Radicle Effect - Greed and Charity

My name is Greg Hampton, one of the pastors here.

If we've never met, I would love to meet you either after a service,

just don't leave without talking to me and we'll exchange information,

we'll get a coffee or fill out the connection card at the end,

the QR codes on your tables right now.

We're in this series called Radical Effect.

And the first writings about the seven deadly sins go all the way back to the year 375

when this Christian monk named Evagris Ponticus, that's the name, yeah?

If you were born and your parent named you Evagris,

you'd either be awesome or you'd go by like E.

So he's writing this letter as a monk about temptations that other monks might experience as monks.

And over the years that list got refined down to the seven things you've probably all heard of.

Pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, insuffinance.

In each of those sins, there's this kind of thing about them that they're fighting to be the primary root in your heart, yeah?

They're fighting to be what bears fruit in your lives.

We can choose something new.

We're in this series called Radical Effect because the radical is the first root that grows from a new seed.

Because the plant that is produced from that is called the effect.

And so there can be this new radical effect if we believe that Jesus really did take our sins on the cross,

all the sins of the world on the cross and bury it in the grave with him, then sin is not the root in our heart anymore.

Amen?

Something new is growing.

Something new can grow because of what Jesus has done.

And so for every sin, there is a virtue.

There's a new root.

On the other side, last week, Scott brought a message about pride and humility.

On the other side of pride is humility.

On the other side of greed is charity.

Now, there's more than one way to think about greed and charity.

It's easy to make it all about money.

Jesus said a lot about it.

In Matthew 5, 42, he said, Give to the one who begs from you and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.

He also said, Do not store up treasures for yourself in this life.

There you go.

Don't be greedy.

Don't try to be rich.

Help people in their need.

See you next week.

Right?

I mean, it can be that easy if it's what we're talking about.

But this isn't only about dollars and cents.

Instinctively, right now, you can probably think of at least one thing that is not money that you are extremely stingy about.

Greed is defined as an intense and selfish desire for something, especially wealth, food, or power.

It's an insatiable desire for material gain or social value, such as status or power.

Some of us are greedy about money, but some of us were greedy with our time, greedy with our trust, greedy with our favor.

We're greedy with our approval and affirmation.

We are greedy with our reputation.

So as we continue, as we look at the scriptures today, I want you to keep that in mind.

All right, we're going to open our scriptures to the Book of Luke.

If you don't have a Bible, they're actually on the table right there.

Feel free to open one of those.

The back kind of 30 percent of that Bible is what's called the New Testament.

We're going to be in Luke, it goes Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans.

So if you see any of those, you're in the right neighborhood.

OK, you're actually welcome to take one of these Bibles home if you don't have one.

Otherwise, check out a digital app store.

We're going to be in Luke 19.

And we have a tradition around here of giving the scriptures our full attention when we read them in the midst of a message.

And so you can do that any number of ways.

You're welcome to sit. But if you'd also like to stand with me, you're welcome to do that.

Luke 19, starting in verse one, says this.

He entered Jericho and was passing through it.

A man was there named Zacchaeus.

He was a chief tax collector and was rich.

He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd, he could not because he was short in stature.

So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him because he was going to pass that way.

When Jesus came to that place, he looked up and said, Zacchaeus, hurry and come down.

I must stay at your house today.

So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him.

All who saw it began to grumble and say, he has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.

Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, look, half my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor.

And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.

Then Jesus said to him, today's salvation has come to this house because he, too, is a son of Abraham.

For the son of man came to seek out and to save the lost.

Let's pray.

God of every tribe, every tongue, every color and every nation, we thank you for the scriptures that they have persisted throughout the millennia,

that we still have them to look at, to consider, to learn from.

And I pray that whatever you have for us to learn today, that it would stick, that it would become a part of the framework of our faith,

that our faith would become stronger, that we would become more like your son, Jesus.

Amen. Thanks, y'all. Can I have a seat?

This isn't my notes, but I just feel compelled. Zacchaeus was a wee little man, a wee little man was.

OK, sorry. All right. So there's an author that some of you might be familiar with named Brene Brown.

Brene Brown wrote, Our brains reward us with dopamine when we recognize and complete patterns.

I'll say it again. Our brains reward us with dopamine when we recognize and complete patterns.

She says stories are patterns.

The brain recognizes the familiar beginning, middle and end structure of a story and rewards us for clearing up the ambiguity.

Unfortunately, she says, we don't need to be accurate. Just certain.

In other words, our brain makes us feel good when we fill in the blanks, even if we are wrong.

So Zac was blank because blank was blank. Your brain instinctively wants to fill in those spaces,

but you may not actually have enough information to know what is true, but your brain will reward you whether you are correct or not.

I think there's at least four stories that are being told in the passage that we read.

There's the one that Zacchaeus had told himself.

There's a story that the crowd was telling.

There's the story that Jesus believed.

And then there's the story that comes together in the end.

I think Zacchaeus had a story that he told about himself that I think, well, let's say we all have a story that we tell about ourselves, don't we?

We all have a version that we look, we know ourselves in a way, we perceive ourselves in a way that maybe everyone else doesn't.

And his story, stay with me, I think he probably saw himself very differently than anyone else did.

I could see Zacchaeus thinking that he was doing his people a favor.

What do I mean?

He was a chief tax collector, but who are they really paying taxes to?

Caesar, Rome, right?

The Roman government, the powerful, the brutal.

Roman government.

And Rome didn't come to town and just pick people at random to be tax collectors, y'all.

They didn't go, hey, you look good with money.

You want to collect people's taxes?

No, you had to apply for this job.

You had to bid for this job.

And if you became a tax collector, if you were Jewish, collecting taxes from your Jewish brothers and sisters, you knew, you knew that your people were not going to like you for it.

Maybe he saw himself as a buffer.

Maybe he saw himself as a buffer between his people and their rulers.

Maybe he thought if I don't do this, someone else worse will.

It's possible, especially when you see him running ahead of a crowd to figure out exactly who this Jesus is.

It's possible that Zacchaeus had already seen himself as a man that loved God, that was taking a difficult job.

Maybe his story said, Zac is good because Zac is helping.

Zac is good because Zac is helping.

The crowd, they're clearly, they had a different story.

He's a sinner.

He's a crook.

They treated him like a thief.

Zac was bad because Zac was stealing.

Why did they think this?

Because tax collectors made their income from what?

From the taxes that they collected.

Now, we don't actually know.

We do not actually know that Zacchaeus was cheating his people beyond what he was supposed to get.

But it is likely that most, if not all the money he had, presumably had come from collecting taxes from his countrymen.

Because a tax collector had to add a fee so that they had a wage at all.

Think about it like this.

When you buy a car from a private owner, if you've ever done that, okay, you take your money and you give it to the private owner.

And then the state says you're still supposed to pay taxes on that purchase.

You all knew that, right?

Some of you all driving around illegally right now.

You found it on Facebook.

You went and you met them in a random parking lot, you drove around the parking lot a couple of times and you're like, all right, I'll buy you.

Give them the money.

You still have to pay the state taxes for that purchase.

And you can go to the DMV, show of hands who wants to go to the DMV by choice, okay, so that you can pay the taxes for the vehicle that you just bought.

But if you don't want to go directly to the government and stand in line for hours, you can go to a place called Mellon.

Mellon and Moline and they'll help you do the paperwork and it won't take as long.

And it's much smaller, a little bit cozier, a little more personal, but it will cost you more.

It will cost you more because they are a middleman that's adding a fee.

And that is what every tax collector was.

They were a middleman that added a fee for their own wages, for their own living.

And like a lot of middlemen services that we have these days, some tax collectors would get away with adding huge fees,

exorbitant fees that couldn't possibly be justified, but the people could not say no.

Like I said, from this passage, we don't actually know that Zacchaeus was cheating people.

We don't actually know if he added exorbitant fees.

We just know that he's made his living as a tax collector.

Maybe you've noticed, but I'm choosing to fill in the blanks about Zacchaeus a little differently.

The crowd had filled in the blanks of the story for themselves as well.

I actually think that part of Zacchaeus' response, why he was so generous at the end of the story,

I don't see it as just a response to the Lord.

I see it as him directing this at the crowd, trying to change the way they were telling the story about him.

Why do I think that?

Because if you read it again, he doesn't say he'll stop being a tax collector.

He doesn't say, guys, I'll quit my job.

I'll do something else.

What he does say is, I promise to pay back 400 times to anyone if I have defrauded them.

If you read between the lines, he's trying to say, guys, I think I'm a little bit more honest than you think I am.

Zacchaeus has a story for himself that Zac is good, because Zac is helping.

Crowd has a story, Zac is bad, because Zac is stealing.

And then there's the story that Jesus was telling.

His story is a little bit more like, Zac is accepted because I am charitable.

Zac is accepted because I am charitable.

The first definition of charitable is all about finances.

But the second definition says, when you are charitable, you are apt to judge others leniently or favorably.

The crowd had no charity left for Zacchaeus because they saw him as a thief.

But Jesus was charitable because he saw him as a son.

He saw him as a descendant of Abraham.

He saw him as belonging to the kingdom just as much as anybody else in that room.

There's actually research about how what you think about someone affects what they actually do.

You heard this? In 1968, there was a study done where teachers were told that certain students were the high achieving students.

But they weren't.

They weren't the best students on paper, but they were told, the teachers were told that those are the best students.

What they found was that the students the teachers had been told would excel and were smarter,

ended up excelling and being smarter and improving beyond their peers.

Why? Because the teachers believed they would.

They filled in the blanks with the assurance that these students were high achieving.

And so these students became high achieving.

And lo and behold, there is the way we fill in the blanks about other people does more than affect how we think of them.

It can impact what they actually do.

And so Jesus tells a different story about Zacchaeus, even just by going to his house.

Back then, going to someone's house for a meal was a sign of approval in a way that we don't think of today.

Right. If I go over to the Campbell's house, people are like, oh, you must be friends with them.

But back then, if you went to someone's house, it wasn't just going, oh, I'll be kind, I'll be nice.

I don't want to be rude and say no to your invitation.

It was a stamp of approval, a stamp of affirmation, and it was a sign that you were willing to share your reputation with that person.

Jesus is telling a different story from the moment he sees this guy.

And then what happens is that Zacchaeus lives up to the story that Jesus was telling.

Let me say this. Some people don't need your favors.

They need your favor. They don't need you to help them move.

They need your favor. They need your love.

They need your grace. They need your presence when it was not asked for.

My hope is that we will let the root of greediness that finds its way into all the things that aren't money,

that it will wither, that it will break away and that it will stay dead, and instead that we will water the radical virtue of charity,

especially towards people with stories that are stacked against them.

And so how do we practice this? How do we participate with any of this?

So last week, Scott asked us to ask people three questions, to think about their stories in the sense of pride is,

I'm just thinking and obsessed with myself, humility is thinking less about myself, maybe thinking about others more.

And so he said, here's three questions to ask people this week. How are you? How was your week? What was the highlight?

And today I also want to challenge us to three things.

The first thing is choose new words for someone's story. We all have someone that we've already filled in the blanks for.

And I think the Holy Spirit will bring someone to your mind that needs better words.

I literally want you to commit to asking God to bring to your mind someone that you have already told their story.

And to ask the Holy Spirit to help you put new words in that story that create more space for that person to grow.

Because you just might find out that that new story is true.

Because step two, put new words to a story, step two is be intentionally positive around that person.

In that 1968 research, the first thing the researchers noticed was that when teachers had higher expectations for particular students,

they created a better learning environment for those students.

I'm guessing that you've got someone that when they come around, you just get a little icy.

I'm asking you to just turn up the temperature a little bit.

And you might find out that they rise to the climate that you're creating.

And last, that research found that not only after they created or gave them a,

they were intentionally positive with them, but they were warmer around them.

That the researchers found that not only did the teachers do that, praise those students more than the other students,

but when those students made mistakes, and this is really important,

they found that when those students made mistakes or raised their hand and gave wrong answers,

that the teachers gave them better feedback and assistance.

Because their default was this is a high achieving student, all they answered something wrong, therefore, let me help them achieve.

We boil all this down like this. Being charitable is about more than money.

People need our kindness. They need us to believe the best about them.

Even when they make mistakes, they need us to tell a better story about them.

And then they need us to believe that better story, even when something bad happens.

Because after all, if a new radical effect can grow in me, then a new radical effect can grow in my neighbor.

And if your sins are forgiven, then so are theirs.

And maybe, maybe you can be the one to tell them that salvation has come to their house today.

And you look back in that story, when Jesus says salvation has come to this house today,

he's not talking about how Zacchaeus said something that got him into the kingdom.

He's saying that salvation, that Jesus came to that house today.

You can be the one that tells a better story about someone, even when they make mistakes,

and tell them that salvation has come to their house today.

Because they are just as much a child of God as us.

Amen? Let's pray.

God, I pray that you would root out anything that's left in us that just leans towards being greedy.

Especially greedy with our reputation, our approval, our favor.

I ask that your Holy Spirit would help us to fill in those blanks differently about people.

And I pray that each of us would just hear your Holy Spirit telling us the words that you put in that sentence about us.

Would you just hear that now?

Would you just open your heart and hear that God has better words for you, about you?

Beloved, child, welcomed, accepted, family, brave, courageous, strong,

worthy, deserving, mended and whole.

Give us your peace, Lord. In your name, amen.