(HOST) Commentator Willem Lange has been thinking about the nature of generosity – and gifts that really matter.
(LANGE) I’ve listened to preaching all my life. I watched my father preach and wondered, What’s it for? Was anybody in the congregation getting it? It’s got to be a very hard job – like building a fire with wet wood. Most of us don’t hold a flame very long without constant fanning.
This time of year in Christian churches is called Advent: a time of preparation for the birth of the child Christians believe to be the Messiah. It’s also much misunderstood. Most of us think in terms of a manger, swaddling cloths, and shepherds. Advent isn’t meant to be as goo-goo as that. Rather, it’s a time for believers to get ready for an irruption – a breaking into our lives of a whole new way of living, of possibilities currently beyond our imagining.
Recently Mother and I heard a couple of sermons on this subject that focused on getting ready to live that new life.
Now, Mother’s always been much more easily inspired than I, which is one of the reasons I love her. I don’t know she’d go so far as to try to walk on water; but while I’m parsing a sermon and considering its personal and political implications, she’ll more often just holler, "Let’s go!" Most preachers would give a lot for a church full of people like her.
Advent coincides with the Christmas shopping season. Armed with lists, credit cards, and sharp elbows, the average American shopper will spend about $800 this year. The average shopper’s credit card debt has more than doubled in the past 12 years. Yet, like the proverbial lemmings, they plunge on.
We take pride in being Americans, though most of us were born to it, and few have done anything extraordinary to deserve that distinction. Yesterday, while we Americans spent billions on Christmas gifts for each other, 35,000 children died of starvation. Today, too; and tomorrow.
Every industrialized nation in the world but one provides health insurance for all its children; nine million American children are without it. We balk at what we’re told – inaccurately – will be the price. Meanwhile, we’re spending over half a million dollars a minute on the military in Afghanistan. That bill will easily top $2 trillion before we leave.
The new life that Advent attempts to prepare us for involves an awareness of the needs of others that has so far eluded many Americans. We read the message of John the Baptist: that everyone who has two coats must ("must," not "should") share with him who has none. Almost all of us here have two coats. And access to hundreds of charitable organizations.
There are hundreds right here in Vermont. They’re as close as your keyboard, and the motivation to help is even closer: right behind your ribs. Few of us can do much, but each of us can do something, and begin to live the Advent that can lead to a truly new understanding of our incredible potential.
This is Willem Lange in East Montpelier, and I gotta get back to work.