The Dismantling of Deal-Making--October 16, 2024

The Dismantling of Deal-Making--October 16, 2024

[Jesus said:] "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again." [Luke 6:32-34]

To a culture built on turning everything into a tit-for-tat transaction, grace is a subversive notion.

To a mindset that sees all of life in terms of quid-pro-quo deal-making, extravagant love (like Jesus') is scandalous... even dangerous.

To the worldview that is only interested in asking, "What do I get out of this?", Jesus is Public Enemy Number One, because he has come to dismantle that whole way of thinking, and replacing it with a life lived in unconditional love.

And it is downright radical.

This is another one of those times where Jesus exposes just how much we human beings have tried to baptize our own selfishness and call it common sense.  Here in this passage from the heart of Luke's version of the Sermon on the Mount (or, "on the Plain," if you will), Jesus takes aim at what most people just call "conventional wisdom."  It goes something like this: "You only help the people who have already helped you (in order to pay them back and get even), or people who can do something for you in return."  It says, "The only reasonable recipients of your love or good-will are the people who already love you and do good for you."  And it takes for granted that it is foolish, ridiculous, and maybe even immoral to help people when you won't "get" anything back in exchange.  If that isn't what passes for typical "business savvy" and "common sense," I'll eat my hat.

And yet, Jesus' kind of love utterly undermines all of that thinking.  He is deliberating attempting to subvert that entire mindset and to replace it with a view of the world centered in God's unconditional love.  Jesus is not here to teach us how to make better "deals" for ourselves that will get us most return in exchange for the least amount of effort expended on our part.  He has not come to help us be "successful" in our careers, businesses, or transactions in the sense of getting more from others, or training us to pass up bad deals where we won't make a profit. He has come, instead, to de-program us from thinking that life is primarily about "getting" stuff, and to free us for "the life that really is life" (to borrow a phrase from First Timothy), that is, a life oriented around self-giving love.  To listen to Jesus at all is to let him dismantle our old obsession with deal-making and "What-do-I-get-out-of-it?" thinking, and to let him retrain our hearts and minds in light of his kind of love without conditions, without limits, and without the need for reciprocity.  This is his revolution.

And he is intent on setting us loose on the world as people who love others freely, without concern for "what I get out of the deal."  If we are honest, that will lead us to make some waves and ruffle some feathers in the midst of a culture that has been taught to think only in terms of its own self-gratification.  We live in a time when demagogues often teach us to ask, "Why should we come to the aid of such-and-such group of people if they aren't doing something in return for us?"  We live in a culture where you are called a "sucker" if you give time, energy, money, or effort to helping others but they have no way of paying you back or returning the favor.  We live in a society in which crowds cheer at the notion that "We have to look out for our own interests first!" and that conceives of "greatness" in terms of getting more than you have to pay out.  And into the midst of that kind of society, Jesus sends us out provocatively to do the opposite--doing good for those who cannot pay us back, and showing love to those who do not love us in return already.  Jesus has to know that will make us look like troublemakers who are upsetting the established order.  Do we realize the same?

I guess I think that's what is sticking with me on this particular reading of these verses from Luke.  If we take seriously Jesus' kind of love, we will stick out like sore thumbs.  We will be notorious, not just for a vague and harmless "niceness" or for being generically "polite," but for the ways we are committed to doing good for others without going through the calculus of "Here's what we'll GET out of it!"  We will get a reputation for being the people who help bring relief after hurricanes and floods without worrying about whether we get "credit" for it, and we'll stay to help rebuild long after the news crews and cameras have moved onto the next headline.  We will come to be known for interrupting the smooth flow of "business-as-usual" because we will be the ones asking, "How can we be of service to others?" rather than, "What will we profit?" We will be known, in other words, as people whose love is not contingent upon a return on our investment, but who love the way Jesus does--recklessly and unconditionally.

Imagine what will happen if we actually take Jesus' kind of love to heart and then teach it to our children to be their way of life as well.  Imagine a whole generation of business majors in college who are no longer satisfied to ask merely, "What makes us the biggest profits in the third-quarter?" but "How does our work actually make people's lives better, and how could we prioritize serving people rather than maximizing our profit margins?"  Imagine a generation of high school graduates who aren't simply thinking of what career will make them rich the fastest or grant them internet celebrity status, but who ask, "How can I contribute best to the deep need of the world and neighbors around me?"  And what would happen if a wave of young people no longer believe they are "losers" for giving their lives to help other people, but see their highest calling in terms of doing good for people who can't do a thing in return?

It is a revolutionary notion, maybe.  But it is glorious, too, isn't it, to imagine that we do not have to play the old, sad games of "tit-for-tat" and quid-pro-quo, but are finally free to do good in the world without turning it into a transaction or a deal!  That's the life Jesus has pulled us into.  And make no mistake about it--we are already drawn into it.  His love for us has grabbed hold of us and pulled us into his kind of life, and that means his kind of love for others.  There is no version of authentic Christianity available where we get to sing, "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me" and then turns toward our neighbor and says, "I can't be expected to do good for you unless there's something in it for me--what am I, a sucker?" Jesus' kind of love is contagious that way. His love for us becomes our love for the world, and Jesus' kind of love is decidedly, unabashedly, unconditional.

So let this be, for us at least, the obituary and headstone of transactional thinking: here lies the old, terrible "conventional wisdom" kind of deal-making that shackled us and held us prisoner in its grasp for too long.  That old way of seeing the world is dead to us, and we to it.  Instead, after the dismantling of the need to "get something out of it" from everybody and everything else, we are at last free to step into the motion of Jesus' kind of love.

Let's just see where it takes us today...

Lord Jesus, free us again today from the constrictive old patterns of conditional, deal-making love, and free us to love like you, without regard for what we get in exchange.