Peter J. Gomes - "The Virtue of Waste" (April 1, 2001)
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| - | Let us pray. | 0:06 |
| Help us, Lord, to become masters of ourselves | 0:10 | |
| that we may become the servants of others. | 0:13 | |
| Take our hands and work through them. | 0:17 | |
| Take our minds and think through them. | 0:21 | |
| Take our lips and speak through them. | 0:25 | |
| And take our hearts and set them on fire. | 0:29 | |
| For Christ's sake, amen. | 0:34 | |
| My text is the fifth verse of this 12th chapter, | 0:43 | |
| the Gospel of John, which we have just heard. | 0:49 | |
| It is the big question, | 0:54 | |
| the big question of the gospel. | 0:57 | |
| And the big question of this sermon. | 1:00 | |
| Why was not this ointment sold for 300 pence | 1:04 | |
| and given to the poor? | 1:12 | |
| Why not? | 1:17 | |
| Why not, indeed. | 1:19 | |
| It is a very, very good, sensible, | 1:20 | |
| prudent, pragmatic question. | 1:24 | |
| And it would have been a sensible, prudent question | 1:28 | |
| no matter who asked it. | 1:32 | |
| Why was it not sold and the money given to the poor? | 1:35 | |
| Would this not be a Biblical precedent | 1:40 | |
| for compassionate conservatism? | 1:44 | |
| Making a profit and doing some good with it. | 1:47 | |
| Who in this congregation could dispute | 1:51 | |
| the soundness of that principle? | 1:54 | |
| Now you and I know something about this text, | 1:58 | |
| we know that we are not supposed to agree | 2:00 | |
| with this solution. | 2:04 | |
| It's been constructed so that we know | 2:06 | |
| we're not supposed to consider this | 2:08 | |
| as a useful solution to the problems of poverty. | 2:11 | |
| Consider the source. | 2:16 | |
| It comes from Judas Iscariot, | 2:18 | |
| the treasurer of the disciples. | 2:21 | |
| And if that isn't bad enough, | 2:24 | |
| the one who a few chapters later | 2:26 | |
| will indeed betray our Lord. | 2:29 | |
| He will do that also, as we remember, | 2:34 | |
| out of some economic consideration. | 2:37 | |
| So we know we're not supposed to like this solution | 2:41 | |
| as the students say, "Don't go there." | 2:44 | |
| But is it not a tempting place to linger? | 2:48 | |
| Because like Judas and the rest of our Lord's entourage | 2:54 | |
| at that dinner party in Bethany confess it. | 3:00 | |
| We are mildly disturbed and not a little bit titillated, | 3:05 | |
| but certainly disturbed by the scene | 3:10 | |
| Saint John paints for us here | 3:14 | |
| in the 12th chapter of his Gospel. | 3:17 | |
| Now what is disturbing and mildly titillating about it? | 3:21 | |
| Well, here we are, a mild domestic moment, | 3:27 | |
| a Kodak moment, if you will. | 3:31 | |
| Jesus is at supper with His dearest friends | 3:34 | |
| around the table in Bethany. | 3:39 | |
| Among His dearest friends is to be found | 3:42 | |
| none other than Lazarus, | 3:45 | |
| whom He had recently raised from the dead. | 3:48 | |
| Martha is busy doing what Martha always does, | 3:52 | |
| cumbered with much serving, catering, | 3:55 | |
| organizing, bossing everybody around. | 3:58 | |
| And Mary, her dreamy sister, of whom we have heard before. | 4:03 | |
| What about Mary? | 4:08 | |
| Sounds like the title of a very bad summer movie. | 4:11 | |
| (congregation laughing) | 4:14 | |
| Well Mary plays her part, the part we have to come | 4:17 | |
| to expect of her, the unusual, the unanticipated, | 4:22 | |
| that moment she takes a bottle of very expensive | 4:26 | |
| ointment of perfume, she pours it over the feet of the Lord, | 4:31 | |
| and if that isn't bad enough, | 4:37 | |
| she then washes it with her hair. | 4:39 | |
| Now you have to envision this. | 4:43 | |
| How do you suppose that she gets in a position | 4:45 | |
| to wash the feet with her hair? | 4:49 | |
| She has to get down on her hands and knees. | 4:52 | |
| A rather intimate and messy gesture all at once. | 4:56 | |
| The sort of thing that people at the kind of dinner parties | 5:01 | |
| that I go to at least, would be mildly embarrassed by | 5:03 | |
| and would pretend not to see. | 5:08 | |
| It was not happening. | 5:10 | |
| There is no woman on the floor | 5:14 | |
| (congregation laughing) | 5:16 | |
| pouring oil on Jesus's feet and wiping it with her hair, | 5:18 | |
| it is not happening. | 5:21 | |
| (congregation laughing) | 5:23 | |
| By any standard this is an extravagant gesture. | 5:26 | |
| An overblown gesture, an hysterical gesture you might say. | 5:31 | |
| "Waste," Judas called it. | 5:36 | |
| What good does it do? | 5:39 | |
| Well, the first good that it does is | 5:43 | |
| it gets our attention. | 5:47 | |
| We notice Mary. | 5:50 | |
| We notice what she is doing. | 5:53 | |
| We may pretend not to, we may be mildly disturbed by it, | 5:55 | |
| but she and it get our attention. | 5:59 | |
| As a woman, Mary was meant to be seen, | 6:04 | |
| and not very much, but not heard at all. | 6:08 | |
| And yet by this gesture consider what happens. | 6:12 | |
| She steals the scene. | 6:15 | |
| She steals the scene. | 6:18 | |
| She does the impossible thing, for example, | 6:20 | |
| of stealing the scene from her brother, Lazurus. | 6:22 | |
| Lazurus might have been the center of attention | 6:27 | |
| at this dinner party. | 6:29 | |
| How many times do you get to have dinner with a friend | 6:31 | |
| who has just been raised from the dead | 6:34 | |
| and with the guy who did it? | 6:38 | |
| (congregation laughing) | 6:40 | |
| But Mary managed to steal the scene | 6:43 | |
| even from so important and interesting a guest as Lazurus, | 6:46 | |
| she stole it from a dead man. | 6:52 | |
| And she steals the scene from Jesus. | 6:54 | |
| What do you do when you are trying to preach | 6:58 | |
| or trying to teach and some woman | 7:02 | |
| begins to wash your feet with her hair? | 7:05 | |
| Now some see here an economic parable. | 7:09 | |
| I understand that. | 7:13 | |
| But to me, it has the distinct odor of sex. | 7:14 | |
| Sex, I did say it, that's exactly what I said. | 7:21 | |
| (congregation laughing) | 7:24 | |
| You see Dean Willimon invites me here | 7:26 | |
| so that I can say the things he thinks about, | 7:27 | |
| but won't say. | 7:30 | |
| (congregation laughing) | 7:31 | |
| This is not about money, my friends, this is about sex. | 7:34 | |
| Think about it. | 7:38 | |
| Here is a form of sexual harassment, if you will. | 7:40 | |
| If Jesus were a Methodist minister, | 7:46 | |
| I suspect somebody would bring Him up on charges. | 7:49 | |
| Perhaps one of you, I can imagine any number of you | 7:53 | |
| considering what should be done here. | 7:57 | |
| You see when you combine sex, money, and religion, | 7:59 | |
| you have a recipe for trouble as we know | 8:04 | |
| only too well in religious America. | 8:07 | |
| So this a messy, untidy, extravagant, and suggestive scene. | 8:11 | |
| Something perhaps should be hidden from the children | 8:19 | |
| and certainly not included in holy scripture. | 8:23 | |
| But there it is. | 8:26 | |
| And why do you suppose it is there? | 8:28 | |
| Saint John tells us this story | 8:31 | |
| of the anointing at Bethany not to titillate us | 8:33 | |
| with second hand scandal mongering or inuendo. | 8:37 | |
| I think he wants us to consider what we might learn | 8:44 | |
| from the scene of compassion, | 8:49 | |
| the scene of comparison, | 8:52 | |
| and the scene of contrast. | 8:55 | |
| So like all good sermons, and most very bad ones, | 8:58 | |
| this one has three points. | 9:02 | |
| Which I think can be taken from our text. | 9:05 | |
| I have saved you all the trouble of trying | 9:08 | |
| to figure it out for yourselves, | 9:11 | |
| so you'd best listen to what I have to say very carefully. | 9:13 | |
| The first thing I think we are meant to | 9:18 | |
| take from this is this. | 9:21 | |
| Jesus wants us to understand | 9:24 | |
| the principle of the big gesture. | 9:27 | |
| Jesus wants to understand what it means | 9:31 | |
| to make an extravagant gesture when a prudent | 9:35 | |
| or a practical or a sensible one would do. | 9:40 | |
| This is a lesson about extravagant love. | 9:44 | |
| Demonstrative love, love overflowing, | 9:48 | |
| love seeping all over the place. | 9:51 | |
| What is waste to the eye of the disciples | 9:55 | |
| is generosity in the eyes of Jesus. | 9:59 | |
| And who are you going to follow? | 10:04 | |
| Judas or Jesus. | 10:06 | |
| Judas or Jesus. | 10:10 | |
| Now I know that question seems self-evident | 10:13 | |
| and quite easily answered, | 10:16 | |
| but I invite those you of a certain age | 10:17 | |
| to remember the famous routine when Jack Benny, | 10:20 | |
| notoriously stingy Jack Benny, was accosted by a robber | 10:23 | |
| who said to him, "Your money or your life." | 10:28 | |
| And there was a long pause and the robber told Jack Benny | 10:32 | |
| to hurry up and Jack Benny said, | 10:35 | |
| "I'm thinking, I'm thinking." | 10:37 | |
| (congregation laughing) | 10:39 | |
| Judas's position here makes sense by the way of the world. | 10:41 | |
| It is the responsible, the reasonable, | 10:46 | |
| the prudent, the methodical thing to do. | 10:49 | |
| If you had to choose between flowers on the table | 10:53 | |
| and food on the table, most of you would reasonably | 10:56 | |
| expected to choose food. | 11:00 | |
| And yet, Jesus in another place reminds us | 11:03 | |
| that we cannot live by bread alone. | 11:06 | |
| There is a time for prudence, | 11:11 | |
| but this is not that time. | 11:14 | |
| This is not that place. | 11:17 | |
| Jesus is against, what I'd like to call, stingy religion. | 11:20 | |
| Which means that He will judge most of us very harshly | 11:26 | |
| because most of us are inherently stingy. | 11:32 | |
| We hold on tightly to what we have, | 11:37 | |
| giving as little as possible | 11:42 | |
| of our substance and of ourselves. | 11:45 | |
| You know exactly what I mean. | 11:49 | |
| Why is it that religious people, Christian people, | 11:53 | |
| Protestant people, I won't go any further, | 11:58 | |
| always have such tight little smiles on their faces. | 12:01 | |
| Have you ever noticed? | 12:06 | |
| Just look around this congregation, tight little smiles. | 12:08 | |
| You can always tell Christians from Jews from Hindus | 12:13 | |
| from Muslims because Christians generally have | 12:17 | |
| tight little smiles. | 12:20 | |
| They don't want to give too much away. | 12:22 | |
| They don't want to be caught out, | 12:25 | |
| suppose they laugh at the wrong time and it isn't funny. | 12:27 | |
| Suppose they give their hand to the wrong person. | 12:30 | |
| Suppose they give their heart to the wrong idea. | 12:33 | |
| Suppose they're sitting in the wrong pew, | 12:36 | |
| in the wrong church at the right time. | 12:38 | |
| So you hold something back. | 12:41 | |
| Tight little smiles, clammy little handshakes. | 12:44 | |
| That is American Christianity every Sunday of the year. | 12:49 | |
| Surely not here in this most extravagant of all places, | 12:53 | |
| but trust me, everywhere else | 12:57 | |
| that is the way it is. | 12:59 | |
| (audience laughing) | ||
| So why is it that we look and act so gloomy? | 13:05 | |
| We are given what is called the gospel, the Good News, | 13:10 | |
| and most people think of it as an insurance policy | 13:14 | |
| upon which they will never collect. | 13:18 | |
| That tends to be the flavor of the gospel | 13:21 | |
| in most of our churches. | 13:24 | |
| If joy, for example, if true genuine joy were a crime, | 13:26 | |
| would there be enough to indict any of you here? | 13:31 | |
| No wonder when a little boy asked his mother | 13:36 | |
| what heaven was like, and she said it was like church, | 13:39 | |
| he said he didn't want to go there. | 13:45 | |
| (audience laughing) | 13:48 | |
| And why should he? | 13:49 | |
| I ask you to look to your right, look to your left, | 13:51 | |
| would you want to spend eternity with that person? | 13:54 | |
| Of course not. | 13:59 | |
| From all accounts, I haven't been there, | 14:02 | |
| but I've read the stories, from all accounts, | 14:04 | |
| heaven is a noisy, extravagant, untidy, wasteful place. | 14:06 | |
| Full of extravagance and generosity. | 14:14 | |
| Full of gestures of big, big, big love and affection. | 14:17 | |
| It is described as the big banquet. | 14:23 | |
| Not a stingy little coffee hour, | 14:26 | |
| but a big banquet. | 14:28 | |
| (audience laughing) | ||
| The great party, music all day and all night. | 14:31 | |
| Now that may disappoint some of the more | 14:37 | |
| anal compulsives among you. | 14:39 | |
| But then you'll be spending your time elsewhere anyway. | 14:42 | |
| (audience laughing) | 14:46 | |
| So our Lord here commends the big gesture. | 14:50 | |
| I think, for example, our Lord would approve of Duke Chapel. | 14:54 | |
| This is an extravagant, wasteful place. | 14:59 | |
| And I'm amazed that the sensible, practical | 15:05 | |
| Methodist instincts at the heart of Duke University | 15:09 | |
| would allow such an extravagant place | 15:13 | |
| in the middle of so practical a place. | 15:16 | |
| Think what you could do if you tore this place down, | 15:19 | |
| turned it in for cash, and helped the poor | 15:22 | |
| in Durham of whom there are so many. | 15:25 | |
| But thank God you didn't do that. | 15:27 | |
| You revel in this extravagant gesture | 15:31 | |
| because this is a sign of the extravagant love of God. | 15:34 | |
| This is not a monument to the wealth of the Dukes. | 15:41 | |
| This is a gesture of the extravagance of God | 15:45 | |
| and don't you ever forget it. | 15:49 | |
| So, Jesus commends the big picture. | 15:54 | |
| He would agree with that great theologian Mae West, | 15:58 | |
| "Too much of a good thing is terrific." | 16:02 | |
| (audience laughing) | 16:05 | |
| Would that we all then could find somebody. | 16:08 | |
| Would that we could all find somebody that we love so much | 16:12 | |
| that we would waste everything we have for that love. | 16:16 | |
| When was the last time you were extravagant | 16:21 | |
| with somebody you love? | 16:25 | |
| So extravagant that it fell over, rolled over, | 16:26 | |
| pressed down, running on the ground. | 16:30 | |
| Go on, be extravagant, be wasteful for Christ's sake! | 16:33 | |
| Be wasteful with what God has given you. | 16:38 | |
| Don't sit there counting your interest, madam, sir. | 16:44 | |
| Give it up! | 16:48 | |
| For Christ's sake. | 16:50 | |
| That's the first thing I think we're to remember. | 16:52 | |
| The second thing is | 16:54 | |
| (audience laughing) | 16:56 | |
| This story is not just about waste, | 16:58 | |
| despite the title of my sermon. | 17:01 | |
| Nor is it just about extravagance. | 17:03 | |
| Nor is it just merely about the big picture. | 17:05 | |
| Jesus tells us that we should remember Mary's extravagance | 17:09 | |
| because she had done the right thing. | 17:15 | |
| She knew the priority of the moment. | 17:19 | |
| We remember Mary because she remembered what Jesus needed. | 17:23 | |
| She, as the old hymn used to say, | 17:30 | |
| she gave of her best to the Master. | 17:33 | |
| Now think about it. | 17:37 | |
| Jesus is the go-to guy for all the things we want, | 17:38 | |
| it is Jesus's job to give, give, | 17:42 | |
| give, give, give, give, give. | 17:44 | |
| Where in the gospel is it that we see | 17:46 | |
| anybody giving Jesus anything? | 17:49 | |
| There are the wise men who gave Him gifts at His birth. | 17:53 | |
| There is Mary who gives Him this extravagant gesture | 17:57 | |
| on the way to the cross. | 18:02 | |
| And there are those people who offer Him | 18:05 | |
| in mock compassion the cup of water | 18:08 | |
| and the vinegar on the cross. | 18:12 | |
| Jesus appreciates Mary and therefore commends her to us | 18:15 | |
| because she gives it all up for Him. | 18:21 | |
| She gives Him everything that she has. | 18:26 | |
| She risks everything by giving everything | 18:30 | |
| and she does that because she knows | 18:34 | |
| it is a precious, vital moment that will not endure forever. | 18:37 | |
| Jesus says as much. | 18:43 | |
| "The poor you will always have with you. | 18:45 | |
| "You will always have opportunity to do good for the poor | 18:48 | |
| "because the poor will always be here | 18:52 | |
| "to have good done for them." | 18:55 | |
| So don't use that as an excuse here. | 18:57 | |
| The poor will always need our help, | 19:00 | |
| but Jesus, in this case, His time on earth is short, | 19:02 | |
| Mary by her gesture recognizes that. | 19:07 | |
| She knows that unlike the poor, | 19:11 | |
| she will not always have Jesus sitting at her table. | 19:14 | |
| This is a sign of His coming death. | 19:20 | |
| Anointing is what you do to people who are about to die. | 19:23 | |
| You prepare them for the long journey. | 19:27 | |
| And of all the people in that room, | 19:30 | |
| of all the people at that dinner party, | 19:33 | |
| Mary alone seems to be the only one | 19:36 | |
| who understands that Jesus is on His way to His death. | 19:40 | |
| And He appreciates that. | 19:46 | |
| I've learned something in my ministry | 19:50 | |
| of Mary's special role in dealing with the dying. | 19:52 | |
| First, like friends and families, | 19:58 | |
| I tried to minimize and to maintain the culture of denial | 20:02 | |
| when we are standing at death's door with a friend. | 20:09 | |
| You'll be okay, you'll get through this thing, | 20:13 | |
| we'll beat this thing. | 20:17 | |
| But sometimes the best thing you can do | 20:19 | |
| for the one who is to die is to acknowledge that, | 20:22 | |
| not deny that fact. | 20:27 | |
| I attended many years ago a dying friend, | 20:30 | |
| my closest friend, who while not a believer, | 20:33 | |
| said to me, "If I am going to die, I want to know. | 20:36 | |
| "Otherwise I won't know how to behave." | 20:42 | |
| And it fell to me as his friend to tell him the truth. | 20:46 | |
| To tell him the truth that his family | 20:50 | |
| and his doctors could not bear to share with him. | 20:52 | |
| And he thanked me for that service. | 20:55 | |
| And the time that we shared as the end drew near | 21:01 | |
| was all the more precious because he knew, I knew, | 21:06 | |
| he knew I knew he was dying. | 21:12 | |
| That is what is going on in this story. | 21:17 | |
| Learn and listen carefully. | 21:21 | |
| And that is why we read this lesson on the fifth Sunday | 21:24 | |
| in Lent, with Good Friday nearer now than ever before. | 21:27 | |
| Mary got it right. | 21:32 | |
| She understood how precious and how few | 21:35 | |
| are the days left remaining to Jesus. | 21:41 | |
| She understood that, she got it right. | 21:46 | |
| And that is why our Lord commends her to us. | 21:50 | |
| Well the third thing we're meant to learn from this, | 21:55 | |
| I think, is a slight twist on the story. | 21:58 | |
| Sure, Mary is the big deal here, | 22:02 | |
| I don't want to take anything away from Mary. | 22:05 | |
| And Judas has the big part of the villain, | 22:08 | |
| let us not take any part from him as well. | 22:11 | |
| Her extravagant, extraordinary gesture, | 22:15 | |
| the waste as it were, is our subject, | 22:19 | |
| really first and really finally and fully. | 22:22 | |
| But, like all of the gospel, | 22:26 | |
| this is about what Jesus does. | 22:30 | |
| And what does He do here in the story? | 22:35 | |
| He teaches us how to be generous receivers. | 22:39 | |
| Generous receivers. | 22:46 | |
| You all are exhorted all of your life | 22:49 | |
| by the likes of me and Dean Willimon and otherwise | 22:52 | |
| to be generous givers. | 22:54 | |
| We're always telling you to give this | 22:55 | |
| and give that and give some more. | 22:57 | |
| And that's the easy part for most of you | 22:59 | |
| because most of you have more than you deserve | 23:02 | |
| and you can certainly part with what you've got. | 23:04 | |
| The great question for Christians is, | 23:08 | |
| how to be generous receivers | 23:10 | |
| of what it is God means to give us. | 23:15 | |
| Jesus models that behavior in this story. | 23:20 | |
| He accepts her gesture. | 23:23 | |
| He accepts what she has to offer. | 23:26 | |
| He accepts the giver and He accepts the gift. | 23:29 | |
| And that is what it is all about. | 23:35 | |
| When I was a very young man I took a job | 23:41 | |
| teaching at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. | 23:44 | |
| I had been recently ordained and I had come from | 23:48 | |
| Harvard Divinity School to offer all of my talents | 23:51 | |
| to the poor benighted people of the South. | 23:54 | |
| How fortunate they were to have me in their midst. | 23:57 | |
| And I would go out into the little country churches | 24:02 | |
| around Tuskegee in the afternoon, | 24:05 | |
| supply preaching in these tiny, little | 24:07 | |
| Black Baptist tabernacles tucked into | 24:11 | |
| the clay of Macon County, Alabama. | 24:14 | |
| And one particular Sunday after I had given | 24:19 | |
| the best that I could, they did this thing | 24:21 | |
| which I had never seen before, certainly not in the North, | 24:23 | |
| they took up a love offering. | 24:25 | |
| They went among the people, maybe 40 or 50 of them, | 24:28 | |
| and they put their change and their dollar bills | 24:31 | |
| and whatnot into the plate. | 24:34 | |
| And then in this most unseemly display, | 24:37 | |
| which I later discovered is quite normal, | 24:40 | |
| they counted it right there on the communion table. | 24:42 | |
| They stacked up the nickels and the dimes and the quarters. | 24:45 | |
| They rolled the pennies and they put the bills | 24:48 | |
| into a package and they put it all together | 24:51 | |
| and they gave it to me as the visiting preacher. | 24:53 | |
| And I refused it. | 24:59 | |
| I said, oh, no, no, no, no. | 25:01 | |
| This is such a poor congregation, | 25:03 | |
| such a small church, it's my gift to you. | 25:05 | |
| Let me give to you, you can't give to me, | 25:07 | |
| and I refused their gift. | 25:10 | |
| And I went back so full of the Holy Spirit | 25:13 | |
| and pleased with myself and I told | 25:15 | |
| a wonderful, old lady at Tuskegee, Hattie Mae West Kelly, | 25:17 | |
| of the experience and what I had done | 25:21 | |
| and I expected her to thank me and praise me | 25:23 | |
| for my act of forbearance and charity. | 25:26 | |
| And she said, "Young man, you have a lot to learn." | 25:29 | |
| I sat back a little bit and she said, "And one of them is, | 25:34 | |
| "you must learn to be a generous receiver. | 25:37 | |
| "They gave you not just money, but themselves. | 25:43 | |
| "And in refusing the money, you refused them. | 25:48 | |
| "You must learn how to be a generous receiver." | 25:54 | |
| That perhaps is the most important lesson | 26:02 | |
| in this gospel narrative today. | 26:05 | |
| That Jesus was a generous recipient of this extraordinary | 26:09 | |
| and unsolicited gesture on the part of this woman, Mary. | 26:15 | |
| It's a parable for us all. | 26:23 | |
| Not long after Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed, | 26:27 | |
| we held a memorial service in the chapel at Harvard | 26:32 | |
| and were privileged to have his father, | 26:37 | |
| Martin Luther King, Sr., preach on the occasion. | 26:40 | |
| You can imagine the emotional energy on that occasion. | 26:43 | |
| And as old Daddy King rose in the pulpit | 26:47 | |
| of the university church, hundreds and hundreds of people | 26:49 | |
| stood on their feet and gave | 26:53 | |
| this incredible standing ovation. | 26:55 | |
| Daddy King kept trying to calm the crowd | 26:59 | |
| and the more he tried to calm them, | 27:02 | |
| the more this applause came forward | 27:04 | |
| and finally he managed to get a word in edgewise | 27:08 | |
| and this is what he said. | 27:13 | |
| "I don't deserve it, but I can't refuse it. | 27:16 | |
| "I know this applause is not for me, it is for my boy. | 27:22 | |
| "But I can't refuse it. | 27:27 | |
| "I don't deserve it, but I can't refuse it." | 27:30 | |
| For us it is the lesson to learn how to receive | 27:35 | |
| what it is that God so generously, so graciously, | 27:39 | |
| so lavishly, so extravagantly, gives us. | 27:43 | |
| And our message is, don't waste the gift of His love. | 27:49 | |
| For He does not regard it as waste | 27:55 | |
| who pours it upon us so abundantly. | 27:58 | |
| He who gave Himself a ransom for us. | 28:02 | |
| His life for our lives. | 28:08 | |
| Learn to be generous receivers. | 28:12 | |
| We don't deserve it. | 28:17 | |
| But we can't refuse it. | 28:21 | |
| Let us pray. | 28:26 | |
| Oh, God who has prepared for them that love Thee | 28:33 | |
| such good things as pass our understanding, | 28:36 | |
| pour into our hearts such love towards Thee that we, | 28:41 | |
| loving Thee above all things, may obtain Thy promises, | 28:46 | |
| which exceed all that we can imagine or desire. | 28:51 | |
| Through Jesus Christ, our Lord, amen. | 28:57 | |
| (light instrumental music) | 29:05 |