The Art of Giving

Acts 20:35. Remember the words of the Lord Jesus who said: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

It is intriguing to me that after the four Gospels, Jesus is only directly quoted once in the rest of the New Testament. I do not know why this is. You would think that the words and teachings of Jesus would have left more of an impression on the early Church that they would quote him constantly. 

Some suggest that the remainder of the New Testament, apart from the Gospels, was written by men like Paul. These men were a second-generation Christians. They had no first­hand witness to the ministry of Jesus. They were reticent to quote the Master directly. They left that task to those who had lived with him in the years of his ministry. It is interesting that the one direct quote of Jesus in the later texts led for his words to disappear in the remainder of the New Testament. 

The Apostle Paul was leaving Ephesus for the last time. He did not expect to see his dear friends again. He is finishing his farewell address. Having commended the followers into the hand of God, Paul leaves them with one unforgettable sentence of Jesus: “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). In these few words of the Master, Paul crystallized the whole life of Jesus and his teaching. Happier indeed is the man, who like Paul, spends his days and nights giving all he has to others. 

What of the man who is fearful of what the future may bring? What of the man who spends his days hoarding what few things he can gather together in anticipation of a disaster? This happens often and exemplifies the message of Jesus in a half dozen words, and by them set forth the wisdom of God.

 Since next Sunday is commitment day in our stewardship program, I am sure most of you interpret this text to mean: “I guess our pocketbooks are going to get a going over today.” Well, I am sorry I must disappoint you. If I were to use this text in this way, you would be missing the point that Jesus and Paul were driving at when they used these words: “It is more blessed to give than to receive”.

Jesus was speaking of the giving of a more fundamental coin than money. He was talking about the giving of one’s self, of which the giving of money is only a token. This puts our text suddenly right in the mainstream of the person-to-person encounter. It comes right to the heart of the Biblical message. The central concern of the Bible is man^’s personal relationship with God and how one relates to God and his brother. 

The biblical story of man begins with a central theme. In Genesis, we read about the saga of man. Man comes from the hand of his creator, who has fashioned him for fellowship with him. The ancient Biblical writer begins the story of man this way, and God said: “Let us make man in our image and after our likeness”.

After the creation, God’s first act is to come down and relate himself to this wonderful new creature he made. He creates a beautiful garden for this wonderful man, who is to be the center of his love. In the cool of the evening, he comes down into that garden to commune with man, so that each could become the trusted confident and companion of the other.

The story of man progresses. God suddenly sees it is not good for man to be alone. He needs companionship. God creates woman as a helper. For man, at that very moment, both the family and society were born in the story. This was to be the source of great joy and a blessing for man. Is it not strange that both were soon to become the source of his greatest frustration and disappointment? However, we are getting ahead of the story. Suddenly man begins to freeze up. Something happens to that very happy relationship with God. Adam begins to draw away and become suspicious of God. God has forbidden him to eat of the fruit of a certain tree. Adam thinks God is trying to keep something from him.  He thinks God is not really interested in his fulfillment. Why? Is it that man has the potential of being like God and is God afraid and jealous, and so he is withholding from man? Before long, man begins to withhold himself from God. First, it is in anger, then in guilt and then shame. We see him hiding behind a tree afraid God might come down into the garden that evening and find him and reject him for what he has done.

But that is not all. Man does not stop there. Before long there is rift in family life and in society. Adam starts blaming his wife. Isn’t that where most wars start? As you might expect, the next chapter in the history of man is a sordid one. Cain goes out and slays Abel. Strange to say, he does it because he feels God is playing favorites between him and his brother.

It is not enough to break off his relationship with God and his fellow man, Adam does not only blame Eve, but Eve blames the serpent. The world becomes a threatening thing to them. That which was to be a blessing has become a curse. And the Biblical writer puts it so pointedly, “In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread”.

We may have a trouble accepting the historical accuracy of the narratives in the early part of Genesis, but we cannot argue with the theology or psychology portrayed. This indeed is the saga of man’s internal history. Through the years, man has withheld himself from God and from his brother. This is the sickness of modern man.

For many years, anthropologists have known they can learn much about a primitive tribe or a developed society from their dances and their games. Many times, these become a sort of pantomime or a sacramental representation of the basic struggle of our lives. Perhaps it is a way that man sublimates his basic anxieties, so he can cope with anxieties in an acceptable form.

Have you ever thought what anthropologists would learn about us? From our modern games and dances. Last Friday night I sat in the stands, while eleven young men glared across an imaginary line at eleven other young men as though they were mortal enemies. One team has possession of an oval piece of inflated pigskin. It has very little value or worth, but the other team wants it more than anything else on earth at that moment. Eleven men want to break through the line of the other team and carry that pigskin over another imaginary line to show that they are the stronger. If necessary, they are willing to risk concussion, brain damage, limb damage and yes sometimes their lives to do this. In this game, the greatest crime is to give an inch to the other. Isn’t it ghastly how one can see a sort of sacramental enactment of the many struggles that go on in our world all around us? A nation holding an imaginary line against another nation. A husband holding an imaginary line against a wife. A businessman trying to break through a competitor’s line to outsell him in the field marketing a product of just as questionable value as the blown-up pig skin.

Think of the dances in the last twenty years. What would the anthropologist say about them? Let me name a few of them: The big apple, the jitterbug, mash potatoes, the twist or the surfers stomp. Add them all up and what do they spell out about our society. It seems to me they all say: “Don’t get involved with the other person.” One could go on dancing all night without being able to even hear a word the partner is saying. Well enough of that. 

Is it any wonder Karl Menninger has said: “Most of us spend a lifetime trying to find out what love really is”? It is surely little wonder that from the start what we receive in childhood and adolescence that many people reach adult life without the faintest conception of what it love is, or of what it might be for them. That is why our lives are so shallow. We do not know the meaning of love.

Just recently I saw a dramatic illustration of this lack of any concept of the meaning of love. A minister friend, called me and said: “I have been trying to work with a couple who have some deep problems, and I wonder if you would help me. I have been trying to get to the bottom of their troubles, and I seem to be beating my head against a stone. I am not getting anywhere.”

When they came in to see me, I sat there for an hour and a half and watched and listened. Here were two of the best quarterbacks I have ever seem. Coach Hebert of our football team ought to get a line on these two. They had an end run, plunges and a superb belly series. In fact, they had every play that was ever invented, and they were playing the game to the hilt. The object of their game was not to get involved with each other, because the other was too big a threat to them.

I have found church people are like that too. They want to go to church. It’s kind of nice to be with a whole lot of nice people, especially in this lonely world of noninvolvement. But in religion, we play games too. We get into a game with God. In fact, I think I have identified the game. It is akin to professional wrestling, and the object of the game is not to let God get ahold of you. You ought to hear the excuses when the Christian education committee goes out to recruit teachers.

Have you ever chaired the nominating committee of the woman ‘s association? Ask the stewardship committee how difficult it is to recruit 100 church members to do the every member canvas.

In fact, a modern poet put it this way:

I got the gimme God blues. 
I got the gimme God blues 
Cause God won’t gimme 
What I want him to gimme 
I got the gimme god blues.

Or to put it in the words of another modern poet:

I’d rather be dead, I’d rather be dead
Than to come to grips with relationships
I’d rather be dead
Than to face up to me and reality
I’d rather be dead.
As long as there is something holding me back, 
I can tell myself how it’s not something I lack 
So, bury em deep or hang me up high 
But don’t ask me to live when I want to die.
I’d rather be dead.

Into this setting, I hear the intrusion of the words of Jesus remembered by the Apostle Paul: “It is more blessed to give than to receive”. What do these words really mean? What Jesus was really saying to his disciples is what he is really saying to you and to me. Stop withholding yourself from life. Stop being a human sponge soaking everything in if you can, but never giving out.

To put it in modern parlance he is saying: “Give out, man, give out”.

Why do we really withhold ourselves from those around us? You may say the answer is very simple. I am afraid of being rejected. In his book, “The Art of Loving”, Erich Fromm has made an interesting observation to this point. He says: “While one is consciously afraid of not being loved, the reality is  usually the unconscious fear of loving”. To love means to commit oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce love in the loved person. This is the same commitment of faith that is needed. We must have faith that trustful love will in turn invoke a response of love.

Now everyone of us has faith. It takes faith to get up in the morning. It takes faith to sit, when we sit down on a chair. We must have faith the chair won’t collapse. You must have faith that the cook won’t poison you when you eat your lunch—and sometimes that cook is your wife. What we need to do is channel this faith in the cause of self-giving—in loving.

This takes courage. We all have courage. In fact, it seems to me that it takes a lot of courage to play the rough game that the husband and wife were playing that I referred to earlier. What we need to do is channel our courage in the cause of love. We must exercise what Paul Tillich called “the courage to be”.

When I looked at that football game the other night, I became aware we are not lacking in courage. What we need to do is to channel of our courage into the cause of love. In this regard I like what Carl Menninger said: “The world’s great lovers have not been Don Juan and Casanova, but Schweitzer, Ghandi, Helen Keller, and saints such as Francis of Assisi”. He goes on to say: “True love is more concerned about the welfare of the one loved than with its own immediate satisfactions. It demands nothing but to be patient, kind and modest: that it is free from jealousy, boastfulness, arrogance, and rudeness: that it can bear all things, hope and endure, so said St. Paul and so said Freud”.

This bring us to another point. This courage and this faith can lead us to involvement with God, too. Why do you feel suspicious of him? We look over our noses at Adam and Eve. When God wanted to get involved with them, they were suspicious of him and thought in holding back the forbidden fruit. They thought he had malicious intent, and he really did not want them to fulfill themselves.

When Jesus says, “It is more blessed to give than to receive”, you and I feel like Adam at times. You feel God wants to use us to his own ends without your welfare at hear. God says: “Become involved with me. I want to share with you of my life, but I can^’t do it unless you’re willing to become involved with me. You must give something of yourself to me if I am to give something of yourself to me”.

Now I said I wasn’t going to talk about stewardship more than I had to, but if I did not talk about it, I would miss the point. 

There is a challenging exchange in the book of Malachi. Malachi hears god saying: “Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. But you say: how shall we return?” Then, Malachi hears God give this answer to the question: “Will man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say, ‘How have we robbed you?’ In your tithes and contributions.You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you. Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need”.

I used to think that this was a very selfish reason to give a tithe. If I give, God will give back to me. But don’t you see that is the reward of being involved. If we get involved in God’s work and life, he gets involved in ours. It takes courage and faith to be a Church school teacher. It takes courage and faith to be a women’s association president. It takes courage and faith to become a missionary. It takes courage and faith to become a tither. It takes courage and faith to be a true Christian. It takes courage and faith to become involved with God, not just as it does with our fellow men. But God has made available in each of us that courage and faith. All we need to do is to direct that courage and faith to the right end.

Jesus says to us: “Let’s stop playing at religion — let’s stop playing in our interpersonal relations —Give man give.”

As Paul says, “Remember the words of the lord Jesus how he said: It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

Here’s how St. Francis prayed:

Lord make me an instrument of thy peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is doubt, let me sow faith.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, let me sow light.
Where there is sadness, let me sow joy.
0 divine master,
Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, 
As to console to be understood, as to understand
To be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving, that we receive.
It is in pardoning, that we are pardoned.
And it is in dying, that we are born to eternal life.