June 28, 2009

2 Corinthians 8: 7-15, Mark 5: 21-43

Spiritual Vitality = Being Generous

What the world needs now…people authentically alive and well.

What the world needs now…people who live their own lives instead of watching “reality” entertainment.

What the world needs now…people who care about others not just themselves.

What an incredible time of opportunity and challenges for a spiritual community such as McDougall United Church? Why is this a great time for us?  Because what the world is hungry and thirsty for—spiritual vitality, spiritual authenticity, is what we are called to be as a community of people who are led and inspired by the Creator God.

Jesus gospel, his good news, was that he comes to bring people life, life in all its abundance, in all its fullness. Today’s scripture lesson from the letters of the early churches is this: To be spiritually alive and vital calls us to be generous.

Paul, was the one person most responsible for the growth of Christianity in the 1^st century. He personally started churches in numerous cities and in turn those churches started others. He spent his whole ministry starting, supporting, training, mentoring, supervising and investing his whole self into extending the mission Jesus had begun.

In the passage from the letters to the Christians in Corinth, Paul is calling for generosity on their part. There are many ways in which we can give to Jesus’ work and to those in need. We think about our spiritual gifts, our time and our talents, our prayers and our caring.

But in this instance Paul is not asking the Church in Corinth to donate their spiritual gifts, their skills, their prayers or their time. Paul is talking money. Cold cash. Serious coin.

The story is somewhat ironic. Paul is asking Corinth to send offerings to the Mother Church in Jerusalem, because it now is poor. They are suffering an economic meltdown caused by draught and meager crop production. It might be similar to McDougall Church being asked to give money to help a Church in downtown Toronto.

This passage, on the surface level, may be about giving and about money. But at a deeper level this story is about perspective: it’s about what is “rich” and what is “poor.” In Canada it is interesting that we have definitions about poverty but none about what does it mean to be rich. The poverty level for a family of 4 in Edmonton is something around $32,000 or $33,000 of annual income. But for being rich there is no numerical bar set. Is it income, or assets owned, or what?

At the conference on Stewardship I attended last week in Toronto, a workshop tried to get us to define what it means to be rich. It was frustrating. The best we could do, and it is nowhere near perfect, was to say that, “A person is rich when they can afford to have things that other people can’t afford.”  Another statement, was that a person is “rich” when what they keep for their own use as a percentage of what their income is each year, gets smaller.” 

Find that hard to understand. Go back to the 1700’s, John Wesley one of the founders of Methodism, which is one of our foundational spiritual ancestors was a dynamic minister. His congregation paid him 30$ the first year. He found he could live on 28$ and he gave 2$ to the church.

His ministry flourished, the next year his Board increased his salary to 40$. He still lived on 28$ and gave that year 12$ to the offering. The following year they increased his salary to 50$ and again he and his family lived on 28$ and thus was able to give 22$ in offering. John Wesley was a rich man!

Now, I know  that many people do not think that the Church should talk about money, but preachers have been doing that for generations. Why?

Because Jesus talked about money and a person’s possessions almost more than anything in the New Testament. 60% of his parables dealt with money and possessions. Jesus realized what power money has in peoples’ lives.

One Sunday, a minister told the congregation that the church needed some extra money and asked them to give a little extra in the offering plate. The minister said that whoever gave the most would be able to pick out 3 hymns. After the offering plates were passed, the minister looked down and saw that someone had placed a $1000 bill in the offering. The minister was so excited that she announced that she would like to personally thank the person who had given that money.

A very quiet, saintly, elderly lady all the way in the back shyly raised her hand. She was invited to come to the front. The minister told her how wonderful it was that she gave so much and in thanks, asked her to pick out three hymns. The woman’s eyes brightened as she looked over the congregation, pointed to three handsome men and said, “I’ll take him, and him, and him!” I guess that’s one motivation for giving…

For Paul he saw two main reasons for the Church in the heart of Corinth to be generous, they needed to remember their roots and heritage.

(1) Their Church had been blessed by those who helped them in their hour of need. When the church in Macedonia had more than Corinth, they bankrolled the start-up of Corinth. Now Jerusalem  was in greater need than Corinth and it was time to share their wealth.]

But Paul was not being a theological Robin Hood, taking form the rich to give to the poor. Rather, Paul was referring to financial comparison. Regardless of what Corinth had it was more than Jerusalem.

Those who have more than others, share with those who have less. Paul calls it a “fair balance.”

We are experiencing tough economic times in North America, but still compared to the rest of the world we are in the top 1% of economic status. Even those living beneath the poverty level in Canada, on a world-wide comparison would still be in the top 50%.

Paul is telling us: “Remember your roots.”  Remember starting out. A basement suite with no refrigerator, putting the milk and butter on the window sill. First baby. A recession, loss of job. We can all remember times when we enjoyed less than we have now. Remember your times of need so you will remember to help meet the needs of others. For us remember our ancestors who paid for this building, who give bequests to McDougall because of their faithful generosity beyond their own physical lives. Give thanks and remember the heritage of our parking lot revenues which is not because of anything we have done. It’s a circumstance of being a downtown Church and is a heritage gift to us.

There’s a second reason Paul calls Corinthians, and us, to be generous, that was and is the “example of Jesus Christ. Paul writes, “For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might be rich.”  According to Paul, Jesus gave up his favored status to become fully human and divine. He entered into the joy and pain of living just as we do. This theological impoverishment of Christ giving up his potentially favored status gives us theological roots to ourselves be generous.

Why did Jesus, Paul and preachers throughout the millennia continue to preach about money and generosity? Because most of us do not comprehend what the “meaning of our money” is. Does our money provide our identity? Does our money provide us with style or status? Does our money, spent as consumers, enable us to be good citizens as the advertisers tell us?  Does our money, our concern for money and our greed help us to neglect seeing the needs of people around us? Out of sight and out of mind.  If all we see is our own stuff, our own balance sheet, then our hearts do not open very wide to allow the spiritual energy of life to flow from us and to flow into us.

Here’s the good news:  We are blessed when we give. Most people who give to ease the plight of others feel good about it. We feel a sense of wholeness and satisfaction…our money is making a difference

When we give willingly we provoke the love of God. Paul, a few verses beyond today’s reading writes, “God loves a cheerful giver.” Paul did not want the Jerusalem congregation to feel the offering gift was a result of his extortion. Giving in response to need is a matter of love.

Do you want to be blessed? Do you want to be assured of God’s love?

Give.