When we read that the city of Washington is going to get everybody out of an infamous homeless shelter by Christmas, because that shelter is no longer fit for human habitation, we have a variety of reactions.
Some react at the thought that we still have not come very far at settling the issue of homelessness ... that it is just too bad that our society cannot help these folks in a way that provides a permanent solution for them.
Others react with a touch of cynicism ... it’s just the mayor crying to repair his image, or it’s just the failed bureaucracy passing its malfeasance from one location to another, or it’s just another tacit admission that we are governing by whim and not by plan. Some, I say, react with cynicism.
And still others, I suppose, respond with a sour feeling about the whole business. Why is it public policy to house people who do not provide for themselves? Some would go so far as to say that the city government has no business trying to cure human laziness anyway.
There are bound to be a wide variety of reactions to the closure of that shelter. I am sure there will be just because most of us have not come to grips, fully, with what we feel about the intersection of material things and people needs. We are not able to be clear about our true feelings and values when we begin to work with what people want and need over against how we want to invest ourselves and our things, our resources.
To use a more personal illustration -- frequently people stop by the church or call and they have some kind of story of hardship to tell ... they have lost a job or they are out of baby food or they need bus fare to the next port of call – and I find that as long as I am dispensing the church’s funds to help these folks, I’m OK. I’m happy to do something for them. Now, did you hear? As long as I am sharing your money, all is well.
But let somebody catch me out on the street comer ... not approaching me as a pastor, just as a person out on the streets … let somebody ask me, not the church, for help, and I get a different feeling. I get all tensed up and defensive and look for all kinds of reasons to keep on walking. I tell you, I have mastered the art of not quite seeing that fellow whose hand is stretched out ... just find something over here so terribly engrossing!
Why? Because like most of us, I suspect, I have never clearly resolved my feelings about things and about people, about how and where I am going to invest myself and my resources, and about what sort of payoff I expect. I, like most of us, don’t yet have it clear where my values are when I am faced with a claim on my time, my energy, and my things.
I believe it was Thomas Aquinas, the great theologian of the 13th century, who said that it was the heart of sin that we love things and use people, when we ought to love people and use things. Let me repeat that for you: according to Aquinas, the heart and core of sin is that we prefer to love things and use people rather than to love people and use things.
I doubt whether we would get any argument about that tonight. That sounds perfectly obvious, intellectually. I doubt that many of us would argue that case very long ... if we just left it in the head, if it were to be just a head debate. But our trouble is, as I have already suggested, that it isn’t a head debate, it’ s a heart debate. It isn’t a question of what we know to be right or wrong, good or bad; it is a question of where our feelings and values are, it is a question of what is kicked up in our feelings when we struggle with how we are going to use things ... or love things ... or love people ... or, God forbid, even use people.
We just don’t know whether we can give up our attachment to things. And we just don’t know whether we can care for people to the point where it really costs.
The apostle Paul reached that point at one juncture in his life. Working in Athens, tied up with a monumental struggle to establish the Christian faith on a firm footing there, he could not leave. But he heard that over in Thessalonica somebody was saying to the Christians there, "Paul doesn’t care about you; Paul isn’t interested in you. Paul is spending all his time over in Athens, because he thinks the Athenians are sophisticated, witty, intelligent folks ... he likes them more than he does you." And Paul found himself anxious and afraid that the Thessalonian Christians would desert; he found that he had become very anxious about his investment of time and money and energy and emotion. Would these folks hold true? Would they remain faithful? Would his investment in them pay off? Paul in Athens had a terrific anxiety about what he had spent.
The scripture tells us what he did and what he found out.
I Thess. 3:1-13
Concerned, as I say, to see whether his investment was paying off, whether his giving them so much was going to make a difference, he sent Timothy on an investigating mission. And Timothy brings back a good report... yes, Paul, the Thessalonian church is solid. Yes, they still remember and appreciate you, Paul. And so Paul takes comfort in all of that, and says, "we have been comforted about you through your faith; for now we live, if you stand fast in the Lord. What thanksgiving can we render to God for you, for all the joy which we feel for your sake ..."
In other words, when you feel as though your investment, your gift, and your love have paid off, then at last the anxiety is gone and you feel fulfilled, you feel thankful. When what you have given of your material things, your care and your concern, really matters in someone’ s life, then you are ready for thanksgiving, then you are ready for joy and gratitude.
In fact, what this scripture does for me is to correct Thomas Aquinas. What this scripture does is to take Thomas a step farther. It is not, emphatically not, that we should love things and use people ... of course not.
But it is also not quite enough to say, as Thomas did, that we should love people and use things. That’s not quite it. And Paul’s experience takes us one more step.
Use things in order to love people. Use things in order to love people. Real fulfillment, authentic accomplishment, will come to us when we make up our minds that we are going to use what we have in order to develop and care for people. When we invest ourselves the way the apostle Paul did, we may still get anxious, as he did, about whether we are going to get the payoff; but if, like Paul, we have used things in order to love people, I believe we will be able to say with him, "We have been comforted about you .. what thanksgiving we render to God for you."
And so the way to enjoy thanksgiving is to look at those children you have raised or you have taught, and to find in them that which affirms all you put into them, and to be grateful, though you still wait, perhaps, for the completion of that promise. It’s expensive to raise children, college tuition and the whole bit ... is it worth it? How do they turn out? That gets to be a Paul in Athens anxiety.
Someone said to me the other day, "The Bible says, ’train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it’, but it says nothing about all the years in between childhood and when he is old, and that’s the tough part." Yes, but invest, trust, see what is emerging, and be thankful, if you have used things in order to love people.
The way to enjoy Thanksgiving is to keep on working with and investing in the future of our mission, our church, and our community. I say this knowing that some of you may feel as though you no longer have any sense of urgency about missions or church-building or community action. You may feel as though all of that is past its peak. You may suspect that this church is winding down rather than gearing up. It may that for some of you this is twilight and there seems to be no reason to keep on investing in a future you will never see. There it is again, the old Paul in Athens anxiety ... how do I know that what I am doing will make a difference?
But this evening, if we are using things to love people, if we are investing what we have in the future, we can trust our God to bring that future to us, and we can discover, as Paul did, that a faithful church remains behind.
I am beginning to talk, here and there around the church, about some major investments in the improvement of the church’s properties. I told the deacons last night that the key ingredient in the proposal is not so much dollars and cents or bricks and mortar as it is spirit. Do we believe that this church is winding down or winding up? Do we have a Paul in Athens anxiety or do we trust God to take what we do and use it … use things to love people?
The way to enjoy Thanksgiving is to keep on investing in our common Kingdom mission, though all around us there are the signs of chaos and human destructiveness … for is you look closely at what we are doing, you will find men and women being won to Christ, you will discover lives being reshaped, and you will see persons growing in maturity and in spiritual sensitivity. Wherever we have used things in order to love people, we are curing the Paul in Athens anxiety, and we are experiencing Thanksgiving.
And so Paul’s prayer for the Thessalonian Christians becomes my prayer for you and, I would hope, your prayer for one another:
“What thanksgiving can we render to God for you, for all the joy which we feel for your sake before God … Now may our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, make you increase and abound in love to one another and to all men.”
Use things in order to love people … and be thankful.
