Christian Giving
2 Corinthians 8:1-15 and Mark 12:41-44
I want to start today by saying thank you to all those have already responded to our stewardship review the review of our giving to the church. I've been given some figures. We gave out just over 200 packs and approximately half have already responded. Of 94 responses 3 new givers have joined the scheme, 32 folk increased their giving, 4 folk decreased their giving (which is OK - sometimes people's situations change in that direction), and 55 folk have kept their giving at the same level. That represents a just under 5% rise in our planned giving, which, while it doesn't meet our deficit, is a move in the right direction. Also, of course, that represents a lot of offers of other help, from the time and talents forms, and those will be collated too. So 'Thank you'. If you're among those who haven't replied yet (and I was one of those until this morning!!!) can I encourage you to do so - even if it's only to say things are going to stay the same - it really helps with our planning. If you've lost your form, let us know, we can get you another easily enough.
That's the notice part really, but I'd like to think more today about what, in our reading, Paul called, "the grace of giving" and to set it in context. Sometimes we tend to think of the financial life of the church as something we'd rather not talk about. It's sort of an English thing really - we don't like to talk about money. But St Paul included it as part of our response to God. He said, "just as you excel in everything - in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in complete earnestness and in your love for us - see that you also excel in this grace of giving." It's put alongside faith and speech and knowledge, earnestness and love. We're used to talking about those sort of things as part of church life. Why should giving be any different? Paul lists it as a 'grace'. The root meaning of 'grace' is a blessing we receive from God undeserved - particularly God's love for us itself is 'grace' - entirely undeserved, God loves us, and gives us so much - gives us his very self. We can't earn this and it doesn't depend on anything we do - we can't lose it - but what it calls forth from us, or should call forth, is a response. We respond to grace - and our response is itself grace.
What are we doing when we come to church? Are we coming to be entertained? Are we coming to explore and learn? Are we coming to ask God's help? Receive comfort? Assurance? Are we coming simply out of habit? There might be an element of some or all these things, but at it's root the primary purpose of coming to church, or being part of a church community, is about responding to God, or to what we have received from God. To offer something back to God - ultimately to offer ourselves to God. It's all summed up in the word 'worship' - offering to God his worth in 'worth-ship'.
At morning prayer on Friday, the little book of reflections we use said something like this. God listens to us when we pray - he loves us when we sing. God listens to us when we pray - he loves us when we sing. Singing was being thought of as part of worship - responding to God - offering our love back in response to the love we have received. It set me thinking how I feel about the responses of Nathanael and Simeon to me. When Nathanael asks for things (which he does frequently - he wants pretty much everything he sees on television!) we listen to him - and sometimes we give him what he wants. But the times he cuddles up and says, 'I love you Daddy,' are the best of all. The down side is when a couple of minutes later he says 'Ohhh, I hate you!' because he hasn't got his own way about something or been made to do something he doesn't want to (usually eat his dinner). We can be very like that with God too. Life didn't go the way we wanted so we take the hump about God!
Simeon doesn't talk much, but he too will come demanding you read him a choo choo book or something, which is nice if you've got time, but then he'll simply come and want a cuddle. It's those moments of love offered back which are one of the biggest joys of parenthood. And I think they are the biggest joys for God too - when we respond with our love and worship. Worship in that sense - offering our response back to God - is the primary thing the church is about. Everything else is set in that context.
That is the context for Christian giving. It's part of our worship - that's why we offer the collection plate as part of the service - it symbolically offers our giving to God as an act of worship. Our attitude to giving, then, says something about how we think about God - what we think God is like.
The Bible gives us a picture of a recklessly loving God who showers us with exuberant abandonment. Everything is far too much. God just enjoys extravagance, and scatters everything around us whether we notice it or not - appreciate it or not - use it well or not. For example, take a guess at how many breaths you take in a day... How many drops of rain fall in a 5 minute shower? How many varieties of insects crawl across your path in one week? How many grains of sand are there on North Bay beach? How many stars sparkle over the moors on a clear night? How many different facial expressions were made in Scarborough's streets yesterday? How many different shaped snowflakes fell on the church roof last winter? What other free gifts does God give that are past numbering?
God deals not only in huge quantities but an amazingly broad spectrum of activities and skills. He is the inspirational artist of the butterfly's wing, the sculptor of the hills and cliffs, the designer of a baby's fingernail, the percussionist of the thunder, the architect of the rainbow. Every moment sometimes the sky is a different work of art. It's all just stunning - poured out - what biological or chemical need is there for all this beauty?!
But then, when God really wanted to reveal his character, he came as Jesus, and again showed us the vast range of his generosity. Can you think of the times when Jesus befriended the lonely? Or touched the untouchable? Healed the sick? Loved the unlovely? Forgave the guilty? Defended the weak? Included the excluded? Gave life to the dead!? Brought joy to the depressed? Offered freedom to the oppressed? A new way of being to the prejudiced? Purpose to the aimless? And I could go on and on. And then, at the end, he willingly gave his life on the cross "so that everyone who believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." (Jn.3:16) As Paul put it, "Though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that through his poverty you might become rich." The cross, central in every church, is the supreme picture of God giving everything - even his life - purely because he loves us. He holds nothing back. God longs for us to be free, to have a purpose in this life and hope in the next. Like everything else he does, God gives himself in overflowing generosity, whether we appreciate it or not, or whether we notice it or not, or respond to it or not.
You could almost picture God skipping child-like around in his creation, hilariously throwing all these blessings up in the air and letting them fall around us like confetti. To worship - even to be part of a church - is about responding to this - celebrating this and seeking to live like this ourselves - to reflect the character of God in the way we are as people. It is so easy to lose the plot though, and find our church meetings dominated by concerns about money, balancing the budget, paying for necessary repairs, paying the parish share and so on, until, without realising it our faces cease to radiate joy, and at worst we can look like a miserable bunch who've just bitten a lemon. When we talk about money, our attitude to responding to God - to what we do with God's blessing - is subverted until it is no longer the 'grace of giving' as Paul says it should be - a free response to love freely given - and becomes a grudging duty. When we talk about money we fold the arms and pull a frown. It changes from, 'I love you Daddy!' to 'Ohhh, I hate you!'
This is not how it is meant to be. Do you think the widow that Jesus commended so much for the tiny amount she put in the Temple treasury, did so grudgingly? Or was it a heartfelt response to God's generosity? A sacrificial response - a response that cost her - but one given with thankfulness, showing she believed in a God who had been sacrificially generous to her. When faced with the amazing generosity of God and his overwhelming love shown in Jesus, how can we hold anything back from him? Christian giving is not about giving to the church to pay the bills (though practically that needs to be done) but that is not a 'grace'. Paul says, "If the willingness is there the gift is acceptable." He refuses to command the Corinthians, because that sort of giving is not the sort of response God wants. Giving becomes a grace when it becomes part of our response to God - part of our worship. Then it can be pure joy.
If we believe in a God who grudgingly gives his blessings only to those who are grudgingly obedient to the nth degree - the sort of God the Pharisees believed in - we will be a grudging people. But if we believe in a generous God, we will, hopefully, start to reflect his generosity in our lives.
Paul was speaking directly about a special collection to support the persecuted and struggling church in Jerusalem. Our giving here, as well as allowing the church to function here, through the parish share system, also supports other churches in inner city or rural areas with small or struggling or poor congregations, enabling them to have their own ministers too. But all this need not apply just to our giving to church. If we are generous people, responding to the generous love of God, that will overflow to other charitable giving as well. Things like the Children in Need campaign or anything else.
God is so generous. Can we live as reflections of that love and generosity too?
Alastair - 20.11.11 - 10am - St Laurence's
