Don Hoffman
donhoffman@w-link.net
Northwest Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
Seattle, Washington, USA

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Wonderful Life
November 21, 1999
Matthew 25:31-46

I always have the dickens of a time preaching about Thanksgiving.
What is there to say that is new and fresh and not the same old same old?
Fortunately, it just so happens that I was reading a book, and the
book mentioned a certain movie. If you read the title of the sermon, you
already may have guessed the title of the movie.

I'm tempted to say all of us have seen it, but I'll be cautious and
just say that nearly all of us have seen that movie. It is about a man,
George Bailey, who runs a Savings and Loan business in a small town.
And it has an apprentice angel, and a dirty rotten scoundrel, and a
love story, and lots of other neat things. Hold your memories of the
first time you viewed that movie, and start wondering, what can it teach
us about Thanksgiving? And we'll get back to it.

Now, among other things, the book I was reading asked, Where does
morality come from? The author's idea is that morality is programmed into
us genetically, and then by our culture. It begins with:--

PAY. " Pay" is the word I'm using to cover exchanging or trading. In
other words business. You give something to me, and immediately I give
something back. Of course, nobody thinks we have arrived at morality
yet. This is just crass commercialism. The next step, after PAY, is:--

PAY BACK. Pay back is almost the same as pay, but it is time-shifted.
You do something for me today, and I will feel an obligation to do
something for you next week or ten years from now.

Now I know the commercial interests want you to think they can
time-shift, too. So they say things like, "Nine months same as cash!" But
most of us have had the experience of going to the furniture store and
saying, "Will you give me a discount if I pay cash today?" They usually
say yes. Nine months is not the same as cash.

So conventional morality, the morality we inherited from our
ancestors over the last million years, is a time-shifted form of payback. If
you do something nice for me, I feel uncomfortable until I can repay
the favor. Notice the word is not "pay," but "repay." Or pay back.

And that explains why it is so hard to do favors for other people. It
makes them uncomfortable. Either they want to pay you back as soon as
possible, or just not receive the favor at all. Each of us has had
this feeling inside--if I can't repay the favor right now, I'm not sure
I want the favor. I'm uncomfortable being in debt. And the person
doing me the good deed probably doesn't want to be paid right now. That
would seem too commercial. Maybe they are thinking of building up a sort
of savings bank of good deeds they can cash in later. That's
conventional morality.

This is the lesson the audience gets when they watch the movie, _It's
a Wonderful Life_. If you do good things for your neighbors all your
life, someday, when you need them, all those favors will be repaid.
Conventional morality.

Now we're going forward to some _unconventional morality_. I'm going
to call this PAY FORWARD. (We've had PAY and PAY BACK and now PAY
FORWARD). The standard example of paying forward is the legend of the five
gallon gas can. We've all heard it--the family is stranded by the
roadside out of gas. Up drives a motorist who stops and takes a five
gallon can of gas out of his trunk and pours it into their tank. "No," he
says when they offer money. "I don't want to be paid. I'm doing this
because somebody helped me when I was out of gas years ago. I'm telling
you what she told me: now you need to carry a can of gas in your
trunk, so you can help another stranded motorist someday."

I suggest this is unconventional morality because your sense of debt
and obligation no longer goes back to the person who helped you, but
forward to another person you can help. That's why I'm calling it "PAY
FORWARD."

Now we've gone beyond the book I was reading, and we seem to have
gone beyond the movie, _It's a Wonderful Life_. We've gone from
commercial trading to conventional morality and then to unconventional
morality. We still haven't gotten to Christian morality, and we are still a
ways from finding Thanksgiving.

And I suspect the person doing the PAY FORWARD good deeds is also
building up a savings bank, but expecting that the reward will come from
God. Even if I don't let humans pay me back, God will notice, and
eventually reward me.

We've had PAY, which is just business. We've had PAY BACK, which is
conventional morality. We've had PAY FORWARD, which is unconventional
morality. Now we come to Thanksgiving Morality, and I'm going to call
it PAY ATTENTION.

Paying attention is to notice the needs around you and respond to
those needs without ever thinking, what is in it for me? or even, what
will eventually be in it for me? This is where the parable of the sheep
and the goats comes in. It seems that for these people their behavior
is unconscious. The sheep are doing good deeds without even noticing
that they are good deeds. They just do what they naturally do, no
thinking needed. They are certainly not toting up some kind of score. They
are not thinking about what is in it for them.

And I think, if there were a real George Bailey, this would be true
for him. He never thought that he was helping his neighbors so they
would help him some day. The payoff came as a surprise. He was too busy
paying attention to be either paying back or paying forward. So the
lesson to the audience may be conventional morality, but the lesson to
George Bailey is that this really is a wonderful life. Just the knowledge that
the awful things Clarence-the-wingless-angel showed him never really
happened is enough. Even before his neighbors dump their bushel
baskets of money in his lap, he is still celebrating his wonderful life.

And I'm going to call this Thanksgiving.

In commercialism you don't need to say "thank you." The service
charge is already added in.

In conventional morality, "Thank you" is what you say between the
time you receive the favor and the time you pay back.

In unconventional morality, "Thank you" is the act of paying forward,
building up a Christmas Club account with God.

In Thanksgiving morality, "Thank you" is the feeling you have when
you pay attention. When you see what the real world is like, and what
your place is in that world. When you remember the wonderful people who
helped you get to where you are, but whom you can never pay back. When
you open your eyes to the chariots of fire that surround you or the
angels (with or without wings) that stand by your side, whom you
couldn't pay for if you were as rich as Bill Gates. When you look into the
future and see the God of grace and joy waiting to give you gifts of
love, without ever asking if you've built up your bank of good deeds.

Of course, paying attention means that you see the real needs that also
surround you, and respond to them because you can't help sharing this
joy. You aren't doing it because of some debt or obligation that has
to be paid back. You aren't doing it because of some need to accumulate
a savings bank of good deeds. You are doing it because you see what a
wonderful life this is, and you want others to share that life.

You see, paying and paying back and even paying forward all have to do
with debt and obligation. We all know that "nine months, same as cash,"
implies a debt. We'll be in trouble with the law if we don't pay it off. We
all
know that a favor done for us is a debt. We are uncomfortable until we
pay it back. We all understand how doing good without reward might put
God in debt to us, and that God might want to pay us back. But
Thanksgiving treats debt as meaningless. There is no paying, or paying back,
or paying forward. There is only paying attention.

I can't get over the fact that George Bailey has reached Thanksgiving
before he discovers how he is going to pay off his huge debt. The debt still
hangs over his head, the threat of ruin, maybe even homelessness for
himself and his family. No matter! He is paying attention to the real world,
and he can't help but be thankful.

Thanksgiving ignores the debt, or at least treats the debt as meaningless.
Thanksgiving is going beyond debt. Thanksgiving is living in the awareness
that
this truly is a wonderful life.

It is a wonderful life, isn't it? Doesn't it make you want to run up
and down and cry out to the neighbors? Doesn't it make you want to
bless the signpost at the edge of town because it says "Seattle" instead
of "Boeing City" or "Microsoft Falls"? Doesn't it make you want to
find Someone-with-a-capital-"S" and say, "Thank You!"?

Thank You!

Don Hoffman
donhoffman@w-link.net
Northwest Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
Seattle, Washington, USA