It has been both an honor and a pleasure to welcome Barbara Metzler to our worship this morning to share about her new book, Passionaries. Here at the Village Church we are interested not just in learning about Jesus and the Christian life, but in actually living out the implications of the Christian life as we learn to live the way Jesus taught us, and certainly, the stories highlighted in Passionaries are stories of how real people have translated their faith into real actions that are having a positive difference in the world. Those stories aren’t meant just to entertain us, of course, but also to inspire us to do the same.

I am especially fascinated by that word passionary. You will find in the very opening pages of Barbara’s book this definition of it: Passionary: 1. One inspired passionately through vision and compassion to change the world for the better; visionary in action on a mission. 2. Society’s agent of change: pioneer of benevolent innovation giving forward and causing positive ripples. 3. A social entrepreneur emboldened to make a difference, volunteering above and beyond responsibilities to family and work; inspirational difference-maker.ⁱ Notice the key words there: passion, vision, compassion, change, action, mission. Those are not timid words. They are not frightened, or wishy-washy, or uninterested words. They are words of power, of hope, even words of faith. Passionaries are people with a purpose. But we have to know this absolutely crucial thing: from where does the passion originate? Why do some people have enough compassion and vision to actually go to the significant trouble to actually work to change something? Passionaries are people who give of themselves in order to benefit others. What makes a person become a giving person? And what does that have to do with you and me?

Now that we have come through the Lenten and Easter seasons we are returning to our Sunday sermon studies of looking at the Christian’s life in the real world. If what we believe about God does not translate into a real difference in how we live in the world, then we either have a very insignificant God or a very insignificant faith, and of course, we don’t think either of those things is true! God is hugely significant, and you and I want to understand how our faith is a significant factor in the lives that we lead. And so for a few moments today we are going to examine once again one of the essential qualities of a Christian person, the quality of becoming and being a giving person.

We have just read two brief sections of scripture that will take us directly into this dynamic of spiritual life. The piece from Deuteronomy is speaking about the practice established very early on in Israel’s life of the giving of the tithe. The section begins with this command: “When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to posses, and you possess it, and settle in it, you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name” (26:1-2). The section goes on to describe how the Israelites are to recite the story of how God promised them a homeland, and how God delivered on that promise. This story is the foundational story of the Jews, the story of how God came to them, revealed himself to them, and set up a relationship with them through which they would find their purpose in life and the pathway to a blessed life. Essentially, it is the story of how God revealed himself as a giving God. Because God is a giving God the people have what they have and are who they are. So that they never forget this, and so that they can actually embody this giving nature of God within their own sphere of influence, they are in turn to become giving people themselves, caring for the needs of the poor—the aliens, orphans, and widows—and for the needs of the religious leaders so that the soul of the nation can be nurtured.

And so, in the tradition of Judaism, giving became a pillar of spiritual practice. Note that this giving was planned and intentional, not just something you did on a whim or on the spur of the moment. You gave from out of what God had given you, and you gave in proportion to what God had given you. Note also that this giving was part of the larger spiritual practice of the people, as the text says, “in accordance with your entire commandment that you commanded me…”

Now let’s fast forward to the section from the letter of John. This passage speaks from a very different context but is amazingly consistent with its much older counterpart in Deuteronomy. Just as in Deuteronomy when the people are called to remember the blessings of the Lord, so in John, the people are reminded of yet another gift from God, “that he laid down his life for us.” Of course this refers to Jesus. God’s very own Son gave up his life for us. That should not surprise us, really, because the declaration of the Old Testament, of the history of the Jewish people, was that God was a giving God. The only surprise, perhaps, was that God would give himself, and that God would give himself to people who in no way, shape, or form, deserved that kind of gift from God. John had been deeply impressed with the sight of seeing his Savior dying on the cross, giving his life so that others could live. If that thought does not change us then nothing else will.

Jesus gave himself for us and therefore we should give ourselves for others. In other words, if God does this kind of thing, should we not follow suit? If the perfect human being, the one who is actually a mysterious union of human and divine, acts this way, then that must be the way for us to act as well! Jesus was a great man, we say, the best ever to live. If he was, then should we not want to live like him?

John makes another point. “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?” There is a hugely important point that we so often miss here. We focus so quickly on the needy brother and sister and the help they need. And that is certainly part of the equation. But John makes another equally important point in a backwards sort of way: the one who does the helping shows evidence of having God’s love within himself or herself. And that’s huge! Do you want to know God? Do you want to have God within you? Do you want a direct connection with the Lord? Then become a giving person, a person who sees the need of the neighbor and acts to help.

Os Guinness says that from the Christian perspective there are three principle reasons for giving.ⁱⁱ The first is that, “giving reflects the character of God.” God creates, which is the ultimate gift—the universe! God rescues and restores. God blesses. If this is who God is, then this is who we want to be as well. The second reason for giving is that, “giving reciprocates the gift of grace in Christ.” Jacques Ellul noted that only once does God pay a price for anything, when he sacrifices himself for our sin, but then, God turns around and freely gives away what he bought, so to speak, as he gives freedom from sin to those who cannot pay their own way out. Christ gives himself away, and those who would wish to enter into the reality of Christ also learn to give themselves away. The third reason that Guinness notes is that, “giving repudiates the power of Mammon, the idolatry of money.” Money represents power, the ability to control our own world, to shape our own destiny, to get along in this world as captains of our own ships, without needing anyone else, including God. Money represents security, or so we think. But when we give money away, we proclaim that our power, our security, our destiny, are in someone else’s hands—God’s. Jacques Ellul wrote this provocative thought: “There is only one act par excellence which profanes money by going directly against the law of money, and act for which money is not made. This act is giving.”ⁱⁱⁱ

Against the law of money. I’d like to expand our thinking a bit to something beyond just money. When we think of giving, we think usually first of money. And money is part of it. But giving has to do with the free release of any form of power or resource that is at our disposal in order that it would benefit someone else and not ourselves. The “law of money” of which Ellul speaks is essentially that characteristic of human beings and human society that says that we should be selfish, concerned only with taking care of ourselves. To go against that law is to say that we also and perhaps even more so should be concerned about taking care of others. To go against the law of money is to go against the law of self-seeking and to go with a different law, which is the law of self-giving. The only reason that you and I exist at all is because God gave us life and a created world in which to live it. The only reason that you and I survive this life and enter into an eternal life is because God gave his life in his Son. God already gives us all we need and we therefore are freed to give ourselves away to others so that they might also meet and know this same God. That is what Christian giving—of money, of time, of influence, of wisdom, of skill, of any useful resource—is all about.

Many of us in this church are concerned about how we can teach our children to rightly appreciate and wisely manage the amazing resources with which they are blessed. We can do that as we teach them how to give of themselves for the sake of others. Many of us in this church are concerned about how we can make the best use of our own resources of money and experience and energy. We can do that as we learn from Jesus how to spend ourselves for something other than ourselves. Many of us in this church are concerned about how we can find meaning in life in something other than material possessions or personal privilege or personal power. We can do that as we give ourselves away in the sacrificial ways that Jesus did. Many of us in this church have already learned the emptiness of success as the world defines it and we are looking for something deeper, more lasting, more real. We can find it as we learn to use our capabilities not for our own glory or gain but for the meeting the needs of a hurting world.

One of the great Passionaries of our age died several years ago before the term itself was coined, Mother Theresa. She once cited a sign on a wall of a children’s home in Calcutta that she had visited. It went like this:

People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered,
LOVE THEM ANYWAY.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives,
DO GOOD ANYWAY.
If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies,
SUCCEED ANYWAY.
The good you do will be forgotten tomorrow,
DO GOOD ANYWAY.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable,
BE HONEST AND FRANK ANYWAY.
What you spent years building may be destroyed overnight,
BUILD ANYWAY.
People really need help but may attack you if you help them,
HELP PEOPLE ANYWAY.
Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth,
GIVE THE WORLD THE BEST YOU’VE GOT ANYWAY.^iv

Truly, the most exciting thing in the world is to learn how to live in this world like God intended us to live from the very beginning. One of the key lessons God has for us is to learn to go against the law of money, the law of me and my needs, and to go with the law of love, the law of giving God’s world the best we’ve got. That’s what the Lord Jesus did for you and me. That’s what we can do for others.

Amen.

ⁱ Barbara Metzler, Passionaries, Templeton Foundation Press, West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, 2006.
ⁱⁱOs Guinness, Doing Well and Doing Good: Money, Giving, and Caring in a Free Society, NavPress, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 2001, p. 108.
ⁱⁱⁱ From Money and Power, as quoted by Guinness, ibid, p. 109.
^iv Cited by Guinness, p. 115.