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October 28, 2007

The Experience of Giving

Scriptures: Mark 12:41-44, John 15:12-16

“I Have Called You Friends”… Her name is Suzie (not her real name). I met her when I first moved to Oak Park almost 20 years. She grew up in the Oak Park area and has lived in the area all her life. I found that so unusual, as I’d moved so much when I was growing up. She comes from a large extended Irish Catholic family. I used to kid her about always having to go to a wake or funeral. She knew everybody!! When we first became friends, we were both single and inseparable. If you saw me and she wasn’t with me, you’d ask where she was and vice versa. We went through a period when I turned my back on her because of a guy I was dating. I ended up moving to the western suburbs and our relationship suffered. That hurt. A couple years later, I moved back to Oak Park. It took some time for us to get back what we had, and more, but we did. She needed to believe she could trust me again. I needed to realize how much I’d missed her and what a gift she was as a friend.

She’s gone up to our family place in Michigan. She knows my entire family so she knows who I’m talking about when there are issues. She loves Mark. We laugh together, cry together. We listen to each other go over the same thing over and over and over. We don’t give unsolicited advice. We don’t gossip about each other (and we try not to gossip about other people but sometimes it’s hard!). As I share this with you, I realize that how grateful I am for Suzie’s friendship. How important it is to tell her that and tell her often.

It’s good to reflect and remember the people in our lives who we can truly call a friend—I feel blessed and so grateful for the women, and the one man—my husband Mark, in my life who fit into this category of Friend—with a capital F. What is a friend with a capital F?
• Someone who has your back, that’s a Friend.
• Someone who will drop what they are doing or come from long distances to be with you when you’re in need, that’s a friend.
• Someone you can’t stay mad at, no matter how hard you try.
• Someone who seems easy to love.
• Someone you don’t have to entertain when they come to your house.
• Someone whose values and/or beliefs are similar to yours.
• Some of us have friends who we don’t see very often. They live in other parts of the country or the world. And yet, when you get together, you pick right up where you were the last time you talked. That’s a friend with a capital F.
• A Friend is someone who knows you intimately and still with all that knowledge, they love you all the same.
• A Friend is someone who will tell you the truth—even it if hurts a little. And while they tell you, they are right there walking beside you.

Think of one person in your life who fits into the category. Thank God for this person is your life... (silence).

Can you remember a time when you didn’t know them and love them as you do today? It might be hard, but I think we can all acknowledge that our relationship with this person developed over time. The relationship we have with them today is not the same was it was when we met.

Friendships develop over time—some come quickly and others take more time. When we think of all the aspects that go into a deep friendship, we discover a foundation built on mutual love and self sacrifice. For a friend, we will go the extra mile without thinking about it as they would for us…(pause) This is the relationship Jesus is inviting us to have with him when he calls us Friend. Jesus wants our relationship with him not to be one of obligation but of voluntary association and self sacrifice.

The God that we believe in is a God who wants to be in relationship with us. God didn’t create the world and then turn his back on it to let it spin where it would and end up where it will. God reached out to humanity throughout the Hebrew Scriptures—through Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Deborah, Samuel, Daniel to name a few. I wonder if in the beginning when God created the earth if he thought it was going to be enough for people to believe in him. If miracles that pointed to him would strengthen the relationship. He gave the people laws to guide and order their lives hoping that this would help them relate to him, to remember him. However, it must have become apparent to God that humanity needed more.

Then in a world-changing event, God came in human form to earth. God became incarnate (flesh and bones) and lived with us. We call that revelation Jesus Christ. It was not enough for God to be up there—God wanted humanity to know that God is right here (arms out and palms up). God is in here (point to our heart, guts). God created us and all that we are including our wants and needs. Can we imagine that God herself desires a relationship with us that reflects the best of our human relationships?

Is it possible to be a friend with God—a friend of Jesus? It seems that the disciples had an advantage over us. Jesus was physically with them. For the first disciples, this concept of friend is easier to appreciate and work out because Jesus was physically with them. They hung out, ate and drank together, walked the countryside. Jesus shared himself with them. He cried with them. He prayed with them. He celebrated life with them.

Jesus is not physically with us. This makes our ability to be in relationship more difficult. But Jesus knew this would be an issue so he addressed it. Before he departed the disciples after he was raised from the dead, he told the disciples that “an advocate will come to be with you.” We know this advocate to be the Holy Spirit. As Christians we believe in the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. And it is through the Holy Spirit that we can have a relationship with Jesus.

Marge and Mickey are two 80 plus year old women from my last church. They showed me what it is like to have a relationship with Jesus based on friendship. They talked to him all the time—called him to be with them in times of trouble and thanked him for the many blessings in their lives. They depended on him. They were intimate with him!!

As Christian Community, we put God, at the center of who we are. And as individuals, just like the first group of disciples who followed Jesus, we order our lives around the guidance and teachings of Jesus Christ.

The reality is that each of us has a different relationship with Jesus. And this has been the case since the beginning of Jesus’ ministry to today. Think about the people who traveled with Jesus, who were a part of his entourage…they related to him in a variety of ways: sincerely committed; not yet sure, but deeply intrigued; outwardly religious but spiritually empty; and the outright skeptics. Like the first group of disciples, we are not a homogenous community.

Michael Selleck describes our relationship with Jesus as a web of discipleship. I’m going to refer to it as a web of friendship. We can think of it as a bull’s-eye with circles radiating out. Jesus Christ is at the center and each circle going out from him represents the degree to which we are in relationship with him. The farther from the center of the circle you are, the less influenced you are by Jesus.

The farthest out circle represents those people who are cautious. Cautious friends are uncomfortable and unfamiliar with Jesus and who he is. If you find yourself in this circle, you are cautious about attending church events, you feel uncomfortable around “church” people.
Cautious people don’t want to let their defenses down, they aren’t ready to let other Christians or Jesus in. They come to church events because others have asked them to come.

Heading toward the center, toward Jesus, the next circle represents Curious friends. Curious friends haven’t really engaged themselves in anything that is specifically meaningful for them. If you are in this circle, you are waiting for the right kind of opportunity, invitation or mentor to pique your interest. You are interested in this man Jesus, but not excited yet about getting to know him.

The next circle toward Jesus represents Committed friends. I would guess that this circle represents the majority of Christians in the main line church. You regularly attend worship and church events as you like being with other Christians. You are dedicated to the church and the community of faith. Committed friends like this man Jesus and but have yet to open their heart to him.

The next circle represents Professing friends. You have made a commitment to have Jesus at the center of your life. You want to learn how to be a better follower of Christ and will want to find ways to reinforce this life choice. If you are a Professing friend, you have a growing interest in going deeper spiritually. You have discovered that no matter what your life situation, you can be joyful and hopeful.

The closest circle to Christ is entitled Inviting friends. People in this circle are deeply committed to Jesus and their relationship with him affects their relationship with everyone else in their life. They are willing to give up their own agenda to do whatever it takes to get others into the web of friendship.

There are only three directions we can travel on the web of friendship in relation to the center. We can move toward Jesus, away from him, or we can circle. Many of us spend the bulk of our faith journey circling. Personal growth or faith crisis may find us suddenly moving in or way, only to circle again until the next personal change.

Hear me; this web of friendship is a map—a way to identify where we are. It is not a judgment about where you are. All of us have been in the outer circles at one time or another. We need to start somewhere. I’m offering up this visual so you can get an idea of where you are in your relationship with Jesus and to ask yourself if this is where you want to stay. It is unrealistic to think that all of us will be in the same circle or at the same place in our journey of faith.

Jesus knew that and he provided different ways for people to experience him and respond to him. Similarly, as a church community, we need to provide various classes, programs, and opportunities for going deeper, for experiencing a loving, caring God who desires a relationship with us that will sustain and support us. It’s not realistic that we will move from cautious friend to inviting friend in the blink of an eye. But we can move from being cautious about Jesus to being curious about him. We can move from being committed to professing. As a church we need to provide opportunities for this to happen. As an individual, you need to be willing to take a risk or be open in new and different ways to Jesus.

One of the ways we can take a risk, learn to depend more on the God of Jesus Christ, is in our relationship with money. Jesus is very clear about this in his teachings. Money or material possessions were a popular subject of Jesus teachings. Our material possessions keep us focused on worldly ways and dependent on ourselves. Over the next month, we will be inviting each other to rely more on Jesus and less on ourselves as demonstrated through our letting go of our worldly possessions.
Jesus wants each of us to experience the joy of giving—no matter where we fall on the web of friendship. And our ability to give begins with remembering God’s love for us. God’s creation of this world and all the gifts and blessings that we experience each and every day. We also remember that God created in us this desire to be in relationship.

Sisters and brothers in the faith, Jesus invites us into a relationship with him—one of mutual love—with all our heart, our soul, our mind, our strength. Jesus invites us to give from the area where fear and scarcity reign that we might experience the fulfillment of sacrificial giving.

In the Mark scripture reading about the widow at the temple, Jesus celebrated her ability to give from her scarcity—her material resources. Will you allow yourself to experience the joy of giving more of yourself to Jesus? Take one small step toward the center, toward Jesus, in your web of friendship with him. Let go of a place you are most likely fearful and live with a sense of scarcity—your material possessions.

We can do this brothers and sisters because, like a friend, Jesus does not ask us to do anything that will harm us. It doesn’t matter that you’ve not spent as much time with him lately. It doesn’t matter that you don’t always know what to say when you talk. When you come to him, it might take some time to experience trust, but soon you’ll realize how much you need him in your life. And like a friend, wherever we go in this journey called life, Jesus promises to be with us through it all, if we let him.

(United Methodist Youth Handbook by Michael Selleck. © 1999 Discipleship Resources.)

Posted by vickie at 10:00 AM