Living Our Lives On The Edge
Sermon
Hope Beneath the Surface
Cycle A First Lesson Sermons for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany
Object:
In the course of my growing up I was in a great variety of clubs and groups. But no club had as stringent and compelling rules, and no club demanded daily attention to its guidelines for behavior and action quite as much as a particular club which met in our home. It met usually three times a day, and the meetings were always at meal time. I'm talking about The Clean Plate Club!
Now just in case there is someone here who missed out on membership in this exclusive club and therefore is uninformed as to its nature, let me explain. The club is really quite easy to describe and the rules are supremely easy to understand. The Clean Plate Club is composed of those proper boys and girls who eat everything that is dished up on their plate. It was always assumed, whether true or not, that every boy and girl would want to be a member of this exclusive organization, for my parents and grandparents would always say, "Finish what's on your plate. You want to be a member of the Clean Plate Club, don't you?" I didn't always, but I never said so. As I recall, my desire for membership in the Clean Plate Club seemed to depend on what exactly it was that needed to be cleaned up!
There were times, of course, when I was driven to membership in this club, and would climb under the table to ensure membership by licking the plate or bowl clean. I assumed that by doing so my mother would be particularly happy, in that she wouldn't have to wash that particular dish. But I digress.
My point in reminiscing with you this morning is that I believe there is evidence to suggest that there may well be a large percentage of the population of the world who enjoy membership in this same club of which I speak.
You see, the point of this club is to search out and find the last morsel of food which lies on the eater's plate, and consume it. And it would appear to me that many of us have that same compulsion in other areas of our lives. Let me explain.
It has been my experience that when I'm at a Thanksgiving meal and watch the server of the pies dish out my delicious piece of apple or pumpkin pie (usually a piece of both), if they miss a tiny part of what should be my piece, I frown inside and long with an eager longing for that little tiny morsel I missed. Or I may gather up my loins and say gently and/or firmly, depending on who the server is, "Er, ah, may I have it all, please?" Can any of you pie lovers relate to that?
I have also discovered that if I receive an unexpected windfall of money, say $25, and there's a special offering coming up in church for some worthy cause, I still find that it takes a lot of effort to say, "Heck, I wasn't expecting this money anyway, I'll just give it all to this worthy cause."
Do you see what I mean? It's that strong training in the Clean Plate Club that's doing it. What's mine should be all mine, especially those last few morsels. Why, to be honest, those last few morsels feel more rightfully mine than all the rest!
Apparently the Clean Plate Club has been around influencing people for a long time, because the same problem demanded some attention centuries before Jesus was born. Indeed, way back in the days of Moses at the edge of recorded history, the Lord was trying to deal with the results of that ancient club.
I'm thinking of how the Lord chose to deal with it through the servant Moses, as recorded in the third book of the Bible, Leviticus. The book is called Leviticus because it has much to do with work and the ministry of the Levitical priests.
Chapter 19 of Leviticus begins with the Lord's call to all the people of Israel to be holy. Why? Because God is holy and they were God's children. This portion of Leviticus, as you noted I'm sure, repeats some of the parts of the Ten Commandments. But the part I want to lift up for our attention this morning is verse 9, which has to do with the issue I've been talking about:
When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord your God.
The word of the Lord which Moses shared with his people was that one should not be a member of the Clean Plate Club when it came to gathering all the produce and wealth that belonged to his people. Rather, one should nurture an attitude of generosity, leaving the corners uncut, leaving bunches of grain here and there for those who had nothing, so they could come along and glean for themselves later. To leave some for others was to be holy, and generous, like their God.
The whole business of gleaning came alive for me when I was living in the country in western New York some years ago. Right across from the church there was a large field which was planted annually by a company that raised green beans. When the time for harvest came we would see these huge dinosaur-like pieces of machinery arrive to pick the beans and spit them out into a huge cage, which would then be dumped into enormous trailers.
What I learned in all that was that there were many folks who waited for that harvest day and would move in after the "dinosaurs" were gone to pick the beans that were left. Modern day gleaning.
Of course the most colorful and interesting story about gleaning comes from the Old Testament book of Ruth, in which Ruth gleaned all day in the fields for her mother-in-law Naomi, eventually marrying Boaz, the owner of the fields.
But back to Leviticus. The Lord called the people of Israel to a life of generosity, remembering when they were wandering in the wilderness themselves after they escaped from Egypt, and had nothing to eat. The Lord called them to think beyond themselves, and to be grateful for the abundance of food and goods that was theirs, that those less fortunate might be cared for. It was sort of the welfare system of their day.
Remember Jesus' parable of the rich man whose harvest one year was so enormous that he decided to tear down the barns he had and build bigger ones to hold it all? Luke records the story in the 12th chapter. Remember the man then said, "... I will say to my soul, 'Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.' " Jesus suggests that an attitude of simply stockpiling all you can in order to "eat, drink and be merry" is not an attitude that brings one close to God and one's neighbor, and it leads to a hollow life.
It really struck me as I was studying this portion of Leviticus, that we really do tend to spend much of our time and energy on the edges of our resources, scratching and clawing for every last penny or dollar, no matter how big the harvest has been in our lives. Whether our resources are great or whether they are meager, it would seem that there is a Clean Plate Club attitude, that drives us to walk the fields of our resources, being sure we didn't miss anything, being sure that nothing is left that someone else might get.
I needn't tell you, of course, that the amount of resources a person has is never related to how generous a person is. No, it is the ones with the most generous hearts, filled with gratitude to God for all their blessings, large and small, who love to give with abandon.
I'll never forget a story I read once about rescue workers in a famine-stricken area who were handing out glasses of milk to some half-starved orphans. One was a little boy who had several brothers and sisters and was used to having to divide his food with them. He asked the worker who gave him the milk, "How far down can I drink?"
"All the way down, Honey," she said. "All the way down!"
The problem is that there are those of us who are drinking from huge glasses, compared to 95 percent of the rest of the world, and we, too, insist on drinking "all the way down."
I believe we could find great joy by being a more centered people, not frantically combing the edges of potential resources for something we have missed, but rather grateful to God for all that we do have. Such a life inevitably leads to an overflowing love for our neighbor and leads to walking in the footsteps of Jesus.
Now just in case there is someone here who missed out on membership in this exclusive club and therefore is uninformed as to its nature, let me explain. The club is really quite easy to describe and the rules are supremely easy to understand. The Clean Plate Club is composed of those proper boys and girls who eat everything that is dished up on their plate. It was always assumed, whether true or not, that every boy and girl would want to be a member of this exclusive organization, for my parents and grandparents would always say, "Finish what's on your plate. You want to be a member of the Clean Plate Club, don't you?" I didn't always, but I never said so. As I recall, my desire for membership in the Clean Plate Club seemed to depend on what exactly it was that needed to be cleaned up!
There were times, of course, when I was driven to membership in this club, and would climb under the table to ensure membership by licking the plate or bowl clean. I assumed that by doing so my mother would be particularly happy, in that she wouldn't have to wash that particular dish. But I digress.
My point in reminiscing with you this morning is that I believe there is evidence to suggest that there may well be a large percentage of the population of the world who enjoy membership in this same club of which I speak.
You see, the point of this club is to search out and find the last morsel of food which lies on the eater's plate, and consume it. And it would appear to me that many of us have that same compulsion in other areas of our lives. Let me explain.
It has been my experience that when I'm at a Thanksgiving meal and watch the server of the pies dish out my delicious piece of apple or pumpkin pie (usually a piece of both), if they miss a tiny part of what should be my piece, I frown inside and long with an eager longing for that little tiny morsel I missed. Or I may gather up my loins and say gently and/or firmly, depending on who the server is, "Er, ah, may I have it all, please?" Can any of you pie lovers relate to that?
I have also discovered that if I receive an unexpected windfall of money, say $25, and there's a special offering coming up in church for some worthy cause, I still find that it takes a lot of effort to say, "Heck, I wasn't expecting this money anyway, I'll just give it all to this worthy cause."
Do you see what I mean? It's that strong training in the Clean Plate Club that's doing it. What's mine should be all mine, especially those last few morsels. Why, to be honest, those last few morsels feel more rightfully mine than all the rest!
Apparently the Clean Plate Club has been around influencing people for a long time, because the same problem demanded some attention centuries before Jesus was born. Indeed, way back in the days of Moses at the edge of recorded history, the Lord was trying to deal with the results of that ancient club.
I'm thinking of how the Lord chose to deal with it through the servant Moses, as recorded in the third book of the Bible, Leviticus. The book is called Leviticus because it has much to do with work and the ministry of the Levitical priests.
Chapter 19 of Leviticus begins with the Lord's call to all the people of Israel to be holy. Why? Because God is holy and they were God's children. This portion of Leviticus, as you noted I'm sure, repeats some of the parts of the Ten Commandments. But the part I want to lift up for our attention this morning is verse 9, which has to do with the issue I've been talking about:
When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord your God.
The word of the Lord which Moses shared with his people was that one should not be a member of the Clean Plate Club when it came to gathering all the produce and wealth that belonged to his people. Rather, one should nurture an attitude of generosity, leaving the corners uncut, leaving bunches of grain here and there for those who had nothing, so they could come along and glean for themselves later. To leave some for others was to be holy, and generous, like their God.
The whole business of gleaning came alive for me when I was living in the country in western New York some years ago. Right across from the church there was a large field which was planted annually by a company that raised green beans. When the time for harvest came we would see these huge dinosaur-like pieces of machinery arrive to pick the beans and spit them out into a huge cage, which would then be dumped into enormous trailers.
What I learned in all that was that there were many folks who waited for that harvest day and would move in after the "dinosaurs" were gone to pick the beans that were left. Modern day gleaning.
Of course the most colorful and interesting story about gleaning comes from the Old Testament book of Ruth, in which Ruth gleaned all day in the fields for her mother-in-law Naomi, eventually marrying Boaz, the owner of the fields.
But back to Leviticus. The Lord called the people of Israel to a life of generosity, remembering when they were wandering in the wilderness themselves after they escaped from Egypt, and had nothing to eat. The Lord called them to think beyond themselves, and to be grateful for the abundance of food and goods that was theirs, that those less fortunate might be cared for. It was sort of the welfare system of their day.
Remember Jesus' parable of the rich man whose harvest one year was so enormous that he decided to tear down the barns he had and build bigger ones to hold it all? Luke records the story in the 12th chapter. Remember the man then said, "... I will say to my soul, 'Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.' " Jesus suggests that an attitude of simply stockpiling all you can in order to "eat, drink and be merry" is not an attitude that brings one close to God and one's neighbor, and it leads to a hollow life.
It really struck me as I was studying this portion of Leviticus, that we really do tend to spend much of our time and energy on the edges of our resources, scratching and clawing for every last penny or dollar, no matter how big the harvest has been in our lives. Whether our resources are great or whether they are meager, it would seem that there is a Clean Plate Club attitude, that drives us to walk the fields of our resources, being sure we didn't miss anything, being sure that nothing is left that someone else might get.
I needn't tell you, of course, that the amount of resources a person has is never related to how generous a person is. No, it is the ones with the most generous hearts, filled with gratitude to God for all their blessings, large and small, who love to give with abandon.
I'll never forget a story I read once about rescue workers in a famine-stricken area who were handing out glasses of milk to some half-starved orphans. One was a little boy who had several brothers and sisters and was used to having to divide his food with them. He asked the worker who gave him the milk, "How far down can I drink?"
"All the way down, Honey," she said. "All the way down!"
The problem is that there are those of us who are drinking from huge glasses, compared to 95 percent of the rest of the world, and we, too, insist on drinking "all the way down."
I believe we could find great joy by being a more centered people, not frantically combing the edges of potential resources for something we have missed, but rather grateful to God for all that we do have. Such a life inevitably leads to an overflowing love for our neighbor and leads to walking in the footsteps of Jesus.
