Last week after worship someone came up to me, and they will remain nameless, and asked if I was now done preaching on money. I told them that we had one more week left, and they were grateful that that was it, although they would have been just as happy if we were done last week, and perhaps that’s you as well. If it is, know that you just have to make it through today, and then we will make our way onto other things. But those things might not necessarily be more important things, because money is a spiritual issue. We don’t normally think of it that way, but the Protestant reformer Martin Luther said that there were three steps to conversion. First was the conversion of the heart, second was the conversion of the mind and finally was the conversion of the wallet. But, he said, they didn’t always happen at the same time, and he argued that the wallet was the last to come around. Now, as James Harnish says, “salvation is about a lot more than money, but it is never about anything less than money, particularly in a culture that is compulsively driven by the power of money.” That is, ideas of salvation end up being partly about money because money plays such an important role in our culture and in our lives.
This is nothing new, Jesus was dealing with the same issue which is why he talks about money and possessions so much, and he tells us directly that we cannot have two masters, that we cannot serve both God and money, or God and possessions. That we have to choose our allegiance. Now he doesn’t say that money in and of itself is bad, but what we decide to do with it, how we are going to treat it and relate to it that makes all the difference. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism emphasized exactly the same things when he talked about money, and in establishing what have become Wesley’s rules on money which are to first make as much as we can, with some very clear stipulations about what that means, the second was to save all that we can, and the third, and I know this is the message you have all been waiting for, and you’re sitting on the edges of you seats now in anticipation, give all you can.
But, before we get into that, as well as into the two gospels passages this morning, we have to go back to something I said last week that had to be the foundation if we were to truly understand our finances and our relationship with them and with God. The first is the most important, and that is that our identity, our sense of self-worth, our very being starts with the fact that we are beloved children of God, and that we are made in the image of God. That means that nothing else we do serves as that grounding. It doesn’t mean that things in our lives are not important, as being a husband and father are of primary importance in my life, but they are not the foundation of who I am. It starts with being a child of God, beloved and adored, as we are, that God claims us as God’s own. <
Secondly, once we understand that, then we can come to the understanding that everything belongs to God. The 24th Psalm begins, “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it.” (24:1) Or, in the 50th Psalm, God, who is chastising the people, says, basically, why should I accept your offerings when you don’t do what I tell you to do anyways, and besides, God says, “every wild animal of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the air, and all that moves in the field is mine.” (50:10-11) That is, you think you’re being so great in making these offerings to me, as if it’s a great act of generosity on your part, when I own it all, and like we saw in the story of the rich fool last week, he can take it back. Instead, the 50th Psalm says, we are to bring our thanksgiving as our sacrifice, our offering to God. That’s why, as Wesley says, we are to remember that we are not proprietors, our owners, but instead we are stewards. God “entrusted you for a season,” Wesley says, “with goods of various kind; but the sole property of these still rests with [God]…. As you yourself are not your own, but [God’s], such is, likewise, all that you enjoy.”
That’s to a large degree what the Pharisees, in trying to trap Jesus, are asking him. Now, there were lots of different taxes that Jews in Judea were responsible for. First there was the Temple tax, which every Jew was required to pay to the Temple every year, and then there were land taxes and custom taxes, but what the Pharisees were asking about is a very specific tax, known as the head tax or the census tax. This was the tax begun in the year 6ce when Judea became an official roman province and it was used to pay for the Roman occupation, so, as you might guess, it was not a very popular tax. And, so what the Pharisees are asking, and how they are hoping to trap him, is that if he says that people should pay this tax, then he is going to be seen as a traitor to his people, as a collaborator with the Romans. Not a good place to be. Or, if he says, don’t pay the tax, then he will be seen as a rabble rouser to the Romans, some who is a threat and must be dealt with appropriately. They want to keep him between a rock and a hard place, and so Jesus response is really interesting, although not because of how it’s often thought.<
Does anyone have a bill on them? Anything will do, but the larger the better. Now, even though our bills say, “In God We Trust” that wasn’t added until an act of Congress in 1956, not out of any true religiosity, but instead in opposition to those godless communists, because if we say something about God on the currency, then clearly, we’re better. But who is actually on the bill? It’s a president, or someone else important to the founding of the country. Well the same was also true in the ancient world, except that the coins that Jesus asked for had a picture of the emperor on it, which also had an inscription that said something along the lines of “Caesar, son of the divine Augustus, high priest.” This was considered blasphemous to most Jews, not only because of the inscription saying that he was divine, but also because of the injunction about graven images. But, there was only one way to pay the roman tax and it was with roman coins. And so, in asking for a coin, and receiving this roman coin, Jesus implicates them in the very trap they are hoping to catch him in, because as much as they say they don’t want to participate, they are implicated because they are carrying the very coins they say they object to, and they have no problem with collecting those same coins in great numbers. So first is that Jesus is calling them out for participating in the very system that they want to say they aren’t participating in.<
But, Jesus is not setting up a duality; that there are things that belong to the state, or to the world, and that they are found in one area, and that the things of God are found in another area. Instead, while he is saying that there are some things that belong to Caesar, belong to that kingdom, and that we are to render unto Caesar those things, that is there is no injunction opposed to paying taxes, but our duty to the emperor is found within the broader context of our duty to God. And the image of Caesar found on the coins, whose imprint does it have? God, because everything in creation has the imprint of God, and we are humans are made in the image of God. So, it turns out that rather than the duality often used with this passage, that some things are Caesar’s and some are God’s, that instead everything is God’s. so, this is broader than the coins in our pockets or what is one them, it’s about loyalty, as well as saying again, that it’s not that money is a thing of this world and that God is only concerned about other things, but that God is concerned about all things, and so should we.
But simultaneously, Jesus is also addressing the underlying belief that we might think we can treat God the same way we treat a tax collector. That is pay the minimum amount, the minimum tax, in order to appease them, and then we can go about doing whatever we want, including keeping the remainder of what’s left after that amounts paid, because that’s ours, but instead, we are to render unto God the things that are God, which is everything. That leads us into the story from Mark, which is commonly referred to as the story of the widow’s mite. Jesus is in the Temple, just as he was in the passage from Matthew, except rather than interacting with the crowd, instead he is sitting and watching people make their offerings. This is not the Temple tax that I talked about earlier, but instead their offerings. It’s reported that there were 13 offering containers made from metal in the shape of trumpets that people would drop their money into, and sense there was not any paper money, everyone would be dropping in coins, so it would make a lot of sound as people made their donations. Some of those sounds would be loud, or long, as people made bigger gifts, and some would be smaller, as it would be with those widow, who drops in two of the smallest coins that are available, they are, as it says, pennies. Then Jesus says to the disciples, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”
Now the way this passage is normally heard or interpreted is that Jesus is praising the woman and criticizing the others. But does that actually happen? In fact, no. He does not commend the woman or her behavior, other than to say that her gift is greater is percentage, not in amount. He also does not condemn the others who have given. He simply says that they have given out of their abundance. Perhaps the woman too has also given out of what she sees as an abundance, even though she doesn’t have much. Or perhaps she even knows, as we do, that holding onto the two pennies is not going to make any difference because two pennies are not going to get her anything. Do she can freely give to the offering because she doesn’t need to hold it back because holding it back won’t change her life. But the problem with seeing this passage as being a praise and celebration of this widow is that we then put her up on a pedestal, and when we put people on pedestals it’s because we don’t think we could ever get their ourselves. Or to put it another way, sacrifice is great, when someone else is doing it and we are merely cheering it on. But that is the opposite of what Jesus is talking about here, which is about generosity and what we decide to give to God or keep for ourselves.
In studies of medical records and doctor conversations, what behaviorists found was that if a doctor told a patient who was diagnosed with cancer that if they had surgery that there was a 60% chance of their survival, the vast majority had the surgery. But, if they were told that there was a 40% chance they wouldn’t survive if they had the surgery, the majority of people would not have the surgery. What’s the difference between a 60% chance of survival or a 40% chance of death? Absolutely nothing, other than the perception of the number. And so, when we think about giving a tithe of our income to God, which is probably what many of the others who were making their offering at the Temple were doing, and we focus on the 10% it seems like a significant amount, like we are making a sacrifice, and there is a risk of not wanting to do it because it seems harder. That’s viewing the tithe like a tax. We don’t want to do it, but some think we have to, and we’re certainly not going to give anything more than that. The 10% is the cap on the expense.
But, if instead, we don’t focus on the 10% we have to give, but on the 90% we get to keep, it totally changes the dynamic. Because it operates from giving from scarcity, I want to keep more of this, to giving from abundance, I already have a lot and so giving this amount is easy, and I get to keep the rest. That is to give as the widow gives, because it is to give from a fully integrated life, that our faith lives are connected to our economic lives. Our belief is connected to our wallet. Wesley argues from the same place. He says that we are to take care of the needs of ourselves and our families, and notice its needs and not wants, and then we are to render to God the things that are God’s. When we look at it this way then we are worried about making the tenth, but giving all that we can, regardless of the percentage, even if its 25%, because it all belongs to God.
This year, Linda and I will be submitting out estimate of giving card for $8190. This is a slight increase in giving over last year, which represents our continuing to move farther in our giving, and happens with me gaining a slight increase in salary next year, but also with a $5000 decrease in Linda’s salary, and we live off what’s left. It represents a little more than a tithe on our adjusted gross income for tax purposes, but not yet to a tithe for total gross income, which is our next goal. I tell you that not to brag, but as I say every year simply so that you know that I’m walking the walk, and that we have our own struggles. We are not to where we would like to be in our giving, but we give gratefully, we give sacrificially, and we give knowing that there is still room for us to grow in giving and in faithfulness.
What we see in the passages from today is that our giving is not dependent upon the amount but upon the difference in makes in the giver, and that until we start to give beyond what we think we can spare then we aren’t really learning to trust in God, nor are we operating as if everything belongs to God. Generosity does not come from financial calculations, it comes from the heart, and stewardship is very different than charity. Charity is about seeking to address a specific need then and there, whereas stewardship is a life-long process of giving from abundance because God has entrusted us with what we have to be used to further the Kingdom of God, of reorienting our life around our commitment to God. Our giving should fundamentally change us and our approach to the world and to God. So, as you think about your stewardship for the coming year, I invite you to make sure that your wallet has experienced the same conversion that has happened in your heart and your mind and that we learn to give all we can. I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters. Amen.
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