Picking up and putting down

Three pastors met during the week and the conversation turned to the Sunday offering and how they used the money that was collected. The Baptist pastor said, “I draw a small circle in the middle of the room and throw the offering up in the air. Everything that lands outside of the circle is for God, what lands in the circle is for me.” The Pentecostal pastor said, “That’s kind of like what I do. I throw the money up in the air but the money that lands outside of the circle is for me and what lands inside of the circle is for God.” The Presbyterian pastor said, “I too do a similar thing. I throw the money up in the air and anything God wants, he keeps.”

Pastors tend to talk about stewardship when there is a looming crisis in the financial side of the church. I preached two sermons on financial stewardship in November 2002, just before our Semi General Annual Meeting and a budget that was a significant increase over past budgets.

At our last board meeting, the RPF board asked me to speak on financial stewardship because our giving is falling short of our budget and the resources into which we have been dipping these past three years are reaching an end.

I have no difficulty preaching about financial stewardship because I view it as a critical part of our spirituality and if you were to look back at my sermons over the years, you would see frequent references to how we use our finances, but this is the third sermon in my five years at RPF focusing specifically on financial stewardship.

I will put up on the website the two sermons I preached in 2002 so if you want to see what I said in those sermons, you can take a look. I hate repeating myself so will try to break new ground this morning.

Most times when a pastor preaches on financial stewardship, he or she gives some rules to follow. Give 10% of your gross income. 10% of your income is the baseline and giving begins after that. And so on. So I will give you a rule to follow this morning as well. If you want to know the New Testament rule for giving, here it is. Figure out how much you have. Add up what you have in the bank, what you have in the coin jar in the kitchen, the money in your pocket, the value of all your possessions, all you have, and then take out a checkbook and write a check for that amount. Give all you have to Jesus. That is the New Testament rule.

The problem is that when you give all you have to Jesus, he tells you to keep hold of it for him. You give all you have to Jesus and he tells you he wants you to take care of it for him and then you are in the same situation as the three pastors in the joke I told at the opening of this sermon. How much do you give to the church and the concerns of Jesus and how much do you keep for your own needs – and wants.

I don’t want to give you rules about how much you should give. That is Old Testament thinking and when Jesus came, he took the spirit that lay beneath the rules of the Old Testament and brought them up into the light. So in the Old Testament there was a 10% tithe for the Levites, the priests, a second 10% tithe to be used to come to Jerusalem and celebrate together at the three annual feasts, and then a third 10% tithe that was collected every three years to be used to care for the poor, the widows and the orphans.

The spirit that lay under these rules of how much to give and to whom to give was that the money and possessions God has given us are to be used to care for those who are on his heart. The spirit that underlay these rules about tithing is that God wants us to use his money for his purposes. We are stewards of his money given to us.

Our human nature likes rules because it makes it easier for us to know when we are doing right or wrong. I don’t want you to leave church this morning with a set of rules of how to obey God and please him. That is the task of other religions. Christians have a far more demanding task and that is to discern the heart of God for the world and use our resources accordingly.

Christians are no longer under the law but have been set free in Christ. The money and possessions God has given us are to be used as Jesus would want us to use them.

I don’t want us to give because we are supposed to. I want us to love Jesus so much that our heart and pocketbook open up. I want us to be in such a vital, living relationship with God that we want to give. Because there are no longer any rules for us to live up to, we need increasingly to take on the heart of Jesus for the world and then we will know how to use what he has given us.

This is such a difficult part of our Christian lives because money and possessions have such a powerful pull on us.

In Mark 10:17-22 there is the story of a rich young ruler who came up to Jesus.
As he went out into the street, a man came running up, greeted him with great reverence, and asked, “Good Teacher, what must I do to get eternal life?”
Jesus said, “Why are you calling me good? No one is good, only God. You know the commandments: Don’t murder, don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t lie, don’t cheat, honor your father and mother.”
He said, “Teacher, I have—from my youth—kept them all!”
Jesus looked him hard in the eye—and loved him! He said, “There’s one thing left: Go sell whatever you own and give it to the poor. All your wealth will then be heavenly wealth. And come follow me.”
The man’s face clouded over. This was the last thing he expected to hear, and he walked off with a heavy heart. He was holding on tight to a lot of things, and not about to let go.

I like the Message translation of this last line, He was holding on tight to a lot of things, and not about to let go. I hope you never read this passage without having great sympathy for the rich young ruler. He was a wonderful young man, full of piety and eager to draw close to Jesus. If only Jesus had asked him for 10% or 20% or 30% or even 50% of all he had. I think he would have done it. But Jesus asked him for everything.

Carry a lot of sympathy for this young man because his is our most likely reaction to Jesus’ request. If Jesus asked me to sell all I had and give it to the poor, first of all I would have to convince my wife that this was really what Jesus had said to me. Then we would have to make a very difficult decision. I hope we would be able to choose to be obedient.

We need to have the heart of Jesus for the world so we can use what we have been given in service of Christ. But it is so difficult to resist the pull of wealth. It is for this reason that Jesus spent so much time talking about wealth and possessions.

Sixteen of the thirty-eight parables Jesus told are concerned with how to handle money and possessions. In the Gospels, an amazing one out of ten verses deal directly with the subject of money. The Christian New Testament offers 500 verses on prayer, less than 500 verses on faith, but more than 2,000 verses on money and possessions.

The reason Jesus spent so much time talking about money and possessions is that they so easily pull us away from him. We accumulate and then want more and more. We have a difficult time giving up what we have because we like to accumulate.

The danger of money and possessions is not just for those who have a lot of money and possessions. You may have just a little and you may have a lot but I want to warn you that you are in danger in either case. You may be protecting what you have or lusting for what you don’t have, in either case you are being pulled away from God. That is the danger of money and possessions.

One of the things that helps me to resist the pull of money and possessions is to take an eternal view of money and possessions.

My father took movies of us as we were growing up. There is one of me in what was a daily ritual. I had a crib with a screen side and I would throw out all my stuffed animals and then climb out of the crib in the morning. I was still in diapers and wore blue pajamas, the kind with no opening for your toes that your feet fit into. What was filmed was my nighttime ritual. I threw all my stuffed animals into the crib, climbed up the side and then did a flip into the bed.

I don’t remember them now but I was attached to these stuffed toys. They were among the first things I picked up in my journey through this life. They were my toys, not my two older sisters’ toys.

At some point, I dropped them or lost them or they were thrown away but by then I had picked up other things. I remember a black bicycle with wide tires. I used to ride that up and down the hills around our house. At the age of 8 my grandmother bought me a pony and I had a cowboy hat, chaps, and boots that I could wear when I went riding in the hills around us.

I began at an early age collecting rocks. My interest was not scientific. I was not interested in categorizing them but I collected rocks that were interesting to me. Many years later when I was a pastor in Ohio, a neighbor who made jewelry from agates picked out all the agates I had collected in my years of picking up rocks and put them in his stone polisher and revealed the inner beauty of these rocks I had collected.

I became interested in collecting coins and would go to the bank and exchange dollars for pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters and then would go home and spread the coins out on the table looking for a year or a mint mark on a coin I did not have in my collection.

The older I became, the more things I picked up in my journey through life. I’ve always loved books and I have some treasured books I received as gifts as a young boy. Even though we have sold or given away many of our books when we have moved from place to place, they keep accumulating. Every time we come back from the US we are at our limit in the weight permitted for our baggage because of books we are bringing back.

I love music and so have a collection of vinyl LPs sitting in my in-laws’ garage and a growing collection of CDs.

I have amassed a number of polished stone rocks while living in Morocco. As I sit at my desk working on this sermon, I see Makonde carvings from Tanzania, a beer glass from Germany that I use for pens and pencils, a little brass duck I have had since I was a kid, a horse and rider my grandmother brought me back from Mexico, a series of photos of when I ran the Boston Marathon. I have a lot of things I have picked up on my journey through life thus far. And I am only 54 years old.

I have picked up a lot but I have not yet arrived at the time when I will put everything down. That time will come. It helps me to remember that there will come a time when I will put down all that I picked up in my journey through life.

When we lived in Ohio, we went to auctions. Someone would die and because they were the last of the family, all the contents of their house would be sold. Chairs and tables and other furniture, jewelry and dishes and silverware, rugs and lamps, everything was sold. The auctioneers would come in and go through all the drawers and closets, the attic and basement and collect all the couple had picked up in their life and organize the sale. On the day of the auction the auctioneer would lift up an object or point to it if it was too large to pick up and the bidding would begin. $25 for this chair. $15 for a stack of dishes. An especially nice table might go for more money but these sales were a good place to find bargains. We have a number of things we picked up at these auctions.

There was a bit of sadness for me at these auctions. The things for sale had memories connected with them that were now lost. Box after box of junk was sold for $5 or $10. Boxes of little knickknacks like those in my office were sold to strangers who would never appreciate the value those objects held for the ones who had died. Boxes of photographs that brought back memories of wonderful days were sold to someone who would salvage the frames and throw away the photographs.

Someday the things I look at and treasure will likely be put on a table at a yard sale and be sold to some stranger for a few cents. This is the way of life. We begin our journey picking up and discarding but gradually accumulating more and more until at the end we set everything down, we set everything down, and we end our journey through life and begin a new journey that passes through death to the judgement of eternal life and death.

When we moved here our sea container had a more difficult time getting to Rabat than we did. Over a period of six months we were told it was lost, then that it had been found in Genoa but it was empty and finally that it was found full but in Madras, India and had to make its way back to Malaysia, through the Suez Canal, to Genoa, to Algeciras, to Casablanca, to Rabat. We grieved when we heard that all the contents of the sea container had been lost and yet all that we grieved for we will put down when we end our journey in life.

I was reading through II Peter this week and came upon this passage:.
II Peter 3:10-11
But when the Day of God’s Judgment does come, it will be unannounced, like a thief. The sky will collapse with a thunderous bang, everything disintegrating in a huge conflagration, earth and all its works exposed to the scrutiny of Judgment.
Since everything here today might well be gone tomorrow, do you see how essential it is to live a holy life?

Peter did not talk about our use of material possessions and wealth in this part of his letter but I think that under the category of living a holy life, use of wealth and possessions are an integral part.

When I think about what I possess from the perspective of eternity, it helps me to hold those things with a lighter hand.

It is very clear to me that this life is a very short passage. Some of us may remember Eric Mirandette and his brother Alex who were with us about a year ago. They worked with Willy Easley in Al Hoceima and spent a few Sundays here. I remember talking with them about their intent to motorcycle across North Africa. They were energetic, vibrant, adventurous young men and this past week in the suicide bomb attack in Cairo, Alex was killed and Eric is in critical condition.

This life is a very short passage, shorter for some than others, and I ask myself often how I will feel from an eternal perspective about my actions when I was here on earth.

It will not be to our credit in heaven that we hoarded our money and possessions for our own use when God had other desires for us.

There is nothing wrong in having possessions and money and enjoying them. Remember that the second 10% tithe in the Old Testament was to be used to have a party and celebrate in Jerusalem. God enjoys us enjoying what he has given us. But God’s heart has other concerns and we need to discern what those are and use what we have been given accordingly.

If giving is not a matter of following rules but following the heart of Jesus, then giving should be a beneficial act that feeds us in our relationship with Christ.

In the bulletin there is printed this quote from Richard J. Foster in his book, The Challenge of the Disciplined Life.
When we let go of money we are letting go of part of ourselves and part of our security. But this is precisely why it is important to do it. It is one way to obey Jesus’ command to deny ourselves … When we give money we are releasing a little more of our egocentric selves and a little more of our false security … Giving frees us to care. It produces an air of expectancy as we anticipate what God will lead us to give. It makes life with God an adventure in the world, and that is worth living for and giving for.

Giving is a spiritual discipline and it is one of the great joys of my life. For the almost 28 years that Annie and I have been married, we have been blessed by being part of the work people have been doing all over the world. Month after month, we sent out checks to friends we knew working in other parts of the world and when we received their letters, we were blessed to know we were, in a small way, partners with them.

Because of our giving, we did not take vacations as elaborate as we might have taken. We did not buy everything we could have bought. We made sacrifices to give, but we never suffered. In fact we were blessed. As time went on, we were able to give more and more as our income increased. We did not cut back on our giving and still were able to pay for our daughters’s college education. Giving has been an important part of our Christian experience over the years of our marriage.

As we have given, we have grown in our spiritual life. We do not ask how much we have to give to please God, we explore how it could be possible to give more so we can be partners with God in what he is doing in the world.

The other side of the coin is expressed in a second quote in the bulletin, this one from A. W. Tozer in his book, Christ the Eternal Son.
I do not think I exaggerate when I say that some of us put our offering in the plate with a kind of triumphant bounce as much as to say: “There – now God will feel better.” … I am obliged to tell you that God does not need anything you have. He does not need a dime of your money. It is your own spiritual welfare at stake in church matters as these … You have the right to keep what you have all to yourself – but it will rust and decay, and ultimately ruin you.

I am convinced that God will provide for RPF, the church association, l’Eglise Protestante, the Village of Hope and all other projects he has led Christians to undertake in this country and I agree with Tozer that this will happen with or without your or my help.

I am not at all interested in making you feel guilty for not giving more or manipulating you so you feel obligated to empty your pockets into the offering plate.

What I want to do is make you aware of the blessing and joy that comes from giving and participating in what God is doing.

Where did the money come from that Jesus and his disciples needed to buy food to eat?  In Luke 8 we read
After this, Jesus traveled about from one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. The Twelve were with him,  2 and also some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases: Mary (called Magdalene) from whom seven demons had come out;  3 Joanna the wife of Cuza, the manager of Herod’s household; Susanna; and many others. These women were helping to support them out of their own means.

If you were alive and living in Palestine at the time of Jesus and he came through your village one day, would you want to offer to him money for his ministry? Would you have liked to have helped Paul and the disciples as they took the gospel to new cities?

When you give to the work of Jesus in the world, you are giving to him. When you give to RPF you are helping to pay my expenses for living in Morocco and preaching week by week. You are helping to pay for the work of GBU that encourages students to grow not just in their academic studies but in their spiritual life as well. You are helping to pay for the spiritual education of young children. You are helping to pay for the expenses of the Village of Hope and the Christmas concert to which we invite our friends.

If you believe RPF is following the heart of God in what it does, then it deserves your support. God will provide for us what we need. What will be your part in his provision?