The Downtown Presbyterian Church

Sermons

Pleasure or Pain

Mark 12:28-34

Rev. Kenneth M. Locke

31^st Sunday of Ordinary Time

November 2, 2003

The other week I was at a Bible study with some ministers and one of them was telling us about his knee surgery. He said a few weeks after the surgery he was playing basketball and one of the people he was playing with was his knee surgeon. He said he was trying to be gentle with his knee and the surgeon kept saying, “knock it off, you’re fine, let’s play.” So then he did something really strenuous and next thing he knew he was lying on the ground screaming in pain. He looked up and saw his surgeon standing over him and the surgeon laughed and said, “Oh shut up, you’re fine. All you did was rip through the scar tissue. You’re good as knew now get up and play.” So he got up, started playing and by golly the surgeon was right. He felt good as knew. He was sore for a minute but then his knee felt better than it had in years.

One of the other ministers in the group said, “You know, that’s exactly what I tell my people about giving. If it hurts you need to keep giving and work through the pain until it feels good.” We all looked at him like he was crazy and he said, “Think about it. Anyone who’s been in physical therapy or had a knee or hip replaced knows at a certain point in the therapy the pain is just unbearable. But if you stop when it hurts you’ll never fully recover and you’ll die in a wheelchair. But if you push through the pain it’ll work itself out and you’ll feel better than you did before. Same with stewardship. If it hurts you can either stop where you are and it’ll always hurt or you can keep giving until it feels good.”

A little crass perhaps, but I think there’s something to that. Our Scripture tells us to respond to God’s love with our whole being: mind, body, soul, wallet, energy, time, affection. All of it goes into responding to God’s love. But for too many of us responding to God is like paying a bill, it hurts.

Maybe you’re different, but I don’t like paying bills. When I come home and check the mail and there’s nothing but bills I am not happy. “Is this the right amount? Did I get my money’s worth? How come it never worked right after the first time we used it?” When I get a bill my response is suspicion, anger, criticism and stinginess.

But responding to my wife’s love is different. When she comes up and says, “Darling, I love you,” and starts running her hand over my chest and nibbling my ear – man, I like that. I respond with heart, mind, body, soul, energy, everything I’ve got. No anger there. No suspicion. Nothing gets held back when I’m responding to my wife’s love. Responding to her love is the most joyful thing in the world.

And that’s how we’re to respond to God’s love for us: joyfully, with everything we have, because it is literally, the most wonderful thing in the world.

If responding to God is painful, if stewardship arouses suspicion, distrust, anger, if responding to God is too much like paying your bills, then crass as it sounds maybe you aren’t responding enough, maybe you aren’t giving enough. Maybe there’s some scar tissue you need to tear through, some pain you need to force yourself through, in order to feel the real joy of stewardship.

God is, quite literally, the most loving lover any of us will ever have. Responding to God’s love should be the most enjoyable thing any of us ever do. My prayer for all of us, including myself, is we will work through whatever pain we have, whatever pain may be holding us back from full joy, until we can respond as our Scripture says to: joyfully, with everything we have.

My prayer is we will all give our time, energy, money and emotion not to pay a bill but with the joy of people responding to being really and truly loved. Amen.