October 11, 2020
Hope Lutheran Church
Rev. Mary Erickson
Sermon Series: “Faithful, Hopeful, Loving”
Psalm 112:1-9; Philippians 4:4-9
Loving Generosity
Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.
The theme for our stewardship emphasis this year is “Faithful, Hopeful, Loving.” Today we’re centering our reflections on Loving – Loving Generosity.
“Faithful, Hopeful, Loving” is inspired by the verse in 1 Corinthians 13:13: “Now, faith, hope and love abide, these three, but the greatest of these is love.” Faith, hope and love abide. These are the three divine forces working within us. But Paul states that the greatest of these three is love. That’s because faith and hope both derive from and are hinged to God’s love:
• Our faith points to the love of God
• We’re anchored in hope because of God’s love
This is why love is the greatest of the three. God’s love is the origin of faith and hope. St. John tells us “God is love.” God’s love is primary. It came before all things and all love can be traced back to God’s love. God’s love is pure and uncorrupted. It’s complete and unbroken.
Our own capacity to love comes from having been loved. The love we’ve received – from parents and grandparents, from neighbors and teachers, from siblings and spouses – these loves are imperfect. Unlike God’s love, our brand of loving has been corrupted by the sin and evil that has eroded this life. That perfect love from God doesn’t translate directly in us.
But there is love. Imperfect and incomplete though it may be, there is love among us. Like a broken mirror, we’re still able to reflect some of the loving light that has come to us from the divine.
And the more we come to perceive and dwell in God’s perfect love, the more complete and whole our own brand of loving can become.
This is heart and soul of stewardship. Stewardship is about the living of our lives. Now that we’ve come to see that our entire being and all that we are have come to God, what are we going to do with our lives? Now that we understand that every new day, every good gift we have comes from God, what are we going to do with all of these days we’ve been given, all of the talents and wisdom and earthly resources we’ve been entrusted with? Now that we see all of the people around us and in our lives as souls dearly beloved by God, how are we going to dwell in community with them? This is what stewardship is.
Loving Generosity. The love we have received, we can now give in generosity.
How much love is there? Love isn’t finite. Love isn’t like a pie that can only be cut up into so many pieces and then it’s all gone. Stewarding our love isn’t something we need to dole out in a miserly fashion.
No, love is more like a muscle, like the heart. The more we use it, the stronger it becomes. As we engage in loving actions, the more our capacity to love expands. The more we love, the more our love grows.
I’m not a parent, but I’ve heard the comments from first time parents when they see and hold their child for the very first time. They know they’re going to love this newborn before it arrives, but the love they experience comes unexpectedly. What they feel for that child blows them over. It completely fills them to overflowing. They’re filled with a warmth and a light that surpasses any love they’d felt before.
And if child number two comes along, they don’t run out of love. The whole thing happens all over again! More love. Love multiplies. It doesn’t divide; it grows. This multiplication of love reveals the nature of God’s abundant loving.
Love is by nature generous. There’s no such things as miserly love. Love cannot be tight-fisted. If love should come across in this way, then something besides love is afoot. Love is generous. Love is self-giving. That’s because love is focused on the object being loved! Love cares more about the beloved than it does about itself.
Jesus said that the commandments can be summed up into two things: love God and love your neighbor. That’s what we do in the stewarding our lives. We love God and we love our neighbor.
And that perfectly sums up what we do here as a faith community. Through our worship we express our tremendous love of God, who has loved us first. We gather in praise and thanksgiving to lift our hearts and minds to the God who creates, redeems and sustains.
As a faith community we also express love towards our neighbors. Together, we function as a unit. We come together so that we can operate jointly. St. Paul says that together we become the “body of Christ.” Just as a body has many parts and organs, together we operate jointly. We combine our energies and our unique abilities and talents. We come together as a single unit of many parts, all of us moving together as though we were one. We join all our resources. And when we do so, we can accomplish things that none of us could do alone.
Look at the acts of love we accomplish when we come together! I’d like to point out a few of them this morning. Hope has had a longstanding passion for addressing local hunger. We need look just across the street to hungry children at Sam Davey Elementary. For year’s we’ve supported Weekend Kids’ Meals for the families of children with food insecurities. During this pandemic we’ve expanded our hunger ministries. A dedicated team goes each week to Feed My People Food Bank. Feed My People is so grateful for the constancy of our team! And in the middle of this pandemic, we’ve been supporting a monthly pop-up food pantry here in our parking lot for people on Eau Claire’s north side. And for years we’ve also had a faithful team who serves meals at The Community Table.
In terms of global ministries, how many of us would have been able to engage in ministries and get to know our sisters and brothers in El Salvador, had it not been for the connections Deb and Bob Adams brought with them? Now we have Days for Girls ministries, we pray for and support a mission team who travels there, and we engage in ways that we can support our partners in mission in the Lutheran Church in El Salvador.
And look at what has happened through our connection with Lidixe! Now Neighbor to Neighbor, a new ministry involving our Latin American neighbors in the Chippewa Valley, has sprung up. How could any of us have accomplished this on our own?
And I’d also like to lift up our quilters. Next Sunday our sanctuary will be filled with the useful quilts they produce. A quilt is such a marvelous example of what happens when we join together. We take all these tiny scraps of material. Left by themselves, they’re not very big. But when you join them together, suddenly you have something much more substantial! And you can wrap yourself in its warmth.
This is exactly what our ministries here at Hope do when we combine our resources! Our loving generosity comes together, we join together in mutual love and mission, and our love multiplies.
