Note; this concept still needs work... so if this were an article I would be calling it 'TOWARD a theology of tithing... I'm still trying to figure out exactly what I want to say about Tithing as Witness...
Intro: It’s difficult to talk about money, in general. It is difficult to talk about ‘giving money’ right now for a variety of reasons I suppose; Times are tough economically and some people, even here among us are really struggling financially. Because financial matters can cause such anxiety and even shame, we often don’t talk about our financial struggles with each other. Besides it just isn’t considered polite.
Add to that the fact that it seems like every other phone-call seems to be a telemarketer offering us a ‘service’ of some sort which is just a polite way of saying that they want our money… some of them for their profit… some of these calls from worthy non-profits, like special Olympics for instance. Well, it just gets tough to talk about all of this in church.
When we do talk about it in church it is often connected to the budget of the church. So in effect we are talking about fundraising for electricity and oil and my salary and insurance and to support the ministries of the church… Some churches talk about tithing (the churchy word for giving money) purely in terms of obedience… God commanded that we tithe and so we should tithe. Or some churches will talk about the ‘spiritual benefits’ of giving as a connection to God.
No matter how we do talk about it… some will feel uncomfortable because they don’t have much if anything to give financially. Some will feel offended because they already give a lot.
So let me just say a few things.
Today’s sermon is about giving, tithing…. Whatever you want to call it. The purpose of the sermon is not to make those who are already struggling financially feel guilty that they don’t have something to put in the plate. Before I read today’s scripture I am going to read from Romans…Rom 12:6-8
6 We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man's gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. 7 If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; 8 if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.
Notice that giving is a spiritual gift according to Paul, one among many… some of us have been given the resources to use this gift… perhaps your gift right now is not financial generosity… it just isn’t possible… so store what I’m going to say about giving away for the day when you do have the resources to be generous… Ok?
Second, I want to say to those of you who give faithfully and generously… who have writers- cramp from responding to every request for aid by whipping out your check-book… thank you… sincerely… American Baptist churches around the state are amazed at the amount of service we can provide to the community and you who have been given the gift of generosity, are doing so in an exemplary fashion… and that gift along with the gifts of others who have time and talent to put your generous gifts to good use all works together for our witness to the world. Today I want to talk about Giving and Tithing from a different perspective from those I mentioned earlier and my hope is that it will not feel like a pitch to those of you who already give generously to give more… or a guilt trip to those of who have not been given the gift of generosity.
So Lets read our Scripture for the day. 2 Cor 8:1-15
Pray
1 Tim 6:10 ‘for the love of money is the root of all kinds of money’
One church member... is fond of quoting this scripture whenever he discusses church endowments…the monies that churches accumulate and invest. Some people think that endowments are really good things and some think they are bad things… He likes to note… it doesn’t say money is evil… it says LOVE of money is the root of evil.
And this is a common theme actually, throughout the Bible.
In Deut 6:10-12 When the LORD your God brings you into the land he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you — a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build , 11 houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant — then when you eat and are satisfied, 12 be careful that you do not forget the LORD, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
Now the thing to remember is that the story of the Torah… the first five books of the Bible… is the story of God leading Israel from wanting to having… from scarcity to abundance… it starts with Abraham in the book of Genesis and it continues as a theme throughout Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. God wants the people of Israel to live comfortably and safely… with all of their needs met… this, by the way is what the Bible means by abundance… not opulence… not a showing and conspicuous gathering and hoarding of wealth and property… but enough to live safely and happily.
This is explained in Ex 16:17-20 and if you do not know this story it is important because Paul has quoted it in today’s reading…. It takes place just after Israel has left Egypt… and the people are in the desert and they are hungry and they are afraid… so God provides Manna… bread from heaven to feed them… and there were rules. Each Israelite was to gather enough… ENOUGH to feed the family for the day… not too much… they weren’t allowed to try to stash it or save it… but to take enough and trust in God for tomorrow… and this is what happened…
17 The Israelites did as they were told; some gathered much, some little. 18 And when they measured it by the omer, he who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little. Each one gathered as much as he needed. 19 Then Moses said to them, "No one is to keep any of it until morning." 20 However, some of them paid no attention to Moses; they kept part of it until morning, but it was full of maggots and began to smell.
God will provide. That is the lesson of this story. Trust in God, not in money, accumulated wealth or material possession.
But there is another lesson that I think applies… When the manna becomes the ultimate concern… the main goal for some of the Israelites… more important that leaving some for others… more important than trusting in God… their manna goes bad… When our wealth or our money becomes the most important thing… the ultimate goal… it is dangerous…
If we look to Jesus own teaching… Money is a prevalent theme… Jesus is always talking about money.
In Luke 16 Jesus tells the story of a rich man and a beggar named Lazarus… they both die and the rich man ends up in Hell… and we are never told that he had any grossly immoral marks on his soul… we are not told that he was evil or cruel… all we know is that he was wealthy, conspicuously wealthy and that Lazarus the beggar lived right outside his gate and the rich man did not know him or know about him and that IGNORANCE caused him to end up in hell… Notice that… His ignorance sent him to hell… his preoccupation with stuff… with things… with wealth… blinded him to the plight of the poor… and he ended up in Hell… Love of money is a dangerous thing.
And what may be most frightening about this… at least how I understand it, is that the rich man is blind to his own material preoccupation. Which is what I think is most threatening about the consumerism in our own country…we don’t even realize its influence over us. We spend an hour and maybe a bit longer in worship… some of us spend time in prayer and in devotion at home… but we are constantly surrounded, bombarded by the suggestion to buy, purchase, accumulate and collect…and we don’t even realize the influence this has over us… this is what the Deuteronomy story is warning us of… before we know it… we have replaced God with the stuff that we can buy.
Luke 19 is the story of Zacchaeus… we’ve talked about him often haven’t we… we really have to learn that ‘wee little man song’ sometime… anyway… he too is wealthy and his wealth, as a tax collector is gained from his in-ethical practice of overtaxing his own poor neighbors….
Do you see a pattern emerging. When the point of life is to gain wealth… when wealth and money become the end… the goal, the purpose… we end up disconnected from each other… like Zacchaeus and ultimately from God, like Lazarus.
So the bible offers us multiple warnings about the toxicity of loving money… of making it our god…
Before you dismiss the idea that you or I could possibly get that distracted… that we could be that influenced… remember the struggle I had to sell two of my four guitars. Seriously… why did I have to have four guitars anyway? Without stopping to think about it I accumulated four guitars and let me tell you that two of those purchases were just consumer therapy… I was feeling bad about something and getting guitars and seeing them sitting in the house gave me a little high…
William Cavanaugh suggests in a little book called Being Consumed that what is insidious about our consumer culture is that it is, in some sense, spiritual… we fill emotional and spiritual needs quickly and easily through the pursuit of some new product, gadget…
And even though we may pride ourselves on be bargain hunters… when we are filling spiritual emptiness with easily procured things… we are missing the chance to grow in faith… because the growing pain is assuaged by the good feeling of a new something.
Sum Up so Far:
While God wants us to live in security and happiness, also called abundance, what God means by abundance is not what our culture teaches us about abundance. When The Bible talks abundance, The Bible means abundance for the entire community, not for individuals here and there. So that abundance for all calls for generosity and simplicity as values for individuals.
Therefore, money is not evil, nor is wealth nor material gain… but they are dangerous. Material wealth can take the place of the God in our lives, creating a sense of comfort when we are feeling discouraged, giving us a joyful feeling… and so material wealth and gain slowly but surely can make themselves a god… can take the place of God in our lives without us even realizing it. And we live in a culture where we are bombarded daily, mostly via television, with the consumer gospel… the good news of the new and improved!
Now, what is going on with Paul in 2 Corinthians that we read together?
2 Cor 8:1-2 And now, brothers, we want you to know about the grace that God has given the Macedonian churches. Out of the most severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity.
So Paul is writing to the church at Corinth about other Macedonian churches. Now, we have to pay specific attention to phrase Macedonian. So Paul is talking to churches who culture was pagan… not Jewish. And he is urging them to continue to take up a monetary collection for the churches in Jerusalem, churches that are largely Jewish in heritage. There was a sometimes contentious divide in these early church because the Jerusalem churches, mostly Jewish maintained many Jewish practices and traditions, while the new church Paul planted, were converted pagans who did not have the same heritage. So the question that these churches struggled with was… should pagans adopt Jewish practices in order to become Christian?
Now, Paul describes the Macedonian churches as having received grace from God…And then goes on to say2 Cor 8:7 But 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.
So Paul sees giving, tithing, as something more than just taking care of the basic necessities of the church building (which they didn’t have anyway) and even more than personal piety, a spiritual practice for the good of the individual. Paul see’s giving as an act of participating in God’s grace.
2 Cor 8:9 For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.
Paul is talking about Jesus. Specifically he is talking about Jesus’ incarnation… that the word of God, the creative love of God became flesh, human, visible. Even more specifically, Paul is talking about Jesus’ crucifixion. In the grand scheme, Jesus gave up the wealth or riches of existence with God, to come and live with us. Specifically Jesus gave up the riches of his life and become poor… was tortured and crucified to show us the depth of God’s creative love… love that knows no bounds, love that Paul would in another place say, we cannot be separated from. That is what Grace is… the gift of Jesus that made God’s love available to us no matter what… a relationship with God is available because of Jesus own gift, his giving of his own wealth for our gain.
Paul does not want the Macedonian churches and the Jerusalem churches to remain in this state of tension, distrust and bickering because it taints the witness of the church to the wider world.
2 Cor 5:17-21
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God.
Why would people believe that Jesus’ generous gift reconciles humanity to God IF we can’t be reconciled to one another? So Paul is urging the Macedonian church and specifically the church in Corinth to finish the collection begun for Jerusalem, in spite of their own financial hardship, to bear witness to the watching world of the reconciliation that is possible through Christ.
You notice that for Paul money is not dangerous (first of all I suppose because he is asking people in poverty to give sacrificially to others).
This is perhaps one of the challenges that the Bible offers to the way we think about giving. While we often think about giving to the church from what we can easily afford… Paul is challenging these early churches to continue to make sacrifices of their own meager finances, for the good of others.
When we give sacrificially, money is not an evil… it is a good, a grace.
You also notice that for Paul, money is a grace when it is put in service of something truly ultimate. When money is sacrificially given for the good of others, it is transformed from a dangerous substance to grace, a sign of God’s love.
Which is perhaps the most important lesson that we are meant to teach the world through the practice of tithing and other offerings… the proper place of money in our lives…
For many in the culture around us… money is an ultimate.
The July 13th issue of TIME has a little interview with a man named Robert Kiyosaki who apparently is a financial guru. Now, I don’t know him and have never read his books and I’m not trying to judge the man… but one part of the interview popped out at me. ‘As a young kid, I really wanted to be rich.’ Its so subtle we might miss it, and that is what the Bible has been trying to tell us. Wealth and money can become the ultimate concern for us very easily, without our even noticing.
I remember trying to educate myself about economics when the whole ‘financial crisis’ hit…
What I particularly remember about one explanation of the housing market crash was that it too illustrated how common the ultimacy of money is in the culture around us. Mortgages could be bundled and sold to larger corporations as an investment. So little mortgage companies started popping up all over the place offering mortgages to one and all. I particularly remember one interview with a man who dealt with these mortgages. He had no background in the mortgage business or in finance whatsoever, but he heard that mortgages were a quick way to make easy money. His ultimate concern was… profit, wealth. Many of these little companies folded up as soon as the profit was made. Their entire purpose was to make quick and easy money.
And I’ve wondered (perhaps a bit idealistically) what would have happened if the church (not this church, but American churches of every shape and size and denomination) had been more willing to talk about the purpose and the practice of tithing… if we had all (instead of avoiding the difficult topic of money and giving) had been showing the world the proper place and purpose of money? Would so many have been caught, some innocently, some not so innocently, in this view of money that it the ultimate, the end?
I think this is why tithing is such an important witness because it is a practice that constantly reminds us and shows the world the proper place and purpose and use of money. When our wealth is used for the glory of God, through being used for the good of others… money is not a dangerous thing, but a gift of grace… a sign of God’s deep deep love for all humanity. When our wealth is used, as Paul wanted it to be used in Corinth, as a sacrificial sign of unity and compassion, our wealth is a witness to the larger world showing it that we need not fear scarcity, but actually will find abundance of life, as Jesus promised, not by hoarding for ourselves, but by giving generously to others. For this is what pleases God and God cares and provides for those who care for others.
Matt 6:24-3424 "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.
25 "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?
28 "And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31 So do not worry , saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
What would others learn about your faith… by looking at your check book
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