THE BIG SECRET
Scriptures: Psalm 112:1-9
Philippians 4:8-13
The stewardship materials that you’ve been receiving in your bulletins for the past four weeks keep referring to a “big secret”. What they are suggesting is that the best kept secret in the church is how wonderful it feels to give. Probably for many of you that’s not such a secret; you already know the many blessings that come from a giving nature. Still, for the next two weeks – this Stewardship Sunday and next week when our focus is Thanksgiving – I’d like to explore with you the feelings that rise up when we center our attention on what it means to give. As it said in one of the flyers you got in the bulletin: “Whether it’s an annuity that provides self-support while undergirding local ministry; a toy donated to a family at Christmas; the weekly pledge that transforms into salaries and health insurance, fuel bills and curriculum, a new kitchen counter and a youth group mission trip; or an anonymous can of chili, a poinsettia, or used eyeglasses – it feels wonderful to give. Whether we have little or whether we have plenty, it’s a joy to give it away.”
Now, this may strike you as an unusual way to go about looking at the meaning of stewardship. We may be more inclined to refer to stewardship as Presbyterian minister Jim Kitchens does as “the dirty little secret”, although he does go on to say echoing our theme: “The dirty little secret of stewardship season is that the church doesn’t need your money nearly so much as you need to give some more of it away – abundantly, freely, lovingly.” This kind of thinking about money is like the new ABC drama “Dirty Sexy Money” – those are three words that we sorta assume ought to go together.
Or, some pastors prefer gimmicks as a way of raising money. Here’s one approach that I came across: a pastor got up in front of the congregation one morning and announced, “Friends, I have here in my hands three sermons: a $5,000 sermon that lasts five minutes, a $2,500 sermon that lasts fifteen minutes, and a $1,000 sermon that lasts a full hour. Now, we’ll take up the collection and see which one I’ll deliver.”
OK, so that kind of approach smacks of coercion, and you already know we’re not going to go that route. The path we are going to go down is to look at the Biblical record, especially the stories that Jesus and Paul told that have to do with giving, and in particular this marvelous church at Philippi that was so generous to Paul on his missionary journeys.
Carolyn Cheney is a laywoman at Christ Church, Episcopal in Washington DC. Last year she was asked to be the Stewardship Committee chair for her parish, and she took that responsibility seriously, researching what the Bible had to say. Here are some fascinating statistics that she shared with her congregation:
“A casual review of Jesus' parables reveals that money was a topic that he brought up frequently. And the reason for this was that undue concentration on material things distances us from God. It was true 2,000 years ago; it is just as true today.
“When looking for ways to move you as a congregation, I found an article that said that Jesus talked about money in 16 out of 38 parables; that 1 out of every 10 verses in the gospels relates to money and possessions; and that there are over 700 verses with the word love, 500 plus verses with the word prayer, less than 500 that have the word believe in them and over 2,000 verses that include some form of the word give --- give, giving, giver appears in the bible 2,162 times - more than love, prayer or believe. So when we discover that some form of the word give appears in Scripture 2,162 times -- or -- more than three times as often as ‘love,’ it is easy to see that God wants to teach us about giving, wants us to understand that learning to give, actually giving, is a gift itself!
“There are more promises about giving than anything else in the Bible. Jesus talks more about giving than heaven or hell. He understands how money, or what it symbolizes -- control in our lives -- can short circuit our relationship with God.”
What is behind all of these Biblical references to giving, Carolyn Cheney implies, is to find ways to put God first in your life. She goes on to say: “Gratitude comes with our faith. In fact, giving thanks is the fundamental act of worship for Christians. From birth to death, ‘thanks be to God’, is the most theologically sound response to life we can offer. A stewardship campaign is simply an annual gratitude alert, calling us to recommit ourselves to giving thanks in concrete ways.”
We look for a variety of ways to express our gratitude to God and how to give God our thanks, although sometimes as circumstances change that gratitude can start to become kinda stingy. About 30 years ago there was a rather silly movie called “The End” with Burt Reynolds, Sally Field, and Dom DeLuise about a man who decides to end his life – and really bungles the job. Reynolds tries to commit suicide by swimming out as far as he can until he is
exhausted and then he decides he’ll just go under. But after going under he is looking at the surface from the underside and decides not to go through with it. As he breaks the surface of the water he screams: “I want to live! I want to live!” He then begins to try to swim to shore, but it is a very long way off. In his panic, he cries, “Lord, if you get me out of this, I will give you 80% of everything I have.” But time passes and he is still going strong, and besides he can just begin to see the shoreline. As he continues to swim he feels his strength holding out and says, “Lord, if you help me to get to shore alive I will give you 10% of all my earnings.” And, finally, he struggles to the place where he sees that he is just going to be able to make it to land and says, “Well, Lord, let’s just forget about what I said before. I think I can make it from here on my own.”
Now, I don’t really think that this kind of attitude reflects where any of you are, but it is a fairly common one and it may reflect where some of us have been at some point in our lives. We think we are completely self-sufficient, and so we don’t need to rely on the promises God has given us. We have amassed a certain level of wealth, and so we feel comfortable in life. We see the needs of others, and so we feel pity – but it doesn’t really touch the core of our being.
But as you and I know those kinds of feelings and life-experiences don’t last. More importantly, they are not truly satisfying. Giving to God is a way of living for God. It is at its heart an act of worship. It is an expression of gratitude to a faithful God for all God’s goodness to me. Giving is not just a response to needs that the church has, it is a response of gratitude. Indeed, in some sense, every sermon we preach is a stewardship sermon, because every sermon that is preached is about how we respond to God’s grace in our lives.
The church at Philippi in Macedonia was clearly one of Paul’s favorites, as you can tell from the warm tone of his letter. As one of the inserts in your bulletin noted, Philippi was a prosperous city, with theaters, elegant baths, and noted concerts. The church there was founded by Lydia, who was the first recorded Christian convert in Europe. She was evidently a well-to-do agent of a purple-dye firm of Thyatria, and she was well-known for her hospitality. She welcomed Paul and his companions into her house, and from that meeting the church in Philippi grew and was faithful. It supported Paul on his missionary journeys, but perhaps even more importantly it gave him comfort and was there for him when he was in prison. This letter that we have in our Bible was probably written late in Paul’s life, most likely when he was in prison and waiting for his trial, so you would think that he would be rather depressed. Yet, the whole tone is one of rejoicing in the Lord for the people at Philippi and being grateful for all that they have done for him. Indeed, Paul is rather wistful in comparing the Philippians with other churches he has founded. In the verse just after the end of our text for today he says to them, “You Philippians indeed know that in the early days of the gospel, when I left Macedonia, no church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving, except you alone.” Before that, though, in one of the most lyrical passages in all of the Bible Paul tells them what will be the result of their generosity: “Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.” As it said at the end of one bulletin insert: “Like their founder, Lydia, the Philippi church was the church of balance – they understood poverty and plenty, and they understood the secret of giving in both circumstances. What secret? The secret that they could do anything – anything – through Christ who strengthened them.”
The big secret about giving is the joy that we discover in the way that our gifts are returned to us. We all know, and could probably tell, funny Christmas or birthday stories (yet, they’re somehow sad, too) about, say, the husband who buys his wife a big-screen TV because he wants to watch the football games, or the teenager who gets his little sister a heavy metal CD for her birthday – you know who’s going to be doing most of the listening! On the far other side of the coin is the very busy and over-committed father who gives his daughter an envelope with a card inside saying, “The bearer of this card gets one afternoon a week for the next 12 months to do whatever she wants to do with me.” You know how much that gift is valued and treasured. One of our favorite Christmas stories – now over 100 years old – is O’Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi”, about a young and quite poor married couple living in a cold-water flat who are faced with the fact that the next day is Christmas with very little money to buy each other presents. So she cuts off her long-flowing hair and sells it to buy him a platinum fob chain for his much-beloved gold pocket watch that had been his grandfather’s…and he sells the pocket watch to buy a set of beautiful tortoise shell combs for her hair. What is especially nice about the ironical ending is that they can laugh about what each has done out of the sacrificial love that each has for the other – and find that their love has been strengthened not by the gifts but by the giving.
“It is well with those who deal generously and lend, who conduct their affairs with justice,” says the Psalmist. “They have distributed freely, they have given to the poor; their righteousness endures forever…..” “Righteousness” in this context is another word for love – for the love that is experienced when generous hearts are full of a giving spirit. When this is our circumstance, “It is well,” as the spiritual has it, “it is well with my soul.” As Al has been saying for the past two weeks, all of us are so grateful to all of you for the generosity you have shown in the past, and we look forward in love to all that you will share in the time to come.
There is a story that is told about the aftermath of World War II in Europe. It may be a bit sentimentalized, but it makes the point quite well about the impact of generous giving. The English countryside had been ravaged by war and was in ruins. Perhaps the saddest sight of all was that of little orphaned children starving in the streets of those war-torn cities. Early one chilly morning an American soldier was making his way back to the barracks in London. As he turned the corner in his jeep, he spotted a little lad with his nose pressed to the window of a pastry shop. Inside the cook was kneading dough for a fresh batch of doughnuts. The hungry boy stared in silence, watching every move. The soldier pulled his jeep to the curb, stopped, got out and walked quietly over to where the little fellow was standing. Through the steamed-up window he could see the mouth-watering morsels as they were being pulled from the oven, piping hot. The boy salivated and released a slight groan as he watched the cook place them onto the glass-enclosed counter ever so carefully. The soldier’s heart went out to the nameless orphan as he stood beside him. “Son...would you like some of those?” The boy was startled. “Oh, yeah...I would!” The American stepped inside and bought a dozen, put them in a bag, and walked back to where the lad was standing in the foggy cold of the London morning. He smiled, held out the bag, and said simply: “Here you are.” As he turned to walk away, he felt a tug on his coat. He looked back and heard the child ask quietly: “Mister... are you God?”
We are never more like God than when we give. After all, as you know, “God so loved the world, that God gave God’s only Son.” As we express our love through this local church as well as through its world-wide mission, may we be as God for others, sharing our big secret of how wonderful it feels to give.
Amen
Dave Pomeroy
First Congregational Church/United Church of Christ
Las Vegas, NV
November 11 , 2007