The Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee



The Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year A, 2008, April 13, 2008, Church of the Good Shepherd Brentwood (morning)

“Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts…” (Acts 2:46).

Folks in Louisiana have the word “lagniappe” which means “a little bit extra”, something you didn’t pay for but which you get anyway. It comes gratis, for free, and people in Louisiana think that lagniappe is the thing that makes life worth living. It’s a little bit like the “baker’s dozen”, a more commonly used term, where you order a dozen donuts and end up getting thirteen. You get it whether you deserve it or not. They throw the thirteenth donut in for good measure, or (according to one theory) because it makes it easier to pack them in the box.

People in Louisiana may have a word for it, and folks who buy donuts may be the beneficiaries of the practice, but the notion of generosity goes a whole lot further than this. What would life without generosity look like? Pretty narrow and constricted, I think, without much margin: a little bit like air travel has become. I speak as a person with four flights booked on American Airlines this week; four flights that miraculously weren’t cancelled and which all arrived safely at their destination, thank God, though the last one an hour late. There’s not much margin there. The seats get narrower, and my backside gets larger, so constriction increases; but even on an airplane they occasionally offer you the whole can of soda. We can imagine a world without generosity, but even then it has a way of turning up.

It’s generosity, above all, that marks the Church. In Jesus’ day, people felt oppressed by forces beyond their control: political, economic, and natural ones that are not too different from the forces we contend with. The experience of Jesus’ resurrection convinced the early Christians that God was generous to them in the face of the narrowness and difficulty of the world; and that God was bringing into being a community that reflected his own generosity. The old life had been constricted by sin and death; it was narrow and pinched. The old life didn’t have much margin. But now God in Jesus Christ, was opening up the margins, making them wide, through his own generosity.

So Luke the Evangelist gives us this picture of the early Christian community in Jerusalem. It’s characterized by “glad and generous hearts”: generosity that is rooted in God’s own generosity to us. “They would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need” (Acts 2:42), action that is based on the belief that the margin is wide, and that life ought not to be constricted and narrow. Not simply “ought not to be”, but in fact is not narrow and constricted in light of God’s free gift to us of new life.

So what are you thankful for? That’s the foundation of gladness. What difference does it make in your life? That’s the root of generosity. We reach out to others in direct proportion to our own conviction of God’s generosity to us. Church of the Good Shepherd is a place where gladness and generosity are manifested; a community that is founded on and rooted in generosity and joy. We are called to be generous to our fellow members of the Church, and to those who are not yet a part of this fellowship. We have glad and generous hearts.

Generosity is a precious commodity right now in both the Church and the world; something that’s pretty scarce. Politically, we don’t cut each other much slack, questioning each other’s good will and motivation. Fear and suspicion remain powerful tools. These days, in some quarters, the same tools are hard at work in the Church, undermining the foundation and digging up the roots. Still, God has given us glad and generous hearts, hearts that come with a new life that is God’s own gift to us, the “little bit extra” that he throws in for free whether we deserve it or not and which makes life worth living.

The Rt. Reverend John Bauerschmidt, Bishop of Tennessee

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