A Wonderful Life
by Donald Hoffman


Matthew 25: 31-46



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. (By the way, many mammals practice

conventional morality, including vampire bats. So don't get too

proud!)



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." (By-the-way-number-two, carrying a can of gas in your trunk

is extremely dangerous! I suggest you find some other way to PAY

FORWARD.)



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." And say, wasn't there a movie  a few years ago about a

boy who convinces all sorts of people to "Pay It Forward"?



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.



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 biblical

morality, and we are still quite a ways from finding Thanksgiving.



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 movie 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 running around

town 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 "Creston"

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!


(Comments to Don at crestnch@televar.com.)
Creston Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Creston, WA, USA