News

When my family and I lived in Medicine Hat, I planted a hedge of roses along side my driveway so that we didn’t have to look at the neighbour’s old pickup truck that was constantly parked on his driveway in front of our houses.  

One year, the conditions were just perfect for the hedge to be covered in double pink roses from top to bottom.     Not only did it look quite nice, but it filled the air with perfume.

One morning, I went outside to go jogging just after daybreak, and I noticed that the hedge was rustling, even though it was a rare, windless morning.   I was expecting an animal of some sort when I looked around the hedge to see what was there.  Instead, there was an elderly woman bending over on the other side of the hedge with one arm full of roses as she reached into the hedge to cut more.

I asked her what she was doing.  It took her a moment to regain her composure at being startled, and then she demanded to know who I was to ask.  I told her I owned the hedge.  I was expecting some kind of embarrassed excuse or apology for cutting a hole into the hedge, but I didn’t get that at all.   Instead, she got very angry at me for daring to challenge what she was doing.  She told me that I had plenty and it was my duty to share and that I was wrong to make such a fuss over a few roses when there were so many on the hedge.

I answered her that it is not sharing when someone takes something without asking permission.   It was not about the roses, but about the fact that she stole the opportunity for me to be generous in allowing her to have some.  She muttered something again about how selfish and rude I was and then stormed down the street with her arms still full of the roses.

There is a very, very fine line between stealing and sharing.  In both cases, the person who ends up on the receiving end walks away with something that he or she values but did not have before.    Where the two are very different is that a thief steals more than some physical item of value.   A thief steals the owner’s rights to control what he or she owns.   At thief even steals the owner’s privilege to share, or to give gifts or to reward or to use property in any other way to be a blessing of his or her own choosing.  

Our lessons this morning deal with sharing.   They show us what a great privilege it is to be able to share and what kind of joy we experience not just in receiving, but in being on the giving end.  May God bless your life in such a way that you yourself know the joy of sharing!

 

The first thing to know about sharing is what the very word itself actually means.  In Greek, the word is ???????, which actually means, “to communicate”.   In those high school classes nobody likes where you have to learn to be a responsible citizen, you end up with times when you are supposed to do sharing.  You may see that in Bible study groups, too, or at conventions when you are supposed to do “sharing”.   It is a feature of one of the local high school courses that the students most like to complain about – CSR.   

That is the closest to the full meaning of the word that you actually get.   Any time you are communicating something with someone, you are sharing in the Greek sense of the word.  You are taking what is normally yours alone and tossing it into the pot for everyone to have a look at.  You are taking something from the individual and, hopefully, voluntarily making it part of the community.  

That is what sharing is.  It is generously taking private property and giving it a new meaning by making it someone else’s property.  You can make it joint property, holding on to it just enough so that you always have some say in the matter, or you can give it away altogether with the understanding that the other person who controls that property now will use it to bless you with it, too.  That is the difference between sharing and giving an outright gift.  If you give someone a gift, it is their’s to do with as they please.   If you are sharing, all of you together become part of the communion of sharing.  All of you keep a stake in it.

The really important part of sharing is the concept of generosity.   In our church, for example, we don’t demand that members give a certain percentage of their income as an offering.  The reason is that we see the offering as two things: something that recognizes that God has given us the gifts to make our offerings possible, and something that God has given us specifically so that we can turn around and use that gift in order to share.  This means that offerings can’t be forced.  They must come from a spirit of true sharing.  

That is why Paul told people who work for others to work cheerfully, “serving wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord and not men.”  (Ephesians 6:6)    That is why Paul said in 2 Corinthians 9:11, “Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”    Everything that God has given you has been given so that you could have the privilege and the right to control God’s gifts in such a way that they become a blessing to not just you alone, but to the people around you.   That holds just as true of your intellect and your talents and your skills and your interests and your kindness and your love and your compassion and concern as it does of any kind of physical thing.    

That brings us to our second lesson for this morning.   Paul very clearly said that the people of God must share all good things with their instructor.   The person who has brought them God’s Word has shared with them, and now they must share something back.  The things that you learn from the Bible about what it means to be a sinful person and what it means to be a saved person have all been revealed to you so that you can use them.  You use them by supporting the people who have shared such wonderful things with you.   You support those people by being willing to be a blessing to them just as they have been a blessing to you. 

Did you notice how that worked in our Gospel lesson for this morning?   Jesus sent out seventy two disciples to share the Gospel into the land of Judah.   Not only where these men supposed to share the news of forgiveness and salvation with the people, but they were supposed to rely on these people to support them and share some of their own blessings.  

Today many people think that churches are some of business providing some kind of consumer service, like spiritual support networks or something.   People seem to think that their offerings are like paying admission, but with out a ticket booth.   They treat the Gospel like some kind of product and then wonder why their religion seems to be nothing more than just another consumer option.

Instead, the Gospel is much more like the air we breath.   You can’t put a price on something like the air, which belongs to everybody if it belongs to anybody at all.   The air is there to sustain life.  Yes, many people pollute it and almost everyone takes it for granted until it isn’t so freely available anymore, like when you are drowning, or when you have one of those dreams when you are under water and you wake up realizing that you have been holding your breath.   The air we breathe is simply there.  It is the air, just like the Gospel is there to provide life to everyone who will breathe it deeply and live.  

Paul said in 2 Corinthians 2:17, “Unlike so many, we do not peddle the word of God for profit. On the contrary, in Christ we speak before God with sincerity, like men sent from God.”    This is how we show respect and thanksgiving to God for all that He has done to share the Gospel of life with us.  We do not peddle the Word of God for profit.  We do not treat it as a commodity, but as something that is available to all people.   We speak as men sent from God.  We speak as those instructors Paul spoke about and like the 72 that Jesus sent out, but we speak to share, and sharing means that those who have been called to share God’s Word also have the right to share in all the good things that come out of it!

Salvation is a gift.  It was a great gift God gave you when Jesus Himself chose to share in your sufferings and your sorrows and your hurts and your disappointments and your confusion and your pain.    It was a great gift that God gave you when all the tension and suspense of Good Friday was broken and Jesus indeed was raised from the dead, and it was really true that Jesus took your sins to the Cross and it is absolutely certain that God has forgiven you and the burden of sin no longer makes life so impossible to live at times.     Jesus shared something so awesome with us in being our Saviour that Paul wrote that He even shared the right be God’s children with us in saving us.   He wrote in Romans 8:17, “Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory”  We share in all these things so that we can share with other exactly what it means to be so blessed that we are willing to allow our own personal blessings to be blessings to others as well!

The 72 who went out into the Holy Land with the message of God’s love knew that not everyone cared to receive what they had to share with them.   Yet, there were people who not only shared willingly in that good news, but they received it with such joy that the 72 couldn’t keep all that excitement down inside of themselves.  They rejoiced at the power of the Gospel.  They rejoiced in just how uplifting it was to share.   They experienced the energy of not just being able to give, but to receive in a circle of sharing that kept raising the level of joy until the believers simply couldn’t keep silent about God’s love for them!

This is the kind of joy of sharing that our Old Testament lesson speaks about as well.  We rejoice together and we rejoice greatly when we share that joy.  We are comforted together and satisfied together and we flourish together on a level far greater than what would have been possible if we had kept all of that to ourselves!

Paul said in our epistle lesson, “Each one should test his own actions.”  That is a good idea.  Do test them to see how generous you have been in sharing God’s gifts and God’s blessings with the people who have been a blessing to you in Christ.  

Test them and know that God has offered His forgiveness to you for those tests that you may be failing as you give far less than what you have the capacity to give.  Test them with the assurance that Jesus Christ endured that test, not because the sinless Son of God had any sin of His own, but because He took your own sin upon Himself.  Even as you share your sin with Him, he shares with You His forgiveness and His salvation!

Jesus forgives you.   He forgives you for being so stingy in your love that hold back that love from people who need to see it most.  He forgives you for being so uncertain in your faith that you are afraid to share, for fear that you won’t get an equal measure back from others.   He forgives you for all the excuses that you make to not really care for your fellow Christians and for those who still need to feel the great joy of the Gospel.  He forgives you so that the word of the Father in the parable of the Prodigal Son may ring true in your heart, “My son, or My daughter, you are always with Me and everything that I have is yours.”

Everything God has is already yours, yours to strengthen you, yours to bless you.  It is yours so that you are able to share to the glory of the Father in the name of Jesus Christ!  May God enable you to share all good things willingly, always, for Jesus’ sake.  Amen.