Finding the Balance

4th Sunday after Pentecost

2nd Corinthians 8:7-15

Amy the pup moved into new digs this week. I completed her side of the dog pens, and she entered rather easily. Oh, there was the expected whining that first evening, but we are moving her that way gradually, and I suspect she will find the same kind of bored contentment that Crockett has come to appreciate.

Thursday evening when she moved in, she started immediately climbing up on her dog house. She watched Crockett jump up on his, but she can’t jump that high just yet, and so she found a way to shimmy up there by climbing up between the house and the fencing. Crockett’s house if flat roofed, but hers is a store bought version that friend Gary let me have some time back. It doesn’t have a flat roof – looks more like a miniature barn – so the very peak has a very small place that is flat. I noticed that she spent much of the evening learning how to balance on the top of her house so that she could be up there with Crockett.

Amy is discovering balance. Balance is one of those concepts that all of us learn as we mature. We learn to strike a balance between work and play. We each eventually find our balance between cold and hot, light and dark, gluttony and fasting, observation and participation – so many places in which balance is key to fulfillment in our lives.

Paul spoke of balance. I read it for us just a little while ago, but let me read it again. 2nd Corinthians 8:7-15 – “But just as you abound in everything, in faith and utterance and knowledge and in all earnestness and in the love we inspired in you, see that you abound in this gracious work also. I am not speaking this as a command, but as proving through the earnestness of others the sincerity of your love also. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich. And I give my opinion in this matter, for this is to your advantage, who were the first to begin a year ago not only to do this, but also to desire to do it. But now finish doing it also; that just as there was the readiness to desire it, so there may be also the completion of it by your ability. For if the readiness is present, it is acceptable according to what a man has, not according to what he does not have. For this is not for the ease of others and for your affliction, but by way of equality-- at this present time your abundance being a supply for their want, that their abundance also may become a supply for your want, that there may be equality; as it is written, "He who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little had no lack."

I’ve been thinking a good bit these days about balance. As we enter this holiday week in which we celebrate our nation, you and I find that we live in a country where balance is hard to find. Balance has left us – extremism reigns. We are pushed to one side of the political spectrum or the other, each of us knowing that we would prefer to live somewhere in the middle – somewhere where balance exists. But sadly, the extremists rule the day.

Did you hear the Apostle? “it is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need . . .” Our biblical examination becomes a little more specific for today, and it feels like Paul is doing a little “toe-stepping.”

A little background. Our passage has roots in two places. Paul’s quote in verse 15 is from Exodus – specifically Exodus 15:18. Paul omitted something from the original text – I suspect it didn’t agree with his point of the moment. Preachers are like that, don’t you know. He left off the part of the verse that says “every man gathered as much as he should eat.” I’m not sure why he left that part out. Anyway, the story hails to the children of Israel, as they were in the middle of the exodus. God provided manna for them, but it was expected that each person gather for his own household.

The second part of the story is the context from which Paul writes. Paul had an interesting relationship with the church at Corinth. When we take the book of Acts in correlation with the Corinthian letters, we find that Paul made at least 3 visits to the Corinthian church, and he wrote at least 4 letters to them. They evidently responded to some of his letters, and so the communication went back and forth between Paul and this church. It was not an easy correspondence. What you and I know as 1st Corinthians was actually his second letter to them. We don’t have the first letter, but there are some indicators in 1st Corinthians as to its content. Then, between 1st and 2nd Corinthians is a third letter, named by scholars as the “severe” letter – evidently Paul really got after them about something – and then along comes this last letter, which we call 2nd Corinthians. In the first part of chapter 8, Paul is outlining the giving record of some of the other Greek churches who are supporting his ministry. In vv.1-2, he says, “we wish to make known to you the grace of God which has been given in the churches of Macedonia, that in a great ordeal of affliction their abundance of joy and their deep poverty overflowed in the wealth of their liberality.” Then as we continue to read, we realize that Paul is again spanking the Corinthians for having started to take an offering for his ministry, only to let their work go unfinished. Now he is admonishing them to finish what they started, and he attempts to shame them by pointing out the other churches who have limited means but who have given generously as an example to them.

Now, if I were sitting where you are this morning, I’d start to ask myself a question – I’d want to know “How in the world did I end up in church listening to a tithing sermon rather than going to the lake today?” Let me quell your fears – this is not a tithing sermon. I don’t like tithing sermons, any more than you do, and I certainly wouldn’t choose to preach one in the middle of the summer. No, this is one of the things that I love about the lectionary – it forces me toward passages that I otherwise wouldn’t preach.

Rather, I consider this to be an “attitude” sermon. Paul is speaking to an attitude that I am trying to learn how to employ in my life, and that I think our country could use a whole lot more of. This passage speaks to an attitude of abundance.

If you take this passage in conjunction with the gospel stories for today, Paul and Mark speak toward an attitude of abundance. In the gospels, those who are standing around watching are concerned about the power that Jesus has – “does He have enough power to heal this little girl, and what in the world is this old woman doing reaching out to ‘steal’ a little of His power while He is on the way to perform a ‘miracle healing.’” In these stories, there is a selfishness in the attitude of most of the bystanders, and even on the part of some of the principles in the story.

The same holds true for the readers of Paul’s letter. There is an attitude of selfishness. Paul counters their limited perspective with a vision of abundance, reciprocity, and generosity.

I learned this lesson again this week when we took our children on their outing last Tuesday. Our Summer DAZE program reminded our children how very much we have, and some of what we have is the capacity to serve others. So, the children took some laundry detergent over to Our Daily Bread, and then they worked at Joe’s house trimming some of his shrubs, and then they came back to the church to plant some monkey grass over in front of the youth house. I like the balance and the symmetry of that adventure. They served people who are not a part of our congregation, they worked to serve someone who is a member of our congregation, and then they did a little work on the property from which we worship each week. Symmetry. Balance. It was a good day.

I read something this week. It’s a quote by one of my favorite authors, Marcus Borg. He is speaking of openness to the Spirit of God, and a general attitude of openness in our hearts. He says, “How do hearts become open? The biblical answer: the Spirit of God does it. And the Spirit of God operates through thin places. I owe the metaphor of ‘thin places’ to Celtic Christianity, a form of Christianity that flourished in Ireland and parts of Scotland, Wales, and northern England beginning in the fifth century . . . This way of thinking thus affirms that there are minimally two layers or dimensions of reality, the visible world of our ordinary experience and God, the sacred, Spirit . . .’ Thin places’ are places where these two levels of reality meet or intersect. They are places where the boundary between the two levels becomes very soft, porous, permeable. Thin places are places where the veil momentarily lifts, and we behold God, experience the one in whom we live, all around us and within us.” 1

I’ve been thinking about a prayer – a prayer for our country. I would pray that God would work to instill in people all across this country an openness – an openness to the balance of life that makes life so much more fulfilling. I would pray that people all across this great land would develop a spirit of abundance – a realization that the blessings we have, which, by the way, are not unique to our country, are blessings of God that have root in God’s great generosity to man, and that we are to reciprocate with an attitude of abundance and generosity – toward God as well as toward our fellow man.

1 Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, Harper, San Franscisco, 2003, pp. 154-6

Richard W. Dunn, PhD.