GENEROSITY by Cheri Holdridge (with an assist by Kurt Young)

We began worship today with a little drama presented by the Village ARTS Group.  The three characters in this short drama are described in this way: 

1 is a greedy, smug, self-satisfied person

2 is a fairly even person

3 is a poor, needy person who is unable to help self

Now, I’m not going to ask you to tell me which one you identify with the most, but I’d like you to think about it. Trevor played the greedy person. I think his character exemplifies our American culture. We have all been there. No matter what we have, we think we need more. We confuse wants with the basic needs of food, shelter and clothing. The consumer driven culture of this country has convinced us that we are people of scarcity, that we don’t have enough, even though God tells us that we have abundant life. 

Beth’s character is described as a fairly even person. Perhaps this is you. This is a person I would call spiritually balanced. You understand that you have what you need. Given the chance you even share with others. Perhaps you went to Churchhill’s yesterday to help Stuff the Truck with food for others for Thanksgiving. Perhaps when you start thinking about Christmas you think about how you want to share with others from your abundance because you know you don’t really need anything. 

The third character is a person who is truly needy. This is someone who due to life circumstances really does not have everything they need. Perhaps they are disabled, or just can’t find a job. Perhaps they have grown up in the inner city with sub-standard schools, surrounded by gangs and pressured to give into the drug culture.  Perhaps they live in an impoverished country where there are no jobs and where there is famine. It is hard to help yourself when everyone around you is poor. Some of us have experienced this sort of neediness, but for the most part, here at The Village, compared to the rest of the world, we still enjoy abundance. Even if we are not materially wealthy, we have something for which to be thankful: good health, or friends, a job we love, and children who bring us joy. Blessings come in many forms. 

Because we are like the people in the drama and have what we need, and for the most part, even more than we need, we also have the ability to give. That is what today’s scripture is about. Near the end of Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 25:31-46 for those following along on the internet), we have record of Jesus’ teaching the people. He is getting pretty serious because he knows his time on earth is coming to a close. This particular passage gets a bit heavy handed. He tells them that a judgment day is coming. On that day, God will separate the people like a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and you want to be a sheep, not a goat. And God will invite into glory those who did this: 

I was hungry and you fed me,

I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,

I was homeless and you gave me a room,

I was shivering and you gave me clothes,

I was sick and you stopped to visit,

I was in prison and you came to me.

The people are confused because they don’t remember ever seeing Jesus hungry or homeless or sick or in prison. But he says: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.”

So that is what Jesus expects of us. We are to look for any person who is being overlooked or ignored, anyone who is hungry, thirsty, homeless, shivering from lack of clothes. We are to look for anyone who is sick or in prison and we are to care for those people. These are real needs. And Jesus says: we have the ability to meet these needs. We have been blessed abundantly. God has blessed us generously. We have what we need and we have what THEY need to. So why on earth would we hold on to what THEY need? God has given us what THEY need so that we can be generous and share it with THEM. That is how this works. The resources that the world needs are here. They have just gotten a bit messed up in the distribution.   

Our job as followers of Jesus is to work on the redistribution. I have what I need. I have more than I need. So I share with others who need what I have. That is what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

Now, Christmas is coming soon. It’s a time when we reflect up on the love of God bursting into the world in the form of Jesus. We celebrate that love with the giving of gifts. Giving gifts is good. Giving gifts is a way to share love. But we have turned Christmas into an excuse to have a consumer frenzy, it’s already started and it will be in full force this week. Some of us will go shopping on Black Friday and buy stuff for ourselves all in the name of the Christmas holiday shopping season and stimulating the economy. Okay, fine, if we need something, let’s go buy it. Workers need jobs, I understand capitalism, I get that. 

But what else will we do, to share generously what we have with those in need? Let me give you an invitation.

But first, a quiz. Can you imagine a disease that could kill the entire populations of Lucas County, Wood, Country, Ottawa County and Sandusky County every year? Now imagine that disease is totally treatable (NO, it’s not Ebola, it’s much easier to treat than that). And what if I told you the disease were completely preventable for $10 per person. Would you spend the $10? Of course you would. To save the lives of your children and your parents, and to save your own life, you would spend $10.   Do you know what the disease is?

The disease is malaria. And in Sub-Saharan Africa there are two problems. First, there are some remote areas where the people did not know that a $10 insecticide treated bed net could save their lives. Second, in places like Sierra Leone a minimum wage worker makes about $US58  per year so it would take a full two months’ salary to buy a life-saving $10 bed net for one person in the family. 

Now, I know we cannot solve all the problems of income inequality in the world. And I know that there are lots of hurting people in this country and so sometimes Americans are prone to say, “Why are we sending money to Africa when there are so many poor people in the country?” This is why: there are not 650,000 people in the US dying every year of a disease that can be prevented with a $10 bed net. 

Just about everyone in this room, if not everyone, lives in a home with running water, flush toilets, and heat in the winter. Some of us have the luxury of air conditioning in the summer. We have food to eat. Yes some of us go to the food pantries to stretch our monthly food supply because we are living on the edge, but at least we live in a city where there are food pantries. I don’t see anyone in this room who is on the verge of dying due to malnutrition. (Look around the room.) Yes we have all clothes to wear. None of us are naked today. We may not have the best designer fashions, but really, how important is that? (GASP if you must)

Compared to people living in Sub-Saharan Africa, our lives are great. The reason we might care about the people whose children who are dying from malaria is because God cares about them. We are followers of Jesus and we want to dare to change the world. So we want to help wipe out malaria. 

TAVYG, our Totally Awesome Youth Group, and our Village Lead Team are inviting us to give to The Village Christmas Offering this year which will benefit Imagine No Malaria.  We will be part of a huge undertaking of the United Methodist Church and others to eradicate, eradicate is what I said, malaria from sub-Saharan Africa. In 2008, the United Methodist General Conference approved the Global Health Initiative, with a mandate to raise $75 million toward malaria prevention. At the time, I will confess that the goal seemed impossible to me. But we have learned, as it says in Ephesians 3:20, that “God really is able to do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine.” So far we have raised more than $60 million. We have already trained 11,600 health workers in 300 hospitals, purchased 1.9 million bed nets to protect people from getting malaria. 

There are 34,000 congregations in the United Methodist Church. The goal of $75,000,000 works out to about $2200 per congregation. I believe our congregation can raise more than $2200 with our Christmas offering. And this is why we will do it.

In 2010, some of the first bed nets arrived in Bo, Sierra Leone and were taken to the smaller villages around Bo. Awhile later, workers with the Imagine No Malaria project returned to Bo. Leaders told the workers that there had been no new cases of Malaria in their villages since they received the insecticide treated bed nets. Parents were so grateful that their children were alive. You see in 2010, a child died every 30 seconds from malaria. Now, in 2014, a child is dying every 60 seconds, but a child is also living every 60 seconds – a child who would not have survived just four years ago.   We’ve cut the number of deaths in half in just a few years of our effort.

Since 2010 new congregations have sprung up in Sierra Leone and elsewhere because of the people’s response to the United Methodist Church’s commitment to health care. Did you hear that? Not only are physical lives being saved, but churches are being born because people are turning to God out of thanksgiving for the blessing of life. Churches are being born, all because some Americans who have more than we need are being generous and giving money to pay for bed nets and health care workers to teach people how important those nets are.  

People are responding to God’s love because of our generosity. When we care for the sick (or for those who could be sick) we are caring for Jesus. That is what he said, Love multiplies. Because, you see, love is meant to be shared, not held on to. 

So I want to ask you to go home today, and make a budget for your Christmas spending. And I challenge you, as I do every year, to give an equal amount to our Christmas offering as you spend on your other gifts for Christmas. That means that you either spend less on your gifts for others so that you can give an equal amount to our Christmas offering. Or you spend what you usually do, and give a matching gift to our “Imagine No Malaria” Christmas Offering. For some people on your Christmas list, you might just tell them you are making a donation in their name; they will be grateful for your generosity. They already have what they need; they don’t need you to buy them anything.  What they desire is a gift of love. 

We are blessed with what we need. We live abundantly. God is giving us an opportunity to bless others. Please pray about what you will give to our “Imagine No Malaria Christmas Offering.” When we love others, we love Jesus. It’s just that simple. Amen.