Relentlessly Generous--January 14, 2022

Relentlessly Generous--January 14, 2022

"Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change." [James 1:17]

It's not just that God is unchanging--it's that the unchanging character of our God is extravagantly generous.  That makes for good news.

There are, after all, plenty of things that don't seem to change but are bad or negative; saying they are unchanging that only makes them permanently terrible.  Grief can feel like that... or depression.  The acquaintance you know whose personality seems perpetually obnoxious, the coworker who is perennially ill-tempered, or the family member whose mood is always sour--you can rely on them to be unpleasant, but that's not a compliment.  Maybe it's the bend in the road you know is always dangerous with blind spots, deer crossings, and a slippery surface.  Maybe it's rooting for a hometown team that never seems to have a winning season.  We know plenty of things in life, from the predictably irksome to the relentlessly crushing, that are constant... but in an awful way.

So let's listen closely to what James sees as the good news of God's permanent nature--God is constant, but not a constant jerk.  God is always the same, and that sameness is a grace you can depend on.  God is reliable, faithful, and sure--not unchangeably stingy, but forever relentlessly generous.  

That's a really important distinction, honestly, because sometimes Respectable Religious folks seem to get hung up only on the idea of a God who doesn't (or can't?) change, rather than focusing on how James specifically means God's generosity doesn't ebb and flow with the seasons or the times or the phase of the moon.  Sometimes you'll hear theologians prattle on about God being "immutable" (which is the fancy word for "unchanging") and that will lead them to say God can't suffer or feel emotion, because those involve change, and God can't change.  Sometimes they'll paint themselves in a corner, too, insisting that God's mind never changes, despite repeated times in the Scriptures where storytellers explicitly say "God changed his mind."  Sometimes you'll hear so much insistence on "This verse says X right here and the Bible can't change, SO THIS IS HOW IT IS!" thinking that they seem to miss times when Jesus himself will say, "You've heard it said this one way, but now I'm telling you a new thing."  Honestly, every time I hear someone shout (they rarely say it calmly, or respectfully), "The Bible said it.  I believe it. That settles it!", I find myself wanting to ask what they think of the countless times when biblical laws came and went, covenants changed, were broken, and then were made into something new, old assumptions were questioned, and when God outright says, "I am doing a new thing--don't even bother remembering what came before!"  

All of that is to say, when we talk about God's unchanging nature, we can either misuse that idea as a straitjacket to try and limit God according to our expectations, or we can follow James' example and see that what doesn't change about God is God's constant self-giving.  It's the character of God that remains the same.  It's the generosity of God that you don't have to worry about turning on or off like a light switch, or coming and going with the breeze.  God's nature is self-giving--that much you can take the bank.  But God also remains perfectly and beautifully free to surprise us in the ways that self-giving nature acts in our world.  To put it another way, you can always count on God to be a generous giver--but you dare not try and predict what the gift will be, or how it will come.  

The character of God's heart as self-giving, however, is what you can take to the bank.  Our acts of generosity, therefore, whether the small and simple choice to speak a kind word to someone who needs it, or a fortune donated to change someone's life, are always simply echoes of God's own nature.  Giving may well be the closest we can get to God's own heart--especially the way a well-given gift brings joy both to the receiver and the giver alike.  As J. Philip Newell puts it, "The whole cosmos is a self-giving of God. And we will find our place in the great dance only to the extent that we love."

Today, then, James would point us toward generosity as the way for us to be most like God appropriately.  We can't create a universe or possess all knowledge or dwell outside of linear time... but we can be givers.  We can give of ourselves to help others be more fully alive, and in turn, we can find that the act of giving ourselves away makes us more alive as well, even as counterintuitive as that may sound. From the breath out that allows another form of life to breathe in, from the way our sun spends itself to give light to our little blue planet and all its throngs of organisms, to the way one act of giving may spur another and another, to the cross of Jesus, where God's own life is given out for the life of the world, all the universe is marked with the character of God's self-giving generosity.  Today, you and I can share in that piece of God's own life as we seek ways to be generous with one another.

Far too many folks know Christians only as constant pains, who come across as unchangeably arrogant, persistently self-righteous, or immutably graceless toward others.  James dares us to let ourselves be known for something different--something truly close to the heart of God.  James dares us to give ourselves away, just as God does all the time.

In this new day, let us be unflinchingly, relentlessly generous.  Let us echo the generosity of God, whose self-giving love is our constant through life.

Lord God, help us to rely on your unwavering generosity, in a world full of stingy hearts and clenched fists.