Sermons

“Do Good, Expecting Nothing”

Ephesians 3:14-21; Luke 6:27-38 – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – February 24, 2019

 Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words that our hearts might be transformed by the power of your love and our lives filled with your righteousness. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

Why do we do good?  Our gospel reading today is basically an invitation into a serious consideration of Christian ethics.  This long list of commandments, some of them pretty severe, makes clear that our decision to follow Jesus is not just about what we feel in our hearts, but just as importantly about what we do in our lives.

So why do we do good?  The scripture passage says the sinner’s answer is to do good because someone has done good toward us or in hopes that they soon will.  I act lovingly toward you, because you’ve been acting lovingly toward me.  If I loan you money, then you’ll be more likely to loan me money another day.  “Even sinners do the same,” Jesus says.  Which is not to say that this is a sinful motivation necessarily; it’s just not a robustly Christian motivation.  God’s love is not about relating to others transactionally.

One step above doing good to get good is the idea we often hear of helping out those in need because “there, but for the grace of God, go I.”  Disregarding the unhelpful take on God’s grace, there is a certain humility and awareness of our own human vulnerability that gives this motivation some ethical heft. There’s a recognition there of the connectedness between the “haves” and the “have nots” that is essential to Christian solidarity.  But this motivation is not that different than doing good because we hope someone would do good for us, if we were ever in need.  It’s not quite as transactional, because the help would presumably come from someone other than the people we are directly helping, but it’s still pretty close to what Jesus says “even sinners do.”

Sometimes people say they like to volunteer with a particular ministry because it makes them feel good.  This one can probably go either way.  Is this just another way of being re-paid for our kindness, and thus possibly still something a sinner would do?  Or is it that doing good makes us feel good because we’re in sync with the love of God?  Does helping someone “less fortunate” make us feel good because it reminds us everything we have that the person in need does not have?  Do we enjoy feeling needed and important to someone else’s well-being? These don’t seem like particularly holy motivations.  Or does it make us feel good because we’ve shared what we can, recognizing that what is mine and what is yours is an arbitrary distinction?  It seems the righteousness of this motivation depends on what specifically is making us feel good about doing good.  But it’s still pretty focused on ourselves.

An important part of spiritual maturity is removing our own egos from the equations of righteousness.  Sometimes we are able to have moments when we do good simply because it is good to do good.  Not because of how it makes us feel, or how it might help us later.  Helping others is the right thing to do, so we do it.  Getting to this point is how we manage to help people even when it’s inconvenient or when they don’t really express appreciation or when we’re tempted to think “tough love” would have been more helpful.  “Do good, expecting nothing in return,” Jesus says. It’s so hard, isn’t it?  Nobody likes feeling invisible or taken for granted. But that’s, in a sense, what we’re signing up for when we decide to follow Jesus.  It’s not supposed to be about us anymore.  We are to do good because it’s good to do good.

Finally, our scripture passage offers us the best and highest motivation for doing good.  Jesus describes all these ways of doing good, all these difficult situations in which we’re called to do good, and then he tells us why:  for God “is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.”  We are called to be good and to do good because God is good.  If we have decided to follow Jesus, we are called to do what Jesus did, namely, reveal God to the world.  “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”  This not only removes our ego from the equation, it replaces it not with nameless righteousness, but with the incarnate God.  Do good because God is good.  It’s that simple.

Except it’s not really simple, is it?  And, indeed, the scripture passage in its entirety recognizes the complications of our lives.  Why we should do good is not the only question addressed here.  These verses also touch deeply on why we don’t do good.  We have enemies, people who hate us, people who hurt us and take advantage of us.  When is it that we don’t do good?  When people aren’t good to us; when they act like thieves or abusers or moochers.  When they judge us or condemn us or let us down.  When they take our stuff without asking and use it up without even thanking us. When is it hard to do good?  When it involves forgiveness.  We are called to do good because God is good.  But we’re not all that good, so it’s hard.

Have you ever considered that your purpose in life is to reveal God’s love?  It’s true! And there are a thousand ways to do that, but all of them involve forgiveness.  There are a thousand ways to do that, but all of them involve setting our egos aside and letting the mercy of God flow through us.  God, who as you will recall “is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine,” is the One who makes it possible for us to do good in ways beyond the transactional favors that Jesus says “even sinners do.”

I wonder if you noticed last week, when we watched that Week of Compassion video about what God makes possible, that when they started specifically talking about God, the images on the screen included a group of boys studying the Quran at a Muslim school and a Hindu woman joyfully talking with her hands.  The gift of Week of Compassion is that it gives us a way to help people we will never meet.  And some of those folks are people that others might try to convince us to view as enemies.  They aren’t, of course, but some might try to convince us otherwise.  Helping people we will never meet is a good way to stretch those muscles of our hearts that help us grow beyond doing good to those who are most likely to do good back to us.  It’s a great way to practice revealing God’s love, to the entire world.  It’s a great way to follow Jesus.  Let us give generously, lovingly, kindly, expecting nothing. Alleluia and Amen.