Giving Makes Your Brain Happy
Psalm 72: 1-7, 10-14
January 6, 2008
I don’t know about you, but I’m tired. December always leaves me exhausted and I look forward to January o that I can relax a little bit. Butt God has this interesting, and sometimes infuriating was of not letting me rest.
I was taught in seminary to preach out of the lectionary. The lectionary is a three year plan of preaching through the major themes of the Bible. Its purpose is so that preachers don’t get too comfortable and preach only those texts that are easy, or those texts that we know something about. The lectionary forces us to go places in the Bible that we normally wouldn’t go.
To be honest with you, I was pretty much a lectionary preacher until I moved here. But for the last three and a half years, I have been using a sermon series type of approach more often.
But from time to time, I go back to the lectionary, which is what I am planning to do during the month of January. I made the decision to go back to the lectionary before I took a look at the prescribed texts, but by then it was too late to reverse my decision.
When I read the lesson from Psalm 72, I wondered what God was trying to say to me, right now on the heels of Christmas. I wondered what God is saying to me because you see, I got a lot of stuff for Christmas, and he’s talking about poor folks.
You all know that Toni and I have been empty nesters for a number of years now. One of the things that we have been able to indulge ourselves in since the kids have been gone has been ownership in a timeshare. I personally consider our choice to buy a timeshare
as one of the craziest and most stupid decisions in our marriage.
But anyway, we have one now and have been to Aruba twice in the last five years. Each time we have been there, we of course do the whole shopping thing. There really isn’t much to do in Aruba except gamble (which we don’t do), sit on the beach (which gives me a sunburn), eat (which is OK), and shop.
I have been looking at this globe of the world in a couple of the jewelry stores down there. It is made of different colors of polished stone and is really pretty. They come in different sizes: some sit on a desk and others are large enough to sit on the floor. But I have never been willing to spend the money to buy one. Toni found one online and gave it to me for Christmas. I honestly don’t know how much she paid for it, but then again, I really don’t want to know. All I know is that it is a wonderful gift.
In all honesty, we live a pretty comfortable life. Americans, by and large, live a fairly comfortable life, but the psalm reminds us that there are still poor among us.
God won’t let us forget the poor in our midst. Just when I’m feeling warm and happy because I got some great Christmas gifts, God jumps into the picture and will not let me overlook those people about whom I tend to forget. Through the psalm, God tells us that there are indeed poor among us and that to forget about them is to neglect the demands of justice and righteousness.
Psalm 72 says, “Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to a king’s son. May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice. May the mountains yield prosperity for the people, and the hills, in righteousness. May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor.”
It would seem that the psalmist is writing about King Solomon, whose wealth was widely known all around the world. For us, the degree of the wealth found in Solomon’s palace
and Temple are unimaginable. How can we relate to his psalm at all? What does it have to do with us? What is God trying to tell us through the psalm?
First of all, let’s remember that wealth is a relative term. I think that I’ve mentioned before, that I was a delegate to the World Methodist Conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1996.
We had one free day during the conference to take advantage of the city’s unique culture. Many of the delegates did the tourist stuff (and there is nothing at all wrong with that). They took a trip to see a nearby rain forest. They took the tour bus up to the huge statue of Christ on Sugarloaf Mountain with his arms outstretched over the city.
I took a tour of some of the work which Methodists are dong in the slums, or Favelas, as they are called there.
As we walked through streets with open sewers and past houses with no electricity or running water, I compared my own life. As I saw homeless street kids everywhere we went and caught glimpses of families living under bridges, I considered my own circumstances.
I have never considered myself rich, but it cost me $1,200 for airfare from New York and a hotel room one block off of Copacabana Beach for two weeks. The Annual Conference paid for half of that and the church I was serving at the time paid for the other half. For people who make less than a dollar a day, that is at least three year’s pay. Wealth is all relative, isn’t it?
You may be saying to me, “nice try pastor.” This may not be the way you wanted to start out the New Year. This is not the way I wanted to start out the new year. In fact, we know that there is nothing around the church that makes people more uneasy or angrier, than talk about money from the pulpit. But that doesn’t change the fact that I think God
is trying to tell us something.
Even more important than our relative wealth is the possibility that God wants us to consider our status as his representatives. The psalmist urges the king to seek justice because that is what God is and does. But our status before God is no less than the king.
In the New Testament, our status as God’s representatives is called a royal priesthood. I Peter 2:9 says, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people…”
It doesn’t matter whether or not we live in a palace or a bungalow in the inner city of Fort Wayne; we are all called, as citizens and heirs of God’s kingdom and brothers and sisters of Christ, to care for those who are poor and oppressed.
Over the generations, this psalm has become associated with the seasons of Advent and Epiphany, and serves as testimony to our conviction that Jesus is the one who ultimately fulfilled its vision of the ideal king.
When Christians pray this prayer, we are really asking for the time when, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
This psalm is not only meant for individuals, but also I think, for the larger society as a whole. As we enter this political season, I think that the psalm reminds not just ordinary folks like us – but also rulers, politicians, and government as a whole – that peace, shalom, and well-being are found only when power assumes responsibility for justice. Peace on earth is finally only to be found when our efforts are clothed in compassion.
We often hear that “might” makes right. That is turned on its head here. From the psalm we understand that “right” makes might. The greatest power in the world is that which is shown through doing what is right – loving, caring, having compassion, and securing justice.
If the theological and Biblical arguments don’t get to you, here’s a health reason to be generous with those who don’t enjoy the same level of financial success as we do.
An economist out at Cal Tech has founded a new discipline of study which he calls neuroeconomics; a combination of neuroscience, economics, and psychology. These studies use state of the art brain imaging technology to explore the neural bases of economic decision making.
The scientists don’t explain it like this, but what they have found out is that we have been hot-wired by God to be givers. They have discovered that when we give to others, there is a marked change in our brain chemistry. They describe it as a “warm glow” effect. In other words, we physically feel better when we are generous.
In the wonder that is creation, God has wired our brain for giving. There is something about giving that brings change to our brains so that we get a natural “high.” Its better than drugs any day.
I need to congratulate you because, as a congregation, you are very generous. In this past year, you have given a whole lot of money to support our various missions and mission projects. Watch the next church newsletter because we are going to try to have a recap of what you gave. I want to thank you for that. I am proud of you and I hope you feel the joy of giving.
But I want to close today by asking you two questions. First, if you had the wealth of King Solomon, how would you spend it in order to benefit humankind? Secondly, given what you do have, what specifically can you go to benefit humankind?
As we begin the new year, I pray that we may look for ways to give priority to the things that lie closest to God’s heart. I hope that we can look for ways to be generous because God has been so generous with us.
