This is the first Sunday of Lent, and Lent is, of course, a time for self-reflection. We turn to the Hebrew Bible seeking God’s Word from the book of Deuteronomy this morning, and we find an abundant celebration taking place between Levites and aliens. An offering of first fruits is the cause for celebration. In that context of biblical times, first fruits are the first crops that ripen. So, let’s ask ourselves today, “What are first fruits as we might understand them, why should we share our first fruits with each other, and where are we supposed to be generous with our first fruits?” With these questions in mind, let us together discern God’s message. Let us pray.

Dr. Sangyil Park is the pastor for Korean United Methodist Church in Concord, California. He’s a renowned preacher and a storied pastor, but he had a rough start in this country. Sangyil Park came to the United States in his early thirties for a second degree in seminary. But after three years of study and another degree under his belt, Park’s English was still accented and he was still very new to American culture.

That didn’t stop him from sharing his first fruits with churches in America. He started serving as a pastor for the Methodist circuit of three small churches in a region called Port Carbon, Pennsylvania. And Sangyil Park remembers the first night that he met the committee for an interview. The people on this committee were at an absolute loss when they saw him walk into the room. They made some introductions, asked him a few questions, and then they kindly asked him to leave the room. What happened after that was a long, long meeting where Park stood patiently outside…waiting.

He says that while he waited outside the room he could feel and hear everyone’s frustration and disappointment. Park was the first non-white pastor in the church’s history of over 150 years. Sharing the first fruits of his seminary training wasn’t going to be such an easy task for Sangyil Park.

Have you ever run into that kind of roadblock in your life? You search yourself for the best you have, and when you try to share it, the world around you isn’t so grateful for what you have to offer?

The situation is worse in the story we hear out of Deuteronomy this morning. Moses is giving people instructions to humble them. He’s trying to remind the Israelites of their history and how that history binds them in covenant with God and neighbor. And it sounds like they’re reluctant to hear that message, or Moses wouldn’t have to be saying it to them so matter-of-factly in the first place!

Moses says, “God has done good things for you, so don’t forget that. Take the first fruits of your crops, put them in a basket and take them to a place the Lord will choose for a dwelling (The text doesn’t specify if that’s a church or a temple or what), and then give your basket to the priest for a blessing. After that, everyone around you will rejoice in what you’ve done and what you’ve brought: Levites, aliens…everyone!”

Everyone. Everyone will rejoice including outsiders. Sangyil Park was an outsider, and even then he walked into a stormy cloud of insiders and offered his first fruits for everyone to enjoy. How much more powerful is that testimony than what the law of the land stipulated in biblical times. Maybe the Sangyil Park testimony couldn’t exist if it weren’t for the people of God all sharing their first fruits so that everyone would rejoice! This is what we mean when we say, “God is still speaking.”

Let’s look at the beginning for a moment. Genesis 12:2-3 says, “I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you. All the nations of the earth shall find blessing in you.” All the nations of the earth shall find blessing in you.

Israel was chosen by God, but if we leave the story at that, then all of our divisions and entitlements and greed make perfect sense. That’s not where the story ends, though. Israel being chosen by God is God sharing God’s first fruits with humanity in a covenant. And what are we supposed to do with the first fruits we have? Share them.

Israel was chosen to proclaim to the entire world the goodness of its God. And listen to this text out of Deuteronomy: “It was not because you were the greatest of all nations that the Lord has set his heart on you, for you are really the smallest of all nations. It was because the Lord loved you and because of fidelity of the oath sworn to your fathers.” Ah! So God starts choosing those who appear to have little value. God chooses outsiders and gives them the power to change human understandings, to change the world, to change the notion of outsiders and insiders into a blessing for all to enjoy.

Sometimes your first fruits might be a brownie. There’s nothing like a good brownie to lift your spirits if you eat it at just the right moment. I haven’t seen the movie Notting Hill, but it was on yesterday afternoon and I caught one scene of it that sounded like it was written after our theme today. A group of people is eating together around a table. They’re laughing, enjoying each other’s company. And all the while they’re trying to glaze over the fact that one of their friends at the table has brought an unusual guest. His date is a celebrity from America that gets paid 15 million dollars a film, but for some reason, she’s at this table with this ragtag group of Brits enjoying some good conversation.

And after dinner they enjoy some brownies together, and it comes to the awkward point where there’s only one brownie left. The first fruits are captures in this one brownie, so who is going to get it? The dinner party decides to start sharing stories together about their lives so that they can determine who is the most pathetic person at the table. The most pathetic testimony, apparently, merits receiving the first fruits.

But then the real first fruits start to come out. The first guest speaks up: “Well, I haven’t had a girlfriend since, well, puberty, and if my cheeks get any fatter, I doubt anyone will ever fancy me.” He was joking, but you could sense the hurt in his honest tone. So another guest responds with her lament, “No one fancies me either, because my body is starting to age and change in ways that aren’t attractive anymore. I guess I’m destined to be lonely.”

And then a couple at the party speaks up, “Finding someone to spend your life with is great, but we’ve been trying to have children for years and now doctors tell us that we’re incapable of doing so.” And the woman begins to cry.

With this powerful honesty comes the group’s next shared testimony. They look over at their friend who’s brought the high profile dinner guest and they say, “Well, he deserves the brownie. He’s divorced, he runs a lonely old bookstore and he’s not nearly as cute as he was ten years ago!”

But then the guest speaks up. She says, “What about me?” And everyone just kind of stares at her like you might imagine that committee staring at Sangyil Park. She says, “I’ve been on a diet since I was 19, so I’ve been starving for basically a decade. Every time I have a relationship end in me being scorn, the whole world knows about it through the tabloids, and they never get the facts straight. I’ve had two painful surgeries to make me look like this, but one day I’m going to lose this beauty and everyone will realize that I can’t really act.”

You got the sense in this scene that the dinner guest finally had a chance to share her story, and it was with near strangers. But even after she wins the brownie—the first fruit of the party—she gives it right back to the people who gave it to her. “Oh, I couldn’t,” she says. And then everyone enjoys the first fruits.

But was the brownie the first fruit in that scene or were the testimonies that these friends and strangers shared a kind of first fruits? The stories they shared built up security and safety and human strength that you can’t buy or compete for or hide from the world. Their testimonies made outsiders insiders, and everyone rejoiced in that moment. Their stories—their lives were their first fruits.

We still tend to think that Lent is all about me, though. Lent is about the individual getting to the core of their being through self-reflection and intentional Sabbath. And it is, but it’s not just for you and you alone. We look at the story of Jesus in the wilderness and we think, “There’s my model. I need to reflect and sacrifice and suffer alone. I need to do what Jesus did in my own way.”

That’s noble. But think about this: We boast the language that Jesus died for me. Jesus took my place. Jesus stepped in on my behalf and bore my sins. Well, if Jesus did all that for you, don’t you think he spent 40 days in the wilderness for you, too? Don’t you think Jesus fought the temptation of the devil on your behalf? Don’t you think Jesus did all that so that you wouldn’t have to go into exile and deal with that kind of overwhelming evil and fear on your own ever in this life or the next?

Let’s look at first fruits and this story again really fast. God offered Jesus God’s first fruits in the gift of the Holy Spirit. Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, was wisped away to the wilderness to battle temptation and win. And if you fast forward past the resurrection of Christ, what did we receive—all of us: the Holy Spirit. Everyone, by the grace of God and the resurrection of Christ, possesses the first fruits of God in the gift of the Holy Spirit.

So, as we start Lent this morning, the question is, “How do I get to my authentic self? Who am I in the eyes of God? How do I get to the first fruits of Christ that live in me so I can be ready for Easter?” Well, here’s your criteria for answering those questions: Ask yourself, “What’s the best I have?” Now, take the answer to that question and share it. Think of God asking you, “What’s the best you’ve got?” and then answer God not in words but in deeds. Share what you’ve got just like God’s chosen people, the Israelites, shared their gifts with everyone.

Sharing our gifts with each other isn’t something we do because it’s nice and generous. That’s not the Church’s foundation. Being nice and generous is the result of us sharing our first fruits with each other. It’s based on the story of God and God’s people. And this is what Lent is all about: finding the gift of God’s Spirit that lives in you so that your true self can sing a grand ‘Alleluia’ on Easter morning. Meditation and prayer and devotionals and labyrinth walks are all methods of achieving this, but nothing is more revealing of your true self than the selfless act of sharing your first fruits. Give the best you got.

I’m going to say a word about tithing here. Tithing, of course, is giving ten percent of your income to the church. When you think of it that way, it’s easy to say, “Well, I don’t know if I can afford that. I’ve got this expense and that expense and this debt and that loan. I’ll take care of what needs to be taken care of, and if that ten percent is left, I’ll give it to the church.” I can’t tell you how many times I used to say that. But if we look at ten percent of our income as a first fruit and we give that and share that together, then everyone rejoices. And our individual lives start being shaped more after the vision and fellowship of the church because our budgets reflect that shared living.

What’s more, have you noticed all the gifts and creativity and resources in this church? If people are more important than money, I don’t think it’s any more evident than right here at Friends. Hide and watch: we might become a fundamentalist church, because that kind of living is fundamentally modeled after biblical history. The Israelites, the disciples…just look at the fellowship of believers in the book of Acts: “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them all. There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need.”

Samuel Park served the church that didn't initially care for him being there. About four months into his tenure at that Methodist church, he was sitting in his parsonage and he got a knock at the door. It was one of his parishioners who had been very reluctant to receive this new pastor.

"Pastor, can I come in?"

"Yes, please."

He came in and sat in the parsonage of Pastor Park and said, "You know when you first got here, nobody really wanted you around. Everyone thought to themselves, 'There's no Koreans here. Why do we need a Korean pastor?' But, you know what? You loved us, and you shared what you had with us. And we learned from that more than I can ever recall us learning in previous years. As a result of it ... wow do we love you! Wow, do we want you to stick around as long as you possibly can. Thank you for giving us what you've got."

When you look around this church, you may be among the folks who don't know a whole lot about Friends, or haven't really taken the time to serve in any capacity at Friends because maybe you don't know what your niche is. That is so tough to do in any organization in life, no matter how small or big – I know. But this is a church and this is our season of Lent. So ask yourself, "What is the best I've got? What is the best that I have?" And then share it! You'll find your niche. And more importantly, maybe we will see that niche and we will be empowered and join you in it. That's what church is.

“What’s the best you’ve got?”

Amen.