Gifts, Giving and the Godfather: A Semon on Generosity (Lent 5)

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“Someday, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me. Until that day, accept this gesture as a gift on my daughter’s wedding-day.” 

Do you know that quote’s source? It is the conclusion of the opening scene of my favorite movie of all time: the Godfather. In that scene, the local funeral director, a man named Bonasera, comes to the local crime boss, Vito Corleone seeking justice for his daughter. She had been assaulted and hospitalized by two boys who were arrested, but essentially unpunished. Bonasera had, he tells the Godfather, embraced the American way of life. Now, America has failed him and his daughter. So he has come to the Godfather for old-world justice. But he makes a serious mistake when he asks this question: “How much shall I pay you?” 

“Bonasera, Bonasera,” replies the Godfather, genuinely hurt, “what have I ever done to you that treat me so disrespectfully?” Come, Bonasera, in friendship. Come, Bonasera, asking for a gift. That is respect. That is honor. That is how you come asking a your social superior for help. Anything other is disrespect. Corleone then extends his hand, Bonasera kneels, kisses it, and asks simply, “Be my friend?” 

As they walk to the Don’s office door, now arm in arm, the Don speaks the words: “Someday, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me. Until that day, accept this gesture as a gift on my daughter’s wedding-day.” The undertaker will get justice for his daughter. The young men who assaulted her will, we are told, be beaten themselves. But it will be done as a gift and not for payment. 

Gifts. Giving. Generosity. That’s what we’re talking about today. So let’s add that to our list. Fasting. Resting. Serving. Simplifying. And now giving. Disciple of Jesus are called, as they imitate the life of their Lord, to be generous even to the point of giving one’s life for one’s friends. It is a life of generosity all the way down. A life rooted, as we talked about last week, not in acquiring things to construct our selves, but in giving ourselves away for the sake of the world. Recall the words of Jesus: “For whoever saves his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” 

Now what does Don Corleone have to do with the generosity of Jesus and his disciples? Just this: both understand gift in an ancient, and not modern, way. For the Don, as for the ancient world, loyalty and friendship are bedrock values. Far more important than Bonasera’s abstract notion of justice. For the Don, as for the ancient world, loyalty and friendship were established and extended by giving gifts.  To give a gift was to extend an invitation into a circle of obligations; to receive a gift was to accept the invitation.  

In this world, one never, ever gave a gift to an inferior. After all, what could your inferior possibly do for you that you cannot do for yourself? No. You only gave gifts to those for whom friendship and loyalty would be to your advantage. So, the Don does not ask for Bonasera’s friendship; he scolds Bonasera and tells him to ask for HIS friendship. The funeral director gives the Don the gift of his friendship, the gift of himself. And in return, the Don gives his protection, his loyalty, his ability to inflict violence on enemies. And a warning. Some day, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me. Bonasera is now inside the circle of gifts and obligations. Loyalty and friendship and a tangible expression of gratitude. 

This is the understanding of gift exchange that runs through the Bible—both Old and New Testament. The idea that a gift is, by definition, without obligation, without strings, without conditions, is a peculiarly recent notion. One that would have made no sense to any of the biblical writers, or their characters.  

Now, when God enters into covenant-friendship with Abram in Genesis 15, God himself shatters the world of gift exchange. Not by making gifts unconditional, but by reversing the order of gift giving. The gift is now not something we offer to God to obtain favors—that’s what a sacrifice was in the ancient world—it is now something given by God without any sense that the receiver will ever by able to pay the giver back. So, in Genesis 15 and powerfully foreshadowing the Cross of Jesus, God himself walks through the sacrifices, saying thereby to Abram, if YOU should break this friendship, I will take the consequences of such a lack of loyalty, a refusal of friendship, on myself. 

God gave the gift of covenant friendship to Abraham and his descendants. Now, in the ancient world, what would one do with that gift? If the giver were another human being, you’d know exactly what to do: give a gift in return to cement the friendship; give something that friend needs so that he knows just how important your loyalty and friendship is. 

God, however, needs nothing. He does not need Abram’s friendship. There is no service or good Abram can offer in exchange that would help God be a better deity, if that makes sense. No, God himself tells us how Abraham and his descendants will give reciprocal gifts: they will bless the world with what they have received. They will be a light to the Gentiles. They will be the gateway through which the radical welcoming generosity of God will flow to the whole of creation. Being utterly unable to “gift God back” for the gift he had given, Israel was to share the gift with the world instead. 

The whole story of the rest of the Old Testament is all about how that gift giving, by and large, did not happen. Israel refused over and over God’s offer of covenant friendship until finally, the covenant is broken, the land itself revolts against God’s people, and they are carried off by enemies into exile. First Israel is carried away by the Assyrians, and then Judah by the Babylonians. An unhappy ending. But not one without hope. Jeremiah goes into exile taking the deed for a piece of property with him. Ezekiel predicts that God will come as a new David and gather his sheep, that the Spirit of God will breathe upon the dry bones and they will live. Because the reliability of the covenant is rooted absolutely and utterly in God’s faithfulness and not in Israel’s, any rupture is only ever temporary. 

The New Testament is the continuation of that great story. It is the fulfilment of that hope. It is the story of God coming as David to shepherd his sheep. It is the story of resurrection—of the one faithful Israelite, Jesus of Nazareth and the hoped for resurrection of all who are his. It is the story of the re-opening of the blessings of the covenant God of Israel, of Jesus, to the whole world. And from the second Cornelius speaks in tongues in the book of Acts, we are to see the great gathering in of the Gentiles into the circle of the gift-giving God. 

Who knew the Godfather and the Gospel were so close together? But they are—they both share in the thought-world of gift giving. And if we are going to get to grips with the Lenten call to generosity, that’s the world we need to enter into, also.  

We in the radical generosity of God, have been drawn into the world of God’s gift. God has extended to us the very same covenant friendship that he extended to Abram. The cross was the consequence God himself embraced to unblock the flow of his blessing, so that the promise to Abram could be fulfilled—that the friendship between God and Abram’s descendants would bless the whole world. 

That’s where we begin if we are to think rightly about generosity. The Gospel of grace, the Gospel of gift, always presents the people of God FIRST as receivers and God as the giver. Never ever the other way around. We cannot give in order to get God on our side. That’s not how it works. We can’t co-opt God. His friendship is a one way street. He gives it freely to all who would receive it.  

Discipleship, on this way of thinking about the glorious gospel, is our reciprocal gift. Discipleship is the gift of ourselves. But we cannot give to God—for God needs nothing. So what do we do? 

Followers of Jesus give themselves to those who cannot repay trusting God, the giver of all good things, to cover their debts. It’s just what we do. So it is that we DO give in order to ensure our betterment. We DO give in order to perpetuate cycles of loyalty and friendship and gratitude. But the ultimate source of loyalty and friendship, the ultimate recipient of gratitude is not some social better, higher up on the ladder than we are, but God. If we are loyal to God, if we are God’s covenant friends, if we are grateful to him for his gift of salvation in Jesus, then we can—even as Jesus did—stick with those who are disloyal and love those who are our enemies for this is what disciples do when they follow the one who knew no sin and yet became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God. 

That’s what Christian generosity is about. It is an expression of gratitude to God for God’s gift of Jesus. It is an expression of trust in God to cover the debts of those who cannot repay. It is a request for the forgiveness of God for OUR debts that we can never repay.  

We can all think of saints who modeled such generosity—St Francis perhaps who took Christ’s command to sell all, give to the poor, and follow literally. Or Mother Theresa who founded her Home for the Dying in Calcutta. But the way of generosity is not the way of the holy few. It is part and parcel of the way to which we have all been called when we heard Christ’s call to follow him.  

So what does generosity look like for you? It is not for me to answer that question for you. It is for me to invite you, this lent to ask it and, when God gives the answer, to invite you to act. Give out of gratitude to those who cannot repay knowing that God has, in saving you from sin death and the devil, already paid their debts to you and has, in the life to come, promised you even more.