[Spend Less]

[Spend Less]

(James 4:1-6) 10:30 am, 2^nd Sunday of Advent,

Dec 9, 2012; Windsor United Baptist Church; J G White

And forgive us our debts, and we forgive our debtors.  We just read it – prayed it – and we will sing it tonight.  I wonder how many people would like to pray for the forgiving of monetary debts this December: the bills, the credit cards, all those debts!  We have these debts that come from our spending. 

We also have indebtedness to others.  They send us Christmas cards; we have to send one to each of them.  They visited us; we’d better visit them.  They had us over for a meal; we need to pay them back.  We got a gift from that person; we have to give one too!

I think there is also a debt or duty of sorts we feel towards our society.   It is hard to be humble amid the ‘successful consumers’ who surround us.  Hard to give one or two gifts to our child, instead of five or ten, like other parents.  Hard to give a second-hand thing as a gift, instead of spending $50 or $100 on new stuff.  Hard to keep the decorations simple when you have a Clark Griswold next door, lighting up the whole neighbourhood with lights. It’s Christmas peer pressure!  Can we escape the festive rat-race?

To Spend Less is a theme of this Advent Conspiracy.  And it is a conspiracy against the trend in the marketplace of life.  It almost seems subversive, abnormal, humbug!

I chose the scripture reading for today from James 4.  James can seem a harsh and pointed little book.  There are many, many injunctions.  Do this, do this, do this; don’t do that, or that, or that.  I chose this particular paragraph because of one phrase, in verse 3: you ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.   

We spend a lot on Christmas for pleasure, do we not?  Our pleasure.  There is the pleasure of giving (and getting) gifts.  Making others happy gets built into us, sometimes in unhealthy ways.  Do we really make others happy?  Do we feel good about ourselves by pleasing those around us?  We spend for the pleasure of being wanted and being appreciated. 

Do you know the short story called The Bachelor’s Dilemma? It’s an old tale, by Morley Callaghan, of a young executive who won a turkey on Christmas Eve from his favourite restaurant.  But what would he do with it?  He called his brother’s wife, where he was invited for dinner the next day, but she had a turkey already.  He called up various friends; each of them had a Christmas bird in the icebox.  Then he remembered some other friends who frequented a certain café.  He joined them and plunked the large bird on the table.  None of them needed it. 

The bachelor went home to his flat.  He felt irritated.  It was as if, he thought, all his friends had joined together to deny him the satisfaction of pleasing them with a gift.  He even tried to give it back to the restaurant from which he had won it, and to a local butcher, whose window was still full of turkeys. 

At Christmas dinner in his brother’s home, they were surprised to hear his turkey was still on his kitchen table; and he wondered why he felt ashamed.  When he got home, he hauled the turkey over to a church, and an old man who answered the door said, “I know a hundred poor families in the nieghbourhood who’ll appreciate a turkey.” 

As soon as he felt the weight of the turkey being lifted off his arms he understood why he had felt ashamed at his brother’s place.  He hadn’t been looking for someone who would appreciate a turkey.  He had been looking for someone who would appreciate him. 

So ends the story of many people’s Christmases.  Trying to spend what they have to be appreciated, esteemed, loved. 

We have also the basic pleasure of getting.  And the pleasure of food and luxury.  I’ve already mentioned the pleasure of avoiding embarrassment, when others expect something of you.  So we spend things for the pleasure of not ignoring the expectations of others. 

Christmastime also holds the pleasures of memory, childhood, longings, nostalgia, escape, hopes.   All these can be fine, when they do not manipulate us into greedy action.

We spend what we have on many things.  We spend our money.  We spend our time.  We spend our energy.  We spend our attention.  We spend our relationships. 

We are in an age of consumers, an economy based on consuming more and more, a culture of shopping and acquiring. 

I just happened to read Huxley’s 1932 novel, Brave New World, a week ago. A utopian/dystopian story of the future, it describes a world that is completely organized around pleasure and consuming.  Infants and children undergo conditioning so that they will be consumers, through and through.  A Director in a city factory explains: ‘We condition the masses to hate the country… But simultaneously we condition them to love all country sports.  At the same time, we see to it that all country sports shall entail the use of elaborate apparatus.  So that they consume manufactured articles as well as transport.’ 

This novel took its title from a line in Shakespeare, O brave new world, with such people in it.  Our corner of the world today is filled with such people who love the Dollar Store, or Walmart, or good fashion, or technological gadgetry, or dining out. 

Is it possible that Jesus’ way, here and now, is different?  We may be aware of how often he spoke about riches and poverty.  His Kingdom is a life free from the rat-race, free from the kingdoms of this world: political & economic & social. 

In Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, after ‘the Lord’s Prayer,’ he taught: do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.

I believe there is Good news about spending less.  It is an option.  It is possible to spend less.  Spending less is of God and His Kingdom. Listen to this poetry of Isaiah 55.

Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters;

And you that have no money, come, buy and eat!

Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,

And your labor for that which does not satisfy?

Jesus taught things like this:  When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous. (Luke 14:12-13) 

Spending less benefits you.  We learn in our Faith that frugality is a spiritual practice.  In Proverbs 11 we can read, One man gives freely, yet gains even more; another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty. A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed.  (11:24, 25)

Spending less allows for more giving, more sacrifice.  When I use less money on myself, I can give more in ways that help. 

       Explore with the Lord how your expectations can be different.  Expectations about healthcare, for example.  We hold very tightly to this, don’t we.  Do you ever think about the justice of having thousands and thousands of dollars put into healthcare for us, for when we need it?  Meanwhile, many people on the planet have no such luxury.  No X-rays, no MRIs, no Cat-Scans.  No cancer treatment, no knee replacement surgery, no psycho-therapist at the ready.  Would we ever think of Canada making sacrifices in our healthcare, for the sake of the healthcare of other nations?  Might sound ridiculous to us; but I wonder if that would be the way of Jesus’ Kingdom.

Spending less benefits others.  We’ll think through this next week as we consider how to give more when we spend less.

Spending less also benefits the planet.  Just listen to the science of our day, and do your own thinking about this.  Some of us have watched the short video with David Suzuki called The Test Tube.  It’s a warning about how we people are using up this planet, and the end of this cycle is getting very close.  Spending less of this planet for our way of life sounds like an impossible challenge to me.  How can I change this?  But with God, all things are possible.

 As possible and good spending less would be, I wonder about how.  And perhaps one key is found here:  God gives grace to the humble.  That’s James 4:6 quoting Proverbs 3:34.  It makes sense that humility is one of the roots of spending less. 

Andrew Murray, in his classic book, Humility, says in the preface, the Christian life has suffered loss, because believers have not been distinctly guided to see that nothing is more natural and beautiful and blessed than to be nothing, so that God can be all in all.  It has not been made clear that it is not sin that humbles us most, but grace. 

The humility – to spend less – goes hand-in hand with the grace of God.  God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Better to consume more of the grace of God, than to spend everything we have on consuming things that don’t satisfy.  Dallas Willard says that the believer uses grace more than the sinner.  The believer consumes grace like a 747 uses jet-fuel on take-off!  Am I living, fueled by the grace of Jesus Christ?  I know my own stubbornness; I want to live my life happy and healthy, wealthy and wise.  But I try to get and keep these things my own way.  Pride is a hard master.

In the summer of 1986, two ships collided in the Black Sea off the coast of Russia. Hundreds of passengers died as they were hurled into the icy waters below. News of the disaster was further darkened when an investigation revealed the cause of the accident. It wasn't a technology problem like radar malfunction--or even thick fog. The cause was human stubbornness. Each captain was aware of the other ship's presence nearby. Both could have steered clear, but according to news reports, neither captain wanted to give way to the other. Each was too proud to yield first. By the time they came to their senses, it was too late.

For some, spending on Christmas can be like a ship, full steam ahead, with no change of course, no turning back.  It is the Living God who can warm the human heart, open the mind, and transform the soul.  It is God’s gracious work to bend the stubborn will and inspire humility in us.  How we spend our own lives changes as we appreciate how Jesus spent His whole life for us. He has paid the debt that matters most; we can be free.

And it is all because of divine love… for us.  James 4:5 is a verse in the Greek New Testament that is difficult to translate.  There are a few options.  I like the NRSV.  He yearns jealously for the spirit that He has made to dwell in us.  God longs for you so much!  Your spirit, your soul, you. 

Then, safe and secure with Christ, how we spend everything we have can be so new.  Thanks be to God!