to give you the capacity to awaken your own love and generosity to become his sheep.

25:03 You can become the sheep of God right now, even shelter at home or working the way you can find places where your heart is awakened and go there. And causes that move you and go further into them. Read more about them. Understand them more deeply. Get to know individuals who have experienced that injustice, that poverty person and allow the God of the universe, the endless, proximate God of the universe to expand your heart and to begin to grow the sheep within you.

25:42 That is how you will become most human, most yourself. When you uncover your poverty of spirit that leads you to generosity and service like the Christ performance. It's in his name that we gather this morning and that I encourage you, the spirit of Christ go with you and live in it and embolden you to become fully human.

26:17 Poor of spirit but generous. Servant only to his name, right? And live.