6 “Watch out! Don’t do your good deeds publicly, to be admired by others, for you will lose the reward from your Father in heaven. ² When you give to someone in need, don’t do as the hypocrites do—blowing trumpets in the synagogues and streets to call attention to their acts of charity! I tell you the truth, they have received all the reward they will ever get. ³ But when you give to someone in need, don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. ⁴ Give your gifts in private, and your Father, who sees everything, will reward you.

Matthew 6:1-4

Dear God, it can be hard to keep our good deeds totally private. And there are other times when it is actually appropriate to let others know we’ve done something because it will serve as an endorsement for them to support it as well. As a nonprofit, there are times when I need to be able to list a donor’s name on something so that others will know that this person of credibility endorses us so they can feel confident endorsing us as well.

But that’s not Jesus’s point here. Jesus, as always, is looking deep into our hearts. Why are we doing what we do? Are we doing it to manipulate other people to like us (ironically, such public displays usually turn people off more than attract them to us), or worse still, because we think we can manipulate you into liking us more? It’s probably surprising to know how many of us think we can influence your love for us. In modern American Christianity, there are so many people who are worried about getting their “fire insurance” that they make that their goal instead of relationship with you. Reconciliation with you isn’t primarily about my eternity. It’s about my here and now. It’s about this moment I have with you. This day I have with you. It’s not about tomorrow. It’s not even primarily about the past. No, it’s primarily about this moment and my communion with you in real time.

So why am I doing what I do? I like to think it’s that fruit of your Spirit that grows in me through being with you and worshipping you. Why do I take someone’s cart for them when they are done unloading it into their car and I’m walking into the grocery store? Because I’m filled with love for them and I want to help. Why do I close the lid on someone’s garbage can as it sat in the street with a lid that had blown open after a storm? Because I want to serve them. You grow in me. And if that’s you growing in me that is driving me to do these things then that must mean that that is your nature too! You love us. You want to show us love. We will get later to the part about fathers and good gifts, but it’s that kind of thing. My evidence that you are good is that the closer I get to you the “gooder” I get.

Father, I am grateful for you. I am grateful to sit here this morning and be able to think through this sermon from Jesus with you. I’m grateful to have different layers of your nature revealed to me the more I do this. I’m grateful for Jesus’s life, teaching, death, and resurrection. I’m grateful for his love for me. I am grateful for the Holy Spirit’s presence with me right now as I type these words. As I go to work. As I love donors. As I love my wife. Oh, how I love you, Father, Jesus, and Holy Spirit.

I pray all of this under the reconciliation Jesus offers and with the Holy Spirit in my presence,

Amen