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Green Stamps                        Matthew 11: 25-30                   July 6, 2008

Remember Green Stamps? If you're over 40, the answer is probably yes. The Sperry and Hutchinson Corporation introduced the popular Green Stamp rewards program in 1896 and successfully operated it through the 1980s.

For those of you who don't remember them, S&H Green Stamps worked like this: Customers at supermarkets, department stores and gas stations would receive stamps at checkout - a bonus, based on the dollar amount of their purchase. As shoppers accumulated the stamps they would moisten them and stick them into books especially designed to receive them, and then exchange them for various household items at a local Green Stamp Redemption Center. Until it finally fell apart a couple of years ago, Kris and I still had a card table we purchased with Green Stamps in nineteen seventy-something.

While no one offers Green Stamps anymore (there is an on-line version, but I don't know anyone who actually uses it), they were once enormously popular. So popular, in fact, that during the 1960s, the rewards catalog printed by the company was the largest publication in the United States and the company issued three times as many stamps as the U.S. Postal Service.

But though the practice of collecting and redeeming the commercial version of Green Stamps in has disappeared from our daily life, many of us still collect something very much like them on a fairly regular basis.

Every time we reach out to one of our brothers or sisters, not for the sake of love but expecting something in return, it is an exercise in stamp collection.

We all seek love. We all long for loving affirmation. And we often forget that love is not a prize that can be earned by cashing in the Green Stamps we collect every time we do a good thing.

Many of us are expert Green Stamp collectors. We collect book after book of them. Hoping some day to redeem them in exchange for another's love.

And, the unfortunate truth is, every human being who longs to be in a relationship with God - and that includes most, if not all of us - every human being who has a desire to be close to God also has a list of things he or she feels they must do in order to make God happy. In order to somehow earn God's love.

Noted preacher and author Barbara Brown Taylor puts it this way: "On the one hand," she writes, "we long to believe that God comes to us as we are, utterly unimpressed by the tricks we do for love. On the other hand, we live in a world where those tricks often work really well, so that it is next to impossible to give up believing in them too."

"I may believe that my life depends on God's grace," she admits, "but I act like it depends on me and how many good deeds I can perform, as if every day were a talent show and God had nothing better to do than keep up with my score."

I find myself identifying with those sentiments. I too am often guilty of spending day after day pushing to accomplish the things on my endless list of to-dos. Generally, these are all worthwhile things. Good deeds. But I act as if I am collecting book after book full of Green Stamps that I can somehow redeem for premiums from God.

If we admit it, I think we will agree that all of us bargain with God. It starts when we're kids: "I'll be nice to my sister if you just help me with this test, God." And it continues through adulthood: "If you only help me land this job, Lord, I'll go to church every Sunday. . . well, at least 3 out of 4." As if being nice to our family or showing up at church on Sunday would earn us a page of Green Stamps to put in our book.

Our Gospel lesson for this morning reminds us of the folly of this kind of thinking. It includes one of the great passages from the New Testament. One Christians have been memorizing for generations. One that has been etched on countless tombstones and carved onto hundreds of church walls: "Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens," Jesus says, "and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

With these words, Jesus makes a remarkable promise. "All you need to do," he tells us, "is come to me." No bargaining. No list of to-dos. No Green Stamps. Just "Come to me, and I will give you rest."

It's an open invitation. An invitation to each of us to come and lay our burdens at his feet and receive his blessed rest.

Jesus' open invitation is underscored for us this morning as we gather around the table set before us. The words, "take, eat, this is my body" and "this is my blood, drink of it all of you" are our reminder that our Lord is here with us today.

And our service of Holy Communion is also our reminder that Jesus' burden is light because we do not need to bear it alone. When we turn to our right and to our left and reach out our hand to one another at the beginning of our Communion service and then again at the end, we are reminded that we are invited to share one another's burden; that we are invited, together, to enter into a relationship with the one who offers us rest.

So come, now, my friends. Gather around the table of the Lord, burdens in hand. No Green Stamps required.

                                                                             AMEN

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