Let’s begin this morning with a page and a half from Tom Wright.  This is a section discussing chapter 6 in his “Luke for Everyone” commentary.

The kingdom that Jesus preached and lived was all about a glorious, uproarious, absurd generosity. Think of the best thing you can do for the worst person, and go ahead and do it. Think of what you'd really like someone to do for you, and do it for them. Think of the people to whom you are tempted to be nasty, and lavish generosity on them instead. These instructions have a fresh, spring-like quality. They are all about new life bursting out energetically, like flowers growing through concrete and startling everyone with their color and vigor.

But are they possible? Well, yes and no. Jesus' point was not to provide his followers with a new rule-book, a list of dos and don'ts that you could tick off one by one, and sit back satisfied at the end of a successful moral day. The point was to inculcate, and illustrate, an attitude of heart, a lightness of spirit in the face of all that the world can throw at you. And at the center of it is the thing that motivates and gives color to the whole: you are to be like this because that's what God is like. God is generous to all people, generous (in the eyes of the stingy) to a fault: he provides good things for all to enjoy, the undeserving as well as the deserving. He is astonishingly merciful (anyone who knows their own heart truly, and still goes on experiencing God's grace and love, will agree with this); how can we, his forgiven children, be any less? Only when people discover that this is the sort of God they are dealing with will they have any chance of making this way of life their own.

In fact, this list of instructions is all about which God you believe in - and about the way of life that follows as a result. We must admit with shame that large sections of Christianity down the years seem to have known little or nothing of the God Jesus was talking about. Much that has called itself by the name of Jesus seems to have believed instead in a gloomy God, a penny-pinching God, a God whose only concern is to make life difficult, and salvation nearly impossible. But, by the same token, this passage gives the lie to the old idea (which was around in Jesus' day as well as our own) that all religions are really the same, that all gods are really variations on the same theme. This God is different. If you lived in a society where everyone believed in this God, there wouldn't be any violence. There wouldn't be any revenge. There wouldn't be any divisions of class or caste. Property and possessions wouldn't be nearly as important as making sure your neighbor was all right.

Imagine if even a few people around you took Jesus seriously and lived like that. Life would be exuberant, different, astonishing. People would stare.
And of course people did stare when Jesus did it himself. The reason why crowds gathered, as Luke told us earlier, was that power was flowing out of Jesus, and people were being healed. His whole life was one of exuberant generosity, giving all he'd got to give to everyone who needed it. He was speaking of what he knew: the extravagant love of his Father, and the call to live a lavish human life in response.
                                                                                      -Tom Wright-

Isn’t that a wonderful phrase; exuberant generosity.  Do you want to be exuberant with generosity?  What if when you were dead it said on your headstone, “He had exuberant generosity?”  Wouldn’t it be great if our congregation was known for its exuberant generosity? “You know that church of Christ they are really exuberantly generous.” That is the challenge of Jesus and the challenge of this sermon this morning.  How do we capture exuberant generosity?

This morning, as we work in Jesus’ sermon on the level place, we are going to discover five weird word pictures which can bring this exuberant generosity into our lives.  I am a firm believer that a real mental picture can transform who we are.  If you can get the picture, really buy into the image and incorporate it into your psyche, then that picture can change who you are!  Are you ready to be exuberant in generosity?  Are you ready to become that vigorous, energetic flower growing up through the rock?  Then imagine, really imagine, the following five weird word pictures. 

The Overflowing Basket
Are you ready for the first picture?  It is a little weird. But I want you to ingrain this word picture upon your cerebral cortex, or wherever it is you record weird word pictures? You are going to the store to buy bread. The store you are going to is not Smiths, where everything is prepackaged; one loaf of bread is the same as every other loft of bread.  No, you are living during Jesus’ day and you are going to buy grain to make bread.  Now, when you get to the grain store the owner meets you at the door and invites you in.  Here is where the mental picture gets weird.  The owner looks carefully at you and you feel he is sizing you up, he is determining something about you.  Then he disappears into the back and reappears with a huge basket.  Most grain baskets are this big (hold out hands) and yours is twice as big.  Then he hands you the basket and begins to put grain in it.  He fills the basket up and then tells you to shake it and then he puts some more grain in it.  Then he tells you to press it down and after packing it down he puts in some more grain and then you pick it up and you are holding it against your robe, you are wearing a robe, it is Jesus’ day, and then he pours on some more grain and it spills into the fold of your robe and stacks up in your folds.  You then waddle out of the store holding more grain than you ever expected.  The store owner has been exuberant in generosity to you.

Do you have that picture?  Is it burnt up here?  Does the old cranial CD burner have it burnt up here? Now listen to Jesus.

Luke 6:37-38  "Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.  Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."

It is easy to be hard.  It is easy to criticize others. It is easy to soup-line others and show how superior you are to other people. People are really rather stupid. It is pretty easy to point out every flaw, every mistake; to judge others as idiots.  It is easy to be hard.  People aren’t too bright and it is easy to point out their foolishness.  Am I right?  It is easy too be hard. 

But here is the exuberant generosity part.  The more gracious we are with others the more gracious God is with us. Graciousness covers others faults instead of pointing them out. Generosity forgives others instead of hammering them.  Exuberant in generosity is not constantly critical of everyone around them.  Are we listening? 

How big a basket you get is determined by how big a basket you use on others. “For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."

The blind Rock Climber
Are you ready for mental picture two?  You are blind.  Not mostly blind, but dark as the bottom of a cave blind.  Have you ever been in a cave and the lights go out; that blind.  Not only are you blind but you are rock climbing instructor.  Here is the weird part of this picture.  Someone enrolls in your rock climbing class.  And guess what? You both fall.  Isn’t that weird? Do you have it in the old ‘nogin?

Luke 6:39-40  He also told them this parable: "Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit?  A student is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher.

Without exuberant generosity you are blind.  If you do not have exuberant generosity you cannot lead another to God.  Remember what Paul said about love?  Without love you are nothing?  Without generosity you are a blind guide taking people rocking climbing.  Unless you are the flower growing from the rock you can only lead others to the pit. 

Planks and specks
Picture three.  You are a surgeon.  Haven’t you always wanted to be a doctor?  Here’s your chance.  You are a surgeon; an eye surgeon.  You are Dr. Stephen Coleman, the lasik eye surgeon in Albuquerque.  Here is where it gets weird again.  You have a stick stuck in your eye.  Not a twig, but a big stick stuck in your eye. You got poked in the eye with like a baseball bat size stick in your eye.  But you are going to do surgery anyway.  If the patient sees you coming, “No, thanks, doc I think I’ll keep my farsightedness.”   Hey, I didn’t make up these pictures.  Jesus did.

Luke 6:41-42  "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?  How can you say to your brother, 'Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,' when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.”

The very fact that you enjoy plucking sawdust out of others is the plank in your eye.  Do you enjoy pointing out flaws in others?  Seriously, do you take some kind of secret pleasure in pointing out what is wrong with others?  The very fact that you look for the mistakes in others eliminates you from being exuberantly generous.  This is what I mean when I say soup-lining others.  If you think it makes you better to point out others faults, then you are the eye surgeon with the baseball bat.

Good Trees and bad fruit
This is quickly becoming a sermon that is not very much fun.  I thought this was going to be a fun sermon about exuberant generosity, but instead it is pretty hard.  Jesus really wants us to be generous. So he keeps on showing us the importance of how we treat others.  Anyway here is the next picture it is still tough. 

Picture a beautiful tree. (Show dogwood) This is a tree in my dad’s yard.  What grows on beautiful trees?  Flowers and fruit.  That is who you want to be. 
 
Luke 6:43-45   "No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit.  Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thornbushes, or grapes from briers.  The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.

What comes out of your mouth?  Exuberant generosity or relentless criticism?  Good trees have good fruit.  Bad trees have thorns. The exuberant generosity that comes out of our mouths shows that we are good people.  The relentless hammering reflects a bad tree.  What kind of tree are you?

A House
One more picture.  It may be the scariest of all of them.  Let me just read it straight up from Jesus.

Luke 6:46-49  "Why do you call me, 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I say?  I will show you what he is like who comes to me and hears my words and puts them into practice.  He is like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid the foundation on rock. When a flood came, the torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well built.  But the one who hears my words and does not put them into practice is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction was complete."

Each of us is building a house.  By your life you are building a house.  Isn’t that a neat picture?  Each word you speak, each deed you do, each hateful act, each gracious gift, every criticism, every nag, every spiteful thing, every word of encouragement, shapes the structure of your house.  But the key point Jesus makes is where is your house grounded?  If you base your house upon doing/acting/living the words of Jesus you will have a strong house built upon the rock.  But if your foundation ignored the words of Jesus your house will be in trouble.

Let me be clear. What is the foundation of our life-house?  In context it is:
®Having a generous basket which overflows to others.
®Not being a blind rock climbing instructor but knowing the generosity of God.
®Not being an eye surgeon who loves to pick out saw dust in others.
®The good tree which brings forth lovely words of encouragement to others.
®Being exuberantly generous!

So, here is how it works.  When the storms come - and I did say when not if - when the storms come those who are exuberantly generous can stand because, both, others will be there for you and God will give you his measure of generosity.  You will have this gorgeous soundly built house on the rock.  But if you live the critic, the hateful, the negative, the hard life, when the storms come you are going to be hammered and no one will be there for you, not even God.  Exuberant generosity is how we get through the storms!

So, there are the five weird word pictures.  They are a challenge to live like Jesus, to be that flower in the rock, to live an exuberant, generous life!