Always Looking to the Interests of Others

Scripture: Psalm 37: 1-22; Philippians 2: 1-4

Sermon: Always Looking to the Interests of Others

Topics: humility, economy, scarcity, abundance, generosity

Preached: October 5, 2008

Rev. Mike Abma

Psalm 37: 1-22

Do not fret because of the wicked;

   do not be envious of wrongdoers, 

² for they will soon fade like the grass,

   and wither like the green herb. 

³ Trust in the Lord, and do good;

   so you will live in the land, and enjoy security. 

⁴ Take delight in the Lord,

   and he will give you the desires of your heart. 

⁵ Commit your way to the Lord;

   trust in him, and he will act. 

⁶ He will make your vindication shine like the light,

   and the justice of your cause like the noonday. 

⁷ Be still before the Lord, and wait patiently for him;

   do not fret over those who prosper in their way,

   over those who carry out evil devices. 

⁸ Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath.

   Do not fret—it leads only to evil. 

⁹ For the wicked shall be cut off,

   but those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land. 

¹⁰ Yet a little while, and the wicked will be no more;

   though you look diligently for their place, they will not be there. 

¹¹ But the meek shall inherit the land,

   and delight in abundant prosperity. 

¹² The wicked plot against the righteous,

   and gnash their teeth at them; 

¹³ but the Lord laughs at the wicked,

   for he sees that their day is coming. 

¹⁴ The wicked draw the sword and bend their bows

   to bring down the poor and needy,

   to kill those who walk uprightly; 

¹⁵ their sword shall enter their own heart,

   and their bows shall be broken. 

¹⁶ Better is a little that the righteous person has

   than the abundance of many wicked. 

¹⁷ For the arms of the wicked shall be broken,

   but the Lord upholds the righteous. 

¹⁸ The Lord knows the days of the blameless,

   and their heritage will abide for ever; 

¹⁹ they are not put to shame in evil times,

   in the days of famine they have abundance. 

²⁰ But the wicked perish,

   and the enemies of the Lord are like the glory of the pastures;

   they vanish—like smoke they vanish away. 

²¹ The wicked borrow, and do not pay back,

   but the righteous are generous and keep giving; 

²² for those blessed by the Lord shall inherit the land,

   but those cursed by him shall be cut off. 

Philippians 4: 1-4

If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, ²make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. ³Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. ⁴Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.

This is the Word of the Lord

Thanks be to God

INTRODUCTION

The state of the economy has dominated the news lately.

We are being told we are in a “crisis” that could turn into a “catastrophe.”

We are on the edge of a precipice, dangerously close to a full-scale depression.

Have any of us ever heard such dire words of warning regarding the economy before?

That word economy, do you know where it comes from?

I know that sermons sometimes sound like you are trapped in the movie, My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

That Greek is the origin of every word we use.

But with the word economy, there really is a pretty direct line right back to Greek.

You see, the word for house in Greek is oikos.

The word for the person managing a household –

what to buy, what not to buy;

what to plant and grow, what not to plant and grow;

what to spend time working on; what not to spend time working on –

that person was an oikonomos.

From that we get the word economy.

Economics is all about managing resources,

whether for a household

or a whole nation.

So here is an economics question:

Is it easier living the Christian life during times of plenty

or during times of want?

Or to put it another way,

is it easier looking to the interests of others during good times

or bad times?

Or to put it yet another way,

was it easier for God’s people to obey him when they were travelling

through the wilderness,

or when they were living in the Promised Land of milk and honey?

Both present challenges don’t they?

Logically we might answer that it is easier during times of plenty.

But many of us know that even though,

over the last 20 years or so we in this country

have been getting wealthier and wealthier,

as a nation we have become less and less generous with others.

As a nation, there has been an erosion

in terms of our willingness to help the poor.

We are more and more reluctant to spend public money to combat poverty.

So, is the answer that it is easier to look to the interests of others in times of want?

Recently I read an article by the preacher and professor Barbara Brown Taylor.

The article was about the well at her home running dry.

In the course of the article, she observes that scarcity evokes community.

When resources are scarce, people learn to live on what they have.

When resources are scarce, people learn to share from their limited supply.^[1]

That sounds good, doesn’t it?

But is it really true?

After my parents passed away, one thing I inherited from my parents’ estate was a ration card.

It belonged to my grandparents in the Netherlands.

When the Germans occupied the Netherlands and everything was scarce, ration cards were distributed.

This ration card has little stamps for butter, for bread, for meat, for groceries.

Looking at that ration card, I wonder,

“Did that time in the Netherlands, when everything was scarce and rationed,

lend itself to great acts of generosity?”

James Clavell wrote a novel about his time in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. The book is called King Rat. It was made into a movie in 1965. The reason it is called King Rat is because one of the prisoners raised rats. He then sold them as food which in turn gave him some capital to wheel and deal in the black market. The story of King Rat is not about selfless, generous prisoners sharing everything they had. It is about selfish hustlers who were looking to get ahead any way they could.^[2]

But you may be thinking, “Yes, but things would be different if the people in that setting were Christian.”

Would it?

A book that had quite a profound effect on me is another book about a Japanese prison camp during the Second World War. The book is called Shantung Compound by Langdon Gilkey. In this book Gilkey recounts his years in a Japanese internment camp in China. The camp had about 1500 people in it. They were all civilians trapped in China when the Japanese invaded. Most of them were British. Many were American. Others were Australian, or Dutch, or Canadian. They were either businessmen, academics teaching in China, or missionaries. The age range was from tiny infants to 90 years of age. But one thing they had in common – they were all predominantly Christian.

Gilkey writes that he came into the camp assuming that in times of crisis, the natural goodness of people would come forward — I guess he wasn’t raised in a good Calvinist home. He was not raised with a healthy sense of our human depravity.

The point here is that Gilkey’s experience in the camp challenged his assumptions about the natural goodness of people, even Christians, again and again.

Take the two resources that were in the shortest supply in the camp: space and food.

The camp was overcrowded.

Gilkey found himself on the Committee that had to settle all housing disputes.

The problem was, some quarters had almost twice as many people as other quarters.

So Gilkey visited the less-crowded quarters to talk about reassigning people.

He was met with all kinds of resistance:

* some were simply rude. “Get off my property” they would say, even though this

was prison. No one owned any property.

* some were politely indifferent: “We feel sorry for how crowded they are over

there, but why bother us with that?”

* yet others found an almost religious sounding answer not to share space – I’ll

call it pious pomposity.

One of the missionaries said that he really could not spare any space because he was called on to preach a fair bit in the camp and he needed the space, the peace and the quiet, to work on his sermons.

Gilkey realized that in times of scarcity, people often were not nice.

Self-interest trumped true justice almost every time.

The competition for space created tension.

The competition for food almost caused riots.

People stole, they cheated, they used every excuse in the book to justify taking more than their fair share.

This was especially evident when 1550 large relief parcels came from the American Red Cross.

At the time there were 1450 prisoners in the camp: 200 Americans, and 1250 from other countries.

The decision was made that all non-Americans get 1 parcel and all the American prisoners received 1 and a half parcels.

Here was the problem.

Before the parcels could be distributed, a delegation of American prisoners went to the Japanese authorities and demanded that the 200 Americans be given all 1550 parcels – these were big parcels (the size of a hope chest, 3 ft by 2ft by ft).

That almost caused a riot.

The Japanese deliberated.

What would they decide?

In the end, they decided to give every prisoner 1 parcel.

The extra 100 parcels were to be sent to another camp.

In the end, everyone received less, not more.

But for Gilkey, he realized that

Even saintly folk will act like sinners

unless they have their customary dinners.^[3]

SCARCITY AND ABUNDANCE

So, is it impossible to truly look to the interests of others during times of scarcity?

Is it too much to ask people to be generous in lean times,

and to be hospitable in hard times?

Psalm 37 is a wonderful psalm.

It describes the wicked as those who fret, those who are anxious,

those who are grabbers and not givers.

The wicked are those who define justice in ways to get ahead.

They are the ones who are always concerned about having enough.

But in the end they will lose whatever they have.

But the righteous are patient.

They are generous.

They are givers, not grabbers.

They trust in God.

Even in days of famine, they have enough.

In the end, they will inherit the land.

This psalm has its roots back in the wilderness experience of Israel.

While Israel was wandering in the wilderness,

resources were limited.

There was little food, little water.

The great temptation during this wilderness experience

was to look back to their days in Egypt.

The great temptation was to think they were better off

in Egypt than they were in the wilderness.

The great temptation was to dream about

salads made with lettuce, onions, and a cucumber dressing.

But the Egyptian economy was an economy built on scarcity.

It was an economy built on famine.

The Egyptians had grown rich hoarding food and selling it to neighboring countries for a big profit.

They had grown strong enslaving folk and working, working, working to build an empire.

But no matter how rich they became, it was never enough.

No matter how much they worked, they never got a day off.

The Egyptian economy of scarcity

created a society that was greedy, selfish, and un-neighborly.

It was a society that had lots,

but the order of the day was to fret over whether they had enough,

to envy anyone who had more,

and to grumble about what they still wanted.

These are the wicked of Psalm 37.

This is the song that the complainers and grumblers began to sing in the wilderness when they wanted to go back to Egypt.

Psalm 37 says there is another way to live.

There is another economy to accept.

This is not an economy of scarcity but rather the economy of God’s abundance.

This is an economy that does not hoard or bank or store what it has.

Rather, like the manna that fell each day and only for that day,

it is an economy that trusts God to provide our daily bread.

This is an economy that doesn’t abide by grumbling and complaining,

but exalts in giving and sharing.

This is an economy that is not so anxious it can never take a day off

but rather looks forward to when we can simply goof off with God.

In the end, the economy of scarcity will leave a person with nothing.

In the end, the economy of trusting in God’s abundance will

allow the meek to inherit the land … the Promised Land.

The two economies of Psalm 37 are still evident in our world.

Just look at our world.

We are addicted to oil.

We are addicted to cash and cash flow and credit.

Wealth for our society has become something of a narcotic.^[4]

Even though we are perhaps the wealthiest economy ever to exist on this planet,

we have an insatiable appetite for more, more, and more.

And that insatiable appetite is threatening to destroy everything.

From the beginning, from Creation itself, God shows himself to be a God of abundance.

From the beginning, our fatal flaw has been our desire for more.

So what does God do?

Jesus who is rich beyond measure, becomes poor.

Why?

So that we might share in his abundance.

So that we might be freed from our slavery to more.

So that we might be released from our captivity to “false” securities.

We are called by Jesus to live out a cruciform kind of generosity and hospitality.

Those living “in Christ” see the world differently.

Where the world sees only scarcity, we see God’s abundance.

Where the world sees only insecurity and the need to hoard, save, grab,

we live out of our gratitude and are always ready to give, to share,

to look to the interests of others

so that those with much do not have too much,

and those with little do not have too little.

Let me say that again

Where the world sees only insecurity and the need to hoard, save, grab,

we live out of our gratitude and are always ready to give, to share,

to look to the interests of others

so that those with much do not have too much

and those with little do not have too little.

(in case you are wondering, the last phrase

is an actual biblical reference — 2 Cor. 8:15).

CONCLUSION

Now I know that with all this economy talk, there are people who will try pin a label on this.

People will say:

that sounds Democratic or that sounds Republican;

that sounds left-wing or that sounds right-wing;

that sounds socialist or that sounds capitalist.

But the trouble with all those labels is that

they are all trapped in a world-view of scarcity.

They are all about managing limited resources in self-interested ways.

But we are called to live according to a different economy.

We live in the economy of trusting in God’s abundance and in his provision.

Because we live in that economy

we can always look to the interests of others,

we can always live generous, hospitable lives,

as we travel through this wilderness,

to the Promised Land.

Amen

1. Barabara Brown Taylor, “When the Well Runs Dry” in Christian Century, Feb. 26, 2008. ↑

2. James Clavell, King Rat, 1962, and the movie version of 1965. ↑

3. Langdon Gilkey, Shantung Compound: The Story of Men and Women under Pressure. New York: Harper and Row, 1966. Gilkey uses this quote from Bertolt Brecht’s ThreePenny Opera. ↑

4. Walter Brueggemann “The Liturgy of Abundance, the Myth of Scarcity,” Christian Century March 1999, notes that wealth has become a narcotic in our society. ↑