Where Everybody's Crazy

It's been a very, very busy week. It still is very busy, so I'll tell you about it later. For now I want to work something through in my head.

Normally when I preach, I use a method called theocentric preaching. Basically the idea is: the Bible is not a book about me. It is a book about God. If I want to handle the Bible faithfully, then I have to talk about what the Bible says about God, not what it says about me. I try to bring out of the Bible passages something about God's character, and on the whole leave people to take in for themselves how they should live in the light of it.

Now there are a couple of problems with this, of course. The Bible is not just a book about God, it's a book about how God deals with people. And if you don't have any application at all, then people can't relate to what you're saying. But the idea is that you start with the character of God, and don't rush away to application.

Anyhow, that's what I normally do. This week's sermon is a bit different. If anything it has a weakness that it's too anthropocentric. In fact if I were honest it's one of those types of sermons I don't like listening to, one which uses the Biblical text as a jumping-off point for random soliloquy. Well, some weeks you hit and some weeks you miss.

But one of the things I'm talking about is the idea of giri and what should be the Christian understanding of it. I've written about giri here before; it's the obligations that you have to repay people as a result of a gift economy.

As a foreigner, I'm actually really scared of talking about this because I know that I don't understand all the subtleties. I know that there is a very easy mistake I could make here. I could assume that because giri is related to obligation, it is antithetical to love. I know that's not the case. Sometimes - often - a giri repayments can be completely from the heart, just like the set expressions that you say to people can be heartfelt even though they're just set expressions.

But at the same time, giri is certainly to do with obligation, and I know that some people find it difficult to joyfully receive something because they don't want to handle the obligation involved. I can't help thinking that a feeling of obligation when you receive something is a handicap to fully appreciating the grace of God. And yes, I know that when I say that I'm sounding very much like the Canadian missionaries who wanted the potlatch outlawed because it wasn't capitalist enough. I don't see anything wrong with a gift economy. I do see something wrong with duty rather than love being a motivation for service.

So I have a sermon about how Jesus, through a once-and-for-all graceful act, broke the cycle of giri. You simply can't pay back when Jesus did. Nothing you can do can make it up to him. The only response you have available is to gratefully receive. But gratefully receiving takes practice, and if you can't gratefully receive the small and insignificant good that people do to you, you will find it hard to gratefully receive the insurmountable good that Jesus did to you.

Well, that's my reading of the cultural situation anyway. As a foreigner I'm really not the best person to be talking about this. I've tried to find a Japanese Christian perspective on giri, but I've come up blank so far. Maybe this is something we need a discussion about. For the time being, I have a horrible feeling my own soliloquy will have to do.