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Giving Begets Giving Spencer C. Lawrence, Church of the Cross, Hoffman Estates, IL, October 29, 2006 On October 31, 1517 a German monk in the Augustinian order nailed a piece of paper containing 95 debate topics on the door of the church in Wittenberg. The monk, Martin Luther, was protesting a number of abuses in the church – not the least of which was salvation by works instead of salvation by faith. A decade and a half later in 1531, a French Law student, John Calvin, listened intently to Lutheran preachers declaring a recovery of the true message of the Christian church. Persuaded, Calvin allied himself with the growing band of protesters and eventually became a leader of what has become know as the Protestant Reformation. Both he and Luther emphasized the initiative of God in saving us from sin. Our part is simply a glad response to God’s gift of mercy in Jesus Christ. Luke’s record of the life of Jesus contains a story about a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and quite rich. He was also notably short. One day when Jesus was supposed to have been coming through Jericho on his way to Jerusalem, Zacchaeus went down to road in the hope of catching a glimpse of the One whom some believed might be the Messiah. The street was already lined with residents also eager to see Jesus. Zacchaeus, being as short as he was, decided that if wanted to see Jesus he would have to climb a tree. So he did. (It has always struck me as very odd – humorous even - to imagine a rich man, dressed in the finest clothes of his day, perched on the limb of a tree watching a parade of pilgrims.) At any rate, there he was looking for Jesus when Jesus saw him. Upon coming to where Zacchaeus was, Jesus stopped, looked up and said, “Zacchaeus, come down because I must stay at your house today.” Zacchaeus was both stunned and delighted. He hurried down and he, Jesus and his disciples headed off to Zacchaeus’ not so humble abode. The people standing alongside the road were stunned, too. But they were not delighted. They were puzzled and angry. They simply couldn’t understand why Jesus – at the very least a prophet and miracle worker if not the Messiah - should want to spend time in the home of a man who was an obvious lawbreaker. It was either on the way or after they arrived at Zacchaeus’ house that Zacchaeus made an astonishing announcement. He said that he was giving one-half of all he had to the poor and if he had taken anything that hadn’t belonged to him he would pay the person back four times as much as he had taken. One thing that made this so astonishing is that Jesus had not said anything to him about this. Zacchaeus was so overwhelmed with Jesus’ love for him that he spontaneously made this offer. A second thing that made it astonishing is its generosity. Jewish law taught that only 10% of what a person had should be given to God. Zacchaeus, you remember, offered 50%. And Jewish law required that in cases of the theft of money the amount plus one-fifth was what needed to be repaid. Zacchaeus offered to pay four times what he had stolen. Zacchaeus, moved by the generosity of God in Jesus, responded with unexpected generosity himself. The Reformation theme of God taking the initiative is clear in this story, isn’t it? Jesus chose Zacchaeus. It was God’s grace working through Jesus that picked Zacchaeus for the high honor of eating and drinking with him. He didn’t deserve it; in fact, he had done everything he could not to deserve it. But getting what we deserve is not what the grace of God is about. God’s grace – as I have said many times before - is love we don’t deserve and can’t earn. Jesus, out of love for Zacchaeus the sinner, took the initiative. My friends, this is what the Christian faith is all about. It is not about obeying a bunch of rules in order to earn God’s favor and make it – if by the skin of our teeth – into heaven. It isn’t about being better than other people so we can say we’re not like the homeless person on the street or the meth addict or the child molesting priest. A woman died in a car crash and went to heaven. At the pearly gates she met Saint Peter who welcomed her. She asked what she had to do to get in. He replied that all she had to do was spell a word correctly. Being a good speller she was filled with hope. She asked, “What word do I have to spell?” Peter replied, “Love.” Quickly the woman spelled it and just before she entered through the gates, Peter told her that her husband had also died in the car crash and that she was supposed to give him a word to spell. What would it be? She thought for a moment and said, “Czechoslovakia.” It’s clever, but it says more about the tensions within American marriages than it says about God. Here’s another one: A man died and went to heaven. St. Peter met him at the pearly gates. He asked St. Peter what he had to do to get in. St. Peter said they judged people on a point system. If his score added up to 100 then he could come in. The man told Peter that he had given to the poor. Peter marked him down for three points. The man thought again and said that he had tithed. Peter added a point. The man, desperately searching his memory finally said that he had never cussed. Peter added ½ point. By now the man was very frustrated and more than a little worried about his future. He said that at this rate he could only get in by the grace of God. To which Peter replied. “Come on in!” The Christian faith is not about proving that we are better than others. Nor is it about believing that we can do enough good things to make God love us more tomorrow than God loves us today. The Christian faith is about believing in the God who has taken the initiative to save us. The reason why we need to be saved, of course, is that we have fallen out of favor with God. Paul wrote to the church in Rome about the debased nature of humankind. He said that all had sinned and fallen short of the glory [the high standards] of God (Romans 3: 23). Does that mean everyone? Paul also wrote: What then? Are we [Jews] better off? No not at all; for we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin, as it is written: “There is no one who is righteous, not even one; there is no one who has understanding, there is no one who seeks God. All have turned aside, together they have become worthless; there is no one who shows kindness, there is not even one” (Romans 3: 9 – 12). You may ask, “Why is Paul being so negative? Can’t we do anything right?” Of course, we can. The point here is that in ourselves we don’t do enough. We don’t seek God. Left to ourselves we want to be gods. What makes us want to seek God is God seeking to us. God sent Jesus Christ to save us, to bring us back to our spiritual home, back where we belong. So Jesus came first as a little baby to demonstrate God’s gentleness. To show just how much God wants people to come back. There is nothing scary about a baby. They attract people rather than driving them away. Last week I spent some time with my son and his wife and my grandson Daniel Scott. (I have new pictures!) When we went to their church I was hoping to carry the little guy around and show him off to the people there. They had, of course, already seen him, but what did I care. Do you know what happened? I never got to touch him. Everyone wanted a turn to carry him. There was this big burly guy – looked like a pro wrestler – who had him most of the time. I almost went over to him and said, “Excuuuse me, but that’s my grandson, not yours,” but I decided not to make a scene. The point is that babies attract us to them. Baby Jesus was a sign of how much God loves us. Then there’s Jesus’ ministry during which he healed the sick and fed the hungry and welcomed outsiders and raised dead people and forgave sinners like Zacchaeus. His deeds clearly demonstrate God’s mercy and power. Of course, the capstone is Jesus’ death on the cross for the sins of the world. In dying Jesus took our sins in his own body making them his own so we could be free of them. Jesus died n order that we could become sons and daughters of God. It is a relationship we do not deserve. Nor is it one we can earn. It is a relationship we receive by trusting in Jesus Christ and committing all we know of ourselves to him. This is one of the key teachings of the Protestant Reformation: we are declared not guilty simply because of our faith in Jesus Christ. It is the great gift of God. It was the gift Jesus gave to Zacchaeus. It is the gift God offers us through Jesus. It’s what the Christian faith is all about. A gift of this magnitude moves us to want to give something back to God, doesn’t it? Giving begets giving. The root of our giving is the gift of God in Jesus Christ, which makes us so grateful that we can’t not give. You see, giving is at heart a spiritual issue. It has to do with our relationship with God through Jesus Christ. If you don’t want to give back to God then you may need to consider whether you understand what the Christian faith is all about. As Paul told the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 13: 5) you may want to test yourselves to see if you are in the faith. People ask me once in a while how much they should give. I could say, “Well, we need to give enough to make the budget.” I could say that, but I don’t. Why not? Because giving to God is not just about keeping an organization afloat. It’s not just about meeting the payroll or paying the bills. It is all that, but not primarily that. What I do say is this: The Old Testament required at least 10% of a person’s wealth or income. Jesus, however, criticized people who gave only 10% and thought they had given all they needed to. He accepted Zacchaeus’ generous gifts of 50% and the fourfold restitution of what he had taken from others. Jesus praised the widow who had only two coins and gave both of them. Jesus assumed giving 10%, but said in effect that our giving should be in proportion to what God has given us. If God has given us a lot, then we need to respond in kind – i.e. give God a lot. For some people it might mean giving 25%, others 50%, still others, even more. The current moderator of the 217th General Assembly, the Rev. Joan Gray, wrote an article recently calling Presbyterians to return to giving God at least a tithe – 10% - of our before-tax income. The current average giving among Presbyterians is about 2% of our before-tax income. I have a confession. There is a lot in my preaching that I am not very good at practicing. I fail in a lot of arenas. Tithing, however, is not one of them. I have been tithing for over thirty-five years. The majority of my giving goes to God through Church of the Cross. Some of it goes elsewhere. In spite of giving that much money away, I have managed to buy a small, but pleasant home, put two kids through private colleges, buy a few expensive electronic toys and still have a little money to put into savings. All this is to say that it can be done. It’s easier if you start early in life, rather than later. If you are starting later, I suggest that you make 10% a goal and increase your giving by 1 or 2% a year until you reach it. What difference would this make? Please be clear that tithing is not security blanket. Just because we give 10% to God doesn’t mean that God will make us rich. Nor does it mean that we will never lose our jobs or be downsized. It does mean, however, that we can be sure that God will always provide what we need. Not necessarily everything we want, but always what we need. Besides that, every time we give generously we are exercising faith in God, and when we trust God we make more room for God in our lives. We can be sure that God will draw closer to us. There are spiritual benefits to giving. More than that, if we all have 10% of what we earn, we would not have to worry about financial support for the ministries, programs and building of this congregation. Nothing fosters anxiety in a church more than a perceived lack of money. Wouldn’t you like to be done with that? Recent updates to the census data say that the average household income in zip code 60195 (that’s the zip code of the church) is a little over $91,000 a year. If we had 100 families or individuals tithing on their income we could have $910,000 a year to do God’s work. But what if the household average is inflated? Let’s say, instead, that the household income averages one-half that amount: $45,500. If we had 100 families or individuals tithing on their income we could have $455,000 to do God’s work in our community. In short, we would have more than enough money to do what we think God is calling us to do. Wouldn’t that be exciting? Giving to God is not about making points with God. It is not about currying God’s favor. Nor is it about trying to impress other people. It is about showing God how grateful we are for sending Jesus Christ to rescue us. Giving begets giving! | |||||
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