What Gift Have We to
Offer?
Old
Testament Reading: 2 Kings 3:21-27
New
Testament Reading: Luke 14:25-33
Text:
2 Samuel 24:18-25
The title of this
morning's sermon recalls the words of a Christmas song you will soon be
hearing. It refers to the apparent absurdity of our rendering to God any
sort of a gift. Talk about finding a gift for the man who has everything!
As I said last week, it is superstition of the worst kind to imagine you
have a God who must be fed and cared for by his worshippers -- like a pet!
Yet the notion of sacrifice occurs in the Bible again and again. Is it an
outmoded idea? In some ways, yes. For all my super-ecumenical tolerance, I
have no trouble rejecting the practice of animal-sacrifice cults, whether
we are talking about Santeria or the Levitical code of the Old Testament.
I fully agree with my remote predecessor Dr. Fosdick in disdaining that
"bloody religion."
Yet sacrifice is an important metaphor.
It enshrines the crucial truth that if there is really anything to
religion, then it cannot simply be a convenience, something like a
computerized bank teller or a remote control for your TV. It must entail
some giving on your part if it is service to a high cause. You must owe it
something. If religion involves the idea of moral duty, then sooner or
later there will be some kind of sacrifice, bigger or smaller, in its
name.
Recently I was reading through my
underlinings in Watchman Nee's devotional classic, The Normal Christian
Life. Nee's book is a classic presentation of the way sacrifice is
seen in pietism. As you listen, I know some of you will recognize some
familiar concepts. Nee tells us that pretty much anything, however
innocent, can become an idol if we come to cherish it more than God. And
how do you know when things have come to such a pass? Even as a pietist, I
was never sure. But here is what I think. The question is put, "Is there
anything precious to you that you may love more than God? If so, you must
be willing to offer it on the alter as Abraham offered Isaac." You might
think immediately of some illicit affair, some shady practice, some overt
sin that you must love more than your religion on insofar as you
continue to practice the sin in known defiance of your conscience. And if
you want to maintain any integrity, you must indeed give up what you are
doing. If you don't, you will be an idolator, at least a polytheist of
sorts, dividing your devotion.
But I always suspected that the whole
process of spiritual growth as understood by pietism logically demanded
that, on this side of the grave, there could never come a day when
there were no idols in your heart. That to love anything at all
but God must be reckoned as idolatry. And in turn this demanded the
surrender of everything to a hungry God whose appetite could never
be satiated. In other words, God had become an idol himself, whose altars
ever flowed with the blood of cherished pursuits, plans, hobbies,
relationships.
As soon as the faithful pietist hears
the question "Is there anything you love more than God?" his conscience is
galvanized with fear. He secretly thinks, "I hope the roaming finger of
the Holy Ghost does not point to this or to that! After all,
it seems innocent enough to me!" But then it seemed innocent enough for
Abraham to have a son! Reason alone would never have dictated his
sacrifice. It was the command of the Spirit heard in the subjectivity of
the soul. The poor pietist is betrayed by his innocent defensiveness! The
minute he thinks, "I hope God does not want me to sacrifice so-and-so," he
has been conditioned to interpret such a hope as evidence that he is
holding out against God! The very anxiety must mean he is after all making
of it an idol!
Here is an ancient example. St. Jerome
was a man of Classical education and appreciated the beauty of a
well-balanced sentence. But one night in a dream an angel rebuked him for
this "sin"! The angel said, "Thou art a follower of Cicero, not of
Christ!" Here, I suggest, we are hearing the tortured conscience speaking,
a religious conscience that has come to relate to God as a battered wife
does to an abusive husband. She still loves him despite his meanness, and
the price of love is trying to absorb the impact of new and arbitrary
assaults!
But I must get back to Watchman Nee.
Let me read you a brief passage in which Nee seeks to illustrate how we
must be prepared to part with our most cherished hopes, or we will never
know the fullness of God's power in our lives. Nee's friend "Mr. Paul" had
dreamed since his youth of studying for his M.A., then his Ph.D. degree.
“Then at length the glad day would arrive when all would greet him as ‘Dr.
Paul.’” He continued his doctoral studies while engaged in the pastorate.
Despite seeming success, he felt spiritually empty and effective. He
sought the answer with God in prayer and fasting. Moths went by until he
heard the inner voice of God: “I long that you should know the power of my
Spirit, but you heart is set on something that I do not wish you to have.
You have yielded to me all but one thing, and that one thing you are
holding to yourself – your Ph.D.” He tried to rationalize, to bargain with
God, but to no avail. So finally he dropped out of the program just short
of his comprehensive exams (or dissertation defense, it isn’t quite clear)
and was promptly filled with the Holy Ghost! [pp. 145-148]
Let me observe that two things jump out
at me from this story. First, why did it not occur to Mr. Paul that there
is perhaps a difference between the academic growth entailed in his
doctoral work on the one hand, and the petty conceit he feared on the
other? In my experience, doctoral study has been an extremely humbling
experience, as it presses upon one the Socratic realization that even at
the higher levels, one knows virtually nothing at all! One is in a better
position to behold the vast ocean of knowledge one will never live long
enough to master, like a spider crawling over the page of a philosophy
treatise!
The second amazing thing is that though
Mr. Paul feared the pretension he thought a PhD would bring him, he
thought nothing of the incredible presumption of thinking he heard and
felt the leading of God with pin-point accuracy! If Mr. Paul could know
the will of God on such minute points and with such minute accuracy, a PhD
would have been nothing by comparison! He was the oracle of Delphi!
What he was really hearing, and dreaded to hear, was the voice of a
tortured conscience, his pietistic Super-Ego. Poor Mr. Paul was like the
Moabite king who sacrificed his son in desperation. He assumed something
dear to him was blocking the blessing he wanted. Pietism had taught him so
to assume. So his hyperactive conscience fingered his dearest dream. At
that point he had to sacrifice it to get the experience he craved.
It was a self-fulfilling prophecy, a kind of subconscious bargain with
himself.
Personally I do not think that God is
like the demon-god Moloch who demanded the sacrifice of your children. I
do not accept the gory superstition of some primitive tribes and some
psychotic individuals that you must chop off fingers or limbs in service
to the deity, to show you're serious. That is the religion of Mr. Paul and
Mr. Nee. But then what gift have we to offer? Has it ever occurred
to you that you have certain abilities, desires, and interests because God
created you that way? Maybe he had your blueprints on the drawing
board, like Geppetto the puppeteer. Maybe it was the providential juggling
of chromosomes. Think of it any way you want. But if you are a creature of
God, doesn't it seem logical that he would be pleased with the fullest
possible development and use of your talents? Wouldn't it seem a happy
truth that what pleases you most, when you are at your best, would also be
the fittest offering to him?
Would the eagle please his creator if
he piously renounced flight? Would Leonardo have pleased God had he laid
painting on the alter and never taken up the palette again? Bach
understood full well what kind of sacrifice God required of him when he
wrote his magnificent pieces and dedicated them "to the glory of God." You
may not be a Bach, but there is something that fulfills you and thus
fulfills God's design in creating you! Your life can be a gorgeous
symphony dedicated to God, not a plodding pietistic chorus of gloom and
puritan austerity. What does God require of you by way of sacrifice? What
the master in Jesus' parable required his servants: he had given them
certain gifts and expected them to make something of it! What Mr. Paul did
was to hide his talent in the ground and expect to be congratulated for
it.
But perhaps this all sounds a bit too
good to be true! Is it really such a happy coincidence that what delights
my heart delights the heart of God? Is not religion, on my reading, simply
a convenience and a divine pat on the back after all? If you think it is,
ask an artist or a writer or an athlete if it is easy to develop his or
her gifts. Ask if their disciplines are easy. Because that is what it
takes. Your life, lived in the most satisfying way, is not easy to live!
If it is like a work of art that you mean to dedicate to the glory of God,
then it had better be fit for the occasion! It had better not be
second-rate. It had better be the best you could have done. Don't offer to
God that which costs you nothing!
Rich Griese has become interested in
Process Theology. In one of the most important works of Process Theology,
Christ in a Pluralistic Age, John Cobb sets forth the idea that we
should view Christ the Logos as God's tugging lure toward creative
transformation. Christ is God's call out of the cocoon, and it is more
comfortable inside the cocoon. Christ is God's call to maturity, and
maturity is never easy. Christ is God's call to become more fully your
unique selfhood and to live your unique story. But it is so much more easy
as Heidegger said, good New Testament theologian that he was, to sink back
into the sweet stupor of the crowd with its anonymity and conformity and
mediocrity.
The ancient sacrifices were conceived
as giving God something to eat. Well, let's use that imagery for a moment.
Christ is calling you to offer your life to God as the culinary delight of
a master chef, but you, left to yourself, would rather slack off and be
presented as a McDonald's hamburger! Believe me, God has better taste than
that! And furthermore, you taste better than that! You can
be Bach in his ears; don't be Muzak! And it won't be easy! Becoming the
self you were designed to be is the greatest joy, but also the hardest
work! And that is what God requires at your hand. What gift have we to
offer? As Paul said, "Present yourselves as living
sacrifices!" That is the sweetest savor the nostrils of God can know.
Copyright©2009 by Robert
M Price
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