Give what you wish to receive
Clare L. Hickman
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Ferndale
May 7, 2023—Easter 5A
Acts 7:55-60; 1 Peter 2:2-10; John 14:1-14
Do not let your hearts be troubled. Because the Bible assures us that it is God’s good pleasure to give his children all that they could possibly want and need in this world, and all you have to do is reach out and claim it. You just have to ask; that’s what Jesus says! “If you ask me for anything … I will do it.”
Name it. Claim it. It’s right there in the gospel!
I have to admit: because of the way that passage is often understood (as in, I will give you wealth, or I will answer all of your prayers), it’s always felt like a non-sequitur to me: Here the disciples were talking about who Jesus is, the works that he does, and how we can follow him … and then, out of nowhere, this whole vending machine idea gets tacked on the end!
But what if it’s not a change in subject? What if the thing Jesus is promising to give us, if we ask, is actually the ability to follow him? What if it’s nothing more nor less than the ability to do these works that he has done?
Healing the sick. Casting out evil. Feeding the hungry. Raising the dead. Forgiving sins. All these and more: signs and wonders that have demonstrated WHO Jesus is, and what his kingdom looks like. These are the gifts and powers he promises to give us, IF we ask for them.
At first blush, that might seem a disappointing turn. When you’d been crafting your three wishes, figuring out the wording that will bring the maximum health, wealth and happiness for yourself and your loved ones, it suddenly seems Jesus has a very different gift in mind for us. It might well be prosperity, but it’s a very different kind of prosperity!
Mary Karr, author of The Patron Saint of Liars, reframes the central tenet of what is called the Prosperity Gospel, in which you send money to the preacher in expectation that God will grant you riches in return. She describes something far more consonant with what Jesus really promises here, suggesting that “Whatever you want, emotionally, you have to start giving away.”[1] Which is to say, that if you act in a life-giving way in this world, you will inspire and multiply life-giving behavior.
It will come back to you. But more than that, it will come to people around you. Because that, in essence, is the great wisdom of Jesus: if you wish to prosper and be happy, then the very best thing you can do, is to help others prosper and be happy.
This, then, is how I would word the promise Jesus makes in today’s gospel: If you ask for the capacity to make life better for other people, I will give it to you. I will give you whatever you need—whether it’s patience, unselfishness, imagination, or graciousness—to do this hard thing. And this will not just mean that you’re an excellent person and a “good Christian” … it will also make you a happier, healthier person.
Making someone happy will make you happier. Helping someone else be more secure in this world, will make you recognize your own security. Giving of yourself, will make you feel more whole.
If it doesn’t, that’s a good sign that your efforts are going in the wrong direction. You might be pouring energy into an unfillable hole, a narcissistic personality, someone who doesn’t truly have the desire or capacity to function in a healthy relationship. There are those people in this world, and we do indeed need to recognize and acknowledge that pouring good energy into an unhealthy relationship does not always produce a good return.
Sometimes, the only way to make life better for another person is to stop focusing your attention on them, stop pouring your energies into them, and simply act in honest, life-giving ways, letting that example be the healing power in the system.
Either way, the gift that Jesus promises to give us, if we are brave and foolish and hopeful enough to ask him for it, is the ability to love each other. To love, not just when it is easy and comes naturally, but to keep loving even when it is hard.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. About what it means to love when it would be far easier to stop loving. To love when you WISH you could just stop loving. In a marriage, for instance, when something has been said … or done … that feels as though it could be (should be?) a fatal blow. And part of what makes it feel so earth-shattering is that you know you can’t just walk away from this pain, this disillusionment, this sheer awfulness. Whatever has happened feels unbearable, and yet … you know you have to bear it. Because you cannot walk away. You aren’t going to walk away.
Because you made vows to stay, in better and worse.
Because you (in fact) love them (as much as you maybe wish that you didn’t right now, because that’s what makes it hurt even worse).
But you too do awful, terrible, unforgiveable things sometimes. And so … you want to be fair. And even more than that, you (desperately) want to know that such things are, in fact, forgiveable. That YOU, in fact, are forgiveable.
And so you stay in the place of pain. You cannot walk away, because there is so much more to lose. You want the love that Jesus promises, the love that only comes from our own fierce love for and service to and forgiveness of each other.
And so you stay, trusting in the prosperity gospel according to Mary Karr (and, I believe, Jesus): that you need to put those things out into the world that you want to receive. Just as it says in the prayer Jesus taught us to pray: our sins will be forgiven, in the same way that we forgive those who sin against us.
He will give us the power to do it, if we ask it of him. The power to make life better for other people: to heal them and feed them, to clothe and comfort them, to release them from one or more of the things that hold them in captivity. And to love them, even when it is exceedingly hard to love them.
This, in its turn, will make our lives better. Filling us and making us whole. Bringing us into a place of deeper and stronger love, in a deeper and stronger world.
This is the promise. This is the gift. These are the three wishes that Jesus longs for us to make, so that he can pour his power into us and lead us into the kingdom. May it be so. Amen.
[1] Mary Karr, Lit: A Memoir (Harper Perennial, 2009), 381