"Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. Freely you received, freely give." Matthew 10:8. New American Standard.
Have you ever received something that was so anonymous that it gives you goose bumps when you think about it today?
About ten years ago, I was struggling big time. I probably couldn't tell that I was struggling as much as the people around me could tell that I was struggling. I was a mess.
My life rhythm looked like drink . . . sleep . . . drink . . . sleep . . . drink . . . work . . . sleep . . . drink.
And while I was at work I was living for the next drink. And while I was drinking I was living for the next sense of peace. And when I was sleeping, I was living for the hope that I wouldn't have to do it all over again.
I was miserable and I didn't even have a clue how miserable I really was.
And right in the middle of all this misery, a gift came. It came in the form of a bus ride.
I remember receiving a phone call from a friend asking me if I'd like to go to Colorado to be a volunteer at this Young Life camp. And my immediate thought was, "How the hell am I gonna pull this one off?"
And the voice on the other line said, "Don't worry. It's covered. All you've gotta do is show up to the bus station."
And so, after much deliberation (since I had so much to do), I decided to pack a suitcase and go off to Snow Wolf Park for a month. I rounded up as much tobacco as I could possibly afford, said goodbye to my family (and the alcohol), and jumped on a bus a couple mornings later.
That month in Colorado provided for me what I couldn't manage to provide for myself: a spiritual awakening. It's like my soul had been craving a reprieve from my dead-end life for months and I didn't even know it. And over the course of that month, I gave myself away to the mission at hand. I cleaned dishes, I swept driveways, and I did all sorts of things that took my mind off of myself. I didn't have time to think about drinking or the misery I would essentially walk back into when I got home.
For that month, someone gave me the gift of living outside of myself.
I still don't know who paid for that trip. But someone knew I needed it. They could read it all over me. They knew that getting me on a bus to Colorado may save my life.
While that trip didn't end up being the final straw for my drinking, it was one of many gifts that were given to me over the course of my drinking career. It was one instance of someone caring enough about the state of my existence to do something about it. It was one stepping stone on a pathway that would take years to find a destination. But it was a move forward in the right direction.
We're in the sixth part of the series of the "kingdom of heaven." In the intro, I proposed that when Jesus used this phrase, he was talking about experience a state of being that had to be found within. It couldn't be given by religion, the government, or any entity outside of one's self. He was talking about a "realm" of being that one could experience in this life, right here, and right now.
I also proposed that in chapter ten of Matthew, Jesus lays out to his audience what it looks like to enter into and to maintain this state of being. And in a nutshell, he says that it looks like helping the powerless, helping people to wake up out of spiritual zombie-ness, and breaking down the constraints that religion tends to place on the spiritual life so that others may feel included and invited into the journey.
And today, we're gonna talk about freely giving as we have freely received.
There's some things that Jesus says that, in my opinion, are black and white. And this is one of them. There's a lot more things that Jesus says that aren't black and white. They require digging. They require placing one's self in the shoes of a first century Jew who lives in the Roman Empire. They require looking up Greek and Hebrew words that have been lost in the English translation. But in today's verse, there's not much research necessary.
You've received freely, so freely give.
I told you the story earlier because one, it's one I remember, and two, it comes from a long line of stories just like that one. They're all about the anonymous gifts that I've received over the course of my life.
There's so many more but I would have to sit on this porch for a whole day in order to tell all of them, but I've gotta get to work in a little bit.
But the point I think Jesus is making is this one. If we are able to remember just one time that somebody gave something to us freely, it should be enough of a reminder that we're to do the same for somebody else.
And really, none of us are exempt from these free gifts. We've all gotten them. By default, we were born into this world with nothing except a sheer dependence on the mother who ushered us in. We didn't know how to create our own food, dress ourselves, change our own diapers, or get from one place to another. So every life experience that we learned from the get go was a free gift. All we had to do was . . . well . . . be.
But eventually we all grew out of the little worlds we experienced as babies. Eventually we developed a thing called self conscience. And eventually we started forming ideas in our heads about the way the world works. And we started seeing the world not through a lens of helplessness, but through a lens of self-preservation. We had to figure out how to make it in this world, and we learned that it wasn't easy.
And so, we jumped into the stream of life head first, knowing that if we didn't do certain things we wouldn't last long. And in some of those cases, we'd have to make hard decisions that affected other people in negative ways. And it was hard, but we knew we had to keep going even if it meant climbing over other people to get there.
And what I believe Jesus is saying to his audience in this passage is, "I know you've got a destination, but don't overlook the people around you. Freely give along the way because you were freely given in order to get where you are."
I believe Jesus's next proposal in his outline of "the kingdom of heaven" is to let distractions be a normal part of our routine. I know it sounds counterproductive, like we all have our daily planners out and we just know what we're supposed to do today. But look at the planner as just one of many plans. The planner is the plan of action we think we're gonna take, but most of the time does it really pan out the way it looks like on paper?
The "kingdom of heaven" moments happen between the ink. They happen in the white. They're not planned, they're not thought out, and they just happen.
They happen whether we want them to or not. And these are the moments where the dude comes up to you at work and needs to talk, and you know that you've got a million things to do today. And you have to face the question, Should I turn around and listen, or should I ignore him?
Or . . .
Should I roll down my window or should I keep looking straight? Should I answer this phone call or should I screen it? Should I respond to this email or should I delete it? Should I give her this money or should I keep it? Should I buy him some food or should I eat by myself?
Today, we're all gonna have little invitations to take part in things that require getting out of ourselves. And they're most likely gonna be distracting to our busy schedules. But these moments, if we're paying attention, may just be the moments that usher us into the reality that there's something much bigger going on here than what's on my computer screen.
May we all have our senses heightened today so that we can seize the kingdom distractions around us.
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