Count Yourself Blessed

Scriptures:     Deuteronomy 28:1-6, Luke 6:37-42

OK, it’s time for a bit of a memory trip.  Back in the 1950s one of my favorite TV shows was “Your Hit Parade” – on every Saturday night, with the Top Seven songs from however the polls calculated them that week – this was a precursor of Top 40 lists.  One song that held number one for quite a few weeks in my memory (which, of course, could be quite faulty – maybe it’s just because I liked it so much) in the early 1950s was one that I wouldn’t be surprised if a number of you remember:  “Count Your Blessings”.  Remember:

When you’re worried and you can’t sleep
Just count your blessings instead of sheep,
And you’ll fall asleep
Counting your blessings.

Always a good reminder.  We have so much to be grateful for, even in the midst of our economic woes and the health problems that come as we grow older.  Simply enumerating those things that make our life richer can be a great help to us at all times – and not just when we’re trying to fall asleep.

The stewardship theme and materials for this year from the United Church of Christ put a somewhat different spin on this approach:  “count yourself blessed”.  The emphasis goes back to us – you and me – the person who feels the blessings.  And so we are asked to consider what we are going to do with that sense of being blessed.

The key text to help us with an answer to this question is Luke 6:38:

“Give and it will be given you.  A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”

These words come in the midst of Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Mount, and they are a part of a series of very direct sayings by Jesus intended to demonstrate for those who would believe in him what it would mean for them if they undertook to follow these directions.

On the face of it these were not easy directions to follow.  Don’t judge.  Don’t condemn.  Forgive.  Give.  Rather counter-intuitive, aren’t they?  Kinda goes against human nature.  Perhaps that’s why Jesus felt it was necessary to tell the story about taking the log out of your own eye before taking the speck out of your neighbor’s.  We just have that tendency to want to find fault with someone else rather than look into what needs fixing in our own lives.

The other thing that’s a bit peculiar about this setting is the juxtaposition of not judging and not condemning with forgiving and giving.  Seems like these are separate activities or spiritual charismas.  What exactly is Jesus getting at here?

We’ve talked on several occasions over the past few months about what it means from a spiritual standpoint not to judge another – the importance of walking a mile in another’s shoes and seeing where that person is really coming from.  Here, Jesus is showing them what naturally flows from taking that kind of an attitude:  “do not judge, and you will not be judged.”  Much of the religious leadership of his time, much of the history of what we have come to call the Old Testament, speaks of a wrathful, vengeful, judgmental God.  Jesus wanted his people to know that God was a loving, grace-giving God; and therefore, we need to emulate that God in our own approach to other people.  It is not for us to judge; it is not for us to condemn, because God is a God who does not judge or condemn us.

Out of this reality flow the next two statements:  “forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you.”  Fascinating, isn’t it, to pair forgiving and giving!  It’s almost as if to say:  as you give, so will you forgive; as you forgive, so will your life become one of giving.  Put all four of these admonitions together, and Jesus is saying to us a Christian life is one where it is more important to be compassionate than critical.

I know, you’re wondering right about now how I’m going to bring this back to our theme of stewardship.  Well, frankly, I’m not really sure.  OK, no, that’s being a bit ingenuous, because obviously compassion is where our commitment to our church commences.  We would not be here this morning, we would not be filling out our pledge cards, if we did not feel that compassionate commitment.

But it was important to set that context, because when Jesus says, “give, and it will be given to you…for the measure you give will be the measure you get back,” all kinds of red flags go up if we take this comment out of context.  Sounds like the perfect text for the prosperity gospel, doesn’t it?  All you have to do is give generously to the church, and all kinds of riches will just naturally flow back to you!  You and I don’t really believe that.  And that’s not what Jesus is getting at here.  What he wants us to see are the blessings that flow back to us when we practice the qualities of not judging, not condemning, forgiving, and giving.

Dr. Ralph F. Wilson comments on this passage with these words:  

“A judgmental, distrustful, and negative approach is learned behavior.  Too often we learn the wrong lessons from hurts we have suffered.  Instead of going to Jesus for healing, we accept bitterness and distrust instead, and go about ever afterward scarred and guarded.  Is it natural?  Maybe…..

“But the positive traits of giving and forgiving are definitely spiritual.  Jesus has enrolled his disciples in a school of the Spirit designed to teach us love for enemies, forgiveness towards those who hurt us, and generosity rather than selfishness and self-protection.  Instead of judging and condemning our enemies, we are to forgive and give to them.  And if this is the way we are to treat our enemies, how much more our acquaintances and friends.  This is to be an attitude lifestyle for us.  And if it doesn’t come naturally, we can call on Jesus to retrain us for his service.

“What Jesus is saying is that you’ll get back what you give out, whether judgment or forgiveness.  AND, you’ll receive it in the proportion that you dispense it.  If you dispense forgiveness with a teaspoon, you’ll receive back teaspoon portions yourself.  If you dispense forgiveness by the bushel basket, you’ll be overflowing with it.”

What Dr. Wilson is saying may seem fairly obvious when it comes to judgment and forgiveness, but what about when it comes to the giving that has to do with money?  Again, his phrase is important here, as well:  it’s “an attitude lifestyle for us”.  When we increase our giving that shapes how we feel about our church and about ourselves.

Let me remind you of Kate Huey’s story that I told last week about what happened to her.  She recounted:  “several years ago, inspired by the witness of two older women, longtime and faithful members of the church who told me their stories of tithing, I decided to take the step of increasing my own giving to the church I loved.  Increasing to a tithe was a challenge, but it surprised me that my feelings followed after the action, or after the commitment, if you will.  I found that I loved my church more when I gave more to it, much as we love our children more after giving of ourselves to them over many years. So it seems that when we decide to set our hearts in a direction, toward something or someone, and when we do the things that fulfill that commitment, our feelings often follow afterward.  The laws of giving and Sabbath and loving, I believe, are God’s way of getting us to do what we need to do, what’s good for us; these laws give us the direction for setting our hearts.”

It is in the doing – in the action – that we find our feelings of anxiety turned to those of blessing.  I recently got an email – maybe some of you did, too – about a conference the United Church of Christ is holding at Old South Church in Boston called simply “bless!” – with an exclamation point at the end.  One of the sentences describing this conference says, “We have come to believe that blessing is the central act of Christian faith; before anything else, we ask God to bless; we invite God’s presence into the world and into our lives; we ask God to turn us toward the things that call out for our attention the good, the bad, and the ugly.”  At the conference there will be talk about the theology and practice of blessing, and members of the staff of Old South Church will tell how the act of blessing has transformed their congregational life, while sharing strategies and tips for bringing blessing more fully into your congregational life and then out into the streets.  We already know something of this, don’t we, with our service two weeks ago of the blessing of the animals.  Comments after that service certainly indicated that when a service is filled with blessing – and not just of dogs and guinea pigs and fish – there is an extra helping of the Spirit of God abroad.  I think I am coming to agree with the organizers of this conference in Boston:  blessing truly is the central act of Christian faith.

And if this is so then it is one of God’s great mercies that we can count ourselves blessed.  Deuteronomy is often thought of as a kind of dour book, full of laws and rules.  But didn’t your hearts just soar a bit when you heard Al read about the promises that are there for those who love God:  “all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you…..”  Hear them again:  “Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field.  Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb….. Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading-bowl.  Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out.”  Now, that’s a powerful lot of blessing.  But it’s what we experience when we know the love of God in our lives.

And so then the question becomes, what is our response?  And perhaps even more importantly, how do we feel about our response?  Have you been reading those little bulletin inserts about stewardship, based on this passage from Luke, that have been in our bulletins the past three weeks?  I love that quote from one of them which is from the play Greater Tuna (which, by the way, was put on here by the Las Vegas Little Theater last year) where Vera Carp, the wealthiest person in town, is sorting through her closet.  She picks up an old garment and says, “Well, this is totally worthless — I guess I’ll just have to give it to the church!”  That draws a chuckle, but behind the joke is the attitude that what is given to the church is leftover, less worthy, only an afterthought. And, let’s be honest, some of us have thought that way at times.  But to go back to Dr. Ralph Wilson’s phrase, it’s “an attitude lifestyle for us”, which causes us to say exactly the opposite of Vera Carp:  “Well, this garment is absolutely priceless.  I guess it’s worthy enough to be taken to the church’s thrift shop.”  Or, “Well, this person is completely worthy in God’s sight.  I guess I’ll just have to give myself and that worthiness to the church!”

I want to circle back here at the end to that idea Luke plants in us that forgiving and giving are inexorably intertwined and the thought that as you give so it will be given back to you.  Jesus goes on to say in this passage, “A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap.”

Think about each one of these phrases as they were heard by people in Jesus’ time:  “A good measure”  – which is full, not short or skimpy.  “Pressed down” –  think of buying grain.  The merchant pushes on the top to make sure there are no air pockets.  “Shaken together” – no empty spaces.  Full as full can be.  The most the container can possibly hold.  “Running over” – that is, heaped high and spilling on the floor.  “Put into your lap” refers to the way ancient people used to make a pocket out of the front of their clothes.  Your pockets will be full.  Or, to use a more contemporary image, think of filling a suitcase, as Ann and I are about to do; you’re getting it as full as you can, and you have to press down as hard as possible to get everything in and to get it to close.  Then, later, when you open it the contents spring out at you and overflow onto the floor.  You can’t imagine how you could have gotten so much into that suitcase.  Like those clothes, blessings abound.  In like manner, when we forgive, what returns to us is far more than we could anticipate, blesses us both in the moment and in the years to come, blesses those around us, and removes the power of pain to shape who we are.

Jesus recognizes, and wants us to do so as well, as I said a few moments ago, as you forgive, so will your life become one of giving.  This is the “attitude lifestyle” not judging, not condemning, forgiving, and giving creates in each one of us.  As you now prayerfully consider your pledge to this church for next year, think about how your attitude lifestyle will impact that pledge.

Do you count yourself blessed?  You should.  You are receiving back measure upon measure each and every day.  Your cup, your suitcase, your life overflows with God’s great goodness. Receive the blessings that God offers you.

Amen.

Dave Pomeroy

First Congregational Church/United Church of Christ
Las Vegas, NV
October 30, 2011