This morning we’re winding down a three sermon series
on Stewardship. In the first sermon I
said that it’s pointless to talk about what we do with the time, talent, and
money that God has entrusted to us without first talking about what we are
doing with that one small talent of God’s life, the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus and
the Father have given to dwell in us.
Have we devoted ourselves to Jesus’ Lordship over our lives and are we
letting the Holy Spirit do his transforming work in us to make us more Jesus-like? Are we faithful disciples who truly believe
in and follow Jesus to the extent that we will take the time to be discipled
and then to disciple others? That’s
where talk on Stewardship needs to start.
Last week the
topic was sharing in God’s abundance.
The abundant life God has for us, for all of humanity, is like a feast
or a potluck. There’s more than enough
for everyone as long as we take on a lifestyle of hospitality and generosity as
opposed to the lifestyle of hoarding to which we are accustomed.
This week we’ll take a quick look at how we give to
the church simply because no series on Stewardship would be complete without
“The Ask”. If you remember in the first
sermon I noted that recent studies on how much and to what people give their money
found that although church-goers give regularly to their church, the majority
of church-goers tend to give less to their church than they do to other
organizations such as hospitals, universities, disaster relief, and disease
research because they see such organizations as more able to make a real
difference in the lives of people than what the local church can. This rings as true for big, one-time gifts as
it does regular, patterned giving.
This lack of confidence in God being able to make a
real difference by working through us as the body of Christ is something from
which we need to repent because it is killing us as a congregation. Focusing on our commitment to Jesus and being
his disciples is a good place to start and so I did. Last week, I hoped you caught an imaginative
glimpse of what could happen through us if we took up the practices of
hospitality and generosity. This week,
we need to talk about getting out and staying out of the financial crunch this
congregation is in.
When we talk about giving to the church the first
word that comes up is tithing, giving ten percent to the church. I’m sure you’ve heard it said that if
everybody in the church tithed we have so much money we wouldn’t know what to do
with it. Tithing seems to be the ideal,
but on the whole it is not practiced. I
suspect this is nothing new.
The tithe in the Old Testament, which was ten percent
of one’s harvest or income otherwise, was for all shapes and purposes the
national taxation system of the theocracy of ancient Israel in which God was
the monarch and the priests were the government. The tithe was to be from the yield of every
third year and was to support the priest, foreigners or refugees, widows and
orphans. We have no idea if it was ever
practised on the scale of the whole nation doing it.
When ancient Israel instituted a monarchy I suspect
that tithing became even less practiced because the kings started taxing the
people for funding armies and building palaces and enforced it. As far as the societal needs that tithing was
meant to remedy, I suspect that in the days of the kings idol worship became
the chief source of income for the priests.
As far as how they looked after the poor, if you know anything about
ancient warfare, war was a good way to get rid of the poor, sick, and disabled. They were your first line of defence.
Looking to the New Testament, there is no evidence
that a practice of tithing ever existed in the early church. In fact, there was no institution called the
church with buildings and priests that needed a regular means of support until
the later 300’s A.D. Though Paul does
argue that those who regularly preach should be remunerated, ministry tasks
were otherwise shared among the congregants who didn’t get paid. Travelling missionaries, evangelists, and
apostles usually elicited the support of wealthy patrons along the way by means
of letters of reference. Yet, Paul himself
was a tentmaker and self-supporting.
I wish to highlight that the church depicted in the
New Testament did not have the institutional needs of supporting buildings,
ministry programs, or full-time clergy with pensions and benefits that we, the
church today, have. The New Testament
churches were small congregations like ours who usually met in homes, usually
the home of a wealthier member. The tasks
of ministry were shared among the people.
So, no building, no salaried clergy.
That being
said, when the New Testament and Jesus himself spoke of giving it is for taking
care of the needy among them. As I’ve
said many times, the early church nearly eradicated poverty amongst themselves.
The New Testament indicates that the first Christians strove to live in the
present in the way they would be living when Jesus returned and established his
earthly kingdom.
This means early Christians strove towards enacting
the expected reality of the end of times Kingdom of God in which all people will
have enough. And so, they shared their
wealth. This does not mean that it was
the practice that wealthy Christians would totally divest themselves of their
wealth. It means that everybody gave to
take care of the poor in their midst.
Everybody gave. They were taught
to give generously as Jesus gave – sacrificially, to the extent of his own life. Jesus was rich, the Son of God, but became
poor, human, for our sake. They were
encouraged to give generously according to their means and beyond.
In our reading from 2 Corinthians Paul notes that the
Macedonians, though they were extremely poor, were able to put together a
“wealth of generosity” with the gift they sent to the Judean church for famine
relief. Though they themselves were poor
they begged Paul earnestly for the privilege of sharing in that ministry of famine
relief in Judea. They took the hardship
that the Judean churches were suffering upon themselves by giving sacrificially
to the extent of increasing their own hardship.
That kind of giving, giving that takes on or shares
in the poverty of others, fits in well with what I said last week about sharing
in God’s abundance and undertaking a lifestyle of hospitality and generosity. I believe this is the way our Lord calls us, his
disciples, to live especially in this materialistic, consumeristic culture that
hoards wealth.
But…as far as how and what we give to this church I
think that model is unrealistic and so also tithing. The largest expense this congregation has is
paying for the ministers and I don’t want anyone living on less on my
account. We ministers have a
Scripture-based right to be paid for the work we do and to be paid a fair wage,
but don’t go hungry on my account.
Nevertheless, this church is poor. It is behind and if it weren’t for money in
the bank and a grant from Presbyterians Sharing, the doors would be
closed. To break even and be grant free
there needs to be roughly $14,000 ($9,000) more a year coming in. If there are 20 envelopes a week coming in
and we were to share the debt evenly without doing more fundraisers, then each
giver needs to give $700 ($450) more a year.
That’s roughly $59 ($38) more a month or $14 ($9) a week. “The Ask” – can you do that? Just write your check for that much more a
week and you won’t miss it, but the ministry of this church and of the Cooperative
will be all the more strengthened for ministry.
Or, are there any of you out there who can do
this? In my church in West Virginia Fred
and Lucille Burns used to call the Treasurer at years end and ask what was
still needed and they would write a check for anywhere from $5,000-$10,000 and
that was on top of their regularly giving.
God bless them.
That’s just talking money. The ultimate solution to our problem is we
need to take discipleship more seriously than we do. Train ourselves to disciple others. Every one of us here has people in our lives
whom the Lord is calling us to share him with.
That is very difficult to do if we feel like we don’t know what we’re
doing. Regardless, has your life in the
Lord been enriched by the wealth of hospitality, friendship, compassion, and
joy that is abundant in this Christian fellowship? If so, consider “the Ask” that I’ve put
before you and follow through. The
wealth of God’s abundance is found in generosity. Let’s not miss that boat. Amen.
