The Virtue of Receiving

At last Wednesday’s chapel service, I shared with folks a quip from the late comedian George Burns who said, “A good sermon always has a good beginning and a good ending, with as short a space as possible in between.”  I don’t know if a majority of my sermons would meet those requirements, but I do appreciate your willingness to lend an ear and a few minutes of your time as we explore what God would have us hear and heed.

Ruth Graham died at 87 years of age and was buried last month.  The beloved wife of evangelist Billy Graham was the daughter of Presbyterian missionaries in China.  Those closest to the family acknowledge that Ruth was the strength behind Billy. It fell to Ruth to raise the kids as Dr. Graham traveled six months out of each year.  Making peace with her role she said in a 2002 interview, “God really prepared me as a young girl for a lifetime of saying goodbyes.”  Later, she gave her daughter some advice, she said, “Make the most of all that comes, and the least of all that goes.”  A wise woman, Ruth Graham.

A footnote to her life, you might be interested to know that Ruth Graham was buried in a plain, unadorned, birch plywood casket.  The casket had a cross on top, modest brass handles on the sides, and it was lined with a simple fabric covering a foam mattress.  The total cost came to $215. 

As a footnote to the footnote, Mrs. Graham’s casket was made by Richard Liggett, a convicted murderer who served a life sentence in the Louisiana State Penitentiary.  Mr. Liggett who often made caskets for fellow prisoners, made the same for himself and was buried in one when he died earlier this year, one identical to Mrs. Graham’s.

Life is filled with ironies, isn’t it?  Sometimes we see them, and sometimes we don’t -- the wife of the world’s most famous evangelist, a model of faithfulness and integrity and spirituality, choosing to be buried in a $215 wooden box crafted by a murderer.    

I wonder if Mrs. Graham was trying to tell us something, something we often forget or fail to see altogether.  Maybe she was reminding us that at the heart of our humanness, we are connected to each other, dependent on each other, relying on each other for our own survival.    

Each of us may prefer to think of ourselves as his or her own boss.  We imagine that we shape our own future and determine our own destiny.  We are masters of our fate. We have the calendars and schedules and day-planners and palm phones to prove it. To a large extent, that is the case. We make choices, and based on those choices our lives unfold for good or ill.

And then something happens on the road of life, a road once called a long time ago the Jericho Road.  Minding our own business, just getting from one place to another, we get mugged – physically, psychologically, emotionally.  We get the wind knocked out of us.  We get the snot beat out of us.  We get bruised and bludgeoned, blind-sided and sucker punched.  So wounded that, if we don’t look like we’re dead on the outside, we certainly feel dead on the inside.

The thieves and thugs do a number on us.  The rogues and robbers come out of nowhere: The one you thought loved you, doesn’t anymore.  The mind, once sharp as a tack, has lost its point. You can’t believe what you just heard from the mouth of your mom or dad.  The checks are waiting to be written, but once again there’s no money in the account. Your birthday arrives with a “0” on the end of your age and you wonder if your life has amounted to anything, anything that anyone would remember.  By the world’s standard, by our own materialist culture’s standard, you have it all, but still feel like your lying on your face in a pool of your own blood on a road leading from Jerusalem to Jericho.  We enter a war so confidence, even cocky, thinking all will be well and the cause is just, and now we are anything but certain where and when it will end, or what victory will look like, or if we will in anyway come close to it.

Yes, the road from Jerusalem to Jericho is a sometimes dangerous journey, littered with the wounded and the weary.  Two of the three in Jesus’ tale failed to make any connection with the plight of the fallen victim.  One did, an unexpected hero, at least for the Jewish audience upon whose ears these words fell. 

A good Samaritan.  It had to be disturbing for a first century Jew to hear that a Samaritan could be good.   One would call a Samaritan a bastard, far more readily than called the same as good.  Imagine hearing a story of the good Al’Qaeda.

But the Samaritan does what the others did not.  He holds up God’s “plumb line” -- the one Amos talks about -- and does not pass by, does not ignore, does not go on his merry way.  He makes, in essence, a connection.

Most sermons, rightly so, focus on the good deeds of the Samaritan, encouraging and urging listeners to go and do likewise.  And well we should, for every major religion of the world, including our own, has as its central core that ethical imperative.  Our faith is nothing if not lived out in lifting others up.   We are well acquainted with the virtue of giving.

But I wonder about the virtue of receiving, the virtue of receiving help when we need it, the virtue of realizing that I am connected to others for my own survival.

I was reminded of this a few days ago, when I found myself in a traffic stand still in the northbound lane of US131 near 52nd Street.  The tie up was a mile long. Construction?  No. A collision?  No.  A vehicle pulling a flatbed trailer had stopped along the shoulder of the highway.  The driver and his passenger were in the middle of highway frantically collecting several dozen 14’-16’ boards, lumber that had come loose and fallen out of the backend of his trailer. 

Two lanes of northbound traffic stopped.  Hundreds of cars and trucks waited..  A mile of drivers halted their vehicles.  It occurred to me that the men gathering their scattered boards depended for their well being and safety on the collective patience and goodwill of strangers they didn’t know nor could ever thank. 

Anyone of us could have driven along the shoulder of the road, pressed the pedal to the medal and steered our vehicle toward both of those men, killing them instantly.  But no one did. And the two men pulling their boards off the highway trusted that no one would.

It was not kind of incident that made it into the Grand Rapids Press or was reported on the news.  That’s OK.  At that moment I felt something good about humanity, about my companions in all those idling vehicles.  All we did was wait.  Nobody shouted.  Nobody cursed.  Nobody fired a shot.  I don’t know if the two men grabbing their loose lumber realized it but there on the highway a connection was made. Strangers gave and strangers received.  Some experienced the virtue of giving; two men experienced the virtue of receiving. 

Sometimes it’s more difficult to receive than to give . . . To accept another’s patience with us. To take good advice when it comes. To let another do for me what I cannot do for myself.  To accept a compliment from out of the blue.  To hear constructive criticism when it arrives from a wise voice.  To let another show me the way.  To realize there are other shoulders to carry the weight. To know that there are sources other than my own to soothe a wound or heal a loss.

There is virtue in receiving.  That may not be the main point of Jesus’ story, but certainly it is one.  What is the crux and core of the biblical faith if not this?  We are first and foremost, receivers of God’s generosity.  From breath to breath, from birth to death, from cradle to grave and life beyond we know what it is to receive from God’s hand, to hear the words of life from Christ himself, to feel the Spirit’s presence in a community such as this that seeks to welcome all and closes its doors to no one. 

Maybe this week you will feel some new connections to people, either as the Good Samaritan or as one who receives from a Good Samaritan.  Don’t miss the opportunity.

And remember the words of the woman buried in the plywood box, “Make the most of all that comes, and the least of all that goes.”