Does it worry you when you see the
minister is going to talk about giving? Does it worry you even more when you
see the title is “Thoughts about giving, Part 1”? How many parts are there
going to be? Is he going to tell me that I need to give more to the church? Is
he going to try to manipulate, or guilt me into something?
I plan to talk on this subject 2 more
times. I am reluctant to tell you when, because you might not come to church on
those days.!
I am not going to try to manipulate you,
or guilt you into giving more to the church. Even if I thought it might work I
would not do that. I would see that as an abuse of the power of what we do here
together. Our worship services are meant to gather us together around the sense
that God is with us. We are here as a faith community to quiet ourselves enough
to sense God’s presence, and to hear and see what God has for us, and how we
are to respond to God.
It all begins with God, and what God
gives to us. God gives us all that we really need to live. So much of what God
gives, comes to us freely, with no strings, or obligations, or price tags attached.
My wife and I went for a long after supper walk last evening. The sky was a
shining robin’s egg blue. There were clouds cutting puffy furrows across the
sky. The contrast of blue sky and white cloud was dazzling. We walked streets
in the neighbourhood around our home, and saw purple, and pink, and white
lilacs, and tulip trees in full glory. We saw other trees budding and leafing
out. There were people out walking, and talking. There were kids at play in the
park. There is so much that is good.
We live in a society in which everything
is turned into a commodity - packaged to be sold as a product. We humans can
manage the land, and decide what grows where, and we can build fences and
barriers to limit access to different areas. We can convince ourselves that we
are creators, or controllers, of the world around us. But the truth is that we
did not make any of it. This world, and its beauty, and the life that persists
and thrives, often in spite of our human activities- all of it is this amazing
generous gift from God. The fact that we breathe, and live, and move, and can
see and appreciate all that is, the gift of life itself- comes from God.
Seeing how amazing this world is, and
remembering it is all a gift from God, is a good place to begin when thinking about
giving. We have really have nothing to give, that did not first originate in
God’s gifts to us.
How incredible it is that God gives
everything so freely. Part of my role as your minister is to somehow represent
God’s grace, and God’s generosity. But there is no danger that you would ever
mistake me for God. I am clearly not as free and generous with my love as God.
Having cleared that up, this morning I
want to do something totally out of the box. What I am about to do is my doing.
I do not have the permission of the worship committee, or the church council,
or anybody- because they do not actually know what I am about to do.
What I have here in this box is enough
loonies for all of you. Everybody gets one. I wish it could be a toonie, or a
ten dollar bill, or something even bigger- but this is what I am able to do!
(Wait until everyone has one.)
You can tell that I am not God, for lots
of reasons. Today especially you can tell that because there are limits to my
generosity. I decided that my limit for today was that I could give everybody
here only a dollar.
But there you have it. A totally free
gift. No strings. It is yours. A reminder of the generous God who gives us all
so much more than money.
Each of us is able to give of ourselves,
because of all that God gives us. When we give our time, our attention, our
love, our work, our loyalty, our friendship, our compassion, our patience, and
yes, even our money- we are able to do our giving, because of all that God has
freely given us.
How does it feel to have that free
looney in your hand? I know it is not much, but please accept it as a symbol of
all that God gives us every day. Later in the service, we will share the bread
and cup of communion, and be reminded that these are sacramental symbols, of
all that God offers and gives us through Jesus.
When we practice giving of ourselves, what
we give can be like a sacramental symbol of God’s love. It can be a celebration
of all that God has given us.
When we give, it can be an act of
worship, of gratitude to God. It can also be an act of rebellion, against the
forces in the world that would have us believe that selling is better than
giving, and buying better than receiving.
I prayed about this out of the box thing
we are doing here today. I prayed that I could feel free and joyful, and
generous, as I handed out money. (Please know that this is money from the coin
can in my house, and is not coming from the church. My wife knows what I am doing
today.)
In the Jewish religion it is taught that
giving is a relationship between God, the receiver, and the giver, in that
order of importance. You can’t really be a giver, unless there is someone to
receive. And without God, there would be nothing to give or receive in the
first place.
The act of giving can be transformative.
When I give something away, the very act allows me to embody God’s generosity,
and follow God’s command to give. Jews
and Christians call that “imitatio deo”, the imitation of God. The same idea is
expressed in Islam as “taking on the qualities of God”.
One of the ways churches, and
synagogues, mosques, and temples, and other places of worship help the
faithful, is to give them a way to channel their generosity, in ways that can
also be effective at doing good in the world. Jews call this righteous giving,
and it is meant to show devotion to God. There are similar concepts in Islam.
It seems to me that in Christian
churches, the idea of righteous giving- giving because it helps us be better, more
God-like people as we practice generosity, gets lost in all the anxiety over meeting
a budget, or paying the bills.
We lose track of something very
important when we reduce the notion of giving to meeting a budget. In our lives
of faith, and God’s work in us, and in the world, giving is not only about
keeping the church going. We have mostly
moved away from giving as a spiritual practice that is good for us, and fallen
into the habit of seeing giving as an obligation- something we would rather not
do, but do grudgingly, if absolutely necessary.
The other problem with making that
strong connection between what is needed to run the church and its programs,
and what we give- is that it actually sets a limit on how generous we should
be.
God does not set limits on how blue the
sky is, or the brilliance of the pink and purple and white lilacs that are in
bloom this week. God does not hold back
on beauty, giving us only enough to get by on. God just gives, and gives, and
gives. Amen
