EVER SHARING
Noel K. Anderson
First Presbyterian Church of Upland
Text: Romans 12: 1-2; 9-13 NRSV
1 “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.
9.Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; 10 love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. 11 Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. 12 Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. 13 Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. †
The Witness of Sharing
Why are We Still Turning People Off?
When we speak of “ever-sharing,” we look toward what characterizes mature Christianity. At heart, it’s about the journey from being a taker—which we are by nature—to a giver, as Christ would have us and the Spirit makes us. To be ever-sharing means we eagerly give of ourselves, our substance, and our expectations by handing all things over to God. It also means sharing with others the good news of Jesus that saves and transforms lives.
None of this is news to any of us, but it raises a question: if we—the Church—have been steeped in giving and sharing for two-thousand years, why do Christians tend to turn so many people off rather than on?
I would dare to boil it down to three things:
1. Although professing faith, we remain self-serving.
2. We live hypocritical lives—our lives display no particular signs of righteousness. Our lives look just like everyone else’s, which sends us back to 1.
3. We fail to share, fail to give.
Our text from Romans charges us to be ever-sharing. “Present your bodies as living sacrifices” gives us an image of total self-surrender. Pagan Rome knew plenty about bodily sacrifices—even human sacrifices—but the idea of “living” sacrifices would have raised their eyebrows. It’s easy to die, but you can only do it once; it’s much harder to live the life of Christian love whereby we die every day to selfhood so that we constantly give ourselves away in love to others.
Verse 2 tells us to “be transformed”(which means converted). To be transformed means to be deliberately non-conformist to the ways of the world. “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed….” Notice what it does not say: it does not say, “transform yourselves.” Many try and are trying in many different ways to transform themselves. Look around us: California is chock-full of diets, workout centers, self-help seminars, and medical centers—all promising transformation if you will just get with whatever program they’re selling. Today, we see that any transformation is acceptable and encouraged, including gender fluidity, hormone therapy, and/or radical plastic surgery. But the Bible doesn’t say, “transform yourself;” it says, “be transformed.”
Transformation is a work of God upon us that we can only get to by surrendering to God and the Spirit’s work within us. The only path to transformation is one of complete surrender to God, and we must give ourselves to God in entirety if we are to have that work performed in us.
A Matter of Witness
That transformation that God works upon us is the substance of our witness, and it convinces others that our faith is real, authentic, and genuine rather than hypocritical. If that work of God is evident in us, the world sees givers rather than takers—true believers and witnesses.
Are you more of a giver or more of a taker? What would your neighbors say? What would your co-workers say? Your relatives? How can you know?
Sometimes, you just know. Ever heard of an energy vampire? [Clip: Colin Robinson from What We Do in the Shadows]. Ever left a conversation feeling like you’ve been gut-punched? We know how this feels. Some people give us energy, and people who take energy from us. Now I am okay with people who take energy because they really need it—I’d like to think I can be generous with whatever energy I have to give—but either way, we know that to be a giver is to love beyond oneself and one’s neediness. We seek to live for others, presenting our bodies as living sacrifices. To be a sharer requires agapé love.
When our love is good—when it is agapé love—it is un-hypocritical because it is selfless. All true sharing is a matter of pouring ourselves out for one another. Verse 10 says, “Outdo one another in showing honor.” This is counter-cultural. By nature, we pursue our own honor and seek for others to honor us. The path of mature Christianity is opposite—to emphasize honoring others.
When we love by ever-sharing, we genuinely honor others and reveal our transformed nature. So let’s talk about how we do this head, heart, and hands.
HEAD: Choosing to Share
Deliberately altering our behavior
Mentally, we must make conscious choices to change our behavior deliberately. We must, as Paul says, “renew our minds” as part of our transformation. We choose to change and then act differently. This is, of course, harder than it sounds.
At the core calling of the gospel is repentance. The greek word for repentance—metanoia—is the same word used to translate words like convert, conversion, and regeneration. This convert/repent word, metanoia, literally translates to “Know Beyond” or “Think Different” (Well played, Apple Computer!). To repent is to think differently or to know things in a more significant way. The call to repentance is a call to be transformed through the renewing of our minds.
What we think matters deeply. Let’s have no talk that says, “Oh, that’s just all in our heads,” as if to diminish the role of what we think. Let’s remember that our thoughts affect our attitudes and, from there, our behaviors and habits. Our attitudes and habits define our character, so what we think about things and how we think about them are very important indeed.
Mentally, we must each resolve to live the life of agapé love—consciously, deliberately. Again, this sounds easy, but it automatically excludes all the self-serving stuff we love:
- •Living for ourselves.
- •Gratifying the flesh.
- •Spending our time, treasure, and talents on ourselves and our closest circles.
We think of the selfish man who wastes money on gambling while neglecting the needs of his children. Or a mother who obsessively smothers her adult children under the pretense of care, when in truth, it’s all about her own need to control. Or the entitled adolescent (of whatever actual age) who feels the world exists for their comforts. Entitlement—the idea that we ought to have things better than they are—has become a lifestyle with a tremendous social support network.
Therefore, Christians must consciously and deliberately choose the other path—the life of giving and sharing, the life of agapé love. That’s headwork.
HEART: Blessed by Sharing
“In all this I have given you an example that by such work we must support the weak, remembering the words of the Lord Jesus, for he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’” —Acts 20: 35
It is more blessed to give than receive. Giving feels good—even great. I have been privileged through the churches I’ve served to meet some true good deed junkies—people who give and give because they love the good feelings of giving. I used to be critical of that—of chasing a feeling that I suspected of being, at heart, self-serving.
I was suspicious of a do-gooding that was about providing oneself with a warm glow of satisfaction again and again. Was it, at heart, an attempt to balance out an otherwise stormy conscience? Was it a kind of atonement or penance for one’s former, selfish indulgences? Why does it feel good? Is it a kind of whitewash over other sins and shortcomings? Something in me felt that authentic giving ought to hurt—that unless you’re giving sacrificially and in a costly way, you’re just serving your streak of good feelings.
There may be some truth in that, but I think now I was unreasonably critical, and I’ve changed my tune.
Out of all the self-seeking pleasures that plague western civilization, I would hope and pray that every person would seek the pleasure of giving, sharing, and doing good deeds. May we all become helpless addicted to those good feelings, and may they propel us to more giving, sharing, and positive actions that benefit others!
Yes, I’m calling you all to become hedonists and epicureans for the good feelings that come from giving to others. If selfless giving is to be thought of as a disease, then let us all become infected and never recover! May our love of giving become highly contagious, and may the pandemic of sharing have no end!
I still believe that true agapé giving is giving that hurts—that is sacrificial giving—BUT, if we can, through the giving that feels good, develop such a habit of sharing that we more easily grow into sacrificial giving, then all the easier giving and sharing are wholly justified.
Our motivation is simple: we want to love others as Christ first loves us. We seek the joy of giving as it gives witness to our Lord. The joy of giving—the untainted bliss of sharing—is the attitude of the mature Christian heart.
HANDS: Give. Share.
Just Do It!
What do we do to become givers and sharers?
We just give and share—just do it!
Giving is not just about money and stuff; it is about giving yourself. Give your heart—care! Caring is a choice; we can choose to care. That is something we do—we make a deliberate choice to care—rather than sit back and wait until something strikes us as worthy of our heart’s investment.
Even as we choose to care, it doesn’t work as an order. Someone may say to you, “You ought to care more about X or Y!” It doesn’t work. When giving or sharing is turned into a moral imperative, it fails. Maybe it’s just because of our sinful nature, but demanding goodness from others tends to produce the opposite.
The Baptist preacher’s nine-year-old boy was playing with one of his birthday toys at the backyard fence with neighbor kids, and their voices suddenly grew quarrelsome and raised to angry shouts. The pastor’s wife, who had been watching from the kitchen window, stepped out the back door and made her way down to the children. Addressing her son, who was still visibly upset, she said, “Now, son, what would Jesus do?” In a near tearful rage, he answered, “SHARE THE TOYS! SHARE THE TOYS! SHARE THE TOYS!”
The person doing the giving—that’s you and me—must also be the initiator of the giving.
If you’re giving just because someone else tells you to, then where is your heart? You may give, but it is likely in reluctance or mildly-reluctant compliance with the initiator.
Choose to instigate sharing.
Choose to want it, like it, and love it!
Grow hungry for the Joy of giving.
Become a junkie for the experience of God’s blessings—and by junkie, I mean let it eclipse everything else in your nature—because left to ourselves and our selfish whims, we all end up hunkering down in self-preservation.
GIVERS: Ever-sharers
We seek to become givers—risk takers and great lovers.
That we should strive to become ever-sharing is a worthy component of our collective vision. When we give, we receive. We are right to cultivate a hunger for the kind of receiving we get through giving.
When we give, we receive.
In Luke 6:38b, Jesus says:
The measure you give will be the measure you get back.
Perhaps even the Final Judgment works this way. The mercy we give is the mercy we’ll get. Those who forgive all will find all forgiven. Grace shall be given to the gracious, and generosity to the generous.
I close with a sound clip—the best, wisest words from the Beatles. It was also their final words as a group:
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you made.
May God so transform us that we become great givers and ever-sharers, giving of ourselves in every way, and may our hearts all be completely transformed to crave the Joy of giving! †
Questions
- What are the top (say three) things that turn people off regarding the Church, faith, and Christianity?
- How is conversion a form of giving or sharing?
- How can witnessing to Christ come off more like taking than giving or sharing?
- Why is “honoring others” a counter-cultural practice?
- Even though we mentally resolve to change our behaviors, change is difficult. What helps?
- What is the downside of doing good works just for the good feeling of having done good?
- How might our hearts change into passionate love for giving?
- For what does the mature Christian heart hunger?