Turn On Delight
2 Corinthians 9:6-11
November 4, 2012
If you read the New York Times Magazine last weekend, you might have seen a story
about the people who live on an island called Ikaria. This is an island that’s part of Greece, in the
Aegean Sea about 30 miles off the coast of Turkey. And you know, the weather has been a little
gray around here this past week, so maybe it will lift our spirits to imagine what your life might
be like if you lived on Ikaria.
This Times piece wasn’t a travel article, though. The title was “The Enchanted Island of
Centenarians” – people who have reached 100 years old – and it tried to answer the question of
why so many Ikarians live really long and healthy lives. There are plenty of them – a couple who
have been married for 75 years, a woman who runs a guesthouse on the island, a 90-year-old
beekeeper. There’s dramatically less cardiovascular disease and depression and age-related
dementia than there is in America. The question, of course, is: What’s their secret? And can the
rest of us tap into that magic?
Well, they’re not shoveling snow, that’s for sure. It’s nice and warm there in Ikaria, a
place full of vineyards and olive groves. It’s naturally beautiful, with the mountains and the deep
blue sea. Then there’s the Mediterranean diet, mostly vegetables from the garden, legumes and
greens, and plenty of olive oil to lubricate the digestion and the circulation.
But what really got my fantasy life going was the description of how Ikarians typically
spend their days. One of the few doctors on the island said it like this: “People stay up late here.
We wake up late and always take naps. I don’t even open my office until 11 a.m. because no one
comes before then.” He took a sip of his wine and went on. “Have you noticed that no one wears
a watch here? No clock is working correctly. When you invite someone to lunch, they might
come at 10 a.m. or 6 p.m. We simply don’t care about the clock here.”
How would that work for you? I think it would drive me crazy. Then again, the odds are
against my living to be 100 years old.
But wait! There’s more. By nature the Ikarians are very social. The woman who runs the
guesthouse said, “At the end of the day, we don’t go home to sit on the couch. … We may not
have money for luxuries, but we will have food on the table and still have fun with family and
friends.”
And one last observation from the doctor, who pointed across the Aegean to the
neighboring island of Samos. “Just 15 kilometers over there is a completely different world,” he
said. “There they are much more developed. There are high-rises and resorts and homes worth a
million euros. In Samos, they care about money. Here, we don’t. For the many religious and
cultural holidays, people pool their money and buy food and wine. If there is money left over,
they give it to the poor. It’s not a ‘me’ place. It’s an ‘us’ place.”
So how would you like to live on the island of Ikaria? It seems like one version of
paradise, but for most of us it would take some attitude adjustment. Not knowing when your
dinner guests would show up. Not running your life as a contest between the to-do list and the
clock. Not plugged into the constant stream of information in which we live, but instead sitting
quietly with cheap wine and chewy bread and the people you’re closest to. A very different way
of living.
I bring up this island and its people because 2 Corinthians also gives us a vision of a very
different way of living, specifically an alternative way of thinking about money. The people of
Ikaria, who don’t have a lot, see money as a tool for creating community and living well. For
Paul, writing to the church in Corinth, money is a way to enter into the joyful and creative work
that God continues to do in the church and in God’s world. Paul hectors the Corinthians against
stinginess, and reminds them that when they share their resources in support of the work of
Christ, they need to be doing so not out of obligation, not even out of commitment necessarily,
but out of joy. Out of delight.
This is one place where it’s helpful to be working with different translations of the Bible.
The traditional translation of the Greek is, “God loves a cheerful giver.” Which is fine as far as it
goes. I know one church where, every Sunday at the offering time, the pastor tells a joke,
because, well, God loves a cheerful giver. Loosens people up, I guess. It would be interesting to
see a chart of how good the joke was versus how big the offering was.
But that idea of a cheerful giver, those words, gives the sense of grim obligation papered
over with a happy face. I don’t think that’s what God is after. God knows our hearts, after all;
God won’t be fooled by false cheer.
That’s why delight makes more sense to me. Because as Christians we are called to a
deep and wonderful joy – the joy of feeling ourselves an intimate and important part of God’s
work in the world. It’s not a grudging admission that we need to sacrifice time or money or
energy that deep down we’d really rather be spending elsewhere. It’s instead an affirmation that
yes, we’re here to serve God and honor Christ and do it all with delight. Delight, like a 3-yearold feels running through the lawn sprinkler on a hot summer day. Delight, like that first bite of
an ice cream sundae when the fudge is still nice and hot. Delight, like a hug from somebody you
love who has been away for a long time and is finally back in your arms.
Our Stewardship Committee is asking us to bring that sense of delight to our giving to
Amherst Community Church next year. I think we can do it! Because when I look at the bills in
my household – the gas bill, the electricity, the phone and cable and Internet and mortgage and
taxes – it’s only when I write a check that supports the work of Christ through this faith
community that I’m truly happy to do so. I grouse about the rest of those bills. The only place I
find delight in writing those checks is when they’re headed right here.
Fred Craddock tells a story, and I’ll close with this, about what we’re getting ourselves
into when we open ourselves to the kind of delight we’re talking about. “Years ago,” he says,
“our ancestors used to go out walking, usually on a Sunday afternoon – sometimes alone,
sometimes couples, sometimes the whole family – and they called it ‘going marveling.’
Marveling. They would look for unusual rocks, unusual wildflowers, shells, four-leafed clovers,
marvelous things. They would collect them, bring them back to the house, and show off the
marvelous things they had found. Isn’t that a delightful thing, to go marveling?
“When I was reminded of that, I went marveling myself. I left the house and went
marveling. About a mile away I came upon a pavilion, and inside I saw a lot of people singing,
praying and reading scripture, sharing their love for each other. They were vowing that they
would – they promised to each other, and they promised to God – make every effort, God help
them, to reproduce the life of Jesus in this place. And I marveled, how I marveled. And I said to
myself, Look what I have found, right here, in this little building.”
May it be so for us. Amen.