Rev. Robert A Kem
Rector of St. Anne’s
Ankeny
10/14/07
Living Is Giving
We live in a culture today that is
driven by acquiring material items.
We are raised by advertising to be
consumers. The promise is the more we have materially the
happier we will be. Yet, as we think about this, we know
that once we acquire that new item we will want the next
thing. This little voice inside of our head says regardless
of what we now have, I want more. We have a material hunger
that is never quite satisfied.
A Pastor was asked the question
once about his career. Why did you choose to be a Pastor? He
thought for a moment and said “you know the hours are long,
the pay is low but the fringe benefits are out of this world.”
The truth is as followers of Jesus
Christ, we are called to bring God’s Kingdom now and we will
more fully see the
Kingdom of
God when
we die.
But what about God’s Kingdom her
eon earth? Jesus said
“Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be
done on earth and in heaven.”
I love the teaching on the 10
Lepers found only in Luke, because it teaches us that God’s
Kingdom is now. God loves us now. God
is a giving God. God blesses us now in this lifetime as proof
of His on-going love for us more fully in His Kingdom that
will come in Heaven.
God wants us to imitate
him. Giving in this life is what living is all
about. We are learning in this life that happiness comes from
“what we give, not what we get.” Jesus in healing the lepers
shows us and example of our Giving God.
Leprosy was a dreaded disease. It
is called “living death” since it ravages the
body and leaves victims deformed. It is introduced into the
central nervous system where it systematically kills nerve
endings causing much suffering and pain. It wasn’t until 1873
when Dr. Armeaur Hansen saw the bacterium my cobacterium
leprae under a microscope and found it was bacteria induced
that the treatment on this disease had any effect. Prior to
that discovery all thought it caused by inherited genes or
caused by sin.
By Jesus reaching out to the
lepers and healing them physically he was showing God’s
acceptance of the lepers and that God’s love is for all people
especially those with leprosy. All they needed to say was
“Jesus Maser have mercy on us” and the power of God’s love
healed all 10 physically and emotionally on that day.
It must have hurt Jesus when only
one leper returned to give him thanks. Not because Jesus had
an ego problem and wanted credit for the healing. The reason
was that this connected this man with the God for eternity.
It was God who gave him his life back in this world.
But by his faith, the leper
cemented their relationship for the life to come. This was the
spiritual healing that also took place on that day.
We enter God’s Kingdom by our
faith. Jesus acknowledges the leper’s faith that made him
well in this world and in the world to come.
Luke 17:21 Behold the
Kingdom of God is in the midst of you.”
The Kingdom will come into our
lives and those we love, when we realize that the secret to
the Kingdom is that
“true living is found in giving
back to God.”
I saw this modeled by my
grandparents who were always happy to see us visit them.
Grandmother had lessons about the depression and how food,
clothing and other goods had to be shared among the family
members. Then Grandpa talked about World War II and how
certain items were rationed here in
America
so the troops overseas would have more. The whole country
learned at that time to give and to share. My grandparents
made certain that we learned how to share among each of my
three brothers.
Whether it was grandma’s apple pie
or some other great dessert, we had to learn to share.
But it was in the practical
lessons from my mom and dad that taught us to share. We
learned to share the bathrooms.. We shared the car when we
were able to drive. We were to learn to give of our time to do
chores at home such as mowing the grass or burning the trash
each week or feeding the dog.
Our family learned to give to
families that we adopted in the poor side of
Des Moines every
year at Thanksgiving. This annual giving further impressed in
me the need to give to others in thanksgiving to God fo what
we had been given in life. There was always someone else
that we visited and helped that had greater needs than our own
as a family.
I learned about giving and so I
passed those lessons down to my own children. Life in our
family did not revolve around just what they wanted but life
was about giving to others and by doing so we were giving back
to God.
The ultimate example of giving we
learn from Our God and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ. God
so loved this world that he gave His only Son Jesus so that we
might have eternal life. What more of an example do we need
to understand that real living is found not in receiving but
in giving?
There is nothing we could do to
equal or repay God for what he did to conquer sin of this
world by giving up the life of His Son on the cross. He gave
his Son Jesus as a ransom for the sins of this world.
But every one of us are given the
opportunity to be a giver for God’s Kingdom. We are able to
participate in furthering God’s plan to redeem this world. We
can support God’s Kingdom through St. Anne’s by participating
on “Consecration Sunday.
Consecration Sunday is our chance
to look closely at our giving of our material wealth to God.
You will see no budgets handed out in advance. There are no
desperate pleas for money. Our motivation on Consecration
Sunday is simple.
It is to say thank you to God. We
learn to thank God for the blessings of this life. This is
the behavior we saw in the one leper who returned to give
thanks. It raises this life to a spiritual level and giving to
be a spiritual experience.
What I love the most after 17
years of Consecration Sunday is the opportunity to grow in
trust and faith by moving up on the Step Chart. We have the
chance to raise our giving to a percentage of our income and
feel good about the increase in our giving to God each year.
This year I ask you to pray and
examine your family income and make a serious attempt to see
where you are on the Step Chart and challenge yourselves to
move 2-3- steps this year where you believe God would have you
go.
Remember this is a sacred time
when each person or family comes forward and places their gift
on the altar and says “Thank you to God”. We then go in and
celebrate our gift together as a family at our catered
luncheon.
May God bless you a thousand times
over in your giving so that your cup is not just filled but
overflowing with Blessings in the coming year.
May we be remembered before God
not like the 9 who walked away, but like the one leper who
returned to give thanks to God.
