rich’s blog

sorry friends; I deleted the final draft of this message.  Here is the version just prior to it.

Preface:

So we are, today, continuing the message on financial giving, “tithing,” that we began last week.  If you missed last week you can listen to or download that message from the church website, or read it on the blog, there.

 

But we talked primarily about obstacles that get in the way of us even hearing a message on financial giving.

 

Obstacles like our suspicion that the preacher is really looking out for his paycheck, our belief that the message isn’t for us, because we’re great givers or because we don’t have to give for some reason, our exhaustion from being asked to give when we have little to give or have given much already, our belief that the money we have is ours and we’re going to do with it what we want.  All sorts of fun obstacles.

 

And we also were invited to review some passages of scripture that have something to say about how we should relate to our cash.

 

Let’s pray, and we’ll talk about what we’re going to do this morning.

 

Prayer: 

 

Introduction:

 

So here’s what we’ll do.  I am going to frame this whole conversation about obstacles & financial giving to the church in terms of generosity.  In terms of being financially generous.

 

We’ll look at Scripture, and discover some ingredients that make up a financially generous life, and we’ll talk about how giving cash to a church relates to living generously.

 

Along the way I’ll mention a tip or technique or two that can help us, I may explicitly address some of the obstacles we talked about last week. I may just let the Holy Spirit connect the dots for us in our hearts.

 

But this is the plan.

 

Concerning Generosity: 

So: we all know what being generous is about, right? It’s about giving freely, giving abundantly.

 

The word has a Latin base, related to nobility, and this makes sense; because giving freely of what you own is a noble, honorable, isn’t it? A generous person is in some real way noble.

 

And in a lot of ways, generosity–freely giving–could hold its own among the highest Christian virtues.

 

To give freely, without trying to decide if your giving is a wise investment, to give freely without tying a thousand strings to your gift, to give freely, but not pretend that the valuable thing you give is worthless–I mean, this sounds a lot like grace, doesn’t it?

 

And the word we use for forgiveness, xaris, means also to give graciously; to give freely.  We can think of generosity as a sort of applied grace, a faith-changed life revealing itself through actions.

 

And we can position ourselves to become generous.  We cannot muscle down a generous disposition, can’t force ourselves to have an attitude of generosity.  That’s like hitting a child until they start to act happy.  But we can have our hearts changed into generous hearts.

 

And let me say: I’m talking about specifically financial generosity today, right? I mean we’ve got to have some boundaries, or I’ll never get off the stool.

 

Becoming Generous: A Generous Recipe

So I’d like to offer us a sort of recipe for generosity, with some really important ingredients.

 

I think that there is a recipe for transformation that, if we follow it, really can transform us: our attitudes, our disposition.  We can become more generous than we are this morning, no matter how generous, this morning, we think we are.

 

So: ingredients.

 

Ingredient: Self-Examination

In one passage that was read to us last week, 2 corinthians 9, that we were invited to reflect on, Paul writes

 

“Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” (2 Cor 9:7)

 

Now, this relates to a specific instance; Paul had invited First Corinth Church to give funds to help out First Jerusalem Church. They had time to think about what to give, had time to consider their finances, their needs, the needs of the group, they had time, right? (cf. Social Science Commentary on the Letters of Paul, 175ff.)

 

If there’s something we’re short on it’s time.  And not having enough time is one of my favorite justifications for all sorts of dysfunctional behavior, I don’t know about you.

 

But we need to make time to consider our own financial giving.  We need to examine this part of our lives.  Some of us have, once in the distant-enough-to-be-meaningless-past, some of us do every month or week, we’re right on top of this.

 

Here’s the rub, though: If we don’t make decisions about financial giving prior to being asked to give, we are not all of a sudden going to default to selfless generosity.  We are going to default to self-protective insecurity and a big fat “maybe next time.”

 

But if instead, we take time, and resolve that we will give this much money to x, y, or z, that we will set aside this much money for those needs that come up that we can’t plan on, then we’ll be in control of our giving, instead of controlled by the thousand self-protective mechanisms that click on when we think we might lose some of our money.

 

So one ingredient in the recipe of generosity is taking the time to examine our finances, and resolve in our heart to give some amount out of them, no matter how small that amount might be.

 

Ingredient: trust 

And in this same passage that I just read, right after the bit about “God loving a cheerful giver,” Paul keeps going:

 

“And 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. As it is written,

‘He scatters abroad, he gives to the poor; 

his righteousness endures forever.’

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. You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity, which will produce thanksgiving to God through us; for the rendering of this ministry not only supplies the needs of the saints but also overflows with many thanksgivings to God.” 

I don’t need to go too much in depth on this, do I? We know what this is about.  It’s about God’s providence.  And it’s a nice thought, what Paul says here–that God will supply what we need, that we’ll be made rich in every way so that we can be generous on every occasion–but I don’t know if we believe it, at least, not when we’re sitting down deciding how much money we want to make sure we give away this week.

 

And that’s a problem, because if we are going to become generous people, we have to trust that God will be generous to us.  There are ways to develop this trust.

 

Here they are: (Are you with me?)

Three words:

Notice & Remember & Recite

 

Notice & Remember & Recite.  We need to notice the way that God provides for us.  We need to notice the way God provides for others.  We need to remember the way God has provided for us. We need to remember the way God has provided for others. And we need to recite these things, talk about them, share them with one another.  We need to give voice to God’s daily generosity in our lives.

 

I want to nuance this, talk about why this is hard–and it is–but today all I can say is that we simply have to do this: notice, remember, and recite.

 

One ingredient in this recipe for generosity is trusting in God, which we can do by developing the habit of noticing, remembering, and reciting all the things God has done for us and others financially.

 

Ingredient: Mortality

But its not simply that God will provide for us now, right?  It’s that God has already made provision for us on the other side of death.  There is a new name we’ll be given, a tent we’ll be clothed with; there’s a resurrection body, everlasting, that we look forward to.

 

God hasn’t just provided for us;  he will provide for us on the other side of death.

 

And because of the hope we have in the resurrection, because of what Jesus has done for us, we’re free to do the one thing that we should maybe do more of, which is reflect on the fact that we will die.

 

We’re going to die.

 

The things we right now hold tightly to will fade, will go out of style, will be misplaced, forgotten, become moldy & rot.  And so will these bodies of ours.  There is an impermanence to the stuff of our lives.

 

Jesus tells a story in Luke 12 about a rich man, he’s got a good head for business.  He’s a farmer.  And he’s just reaping-literally-a lot of profit from his growing agribusiness, you know.  And, reasonably, he decides to restructure-literally-the organization. He tears down some barns, builds some new larger barns. Actually; he’s daydreaming about doing all this, the farmer.

 

And he leans back and thinks about how great this will be, how he’ll say to his soul “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”

 

We read: “But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you.  And the things you have prepared? Whose will they be?” So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves, but are not rich toward God.

 

Similarly, and elsewhere, Jesus says: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust don’t destroy, and where thieves don’t break in and steal”

 

He goes on to say “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

 

Together these stories point to some basic things: We will die; and we don’t know when. And while we live, what we treasure reveals our priorities.  But because we’ve been promised that death is not the end, while we do live, our our priorities cannot be oriented toward relaxing & being merry, storing up things of worth, but oriented toward God and the things of God.

 

We shouldn’t wait until we’re dead for our will and testimony to be read; we should live out our “will and testimony” by giving testimony, witness, to the will of God.  Which is generosity, living that is rich to God.

 

So a basic ingredient to become a generous person is to soberly understand that death is coming, and as far as our finances go, we should live like it.  We need to live richly to the God who is giving us everything.

 

Ingredient: Stewardship not Ownership

And one way to live richly to this God who will heal us from death is to think of ourselves not as owners of what we have, so much as stewards.

 

A steward was, once, the ward–or guardian–of a household, an estate.  The steward looked after what the property owner owned, and kept everything running, working, ensured that everyone was playing the part they were supposed to play in the healthy functioning of the estate or the house or the kingdom.

 

We’re stewards of the stuff we have; we’re simply not free to look out only for our interests, but as Paul reminds us, we’re to look out for the interests of others (more phil here).

 

Jesus shares a parable in Matthew 25 about a wealthy man who leaves his property in the hands of servants, stewards, and gives them various amounts of “Talents” to watch over.

 

This is a financial parable, by the way.  A Talent was about a lifetime’s worth of cash.  A lifetime’s worth.  Think of all you have earned, and all you will earn, and being given five times that, then two times that, and to one of us, we “only” get one lifetime’s worth of money to watch over.

 

In the parable, this is what happens. Most of us know this story; the servant who was given only one Talent, one lifetime’s worth of money, buried it, out of fear of the wealthy master.  The other two doubled their money–and the master rewarded them both the same for their hard efforts “Enter into the Joy of your Lord.”

 

The steward who buried his cash–he got kicked out of the estate, tossed into “the outer darkness where men weep and wail.”  He was told that he at least should have stuck it in a bank and gathered some interest.

 

We use this parable to talk about the ways we shouldn’t waste the gifts “talents” that God has given us, right? But if we’re going to use this parable that way, we should be talking about money.

 

Our Lord is full of joy, and has given every one of us a lifetime amount of cash, right?  We can hide it, check on it now and then to make sure it’s there, watch as those around us use theirs in ways pleasing to our Lord.  Or we can be one of the ones who enter into the joy of our master by doing good with what we’ve been given.

 

So one ingredient in becoming a generous person is to begin to think of ourselves as stewards, of what we have as God’s property, and consider ways to steward it well, not hide it because of reasons that have nothing to do with God’s desires.

 

Ingredient: Want

Jesus notes straightforwardly that those who have been forgiven much are most grateful.  This is just a mathematical statement, right? And he’s talking about sin; those of us who are most aware of the rotten things we’ve done, and most aware of the fact that God has forgiven those things, are most likely respond with thanksgiving.

 

But there’s a parallel financial truth that accompanies this, which is that those of us who have been most in financial need, most broke, most poverty-stricken, are likely to be those most grateful when we find ourselves not in need any longer, stable, with an abundance.

 

I honestly think that at least one way to discover thankfulness for some sort of financial stability is experiencing poverty, want.  It isn’t necessary; but it’s helpful.

 

Now: should we put ourselves in positions of poverty?  Create some sort of artificial poverty for ourselves, so that we can experience want? I don’t know; I don’t know if that can really change us.  It probably can, I suppose, but not if all we have to do to get out of it is go to the ATM.

 

What we can do is create boundaries in the expansion of our wealth.  We can decide, if we get a raise, not to adjust our standard of living to this new cash flow.  We can decide to choose periods of financial limitation, in order to give more, the same way Paul calls married couples to choose periods of sexual limitation as an act of faith, so that they can better devote themselves to prayer.

 

The goal of exercises like these is to create in us an attitude like Paul’s.  He’s writing to the Philippians, who he’s thanking for a financial gift that they’ve given to him, the context is cash, here, which has been a great help to him; he’s so thankful for it, right? But he says to them:

 

“I rejoice greatly in the Lord that at last you have renewed your concern for me. Indeed, you have been concerned, but you had no opportunity to show it. I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength.” Phil 4:10-13.

 

If we only know what it means to be well fed & live in plenty, I don’t know if we can experience the dependance upon the Lord’s strength that Paul talks about here.  It seems like we inevitably slide into dependance upon our plenty. So we who do have might want to creatively explore ways to self-limit our “plenty” now and then.

 

So this ingredient might be called self-limitation, or remembering lean times of want.  It, too, is a basic ingredient in a generous life.

 

one more this morning, out of the many we could mention:

 

Ingredient: thankfulness

Look.  Even stewards get to buy themselves clothes, right?  We are on the way to Resurrection and world without pain.  Times of want have given way to times of plenty, and we have all had enough to at least get us here.  If we tried to write down the answered prayers in our lives our hands would cramp.

 

Should we be thankful for this stuff?

 

When Paul summarizes the Christian life in Colossians, and says “whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” He is trying to say that our lives should ultimately be thankful ones.

 

It’s worth taking an afternoon to just notice, remember, and recite all the things, large to small, that we can thank God for.

 

This ingredient of thankfulness is one of the most important in a generous life.

 

A Generous Life

And so if we take these things, if we can

 

examine our finances, resolving to give some portion of them,

notice, remember, and recite all the things God has done for us financially, remember that death is not our end; but we cannot take our money with us

consider ourselves stewards not owners,

choose to create boundaries in our financial lives,

and give thanks–

 

if we can take these things, mix them in equal measure, and practice them–like a golf swing, like a video game maneuver, like a musical chord–over the course of our lifetimes, or this week–whichever comes first.

 

I am just certain that we’ll become more generous people. We’ll become people who really are “rich toward God”–with our finances, and in all things.

 

But How does Sunday Morning fit into a generous life: 

But what does this have to do with the offering basket?

 

We can talk about what the offering basket–what giving to a church– “does” to or for us, can’t we?

 

It gives us a weekly chance to give, so that we can do the self-examination thing, resolve to give, then give.  It forces us–even if it’s for a split-second only–to think about financial giving, no matter what amount that giving may be.

 

In many ways it multiplies our ability to give: maybe some of us could host and supply the needs of a food pantry or an esl class or some such thing: but it’s nice, isn’t it, to have space & coffee & paper towels & multiple toilets, right?

 

But let me speak really frankly for a second about what it seems to me the offering really does.

 

In many ways, it maintains an institution.  The church is people, right?  It’s people.  But we use the term to talk about the church as an institution–you know what I mean by this, right? An organization that does things in its own name, that promotes various moral and ethical ideals through financial & human resources.  And institutions get a bad rap, but–we don’t have time to deal with that.

 

But in many ways, what we give to the offering basket maintains the institution of a church; in our case, Smoky Row Brethren. And an institution means “stuff.”

 

Stuff like buildings & grounds and all the other stuff that fills them.  And buildings & grounds & the stuff inside need maintained, need replenished, need cared for, right?  And institutions have staff members that also need maintained & cared for.

 

And this isn’t bad; while an institution can’t do everything, it really can multiply what we give.  It casts a larger net than an individual can sometimes cast, and people and groups can get caught in its stronger gravitational pull, have their needs more easily met.  It’s potential for good is greater.

 

But of course, you can’t maintain an institution’s stuff without cash, can you? without money, you can’t promote the interests of the institution.  You can’t plan & strategize and form hopes about the coming months without knowing what financial resources you’ll have–if you’re an institution, or a person. Institutions need money.  So the money in our offering basket’s goes to the maintenance and promotion of Smoky Row Brethren Church, right?  And Smoky Row Brethren Church, as an institution, exists for the maintenance and promotion of God’s Kingdom.

 

And while an institution may or may not care for it’s own; a church does. And we of course are a church.  So the money that we put in our offering baskets also goes to caring for one another when needs arrive in our lives–if we, of course, can risk sharing our needs and receiving the care.

 

Now: It wasn’t always this way, of course; “church” didn’t always look the way it looks now.  When the Brethren church was young in America, someone donated land, the church built a meeting house; they took a special offering, maybe for a stove, and another person provided wood.  The elders were expected to work full time & preach & teach, the deacons worked full time & cared for spiritual matters, the church itself took care of the needs of its members.

 

It was a different model; less “institutional,” and with that, there were less programs, less specific outreach events, less special events, and age-specific ministries, and mission trips: because honestly, those things are hard to do when everyone is working full time and your one or two-room building is good enough to sit in on a Sunday morning, but was never meant to do much more than that.  This isn’t a model that lends itself to numerical growth.  It is a model that exists in the world: there are still Brethren who live this way today.

 

But the fact is, most of us do want to house a food pantry, do love that ESL classes are changing lives, do daydream about all the things we’ll do in the coming years, and enjoy the things we do in the present, with the resources we have as both the church and the institution we are.

 

So the money in our offering basket’s goes to the maintenance and promotion of God’s Kingdom, through the programs that we do, and the staff that we support–myself included.  Our interests are internal and external; focusing on caring for ourselves and others.

 

Conclusions: 

Being financially generous to Smoky Row is critical for us as an institution to survive, totally necessary.

 

But it comes out of a generous life, right?  We see that, don’t we? If we’re financially–what’s the opposite of generous? Probably something like the opposite of the ingredients to a generous life: distrusting, unreflective, ungrateful, maybe deluding ourselves about our mortality, living without financial boundaries and limits–if we’re these things, we’re not going to start giving money to Smoky Row all of a sudden.

 

So while I care that we give of our finances to Smoky Row, put stuff in the offering basket, I care more that we do it as part of a generous life.

 

And I mentioned that we can’t force a generous spirit, a generous disposition.  And I mean it. But I do know that if we practice generosity, as a discipline–a thing that we do because it’s good for us, like brushing our teeth or tying our shoes or wearing a seat-belt–if we practice giving away money; it can begin to affect our attitude & disposition.  It just does.  It just does. So there is a basket that goes around.

 

But we live in a world of baskets that are going around. The obstacles to a generous life are great, because we cannot escape the fact that financial generosity is part of what it means to live a generous life, and a generous life is what it means to live a life like Jesus own.  We must be rich toward God; and we have to practice the things we’ve talked about this morning.

 

Let me review them one more time:

 

Let’s examine our finances, resolving to give some portion of them,

Let’s notice, remember, and recite all the things God has done for us financially,

Let’s remember that death is not our end; but we cannot take our money with us

Let’s consider ourselves stewards not owners, choose to create boundaries in our financial lives, and give thanks–living richly toward God in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.