Charity

Over the last two weeks I’ve taken you on a journey of the foundational items we believe in. In these foundational items, we all the rationale of all that we do and say. As a church, we are moved because of these things. We first said that it was human nature to want to be treated better and receive better than can be reciprocated; as a result, we avoid vulnerability by nature. As a result, Jesus had to come and rescue us from our own fear of vulnerability and show us that being in a relationship that makes you feel vulnerable is okay—because it can be transformative. We find our church doing things and programming specifically so that there is no need to fear vulnerability; but rather, embrace it as a place for relational growth. It is this type of relationship that all of us should be moving toward in our professional and personal lives. Oh the lives it would change when can be brave enough to embrace this. Then last week we started to talk about forgiveness and learned that if we would just begin to forgive the way Jesus forgives, having no reason to sacrifice ourselves, but doing so anyways, changes us from the inside out. It makes us look at ourselves differently and also makes us feel different about other people that wronged us. Instead of feeling scarred and embarrassed, we feel hope. So this week, we move on to another topic which we call charity. “Charity” when the Bible speaks of it, isn’t talking about alms—like giving to the poor. Rather, “charity” in the Christian sense, is the giving of love through grace. There are a few things about “charity” that I want to make clear to all of us before we even get to our Bible passage. The first is this: we are charitable to people and things, that is loving, that we “like” or are “fond” of. Here’s what I mean by that—we tend to give more love through our good graces (that is to pour out ones’ self sacrificially for no reason) to people and things that we like. The more we like something or somebody, we tend to give more charitable love to them. This notion; however, if taken to the extreme selfish limits can be harmful. What I’m talking about is liking for your own sake as opposed to the sake of another person, whom that like or love is supposed to be devoted to. Here’s my example: we have so many spoiled kids who can’t do anything for themselves. The reason? Their parents “love” their kids so much by natural affection that they gratify their own affectionate impulses at the expense of the kid’s real happiness later on. Yeah, I know, I just diagnosed why our world is so messed up because of charity. Another thing we need to know about charity is that there are two types of charity. There is worldly charity which is sentimental and affectionate, meaning it grows disparately with likings and moods; then there is godly charity which is to understand the other person and do good on behalf of that person—as an act of charity. If you don’t understand what I’m saying here, that’s fine for now because I just got even a little too philosophical for my own good. Let’s read Luke 16:19. 19 “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. 20 At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores 21 and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores. 22 “The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. – Luke 16:19-22 Just so we don’t miss the point that Luke is trying to make: there is a rich guy and a poor guy. It is a dichotomy, but it’s more than that. Luke is establishing through Jesus’ story a morality about classism. The rich man had no name—“dives” is not his name, it just means rich guy in Latin or some other dead language. But, but, the beggar had a name. You see what Luke does; rather, what Jesus does with this story. He places the importance, not on the societally important, but on the ignored. Jesus was basically illustrating that the rich are a dime a dozen—living rich was normal. It was the beggar whose life is the anomaly. In society we all try to “be rich” or get famous or be important and so we ignore all those people we walk by that aren’t living to that ideal, when it is their plight that we should know, not to model it or anything, but to know that there are people behind those afflictions that need love by grace because they don’t have any. Look at verse 21b. It says “the dogs came to lick his sores.” He is saying that people who need love the most from us are getting ignored even though it is apparent that even stray dogs are not ignoring those people. The implication here being that stray animals have more humanity that people living in society, rather, let’s not be so pointed, stray animals are more humane than religious people is the real accusation here. It’s not a good picture that is being painted here. I know most of us don’t make it a habit to get to know people whose plight just sucks as bad as this guy and that if given the chance we would, understandably go brush shoulders with the rich and powerful. In our world, it would be brushing shoulders with the religious and “godly” that would appease our superegos, but there is something terribly wrong with that. So we stop again because there are a lot of things that is being implicated here. The rich guy, but worldly standards, was not a bad guy. In fact, we see the imagery of food given to Lazarus off the rich man’s table as an act of worldly charity. The rich guy was trying obey the law of charity by showing him, more likely others, what a fine man he is. However, none of that mattered to God. The dude still went to Hades. Let’s pick it up in verse 23. 23 In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. 24 So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’25 “But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony.26 And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’ – Luke 16:23-26 The rich guy went to Hades because he only liked the people he liked. He was being punished for his intentions, not his actions, although, actions are highly correlated to intentions here. People aren’t fools, they know when you’re showing off; and likewise, God is even less foolish and therefore knows that the showing off is ugly. Let’s go to Acts, it’s not on the screen, but you can open up your Bibles to Acts 3. Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour.2 And a man lame from birth was being carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple that is called the Beautiful Gate to ask alms of those entering the temple. 3 Seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked to receive alms. 4 And Peter directed his gaze at him, as did John, and said, “Look at us.” 5 And he fixed his attention on them, expecting to receive something from them. 6 But Peter said, “I have no silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!”7 And he took him by the right hand and raised him up, and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong. 8 And leaping up he stood and began to walk, and entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God. 9 And all the people saw him walking and praising God, 10 and recognized him as the one who sat at the Beautiful Gate of the temple, asking for alms. And they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him. – Acts 3:1-10 Peter and John were going to temple, meaning they were ceremonially clean. They stopped and touched a ceremonially unclean guy, a paralytic. By Jewish law, Peter and John should have disliked this person because of his uncleanness, but they showed him charity—love through grace. When we do good to other people because those other people are made like us by God, and in our doing good, which is different than the spoiling parents type of doing good, desiring their happiness like we would want our own, then we learned to be charitable like God. Charity, our third principle, isn’t about giving, although, for us, we tend to give a lot. It is about seeking the joy of every single person we interact with, or are in our worlds to interact with so that we can love them through grace. In fact, the more we practice loving through grace—that is to give of yourself sacrificially even though the other person doesn’t deserve it (we actually call that community service) we tend not to dislike those people less, but like them more. We tend to love them more. You see charity increases like compound interest. That’s how credit card companies make so much money from us debtors. That is why, when the church makes little tiny decisions that we make every single day, there is a life time of importance packed into each one. That is why we put up the VBS events, go on field trips, do social service and tiringly wear ourselves out even though it annoys us. What Peter and John did, and what Lazarus failed to do, was make a small good act in a day they had opportunity. We play this event we read in Acts as a miracle, but it was only a miracle because of a small charitable act. You think they had any idea what would happen if they said what they said and held the guy’s hand? No way, it was a dream they never dreamed of. It was seemingly trivial, but it amounted to a man transformed by the will of God. Let’s go back to Luke 16. 27 “He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, 28 for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’ 29 “Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’30 “‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’31 “He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’” – Luke 16:27-31 Here’s where our discussion of charity concludes for us. We can describe the love of God, who sent His Son Jesus to die for us on a cross, that act of forgiveness we talked about last week, to be “charity.” In fact, it is “charity.” And if that is what we are supposed to be doing according this passage in Luke, but are not sure how to do it because we seemingly lack the ability to do. Then what is it that we can do, because we do love God and we can’t manufacture feelings because the intentions of those feelings are faux and ingenuine. It’s simple: we ask ourselves, what would we do if our feelings are genuine, what would we do? When we answer that, then we go and do just that. We become charitable in that way before God and stick with it because when we do, we tend to find ourselves lost in it and love God through it. Here is charity: to do for another just as we would do for us because God loves us and therefore the other. This is the law of charity. I know it’s impossible to always be genuine, especially for the benefit of somebody other than us, but what we can always remember is that God’s charity for us is never indifferent, nor does it ever cease or waver like our own. That God is relentless in His determination to provide charity for us through the sanctification of our souls from our sins at whatever cost to Himself. It is in that understanding of love, that we freely love and give love even though people don’t deserve it, nor are they recognizable enough to deserve any our attention. Let’s pray.