Selfishness and Service

I told you last week about a chilly morning on the Appalachian Trail when I made tea for some of my fellow hikers. Well, there’s more to the story. You see, I used up most of my water making that tea. But this wasn’t a problem because there was a restroom just down the hill. I figured that I could refill my water bottles at the taps and I’d be good to go for the rest of the day. So after we’d all had our tea I said, “I guess I’d better go down the hill and get some water.” And one by one the other guys said, “I didn’t see any taps in that restroom. All I saw was sanitation gel.” All of these clowns saw me using up my precious water so that I could serve them tea, but not one of them thought to mention that I wasn’t going to be able to refill those bottles. I mean, why should it occur to them? They all had water. So did I, before I made them all tea!

But you know, that’s just human nature. We all have trouble seeing beyond the ends of our noses. When my needs are met, it may not even occur to me to think about the unmet needs of the other guy. When I’ve dealt with a situation, or defined a situation to my satisfaction, it may not occur to me to look at that situation from someone else’s perspective. I do this as much as the next person. There was one piece of the AT that my brother and I hiked together. Well, we were sort of hiked together; he was usually about four miles behind me. When I proposed to him that we do some hiking, it hadn’t occurred to me that I might be in better shape than he was. At this point in the season I’d already hiked about 70 miles with that 50 pound pack on my back, and he hadn’t done any backpacking in years. So when he came up with this ambitious plan of hiking 10 miles a day, much of it uphill, the furthest thing from my mind was to say, “Hey Tom, I think you’re being overly ambitious.” I mean, he’s my big brother. He’s always been stronger and smarter than I. If he thinks he can handle those 10 miles, who am I to advise him otherwise? Besides, when you’ve been knocked upside the head by your brother enough times when you were kids, you’re pretty hesitant to give him advice. My point is that between my fear about my brother and my assumptions about what he knew – my fear, my assumptions – it didn’t occur to me to suggest that maybe his backpacking plans were too ambitious. In my focus on myself, I failed to be helpful to him.

It may not occur to us to look at the situation from someone else’s perspective, especially the perspective of someone who’s hurting. This tendency to focus on the self, this frequent failure to see the world from someone else’s perspective, this apparent inability to see beyond the ends of our noses; this is what the Bible calls sin. To be in a state of sin is to be so focused on ourselves that we separate ourselves from God. To be in a state of sin is to be so focused on our fears and our needs that we fail to trust that God can calm those fears and care for those needs. And since we can’t trust God to look after us, we try to look after ourselves. And that’s when things can get really nasty. Because when I’m primarily focused on my own fears and my own needs, I tend to not only ignore the fears and needs of others, I may even exploit their fears and needs in order to look after my own. So now we’re talking about not just an innocent failure to recognize someone’s need for water, but an overt act of seizing water before he can, and then selling it back to him, and making a tidy profit for myself in the process. Or playing on your desire to own a home, and offering you a mortgage at favourable rates so that you can buy that home, not telling you what the real interest rate is; not telling you that next year you’re going to be paying that real rate; which I know that you can’t afford. But that’s not my problem because by that time I’ve sold the mortgage at a tidy profit and it’s someone else’s problem.

Sin spans the spectrum from benign neglect to the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Sin is being so focused on my own needs – so anxious about my own needs – that at best I’m not even aware of your needs and at worst I exploit your needs in order to satisfy my own. In the final analysis the mortgage crisis isn’t an economic matter, it’s a spiritual matter. In my anxiety about my own needs, I become greedy, and exploit your needs. In my greed, I try to acquire as many material assets as I can, regardless of whom I hurt in the process. Now greed is one of the seven deadly sins. In the 1992 U.S presidential campaign, an advisor said to then Governor Clinton, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Last week Sojourners Magazine looked at this huge economic crisis that’s been triggered by the sale of bad mortgages and Sojourners said, “It’s the morality, sinner.”

Sin is not just the problem of thirsty hikers on the Appalachian Trail or greedy lenders in the housing market. Paul says that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). We all have trouble seeing beyond the ends of our noses. And sometimes our inordinate self concern leads to extraordinary acts of cruelty.

Will Campbell is an old Baptist preacher. As a young man he preached the virtue of racial integration in the Deep South, before the days of the Civil Rights Movement, when the sin of racism still held the South in its vice-like grip. Campbell the preacher has a brother who has no use for the Church whatsoever. Campbell’s brother is not only an atheist, he’s an alcoholic. One day these two brothers were driving in Will’s pick-up truck and the brother said, “Will, you know I hate religion. I got no use for the gospel whatsoever. But you know what; I’m curious. I want you to tell me, in 10 words, what Christianity is all about.”

Campbell said, “We’re all bastards; God loves us anyway.”

To put that in more conventional biblical terms: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Yet “while we were sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Even though we’re all bastards, God has reached out to us in Jesus the Christ – God has embraced us in Jesus the Christ – and in the warmth and power of that embrace God says, “I don’t care how self-centred you are, I don’t care how much you’ve hurt others and exploited others, I love you with a fierce love and I will not let you go!”

It’s amazing how fear and anxiety can just flow out of us when someone holds us long enough; when someone assures us that he or she is going to take care of us. “Look not to you own interests,” Paul says, “but to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:4). We look to our own interests and not to the interests of others when we’re afraid that our interests and our needs will not be met. But God in God’s embrace of us – sinners that we are – God in God’s embrace of us seeks to assure us that with God there is an abundance of love, with God there is an abundance of wealth; “Be not afraid, God says, “because I will not let you go.” “Be not afraid,” God says, “because I will give you this day your daily bread, and your daily water. Just as I gave bread and water for the Hebrews in the wilderness, I will provide them for you (see Exodus 16:1-36; Exodus 17:1-7).

We are saved from sin by the grace of God. That’s what we’re talking about here. Sinners that we all are, God embraces us anyway. But this grace that saves us is about more than forgiveness. Grace as simply an act of forgiveness doesn’t save us from sin, because after the good feeling of forgiveness wears off, we’re back to sinning. No, grace saves us from sin not only when it forgives us but also, and especially, when it empowers us. In the embrace of God I am assured that I will be looked after; therefore I no longer have the urge to hurt and exploit others. That’s empowerment. In the embrace of God I am so filled with love that I want to look after others. That’s empowerment. Again, “Look not to you own interests, but to the interests of others.” When I’m imprisoned in the fear and anxiety of sin, that feels like a burdensome commandment. But when I’m filled to overflowing with the forgiveness and the reassurance and the acceptance of God, then looking after the needs of others is a labour of love. The grace of God frees us from sin so that we can reach out to others as servants.

Clara Barton, pioneer nurse during the American Civil War, saw suffering that you and I can only begin to imagine. Asked how she could stand the blood and the guts day after day, she answered (in essence) that to focus on one’s own feelings is to miss the point. One must see the thing that needs to be done and do it!

Look to the interests of others. Keep doing things like making tea for them. Just don’t expect to be rewarded by those whom you help, because maybe they’re still too anxious about their own needs and too caught up in themselves to do so. Maybe your act of kindness will help to free them from that state of sin. We are all sinners, saved by God’s grace. Amen.

Text: Philippians 2:3-4
Preached by Bruce D. Ervin
28 September 2008