IT REALLY IS MU2E BLESSED John &., Buchanan
Acts 20:28+35 Broad Street Presbyterian Church
October 39, 1977 Coluneus, Onto

One of the unfulfilled dreams of the preacher is to have his people hear as
if for the first time, If familiarity doesn't always breed contempt, it does have
a way of reducin:, our critical faculties. Hitler knew that if ho made a statement
frequently enough, regardless of hov outlandish it was, people would soon stop
thinking critically about it and it would subtly enter the realm of common truth,
The Orwellian manipulators of public opinion in the People's Republic of China have
refined the practice to an art form, Persons who one day are resarded as patriotic
heroes, are attacked by way of wall vosters all over Peking the next day: and the
sheer weight of the attack causes most of the people to change their minds. [In fact,
so efficient is the process that it is possible for a person to fall from grace
through the vail posters but then fall back into favor a shore time thereafter,
Repetition has a way of causing us to suspend our critical faculties.

Thus one of dreams of every preacher is to have his people hear - as if for the
first time: somehow to erase the accumulation of the years, the thousands of times
the words have been read and spoken, and get at them with every critical faculty
alert and functioning, I would submit that there is no more astounding assertion
in the Bible than our text this morning but that we have heard it intoned and in-
voked so very many times we have never thought about it critically.

In a sense the whole Christian story is wildly improbable and suffers from
familiarity. The birth of Jesus in Bethlehem in the middle of a Roman census is an
incredivle tale, He Lived in an obscure village, never traveled very far from home,
emerged briefly in the life of His mation and was dead within three years.

The things He said in that brief public career were as improbable as He was.
In the raw, rough world of the first century He talked about gentleness and com-
passion, In a worid where a sword was the only going symbol of power He talked
about the power of love, He told people to walk an extra mile when a soldier
pressed them into duty as a luggage carrier, He advised them to offer their shirt
when someone demanded their coat. He recommended turning the ocher cheek.

He said some altogether startling things. And among the most improbable of
all is a little sentence, not even recorded in the Gospels, but remembered and
attributed to Him by St. Paul: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive." Or,
as the New English Bible renders it: "Happiness lies more in giving than in
receiving,"

We've heard it a thousand times, usually from the minister just before the
offering plate is passed. And that's unfortunate because if it is true, we know a
secret that few others seem to imow, If, in fact, happiness is found in giving,
we know the ansver to a question everyone is asking.

Tt is, I vould submit, one of the most radical things Jesus ever said, And
I invite you to try to think about it this morning as if you had just heard it for
the very first time, In order to combat the notion that the saying is totally re-
moved from the real world I would bring into focus two contemporary witnesses who
should get our attention, Karl Mcnninger, for instance, who said, "Money giving is
a good criterion of a person's mental health. Generous people are rarely mentally
ill people.” And Dr, Roy R, Grinker, whose name you probably don't know but who has
written an article in the October issue of Psychology Teday under the title, “The
Poor Rich", Dr. Grinker is a Chigago psychiatrist one of whose specialties is the

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treatment of children of the very wealthy, He describes the paticnts he sees as
privileged but self-centered, hypochondriachal, bored, intolerant, fructrated, empty
and totally unhappy, In fact, according to Dr, Grinker his privileged patients are
most like very poor children. His articl: ends with a case stucy of sorts involving
a young woman, frivolous, on heavy drugs, promiscuous, with no friends, no interests
other than her own amusement, encaced in a variety of destructive behavior patterns.
She was "desperately hungry for some kind of fecling inside her to £ill a void that
could be relieved only by drugs and sleep," After a period of therapy the youns
woman began to visit art museums and pradually discovered something cutside herself,
In turn she found something insi'e herself worth expressing and siving, She besan
to paint and then to cellect art. Finally she went back to school and earned her
Ph.D, in Art History and is today somewhat of an authority respected in national

art circles. Sie found something to which to give herself and it made all the
difference in tue world.

Now, Let's veturn to the text: the setting itself is most interesting. Paul
Was traveling from Greece to Jerusalem, In fact, he was retracing his steps from
other journeys stopping in the tovns and villages where he had earlier established
churches, His purpose seems to have been to see how the young Christian Communities
were faring, and also toe see - probably for the last time - his olc and dear friends,
He realized chat he might be arrested in Jzrusalem - which is precisely what happened,
Ii was, that is to say, far more than a pleasure trip and Paul would have wanted to
deal with these Christian people in the same way as we try to crowd the last minute
before the chilcren Leave the house with vital information, wisdom, advice, warnings
and threats,

Instead of visiting Ephesus where he had lived for three years he sent for
the Elders of the Church and they met in the city of Miletus. It must have been a
very moving reunion. What he said to them on the occasion is recorded in the 20th
chapter of the Acts of the Apostles: he zecalled his life among them: he urged them
to be faithful in times of stress and persecution: and he said, "keep in mind the
words of the Lord Jesus, who Himself saic, ‘Happiness lies more in giving than
receiving. '"

With that they embraced, prayed and wept together, The Ephesian Elders es-
corted Paul to his ship and never saw him again, Now, I've taken you through that
brief history because Paul didn't simply drop this saying of Jesus in the midst of
a discourse on Christian living. Rather, it is summation: the last thing he said
to dear friends. Ic is, IE would sugsest, the essence of the matter of Christianity,
according to St, Paul,

Let's look more closely still. We are most familiar with the Revised Standard
Version translation: “It is more biessed to give than to receive," The trouble
with that is thai the word "blessed" is not used anywhere I know of outside the
Bible or certain churchly rubrics, We grew up reciting the Beatitudes: "Blessed are
the poor in spicit: Blessed are the meek: Blessed are they that mourn." We sang
"Blessed Assurance, Jesus is Mine," We heard our Roman friends refer to the "Blessed
Virgin", fry as I might I could not think of "blessed" used other than those three -
and none of them, on the surface at least, sounds very exciting or even moderately
interesting. “Blessed'' frankly is a pretty pompous word: it reminds me of sticky
piety, saintliness in the worst sense, Wednesday night prayer meeting and no base~
ball on Sunday afternoon, 1 have never been terribly interested in "blessedness”:
nor have you - which may be one of the reasons we've never thought seriously about
how we might achieve it,

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"Happiness" is a different matter. There isn't anyone uninterested in
happiness, And it so happens that che Greek word which got translated “blessed”
sevetal centuries ago by King James' schclars really meant a rather lusty, worldly,
secular glee: hilarity, fun, happiness, It is not, in Greek at least, a state of
piety at all - such as that described in stanza two of the hymm "Blessed Assurance®™ -
"visions of rapture now burst on my sicht." The word really means a carefree whole-
ness in all of Life. The new translation is, in this case, far more accurate,
“Happiness ties more in giving than in xreceiving."

Please notice that the sayin; does not suggest that it is wrong to receive or
get. Ti does not propose that a siver is morally superior to a receiver, [et does
not suggest that a person can be one to the exclusion af the other, It says, only,
that it is happier to be a giver than to be a receiver.

Raving looked at the statement literally and historically I think it is
pertinent to ask whether or not it ig true, Is it, in fact, demonstrably evident
that more happiness is produced by piving than receiving? Dr Menninger thinks so if
we may equate mental health with a denree of happiness. Dr. Roy Grinker, the
Chicago psychiatrist, would probably not agree to be cailed in as support for a
Christian Stewardship sermon, but I think he would agree to the truth of Jesus'
statement,

Whose pleasure, after all, is the sreatest - the one who sives the gift or
the one who reccives it? Who is happiest on Christmas morning? Whose delight is
most intense - the one who planned and purchased and hid the surprise - or the one
surprised, delighted and thrilled by it? It's at least a toss up. But more to the
point, Tf think Jesus and Paul His interpreter, meant something about life style: the
way we do our living in general. Everyone receives and everyone sives: I think
Jesus meant to indicate that we are fundamentally, however, one or the other, An?
that if we are a giver, we will be happier. I think Chere is far more at stake here
than passing the offering plate: more than Church budget, The issue is wholeness,
happiness, Tt is a matter, rather, of a way of living, an approach to life which
involves living for someone or something other than self: a daily self-giving, seti-
emptying for the sake of someone or something,

tt has to de with a kind of civins described one time by Paul Tournier in a
delightful pararraph: "For the child neither social convention nor money ner
ownership count; vhat does count is the heart - given impetus, He will give all
that he finds. Lt is an act of regal love for him to pick a pretiy flower in a
public park and offer it to his mother, Avain, in the game of hide and seek, which
children enjoy so much, they pretend to hide only for the purpose of giving them-
selves away asain by coming out from their hiding places, The proof is in happy
outbursts accompanying their discovery after such a brief time of hiding. The
supreme gift is the giving of oneself," (The Meaning of Gifts),

The New Testament proposes that the fiving of oneself is a very happy activity,
The culture in which we Live proposes that the opposite is true: that getting is the
happiest possible situation, The dactrine of salvation current among us may be read
in the advertisements in any slick national magazine, The chief end of mam may be
to glorify God and enjoy Him forever according to the Shorter Catechism, but according
to the high priests on Madison Avenue nothing replaces buying, acquiring and owning,

hon

Archibald ilacLeish in an article in Saturday Review several years ago suszested
that Che fundamental moral change vas that Americans have become a society of con~
sumers father than producers and that the affluent society is structured on the
morally veak proposition that havpiness is getting everything one wants, But let’s
not be guilty of masochism about our nation, WE may have more soods but we do not
own the monopoly on sin. Harvey Cox in his latest book on the appeal of Eastern
Religion indicts American culture for its greed, Martin Marty, in a review of the
book pleads with Professor Cox to tell us where in the world ~ or when in history -
that has been different. Greed - getting - having - owning - ve ought by now to
understand - are part of the human situation, Our problem is egotism, our original
sin is inveterate self~centeredness, It is what Jesus Christ came to save us from,

i will never forget the day a cement truck overturned in our neighborhood,
spewing its contents all over the street, People acted as if solid were lying in
the putters: they carried it off in boxes, baskets, wagons: one man spread news-
papers in the trunk of his car and shoveled it in. And as T watched and fought the
impulse to join in I knew suddenly what John Calvin was talkine about,

Why, for instance, the eternal fascination with gamblins - or chat ingenious
device by which ve induce the poor to finance the services we will not pay for called
the State Lottery? Why the endless stream of contests, punch cards, jingles and
trading stamps?

The implications are far decper than commerce alone. We are in the midst of
a revoluation in cexual mores which says Loudly and cleatly, "if you want it, take
it: if it feels seed, do it," We have been called a Sensate Culture obsessed with
instant gratification, What seems most important is ta get mine now, before it's
too late,

Even in the matter of our relinion we seem to expect to get, Our verb forms
reveal our theolony, We talk about “having” faith - as if it vere something we
owned. We have it all backwards, of course, The late Paul Tillich was very helpful
when he wrote: ‘In Christianity tcuth is found if it is donc, and done if it is
found," (Shaking of the Foundations, p.115,117). Dietrich Bonhoeffer knew that
and expanded on it by teaching that faith is an act of obedience to Jesus Christ
and that we wastc our time waiting for something to happen to us spiritually
before we begin to obey and follow Him, And Albert Schweitzer addressed the matter
directly by observing that a person will never be happy until he or she finds
something in life bigger than himself or herself: something for the sake of which
one can give seli away,

Tt is Stevardship Suncay, Every member of this consrepation has been asked
to be a giver. There are two issues involved: one far more important than the
other, The first is the program of this church represented on paper by a budget.
You are being astied to support it financially. Your know what it costs to do what
we have set out to do here together. You know that your contribution is a way for
you to have a part in the mission of Jesus Christ and a share in God's Kingdom
coming in the world,

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The second, and much mere important issue is you an! your faith and your
happiness. What God wants is human health and wholeness, Giving money to the
church is a way you can provide it for others through the programs of the church,
But it is also the way you can sive it to yourself. That, it seems to me, is the
best news of ail: that happiness does lie more in giving than in receiving.

To be a Christian is te oe an incurable giver: in relationships with
others ~ husvands, wives, children, parents, neighbors, friends, strangers - to
pive more than to set, Ii is to sive self away and to discover the pure joy in
doing it.

That's happy: that's ineredibly good when it happens: that's precisely what
God has done for us in Jesus Curist, And it is to that - that other-directed,
generous, joyful life we are called: te the amazing discovery that it really is
more blessed to sive,

Amer.

Father, we are the benefactors of Your cenerosity, We receive Your daily
gifts of food and air and sunshine and Your ultimate gifts of freedom and love,
We are grateful, Help us to know anev that in giving we receive the fullest
measure of joy: that in giving ve live lite as You created it to be lived: through
Jesus Christ our Lerd.
Amen,