When I was serving churches in New England, I was attending a clergy meeting, although I don’t remember the purpose, but one of the other clergy there was serving a church that had a sizeable homeless population in their neighborhood that they served. And so he was talking about that, and said that during a worship service he saw one of the homeless men put a couple of dollars into the offering plate, and he went out and stopped the plate, took the money out and handed it back to the man and told him he didn’t need to make an offering. My response to that was “who do you think you are that you would stop him from giving.” Now I understand all the other arguments that could be made about someone who is homeless needing the money more than the church. Or perhaps he felt like he had to make an offering. That he would stand out if he didn’t put anything into the plates. But the flip side of all of those is our need or desire to give. That even though the man did not have a lot of money, and perhaps even what he put in was all he had, but that he was going to give because of his blessings. He was going to give out of his abundance, as Jesus says of the widow in the Temple who puts in her only two pennies, rather than trying to preserve from a sense of scarcity. I don’t know, but I do know that we all need to have the opportunity to be able to give, because giving is not a requirement, it’s an opportunity, and a response to what God has already done for us.
That was the story that came to mind this week as I was working on the passage from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. In the letter as a whole Paul is trying to rebuild relationship with this church that he established and clearly thinks so much of, but they have come under the influence of a group that Paul facetiously calls the super apostles. But before he gets to them, he returns to a topic that he had actually been addressing to them before and that is taking up an offering for the church in Jerusalem. While the Corinthians had originally begun to do that, it appears they stopped, although why is not clear, and so Paul is giving them an example of the other churches, and notice that it is plural, in Macedonia, which is north of Greece and is possible the churches in Philippi and Thessalonica, although that’s speculation again. But what is striking is what Paul says about these churches. As they were suffering some unknown affliction, that they were still filled with abundant joy and gave out of their extreme poverty an offering overflowing “in a wealth of generosity.”
And to make the point even clearer, Paul says that they did
this of their own accord. Paul did not plan a worship series on stewardship in
order to get them motivated. And, in fact, he says they begged Paul to be able
to participate in this offering. Perhaps Paul had, mistakenly it appears,
believed that they had nothing to give because of either the afflictions they
were undergoing or because of their extreme poverty, and so he wasn’t asking
them to participate. But because of their abundant joy in what they had already
received from God, they needed to be able to give back. That perhaps they could
not give as much as others, especially the church in Corinth which has some
people of some means, but that doesn’t stop their ability or desire or
willingness to give. To be able to express their generosity.
In first John we are told that we love because God first
loved us. And so what Paul is saying is that we give, as I have said the past
few weeks, because God first gave to us. We give because God is a giver. Giving
should flow naturally from who we are, made in the image of God. And, being
generous, being extravagantly generous is an expression of our faith. But,
giving is not a salvation issue. We are saved by faith alone. I know that there
are people who will tell you that you have to give. That we will be judged by
how we give. And it’s not true. We will be judged on our relationship to our
money and our in the sense that it’s a matter of if we are putting God first.
As Jesus says just before the gospel passage we heard today, you cannot serve
two masters because you will love one and hate the other. Or as we heard in the
passage from Deuteronomy as we began this series, and as Jesus also quotes as
being one of the two greatest commandments, that we are to love the Lord our
God will all of our heart, all of our soul, all of our strength. That is with
all that we have and all that we are. And so if we are withholding in that,
which, let’s be honest, is really easy to do. In fact, I would say that giving
everything is really, really hard, which is why Jesus says that the path of
discipleship is narrow and hard, but the path to destruction is wide and easy.
And so what we give is not a salvation issue, but it is a reflection of our
faith journey and our spiritual maturity. If you are spiritually mature, or
working towards it, then giving will have to be a part of it, and honestly, in
my experience, the deeper you get into your faith, the easier it becomes.
And Paul reflects that because he tells the Corinthians that
he is not commanding them to give. Instead, he says that he is “testing the
genuineness of their love and the earnestness of others.” He says he wants them
to excel in this as they excel in everything else, which might be an
underhanded compliment when we compare it against what he says to them in
chapter 13 in first Corinthians when he talks about love, when he talks about
faith, speech and knowledge, and says if you excel in these but don’t have love,
then you have nothing. And then, again, he compares it off against the giving
of Christ, who became poor for our sake, so that we might become rich in the
blessings of God. And then he reminds them, and us, that we are to give
according to what we have, giving from abundance, rather than what we don’t
have, giving from scarcity, or not giving but hoping. That is there are plenty
of people, and I have included myself amongst them, who have said that if we only made more money then I’d be
able to tithe, but I just don’t make enough now to be able to do it. Or it’s
like the prayer that people offer to God and say that people say that money changes
people, but money would never change them, and if God would just let them win
the lottery they would prove it. It’s just wishful thinking. Just as God cannot
meet us where we want to be, but only where we are, we cannot give from what we
want to have, or may have, but only from what we have, and viewing what we have
as being enough. Again seeing things from a position of abundance, rather than
a position of scarcity.
And while there are some who will tell you that you if you
give, God will make you rich in return, the only people getting rich are the
preachers making that proclamation. Now that doesn’t mean that there are not
benefits for giving, because there are. The same is true in giving of yourself.
Few people come back from a mission trip not feeling that they have been blessed
and filled in truly meaningful ways. And so what we hear several times in
scripture, including from Paul, is that you will reap what you sow. If you sow
generously, you will reap generously, and if you sow sparingly you will reap
sparingly. But, again, that is not a quid pro quo situation. You reap sparingly
or generously because of what you have opened yourself up to. In the 23rd Psalm
we hear that because of God that our cup overflows, and what we also hear at
the beginning, in some more modern translations is not The Lord is no my
shepherd I shall not want, but instead The Lord is my Shepard I have enough.
And so if our cup is overflowing it’s giving out to the world. But how do we
make room for even more blessings? By pouring out more. And if we are so
concerned with keeping everything we have then we can never receive more. What
we receive back is not about rewards for giving, but about our attitude and
approach to the world. If we have an open heart and generosity then generosity
and an open heart is returned. And if we are closed off and protective, then
closed off and protective is returned.
Or let me put it this way. Since we have lost both our dogs
in the past year, we’ve been talking about and thinking about the possibility
of a new dog. We’re not ready yet, but we have gone to the shelter just to
look. When you approach a strange dog, how do you approach them? What do you do
with your hand? You go up with your hand open right, so they can smell it, and
you’re indicating that you are not a threat to them. Now what would happen if
you went up with a closed fist? The dog is going to see you as a threat and
will be threatening in return, or simply try and get away. Giving does the same
thing. When we approach the world with a closed fist, the world returns the
same and we are not open to receiving God’s blessing. We are working too hard
to try and hold on to what we have. But, when we approach the world with an
open palm, with a position of generosity and maybe even extravagant generosity,
then the world returns it because we have opened ourselves up to that reality.
And so we don’t have to give, but we need to give, and as I
said in the stewardship letter that went out our need to give is greater than
the church’s need to receive. And I know some people think I’m just blowing
smoke when I say that, and let’s name the elephant in the room that you pay my
salary, and so what you give goes towards that, but it’s the truth. We need to
give for our own spiritual health, and more importantly, we get to give. As
Paul says, he is not commanding the Corinthians to give, but he is giving them
the opportunity to give. Just as the other churches begged to be able to
participate and gave voluntarily, and generously of what they had. They gave from
their abundant joy and extreme poverty. They gave according to what they had,
not according to what they did not have. What they said and what we can say is
that they could spend everything on themselves, or they could choose to hoard
it all because they were worried about tomorrow and about what they would eat
or drink or wear, but instead they chose not to. They choose instead to see
what they had, regardless of the amount, as a bounty given to them by God and
so they chose to give back a portion of that for furthering the Kingdom of God.
which is the other part, is that we give through the church, or through other
organizations as we are not the only place doing God’s work, in order to bring
about the Kingdom.
And our giving cannot just be accidental. If we choose to
give from what we have left over, then our giving will never be generous, let
alone extravagantly generous. Our giving has to be intentional as an expression
of our faith, as an expression of our blessings, and so what scripture calls for
us to do is to give from our first fruits. That we give from the start and then
do everything else we have to do, and when we do that then we begin to
fundamentally rearrange our financial lives, our spiritual lives and our
regular lives around being a blessing because we have been blessed, and we as
the church then seek to do the same thing. To be good stewards of the resources
with which we have been entrusted in order to give beyond these walls so that
our community and the world will know that we are indeed Christ-centered,
prayerful, inclusive, growing spiritually, compassionate and caring and in
service and mission, which are our core values and what one person said is our
vision for the future as well, that this is how we will be known.
And what I like to do every year is to let you know that
Linda and I walk the walk that I am encouraging, and so we tithe off of our net
pay, and so we will be submitting a card for a little more than $7500 for the
coming year. Which is not where we want to be, and hopefully Linda’s health
will improve and she may return to being able to work full-time and then our
giving will increase, and that’s what an estimate of giving does is to
recognize the realities of life, that perhaps we may be able to give more than
what we estimate because we are blessed in ways that we didn’t know would
happen, or we have to give less because other things happen, as happened with
us in the past year in Linda being out of work for basically four months and
then less than half time for the rest of the year, But we continued to give
because we are called to give and know the importance of giving for ourselves,
for our spiritual lives and for the life of the church and the other
organizations we support. And our ultimate goal is to be able to tithe off of
our net pay, and then be able to give a tithe plus other giving, which is also
scriptural.
At the end of last week’s service, I quoted from the next chapter of 2nd Corinthians that we are to give not reluctantly or under compulsion, but to give as we have decided, but to know that God loves a cheerful giver. And the Greek word as cheerful is actually the word from which we get the word hilarious in English, or we might say it’s that sense of abundant joy, and we get there by seeing everything that we have received as a blessing from God, knowing that we shall not just not want, but that we have all we need, and that God will provide whether we worry about it or not, and that God will enrich us in every way so that we may be able to share in every good work, to be known for our extravagant generosity in offering the love of Christ to the world, so that, in the words of Paul, our very lives overflow with thanksgiving to God. and that we will give thanks to God for this indescribable gift. I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters. Amen.
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