2 Corinthians 8:7-15; 9:6-9
The excitement’s building! I can almost taste it. We’re going to see if we can beat last year’s record and we’ll know soon. I admit we may be Junior Varsity compared to some of you, but we’re still pretty amazed. In one day’s mail at home, sometime last November, we received 14 letters soliciting charitable donations. Each cause had something to commend it, everything from “Save the Ring-tailed Lemurs” to “Friends of Friends of Friends of Wilderness Rivers.” One day we got a letter each from Nancy Pelosi, Clint Eastwood and Joe Lieberman.
Both the Republicans and the Democrats have sent me letters that begin: “Dear John… as one of our strongest supporters…” You know what came next.
Ah, modern marketing! You know how the game works. They’re the hunters; we’re the prey. They put you on the bleeding-heart list, or the tree-hugger list, or the tough-on-crime list or the everyone-in-Washington-belongs-in-jail list. And then they sell your name to others.
It’s a tug-of-war of sorts, but rather than pulling on a rope, they’re fighting for your wallet. Ghost writers carefully craft letters to appeal to your soft spot, overcoming the resistance of your jaded heart or mind so you’ll open your check book and send money. And once you do that with a single gift you’ll now receive urgent requests for “special gifts” every couple of months.
Some think the church does the same thing only not as classy or polished. Consider another way of looking at how we ask for everyone’s support for our mission: a group of good-hearted, church-loving folks called the Stewardship Committee meets and prays. They joke and laugh because they like each other but this is serious work.
Sometimes they feel the burden that the well-being of our whole church is resting on their shoulders; as if they do their work well, pledges will increase; and if pledges don’t increase enough it’s because they somehow failed.
We all know better, but still they talk and think and ask: “How can we tell the story of our church so it will reach everyone – those who seem only to give a token, or those who won’t give at all, so we can keep building this loving community to be what God is leading us to be?” Okay, we don’t always express it in such lofty ways, but that’s what this annual endeavor is about.
We come to Consecration Sunday and we see what you and I and everyone together will pledge for next year. Then the budget committee – another group of good, church-loving folks just like all of you – comes together and takes all the requests from Teams and committees, all the increase-notices from oil and water and gas companies, and builds the best budget they can. And in January you and I come to a meeting after worship to adopt our budget.
Now that doesn’t sound like a tug ‘o war with strangers trying to lighten our wallets. It’s much more like the approach in the poem by Shel Silverstein, the cartoonist, and author of kids’ books who died in 1999. He wrote:
I will not play tug o’ war. I’d rather play hug o’ war.
Where everyone hugs instead of tugs,
Where everyone giggles and rolls on the rug,
Where everyone kisses, and everyone grins,
and everyone cuddles, and everyone wins.
Everyone wins. Do you think that’s possible? I do. Isn’t that what we’re about – a win/win effort that truly makes the world better by living and sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ?
Everyone wins because stewardship isn’t a tug o’ war with you on one side, the church on the other, and your wallet in the center. Stewardship isn’t about writing a perfect letter that will touch your head or your heart so you’ll open your check book. It’s not like you have the money and we have to persuade you to let go of a little more of it so we can run our organization.
You and I may think we’re giving because the church will wither if we don’t do our Christian duty. Here’s the honest-to-God truth: we give because our souls may wither if we don’t. Our souls – that of God that dwells in each one of us – will wither if we try to grasp and hold and keep all of what God has entrusted to us.
In the same way the Gospel is about opening up and letting go, I really think the work of the church is to give you and me a way to let go of what we’ve accumulated and what we clutch, and release it for holy work.
Because if we keep it all we’ll shrivel up, possessed by our possessions.
One day you might get 15 or 20 solicitations in the mail – each one carefully written to tell you about the good work your gift will do in one way or another. But none of them is like your gift through the church, because here you make a visible witness and offer a tangible presence in the heart of our community that is centered on what we believe God wants us to do in the world.
That’s why our own family tries to keep the biblical commitment to tithe of our income every year – five percent to our church and five percent combined to all the other worthy causes that flood our mailbox.
The church is more than another 501c(3) non-profit. It’s more than the hard work and dreams and visions of many kind, good people. This church – our church right here since 1733 – is truly God’s home, and we ask God to lead every step of the way. We’ve trusted in that love and grace and providence. Some years we’ve been able to extend and expand our work, and other times we’ve tightened our belts just as our individual members have needed to do. That’s always been true.
So, too, the Apostle Paul addressed a downturn of giving from first century Christians through his Letters. Here in Second Corinthians we have the longest stewardship sermon in all the scriptures. Paul was urging the Corinthians to complete their financial pledges. They had made promises to support the struggling folks in the Jerusalem congregation… the “Mother Church.” A little later there were some disagreements over doctrine, some changes in economic conditions, and the Corinthians reduced their giving.
Paul appealed to them saying:
…now finish doing it, so that your eagerness may be matched by completing it according to your means. For if the eagerness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has – not according to what one does not have.
If the eagerness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what you have, not according to what you don’t have. And God delights. The spirit in which we give is at the root.
I’m all for saving the whales and aiding refugees and protecting forest land. But when I consider giving the fundamental questions are these: what am I most eager to do, and to be? What kind of world am I most eager to see? For me the answer comes in following Jesus as his disciple.
- Our church stands on this spot, hallowed by a dozen generations since those who cleared the native stand of trees and hewed the timbers and built the frame.
- Our church has been faithful through the lean years when oil was rationed, and money was tight, and people were hungry and still we worshiped and served.
- Our church has kept the faith in season and out, lighting a beacon of hope and promise, teaching us and our children, refusing to turn our backs on the outcast, the downcast, and the marginalized.
- We’ve acted out our faith through missions trips, soup kitchen, food pantry, children’s closet, rummage sales, and particularly Community Crisis Ministries.
- We’ve laughed and danced together.
- We’ve nurtured and comforted each other in times of loss and tragedy.
- We’ve sung “Let there be peace on earth” and we have sung “we’ll build a land…” and we’ve imagined a world that lives in harmony and peace – where the reign of God embraces all humankind.
And as far as I can tell, when we open our hearts and give with joy, and with the eagerness to keep the dream alive and keep the Gospel lively, everyone wins…
everyone wins…
…and God delights.