Imagine your friend invites you to a party.
You arrive and there are lots of people, decorations, food and drink.
There is enough for everyone.
When you are hosted by someone that generous, you do not have to worry about your needs.
You can just enjoy yourself and focus on the people around you.
Yeah, that is what a good host wants for her guests.
This is the picture of the world that we find in the Bible.
Creation is an expression of God's generous love.
He is the host and humans are his guests in a world of opportunity and abundance.
We are called to keep the party going, to spread his goodness.
This is a beautiful picture.
But, it is not the way people experience the world.
Rather, we find a world of scarcity and struggle, not abundance.
And Jesus grew up in that kind of world.
Under military occupation,
people losing their land or families to debt and poverty.
And yet, he would say things like this:
Look at the birds.
They do not store up food for themselves, yet they have enough.
Or, consider the wildflowers.
They are beautiful and abundant.
And they do not stress about their existence.
And you all should live that way, too.
But, surely Jesus knew that things do not always work out.
Sometimes, there really is not enough.
Jesus did experience poverty first-hand.
But he viewed the world through the story of the Hebrew scriptures
which claimed that our scarcity problem isn't caused by a lack of resources.
Rather, the problem is our mindset that God cannot be trusted.
Maybe God is holding out on me.
Maybe there is not enough and maybe I need to take matters into my own hands.
Once we are deceived into that mindset of scarcity,
we can justify the impulse to take care of me and mine before anyone else.
That leads to envy, anger, violence and a world where it seems like there is not enough.
The party is over; it is turned into a battleground.
But God wants humans to experience his generosity.
So, he chooses one people, the family of Abraham.
He promises to give them the abundance that he wants for everybody else.
God will provide what they need.
All they have to do is trust his generosity.
Through them, the whole world will see how generous the host really is.
But that is not what happens.
Abraham's descendants, the Israelites, enter a land of abundance
and they promptly forget the host who gave it to them.
They act like it is all theirs and like there is not enough.
It leads to war and Israel's self-destruction.
If I were the host of this party, I think I would just give up.
But God does not give up.
What he does is surprising.
He gives another gift.
Another gift?
Yeah, but this gift is different.
What God gives is himself.
Oh, right! In Jesus, the host himself comes to join in on the spoiled party.
And notice, Jesus lives with the conviction that there is enough.
And that our generous host can be trusted.
His mindset of abundance allowed him to live sacrificially and generously even towards his enemies.
And Jesus called his followers to trust in God's abundance, like him.
That is why he said things like, "Sell your possessions and give to the poor."
Or, "Do not worry about your life."
He is inviting us to live by a different story.
One that is built on trust in God's goodness and love.
But living generously does not mean life is going to go well.
I mean, look at Jesus.
He was betrayed by his friends and he suffered.
This was no surprise to Jesus.
He knew that people would take advantage of his generosity
In fact, that was his plan.
Really?
Yeah. Think about it.
Jesus knows we are all hopelessly deceived by this lie that there is not enough.
Yeah, that lie needs to be defeated.
So, that is what Jesus was doing when he gave us the gift of his life.
Jesus' death was the ultimate expression of God's generous love.
Yeah, God's love can turn death into life
and scarcity back into abundance.
Or, as the Apostle Paul put it,
"You know the gift of our Lord Jesus, the Messiah,
that even though he was rich, for your sake he became poor
so that you, through his poverty, might become rich.
And Jesus called his followers to live like the real party has begun.
Yes. He called it the Kingdom of God.
Our invitation to this party is yet another gift, the personal presence of God's own Spirit
that can teach us how to trust the generosity of the host just like Jesus did.
Yeah, and when you believe there is enough, you start seeing opportunities for generosity everywhere.
With our time, money, and our attention.
Yes. One of the most important ways that we can experience the abundance of God's new creation
is sharing with others because of our trust that God is the generous host.