Preached live at Islington United Church on August 23, 2026 as part of the summer series “Consider the Birds”. Bird: Wild Turkey
Psalm 65:5-13
By awesome deeds you answer us with deliverance,
O God of our salvation;
you are the hope of all the ends of the earth
and of the farthest seas.6 By your strength you established the mountains;
you are girded with might.7 You silence the roaring of the seas,
the roaring of their waves,
the tumult of the peoples.8 Those who live at earth’s farthest bounds are awed by your signs;
you make the gateways of the morning and the evening shout for joy.9 You visit the earth and water it;
you greatly enrich it;
the river of God is full of water;
you provide the people with grain,
for so you have prepared it.10 You water its furrows abundantly,
settling its ridges,
softening it with showers,
and blessing its growth.11 You crown the year with your bounty;
your wagon tracks overflow with richness.12 The pastures of the wilderness overflow;
the hills gird themselves with joy;13 the meadows clothe themselves with flocks;
the valleys deck themselves with grain;
they shout and sing together for joy.
2 Corinthians 9:6-11
The point is this: the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. 7 Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not regretfully or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. 8 And God is able to provide you with every blessing[c] in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work. 9 As it is written, “He scatters abroad; he gives to the poor; his righteousness[d] endures forever.”
10 He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness.[e] 11 You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity, which will produce thanksgiving to God through us.
Livestream (Sermon starts at 21:50)
Sermon Transcript
We all know that we’re not supposed to give in order to get.
We call this transactional giving.
Ideally, when we give… we do it for no other reason than that we desire to give. We give a gift as a way of expressing our love to someone. We give to the church because we believe in its ministry. We give of our time to certain social justice initiatives or causes because they matter to us.
We help someone because they need help, not because we expect them to offer us something in return.
And yet…
Who can deny that sometimes, we do give with the expectation that we will receive something in return.
My husband and I recently moved and I had a few girlfriends come over and help me unpack and organize my closet… it was a challenging task… of course when it was all said and done, they joked and said that when they are moving, they all know who to call… me… and of course, I would oblige without question… because I kind of owe them.
But is this feeling of needing to “return the favour” really such a bad thing?
Many say that giving should be completely altruistic. No expectations of anything in return. But let’s be honest…
When we give of our time, or our money to the church… we might say that we do this with no expectation of anything in return… but we do get something in return, don’t we? We get fed, spiritually, by the church’s ministry. We participate in programs that benefit us… We experience community. Friendship. A sense of purpose. The satisfaction of knowing we’ve made a difference.
And none of that necessarily makes our giving bad or somehow less generous.
In fact, I think it points to something deeper about the way human beings are made, and about the nature of God’s world.
We were made to be generous, but generosity isn’t only about giving… It’s also about how we receive.
It’s about acknowledging that God has already given us so much. God brought us into an abundant world full of possibility before we gave anything to anyone. And so both giving AND receiving are a part of generosity.
But there is a difference between giving and receiving as a transaction and giving and receiving as a natural part of God’s reciprocity.
Transaction says: I give to you, and you give something back to me. Maybe not how we want to approach our giving.
Reciprocity, on the other hand, is something much more mysterious.
It is the movement of gifts between us. God designed a world that is reciprocal, where gifts and resources are meant to be circulated and shared.
I have been given the ultimate gift of life, and I have certain gifts to contribute to the world, to be of service… and so I offer them. Through my vocation, my time, my money… You might receive those gifts. You also have unique gifts to share, no matter what stage of life you’re at… sometimes those gifts look like skills you’ve cultivated, or things you offer through your career… sometimes it’s your time or your money that you can dedicate to certain causes… or your presence, or your youth… and others in the community then receive those gifts from you… And they touch, nourish, inspire, support others to then share their gifts with someone else.
So there is this cycle of reciprocity… but that cycle can be stunted when we are not able to fully receive the gifts that are available to us.
That cycle can also be stunted on the flip side, when people hoard their gifts, or they take and take, but don’t offer anything to anyone else.
Paul says in Second Corinthians that “God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.”
Paul also says, “The one who sows sparingly will reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will reap bountifully.”
Now, we have to be careful with how we interpret Paul’s words here… Because if we’re not, it can sound an awful lot like a spiritual investment strategy:
Give more, and God will give you more. Put more into the offering plate, and God will put more into your bank account. And there are certainly churches that preach this kind of theology… perhaps you have heard of the prosperity gospel.
Now I personally don’t think this is what Paul is promising.
God isn’t a vending machine. We don’t put generosity in on one side, and expect blessings to be dispensed.
And just because you or I may be blessed with certain privileges in life certainly does not mean that somehow we have been rewarded because we deserve it more or we have given more than others… No…
In Second Corinthians, Paul says that God provides us with abundance… full stop… which means that we can share abundantly in every good work.
Our generosity doesn’t create God’s abundance in our lives.
God’s abundance is what sustains our generosity.
We have already received the ultimate gift of life… but have we fully accepted it?
Now I know that most of you in this congregation do not need to learn how to be more generous givers.
Since I came to Islington, I have noticed that the generosity in this community is in overflow. This community is full of the generosity of the Spirit.
I do wonder though… if perhaps some of us need to work on being more generous receivers.
Sometimes being a giver can become a part of our spiritual identity. It can contribute to a kind of spiritual pride. Your identity is to be a caregiver for everyone else… and that may give you meaning and purpose… and there is certainly nothing wrong with that… but if that means that you do not honour your own boundaries or limitations… if you don’t allow yourself permission to receive rest, to be selfish on occasion, to allow others to contribute to you… Then this can be a straight road to burnout.
Giving without an appropriate balance of receiving can become an exhausting cycle.
And sometimes we can’t avoid it. Sometimes we are caregivers, who are moving through difficult seasons of life, whether that be single parenthood, or caring for aging parents, or caring for loved ones who are ill, or just responsibilities that continue to mount up…
I acknowledge that these are difficult seasons. So the question then becomes, how can we, amidst all of that responsibility, allow ourselves to still receive the abundance of God? Maybe we can call on our community a little bit more… maybe we can stop pretending that we are “fine”, that we are this strong and capable person that has it all together, when deep inside we are falling apart…
Maybe we can learn something about what it means to receive God’s abundance from one of our bird friends… the Wild Turkey.
Now if this is your first time coming to Sunday worship at Islington, and you’re wondering why all of a sudden this sermon has taken a bit of a weird turn, bringing up the wild turkey seemingly out of the blue, I should tell you that these past few months we have been considering various birds of the bible, and every Sunday we have a bird that pertains to our theme.
So today, our bird that we are considering is the Wild Turkey.
There’s something a little funny about this bird.
It’s not exactly the bird we tend to imagine when we think about beauty or grace. It’s big, loud, moves a little funny. Back when I lived in Brisbane in Australia, there were a ton of wild turkeys in our neighbourhood. Like what squirrels are to Toronto, is what wild turkeys were to my neighbourhood of Kangaroo Point. [Yes I did really live in a neighbourhood called Kangaroo Point]. These wild turkeys were always just up to something kind of odd… Digging around in the ground… they’d make these huge nests in the dirt - big mounds of leaves and branches and soil… and to be honest I never really paid much attention to them or thought much of it.
But all the while, they were foraging. Wild Turkeys are foragers. They spend all day looking for little treasures in the earth.
They scratch through the leaves, they search the earth for seeds and nuts and berries and insects, and whatever else the earth has provided them.
According to Ted Andrews in his book Animal Speak, the wild turkey is also referred to as the Earth Eagle. It has a long spiritual association with the honouring of the Earth. It is a symbol of all the blessings that the Earth contains, along with the ability to use these blessings to their greatest capacity…
So the wild turkey shows us how to fully receive God’s bountiful creation, AND it also shows us something of how God’s creation is reciprocal.
By participating in the web of life, eating insects and seeds, the turkey helps keep ecosystems in check… it depends on healthy forests to be fed… and in turn, it feeds and sustains us… whether that be for a Thanksgiving meal, or maybe serving as a healthy protein source all year round.
Another interesting thing about the wild turkey is that it is a communal animal. They’re often seen in groups, emphasizing the importance of community, family bonds, sharing resources, and working together. They are very adaptable creatures… they are resourceful, working with what they have… and they have the ability to thrive in many environments, whether the resources are a little more scarce or a little more abundant.
So the wild turkey teaches us the balance between giving and receiving, promoting generosity with one’s talents and resources, whilst also being open to the gifts of the Spirit in its many forms and expressions.
So if you are someone who has long since been a giver… perhaps the question for you is not “how do I give of myself more” but rather “how well am I receiving?”
How well do you receive offers of help?
How well do you receive a compliment? Do you accept the compliment, or try to downplay it in the name of false humility?
Can you be someone who doesn’t always have to have the right answers, or always know the right thing to do or to say?
Can you believe that you are worthy of God’s grace, without feeling that you somehow have to earn it?
Receiving can be vulnerable, and sometimes it can feel harder than giving. It can even bring up feelings of guilt, especially when we consider that there are whole economies that hoard resources and stunt the flow of reciprocity on a global scale… we do have to acknowledge that not all human beings have access to the same resources, in the same way… and in our part of the world, we have an overflow of resources that aren’t fairly shared.
So can we hold that truth… and do what we can to alleviate the suffering of others… do our best to give the gifts that we have been given…
While at the same time, not feeling guilty for what we have to the point where we cut ourselves off from being able to receive?
This can be a challenging tension to hold… that balance of both giving and receiving. Acknowledging privilege and inequity whilst also being grateful for what we have.
And yet, the wild turkey teaches us to be generous receivers.
Not because we are selfish, or inherently more deserving… but because receiving is a part of the cycle of generosity.
Abundance is meant to flow and circulate. And when we participate in that movement, fully… when we give and receive what has already been there all along, then we don’t need to possess as much as we thought we did. We don’t need to grasp or to hoard.
So may we become generous in all of our giving and receiving.
May we learn to better recognize the gifts that are already beneath our feet.
And may we trust that God is not asking us to empty ourselves or to work ourselves to the point of burnout in order to be worthy.
God invites us to participate in the holy reciprocity of grace.
A life where we receive what has been given,
Give from this source of infinite abundance,
And trust that the gift will keep moving.
Amen