I love this time of year. I sometimes fantasize about being a professional sports’ general manager in my next life. I think it would be fun, drafting and trading, managing the salary cap, arguing with the owner, doing what you love, being criticized by people who know less than you do about what you are doing but think they know better than you just because they sit in the pews—er, I mean, bleachers. Well, I guess I’ll stick to being a pastor, where there is only slightly less job security but so much more job satisfaction, don’t you know?!

So, the Mavericks still can’t get a true center, and all their trades are deemed to be rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Never mind all but three teams in the NBA are in the same lifeboat. The Rangers have resisted the temptation to give away the farm—literally and figuratively—in order to win now. They need starting pitching at the major league level, like all but about three teams in baseball that are in that same dugout. And then there’s the Cowboys. Some things ought not be spoken of in church.

Anyway, what’s fun for the fans and worrisome for the teams is the question of whether they are making fair trades, whether they are getting the best of the deals, or at least whether they are getting good value for their efforts. Sometimes it takes a few years to figure out. But this is not just a sports question. We worry about things like this in business every day, too. Is the stock price trading at a fair value? Are workers getting their fair share of the profits or are the top executives pocketing too much and exploiting the little people? Are union workers making so much compared to labor overseas that companies cannot compete globally without outsourcing to India?

There’s a cottage industry just in the coffee-growing world called “fair trade coffee.” If you commit to buying fair trade coffee, the theory is that the growers themselves will receive a fairer price for their product than the market price—usually 5-15 cents over market. By cutting out some of the middlemen in the process, the poorest people in the process will have some chance to step up toward prosperity themselves. Loan guarantees and corruption preventions allow them to participate in the success their product brings, instead of all that going to big importing companies in developed countries.

How is this all spiritually relevant to us sitting here today? We—even those of us who have dropped everything into the watery grave of Christian baptism—are all too often still preoccupied daily with wealth and possessions and whether we are moving up or moving down compared to others. We are dulled and deadened by it, failing to enjoy the life God wants to give us. Economics dominate our daily view of the world, whether we can define the term or not. We vote by our purses more than our principles; or scarier still, our purses are our principles. Which is why Jesus can be so scary.

Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. Now, most of us haven’t made our own purses or wallets since we were in Indian Princesses or Indian Guides. But really, every day we check our bank balances to see whether we feel more secure or less, we are making purses. Every day we allow our self worth to be determined by our net worth, we are making purses of failing treasure on earth. Every day we run to the business section to check our stock prices before we run to the Bible to check the value of our eternal souls, we are making purses that will wear out. We are proving where our hearts really are.

But congratulations to you for being here today, despite the fact that you expect to hear the truth that is often painful in order to be helpful. You come to church to hear the hard gospel that leads to the good life. But if you think the church ought only be here to tell you things that make you feel better about the way you are living, why should we exist at all, since Madison Avenue and Drug Emporium do that better than we in their own ineffective ways?

Jesus offers us good news that sounds like bad to begin with. He diagnoses us with an addiction to things. The cure requires certain deeds that will modify our behavior, but he also goes beyond deeds to the attitude that gives rise to them. Let’s start where he does with the attitude.

Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Now, Jesus mixes metaphors here about sheep and kingdoms, but we get the idea. When we are acting like sheep that are always worried about our next meal, about whether there will be grass on the other side of the hill, we become fearful and start to bleat. We complain about not having enough. We see the world as if resources are finite and survival depends upon the fitter competing against the fatter, the macho against the meek.

Fear makes us do things we would not do under ordinary circumstances. When a skunk is afraid, he sends out his stinky scent. When a squid is threatened, the ink flows. When a porcupine is worried, the quills get prickly. And when a human is backed into corner, it’s fight or flight. Ever take one of those personality tests? Some of them give you two takes on yourself: the way you tend to function under normal stress and the way you do under high stress. The latter is always less attractive.

Jesus tells us that fear is at the heart of our worldly addiction to things. Some of you grew up in the Great Depression. You can’t throw out anything. My grandmother had a house full of things she claimed she might need some day. She had an unusable screened-in porch and a playroom in her house piled high with boxes. She had a basement, and attic, and three sheds in the back yard full of stuff she had accumulated. Shelves from floor to ceiling. Boxes with magic marker describing what might be in them. Her illusive dream of security turned into a nightmare for my father after she went into the nursing home. He’s not quite as bad, but … well, he is his mother’s son and I hope he doesn’t go into a nursing home any time soon. And then there are some of you younger folk who can’t hold on to anything. You have to keep getting the newest and the best thing on the market, whether houses or cars or gadgets or clothes, no matter how much debt it puts you in. You think your value is determined not by what you save but by what you buy. And both of you—savers and buyers alike—are equally possessed by your possessions.

What if you could let go of the fear of not having enough or not having the right things? What if you knew you had a Sugar Daddy always eager to give you what you need? What if you really trusted God that you would always have what you absolutely need, even if you might not have all the things you want? How would that change things for you?

My friend, Kenny Wood, had a favorite uncle who would come to visit. The first thing they would do when his uncle saw Kenny was to settle up. They would both take out all the money from their pockets and wallets and lay it on the table. Then they’d count it up and split it right down the middle. There, said the older man, now we’re even. Now, that sounds like a pretty good deal, doesn’t it? If you are the little boy. It’s more than a fair trade; it’s a generous one. You get the better of it. But what if God’s good pleasure is like Kenny’s uncle’s: to give you what you need and have you licking your chops at the thought of how lucky you are? What if God thinks God gets a kick out of that deal, too?

Most of us don’t experience the joy of that with God because we aren’t willing to empty our pockets at all. We are too busy holding and conserving and competing and measuring and judging and sorting and counting and consuming and taking and accumulating and protecting and worrying. We never put ourselves in the position of knowing what it feels like to be surprised by God’s gifts of joy because we don’t open our clenched fists to receive.

One strategy for getting into that position is to do as Jesus says: Sell your possessions, and give alms. Let me just point out, before you break out in hives, Jesus did not say to sell ALL your possessions, and give alms. He is only asking us to do what we already do on our own behalf and to do it instead for the sake of others. When you sell stock to buy yourself a new car, you don’t think of that as an unfair trade, do you? You still profit by it. But when you sell stock or lighten your wallet or pass up the chance for a second house in order to have enough to give to the poor, well, do you feel the same way? Do you sense that you are also profiting in this trade? Do you feel that you receive something back in the exchange? If you don’t, then one of two things is true: either you are not giving at all, or you are giving only to receive, giving out of fear not love, out of obligation rather than privilege.

On the first count, there are plenty of indictments to be handed out. I will refrain from making the issue today about giving to the church, although I hope you already are under Holy Ghost conviction about that. Think today about the fact that we have 43 million people in this country without health insurance. We have government cutting back on the CHIP program that allows children in poverty to gain better access to health care. And we have no presidential candidate offering an adequate solution. President Bush’s plan will get to 1.8 million of the uninsured, and Senator Kerry’s to 27 million. Not one single plan will address the whole 43 million. Why? Because it will cost us all more than we are willing to pay, and any candidate that asks us to pay more will lose. Does that say more about them or us? Give alms, Jesus says. Whether through taxes or charity, whatever it takes, we are to serve our neighbors even if it means sacrificing to do it.

Now, if you are giving, but you are giving for the sake of receiving, with some expectation that you will be paid back for it, then you are probably always going to think you are being short-changed. You have to give up the notion that your giving is the means by which you will be rewarded. You have to learn the secret of God’s own joy in the act of giving itself, not in the hope of receiving back if you do your part. And not expecting that your giving will suddenly change other people as a reward for your good intentions. That kind of giving is still only about us; it is self-centered rather than God-centered or neighbor-directed.

Listen, God will only step in when we step back. But if we step back, what we find is that we are leaps and bounds ahead in the joy of life because God is not really interested in fair trade practices. God wants us to feel the unfairness of God’s grace, to be surprised by the abundance of God’s gifts to us. We are all poor in comparison to God’s riches. But when we give to the poor, we acknowledge that to God and ourselves and begin to discover the richness of the good life that only God can give. Go figure that.