William B. Lawrence - "When the Gifts of God Aren't Enough" (August 3, 1997)

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-	Before you hear the gospel lesson for this morning,	0:10
	I should probably (murmurs faintly).	0:15
	In the verses that David is about to read,	0:19
	Jesus is not in a very good mood.	0:22
	It's not a mood of anger,	0:26
	such as the occasion when he overturned	0:28
	the tables of the moneychangers,	0:30
	nor is it a mood of grief,	0:33
	such as when he wept at the death of Lazarus.	0:35
	It is, perhaps, best described	0:40
	as a mood of deep disappointment.	0:42
	These verses in the gospel of John form a portion	0:46
	of a much larger story in that sixth chapter.	0:49
	Thousands of people had gathered	0:54
	on a grassy plain to hear Jesus teach.	0:56
	A few hours later, more than their spiritual hunger	0:59
	had to be fed, they were physically hungry.	1:03
	And from the fragments of five loaves	1:09
	and two fish offered by a little boy,	1:11
	Jesus fashioned a feast for the thousands,	1:13
	and then he left, crossing the Sea of Galilee	1:18
	only to find that most of the crowd had followed him there.	1:23
	And that's where his mood of disappointment shows.	1:28
	Listen.	1:32
-	"So when the crowd saw that neither Jesus	1:41
	"nor his disciples were there, they themselves got	1:43
	"into the boats and went to Capernaum	1:46
	"looking for Jesus.	1:48
	"When they found him on the other side	1:50
	"of the sea, they said to him,	1:52
	"'Rabbi, when did you come here?'	1:54
	"Jesus answered them, 'Very truly	1:57
	"'I tell you, you are looking for me	2:00
	"'not because you saw signs,	2:03
	"'but because you ate your fill of the loaves.	2:05
	"'Do not work for the food that perishes,	2:08
	"'but for the food that endures for eternal life,	2:11
	"'which the Son of Man will give you.	2:14
	"'For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.'	2:17
	"Then they said to him, 'What must we do	2:21
	"'to perform the works of God?'"	2:23
	"Jesus answered them, 'This is the work of God,	2:26
	"'that you believe in him who he has sent.'	2:29
	"So they said to him, 'What sign are you going	2:33
	"'to give us then so that we may see it	2:35
	"'and believe you, what work are you performing?	2:38
	"'Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness.	2:42
	"'As it is written, "He gave them bread	2:45
	"'"from heaven to eat."'	2:47
	"Then Jesus said to them, 'Very truly I tell you,	2:49
	"'it was not Moses who gave you	2:53
	"'the bread from heaven, but it is my Father	2:55
	"'who gives you true bread from heaven.	2:58
	"'For the bread of God is that	3:00
	"'which comes down from heaven	3:02
	"'and gives life to the world.'	3:04
	"They said to him, 'Sir, give us this bread always.'	3:07
	"Jesus said to them, 'I am the bread of life.	3:11
	"'Whoever comes to me will never be hungry,	3:13
	"'and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.'"	3:17
	This is the word of the Lord.	3:21
	Thanks be to God.	3:23
-	So the people wanted bread.	3:28
	They wanted enough bread to fill themselves always.	3:31
	They wanted to know what they had to do	3:36
	in order to get such bread always.	3:38
	And a disappointed Jesus tried to tell them again.	3:43
	It is not a matter of what you do.	3:48
	It's a matter of what you are given.	3:52
	"The bread you eat," he said,	3:56
	"is a sign of the bread of life	3:59
	"you receive by believing	4:00
	"and accepting the gift of God."	4:03
	And Jesus said, "I am the gift of God."	4:07
	So much of the Bible is a celebration of God's gifts.	4:16
	The fourth chapter of the letter to Ephesians	4:20
	read earlier in the service finds the apostle,	4:22
	perhaps Paul, pleading with the church	4:25
	in Ephesus, "Do you wanna find unity with one another?	4:28
	"Well, it's already embedded in the life	4:34
	"of the church that you have, it's a gift.	4:36
	"Accept the gift," he pleads.	4:40
	"Do you need individuals to lead,	4:45
	"to guide, to teach, to build up the church?	4:47
	"They're already present," he says,	4:51
	"gifted people whose capacities to serve are not	4:53
	"their own invention, but are the gifts of God.	4:58
	"Accept the gifts."	5:01
	Why is it that the church ends up in such messes,	5:06
	factions, divisions, abuses?	5:10
	The author of the letter writing from prison	5:14
	struggles almost to the point of exasperation	5:17
	as if to say being the church isn't hard.	5:20
	We make it hard.	5:25
	And he begs us to recognize that the gifts	5:28
	of God are all we need for life with one another.	5:30
	The gifts of God are embedded in our life	5:34
	with one another, enjoy them, use them,	5:36
	build up the church with them.	5:40
	But the people whom Jesus had fed	5:44
	had trouble noticing that his bread signified	5:47
	he was the gift of God and the Ephesian Christians	5:50
	had trouble noticing that each other happened	5:53
	to be bearers of the gifts of God	5:55
	to themselves and one another.	5:58
	But I suspect nobody in the entire Bible	6:01
	had more trouble with the gifts of God than King David.	6:04
	Part of the problem was that he was more gifted	6:10
	than almost anybody else in the Old Testament,	6:12
	a musician, a poet, he was a man blessed	6:15
	with great personal courage, with sharp political skills,	6:20
	with a powerful mind for military strategy,	6:24
	and besides that, he was remarkably handsome	6:27
	and a good dancer.	6:31
	And the tragedy of his story is that all those gifts	6:34
	he decided still weren't enough.	6:38
	He wanted to seize some more.	6:42
	Now most of us are familiar with the story	6:46
	of David and Bathsheba.	6:48
	First, his eyes intrude into the privacy of her bath.	6:51
	Then he took her and had his way with her	6:56
	in an adulterous and probably assaulting act.	6:59
	Then when he learned that as a consequence	7:04
	of his act, she was pregnant,	7:06
	he decided to dispose of her husband	7:09
	even though her husband Uriah happened	7:12
	to be one of the elite commanders of David's own army.	7:14
	So King David used his understanding	7:19
	of military tactics and strategy	7:21
	to arrange a battle that was certain	7:24
	to get Bathsheba's husband killed.	7:27
	So in this one episode, just barely a chapter and a half	7:31
	of one book of the Old Testament,	7:36
	David managed to violate at least three	7:38
	of the Ten Commandments that God had given to Israel.	7:41
	He had coveted, he had committed adultery, he had killed.	7:44
	I know it's often assumed that the flaw	7:51
	in David's life was his sexuality,	7:53
	and I suppose that if we watch	7:57
	enough television situation comedies and mini series	7:58
	or if we read enough Freud, we'll conclude	8:01
	that eventually everything does come down to sex.	8:04
	But David's sin was less simplistic	8:08
	and more sinister than that.	8:11
	It was the way he used his powerful array of gifts,	8:15
	not to sustain his relationship	8:20
	with God and God's people,	8:23
	but to put himself in control	8:25
	of God's gifts and God's people.	8:27
	It was with the same attitude	8:31
	that one of the corrupt Popes in the Renaissance said,	8:33
	"God has given us the papacy, let us enjoy it."	8:37
	David knew he had the gifts of God.	8:42
	He just forgot that they were gifts.	8:47
	And he merely contented himself with using their power.	8:51
	And David in that act became	8:56
	what the old judge Samuel had warned would happen.	8:58
	Samuel had warned this would happen with kings.	9:03
	David had become what Samuel called a taker.	9:07
	Samuel had told the people of Israel	9:13
	that one day the king that you want	9:16
	will come and take your sons	9:20
	and turn them into his soldiers.	9:22
	The king you want will come and take your daughters	9:25
	and turn them into his servants.	9:28
	The king you want will come and take your land	9:31
	and turn it over to his lackeys.	9:34
	Because the king one day will forget that his office	9:36
	and the people in the land are the gifts of God.	9:42
	The king will forget that the gifts of God	9:46
	are all the people in the land	9:50
	and the king will decide	9:53
	that the gifts of God aren't enough.	9:55
	So David became a taker.	9:59
	He took Bathsheba and he raped her.	10:02
	He took Bathsheba's husband	10:06
	and arranged that he be killed.	10:08
	David, gifted with so much, sought to take more.	10:12
	And the real tragedy of it is he could've had more,	10:19
	but he wanted to take more.	10:24
	"If the gifts of God had been too little,"	10:28
	Nathan told him, "God would have added as much more.	10:31
	"Why," Nathan said, "why have you despised	10:35
	"the word of the Lord?"	10:40
	So in the end, David lost everything that he had taken.	10:43
	The child born of his liaison with Bathsheba died.	10:47
	His family, his sons, fell into civil war.	10:53
	He lost access to the gift.	10:59
	And were it not for his confession of sin,	11:02
	he would have lost his relationship with the Giver as well.	11:06
	Father Walter Burghardt, who is a contemporary	11:12
	Catholic theologian and preacher,	11:14
	in a recent book of his called	11:17
	"Preaching the Just Word,"	11:19
	has written about what he calls	11:22
	the predicament of the prosperous.	11:23
	It involves the feeling that what we have	11:27
	is the result of our own production,	11:30
	and it involves the fear that what we have	11:32
	must be cared for by our own protection.	11:35
	Having enjoyed and shared the gifts of God,	11:39
	not enough for the prosperous in their predicament.	11:42
	The prosperous in their predicament	11:47
	wanna take control of those gifts.	11:49
	And next do away with the the Giver.	11:53
	I daresay that almost no one gets to this campus,	11:58
	at least in any formal relationship,	12:03
	or no one who gets to this campus formally	12:06
	gets to stay on this campus for very long	12:09
	and in official capacity, unless that person is	12:11
	by some definition gifted.	12:15
	Some suspect that it takes a resume	12:20
	about like David's to find and hold a place.	12:22
	You know, you have to have military strategy,	12:25
	political skill, an intellect that's sharp,	12:28
	plus be handsome and be able to dance.	12:32
	But in truth, we in this university are blessed	12:37
	with an astonishing array of gifted people,	12:40
	gifted students, gifted researchers,	12:46
	gifted teachers, gifted practitioners,	12:48
	gifted athletes, and gifted executives.	12:51
	We benefit every day from the services	12:54
	of a gifted crew of groundskeepers and housekeepers	12:56
	because their gifts primarily are the gifts of patience	13:00
	to put up with the rest of us who take the beauty	13:04
	and order of this campus for granted.	13:07
	We manage every day because of the gifted contractors	13:10
	and laborers who somehow can manage	13:13
	to take a space in the medical center	13:15
	and remodel it with almost,	13:17
	almost no interruption in our operations.	13:20
	These are gifts.	13:24
	And when each of us goes about exercising	13:27
	our own gifts, we are tempted to think	13:30
	that if only we could take control	13:33
	of everybody else's gifts,	13:35
	then we could arrange them to suit our priorities,	13:38
	and then we'd be happier.	13:41
	It's tempting to be a taker,	13:44
	but the variety and diversity of gifts	13:49
	that people bring to this campus are	13:51
	what really can make us a community,	13:53
	not someone's taking it over.	13:56
	Earlier this summer, the news that all	14:01
	of the Woolworth stores are going to close	14:04
	awakened a host of memories.	14:07
	Some of us here, I suspect, are indeed old enough,	14:10
	or at least willing to admit that we're old enough,	14:13
	that we can recall childhood days	14:16
	when one actually could find things	14:17
	of value on the Woolworth counters	14:20
	that could be bought for a nickel or a dime.	14:22
	We can also recall that the journey toward	14:26
	racial justice in America included	14:28
	a stop and a very, very long wait	14:30
	at a Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro.	14:34
	Well, during the summer of the year	14:38
	that my wife and I were married,	14:40
	the year that we moved into our first home together,	14:42
	an apartment in New York City,	14:45
	I was waiting for the start of the academic year	14:48
	at Union Seminary, so I found a job	14:50
	and worked for three months	14:53
	as a stock clerk in Woolworth's	14:54
	at Broadway and 109th Street.	14:56
	It was a great educational experience.	14:59
	I received and stocked merchandise,	15:03
	I checked pricing, I made sure the markup was 42%	15:06
	on all the merchandise, I packed trash,	15:10
	and I met people whose dreams	15:14
	of economic security were tied permanently	15:18
	to this little retail operation.	15:22
	I remember that the store managers were men, always men.	15:26
	And they were promoted on the basis	15:30
	of the success of their stores.	15:32
	And I remember that the success	15:34
	of the stores depended on the women, always the women,	15:35
	who organized day after day the retail floor,	15:39
	who tended their aisles, who kept the books,	15:44
	who monitored shoplifters, and who knew	15:46
	that the organization would never,	15:48
	never recognize their efforts.	15:50
	It was a world segregated according to gender.	15:55
	It was a world indifferent to the gifted	15:59
	human beings who made it all work.	16:01
	The system was arranged with no sense	16:05
	of obligation to anyone else	16:07
	in the company or the community.	16:09
	And what illustrates that best,	16:12
	I think, is not that someday there will be	16:14
	no Woolworth stores to go to,	16:17
	it is that there are, to my knowledge,	16:21
	no Woolworth colleges, no Woolworth universities,	16:23
	no Woolworth hospitals, no Woolworth children's homes,	16:28
	no Woolworth social service centers	16:32
	for retraining the unemployed.	16:34
	There was no sense in that organization	16:38
	of gifts beyond the self.	16:41
	When people ignore the structure	16:47
	of gifts embedded in life	16:49
	and become simply takers,	16:52
	they deprive themselves of lasting hope,	16:56
	and they inflict immense suffering upon the innocent.	17:01
	The debris of David's decision	17:07
	that the gifts of God weren't enough	17:09
	included his children, his kingdom,	17:11
	and his military commander.	17:15
	And in our time, others have suffered	17:19
	at the hands of takers as well.	17:21
	One was a man named William Reese.	17:25
	A very ordinary fellow by almost any objective standard,	17:28
	his world included his home, his wife,	17:33
	their 12-year-old son,	17:36
	the United Methodist church where they worshiped	17:38
	on a regular basis, and his job.	17:40
	William Reese was the caretaker	17:43
	of a small cemetery in southern New Jersey,	17:45
	a cemetery where the bodies of Union	17:48
	and Confederate soldiers are buried.	17:51
	On the 9th of May, this past spring,	17:58
	a man who was driving a stolen car	18:01
	spotted William Reese's red pickup truck	18:04
	at the cemetery property.	18:06
	The man in the stolen car decided	18:10
	to take the red truck and apparently decided	18:11
	that he'd better kill Reese in order	18:14
	to take away any witnesses.	18:16
	So on May the 9th, 1997,	18:19
	William Reese became one more victim	18:21
	of a taker named Andrew Cunanan.	18:24
	The innocent suffer when a taker concludes	18:29
	that the gifts of God aren't enough.	18:34
	It can happen in a terrible act of violence.	18:39
	It can happen, as well, in a mundane moment	18:42
	of indifference to the gifts that God	18:45
	has embedded in our lives with one another.	18:47
	So Kathleen Norris, in her book "The Cloistered Walk,"	18:52
	confesses that her two residencies	18:56
	at a Benedictine monastery in Minnesota	18:58
	have taught her the differences	19:01
	between a consumer culture where we cater	19:03
	to our sense of self-importance and take what we want	19:05
	and a Christian approach to culture,	19:10
	which focuses not upon desires, but human needs.	19:13
	Not upon controlling, but sharing.	19:19
	Not upon taking, but receiving.	19:24
	And Kathleen Norris also confesses	19:29
	that her two residencies in a monastery	19:32
	have taught her something about her marriage.	19:35
	"I came to realize," she says,	19:38
	"that marriage is a life-long religious vow,	19:41
	"that I am as committed to monogamy	19:46
	"as a monk or a nun is committed to celibacy."	19:49
	Somewhere in the structure of our lives	19:54
	are embedded the gifts of God.	20:00
	There surely will be occasions when all	20:04
	of us are tempted to conclude	20:07
	that the gifts of God aren't enough.	20:08
	When it happens, and if and when we succumb	20:12
	to the temptation, we are still not without hope,	20:14
	for one of the gifts of God embedded	20:21
	in the structure of the Christian church	20:23
	and the Christina life is the gift of forgiveness.	20:25
	We access it first with confession,	20:30
	then with a plea for mercy,	20:35
	then with a commitment to change,	20:38
	and then with a reconciliation	20:42
	that joins us to all others in the community	20:44
	from which we have been separated.	20:48
	It is possible because of a gift of God.	20:51
	It was announced from a cross by a dying Jesus.	20:57
	"Forgive them," he said.	21:01
	And that is a gift of God which is enough	21:06
	at least for a start, amen.	21:12
	(uplifting organ music)	21:20
	(people murmuring faintly)	21:47

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Title:

William B. Lawrence - "When the Gifts of God Aren't Enough" (August 3, 1997)

Description:

Sermon start time: 00:10. Sermon end time: 21:16.
The gifts of God are embedded in the structure of our lives. We are often tempted to doubt that they are enough, and so we become takers, seeking to control the gifts for our own benefit. This response inevitably leads to suffering, particularly that of the innocent and vulnerable. But if we respond properly, and celebrate the gifts each of us has been given, this can become the seeds of a true, Christian community. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)
Key quotation: “When people ignore the structure of gifts embedded in life, and become simply takers, they deprive themselves of lasting hope, and they inflict immense suffering upon the innocent.”

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August 3, 1997

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Lawrence, William B.

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Duke University. Chapel

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William B. Lawrence - "When the Gifts of God Aren't Enough" (August 3, 1997)

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