Rev. Joan Pell Sierra Pines United Methodist Church Sermon: 10/2/2016 Series: What If Scripture: Matthew 6:19-24 What If Everybody Did That? NOTE: The children s message earlier in the service used the book What if Everybody Did That? by Ellen Javernick. In this book a boy litters, feeds the zoo animals, races a shopping cart etc and is scolded and asked the question what if everybody did that? < Matthew 6:19-24 NRSV> 19 Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; 20 but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. 22 The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; 23 but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! 24 No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. So what if you do store up treasure in heaven and not on earth? What if Everybody Did that? If your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. What are your eyes focusing on? What if you focus on what brings light and love to another person. What if Everybody Did that? No one can serve two masters; You cannot serve God and wealth. So what if you serve God not wealth? What if Everybody Did that? Last week s scripture came from the passage that immediately follows what we heard read today. That scripture said do not worry about your life. So we talked about what if we reject fear? Now imagine What if Everybody Did that? And last week s passage also had us remembering to Seek first the Kingdom of God and God s righteousness. So imagine What if Everybody Did that? -1-
This What If sermon series all about rejecting fear and opening ourselves to possibility. The possibility of letting go of our security and trusting God to work in us in ways we have yet to imagine. AND yes, this is a sermon series all about stewardship. which means we are going to be talking about how we manage our resources including our financial wealth. Or putting it another way, we are talking about money, or money matters. Because money - matters. Jesus talked about money a lot, yet we kind of squirm and prefer not to talk about it. But to Jesus, getting our relationship right to our material possessions and our money is a spiritual matter. We not give to God because God deserves it or demands it or taxes us. When give because when we have the right relationship with money we find ourselves with lives that are fulfilled and joy-filled. When we give things or possessions or money the credit for our happiness, then we have an unhealthy attachment to money. When we are never satisfied with what we have and always want just a little more, then we have been bitten by materialism or greed. When we start to believe that happiness comes from outward circumstances and visible achievements, then we will end up feeling panic, emptiness, striving and loneliness. When we accept the myths of money, we suffer from a self-created, culturally-fostered discontent. As we heard in this passage today, when we put something first, it becomes what we love and worship and end up living for. Looking at our check books or credit card statements will give us a good idea of what we love most. Possessions do not bring us happiness. If we are not enjoying life, then perhaps we are spending our money on the wrong things. What we love is what we spend our money on. When we put our eyes in the wrong place, our treasure in the wrong place our heart in the wrong place. When we seek the wrong things then we will live in fear. So what are we called to do? Well it is much easier to say than do. Jesus way is counter-intuitive. Jesus and the OT scriptures teach us to have pro-active generosity instead of a reactive generosity. Reactive generosity reacts to a need saying what have I got leftover that I can give to it? Money then dictates our response. Money and stuff end up controlling us. Proactive generosity, on the other hand, puts God first, saying I will give first and trust that all the rest will fall into place. 1 The Bible teaches us two ways to have proactive generosity. 1 Jeremy Smith, What if we humble ourselves and pray? Niceville, Florida: Crosspoint UMC, 2015. http://yourcrosspointnv.org/media/2015whatif/ and https://vimeo.com/120971434. -2-
(One. Firstfruits). Firstfruits giving has its origin in the Old Testament. God s command through Moses was to Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the Lord your God (Exodus 23:19). In an agricultural society they brought crops and animals, acknowledging God as the owner of the harvest. Old Testament believers returned to God their firstfruits. And they were not supposed to bring the worst of the crop / animals either; When you offer blind animals in sacrifice, is that not wrong? And when you offer those that are lame or sick, is that not wrong? Malachi 1:8 We also should give our firstfruits, setting aside our offerings before fulfilling our other obligations. If our offerings come from out of what is left over at the end of the month, as the last thing we do, then we will find that there is nothing left to give away. Giving off the top as a priority, confirms our trust in God. (Two. Proportionate). The second intentional way of giving is through proportionate giving. In the mid-1500 s in England a custom started in a butcher s shop of putting out a small china cup with the initials T.I.P.S. short for To Insure Prompt Service. If you wanted to jump the line and be waited on before others, you could pay to do so. Today we have seen that custom change to the point where its original meaning is obscured and the rate has risen to 15 to 20%. We regularly compute this down to the penny, and would feel ashamed of ourselves if we did not tip. Yet we wince at the thought of contributing a percentage of our income to God, God who has done so much for us than any waiter or waitress. 2 God gives us 100%, yet we are called to return just a portion. The OT talks about a tithe, of a giving of 10% of one s income saying: A tithe of everything from the land, whether grain from the soil or fruit from the trees, belongs to the LORD; it is holy to the LORD. (Lev 27:30) In Genesis 14:20, Abraham gives a tenth, and in Genesis 28:22, Jacob vows to give a tenth. Tithing was commended by Jesus, and it was supported by John Wesley. <APPLE illustration> 3 10 apples lined up. Nine for us Food - Education Medical Retirement Housing Entertainment - Car & gas Vacation Utilities. One for God, but it is hard to live on 9 apples. Cut into the Lord s apple. God won t mind! Cut some off for: Trip - Eat out Christmas Wedding - New furniture - Big screen TV Shoes Skiing Sales. Then nibble at it. Now we are down to the core. 2 Sermon Second Sunday in Excel in the Grace of Giving (New Canaan, CT: Parish Publishing, LLC). www.parishpublishing.org. 3 Idea from David Slagle pastor of Veritas Church in Decatur Georgia as mentioned by Adam Hamilton, Enough: Finding Joy through Simplicity and Generosity (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2009), 82-3. -3-
Scripture makes the tithe a benchmark, a baseline. It is large enough to stretch us and yet possible for us all to do. It gives us pause and causes us to ask, is my giving generous? Tithing gives all Christians an equal privilege and opportunity. There is a story about a financially successful man who had trouble with the tithing concept. He went to his pastor and said, If I would tithe my $500,000 salary I would have to give $50,000. The pastor listened to his problem and agreed that $50,000 was a lot of money to give, so he offered to pray for the man: Dear Lord, please help my friend earn less money so he finds it easier to tithe. 4 Richard Sterns from World Vision in his book The Hole in Our Gospel gives some interesting statistics. [Old figures] In 2005, American Christians gave 2.58% of their income on average, which is down from the 1933 World Recession level of 3.3%. If every church member in the entire country tithed, then we would have $168 billion per year. What if everyone did that? To put that number further into perspective Americans spend $700B/year on entertainment. $2B on the US elections. With that level of giving firstly, no churches would be struggling, and secondly, we could solve the world s hunger problem in a stroke. Just 40% of that $168B would be $65 billion which could eliminate the most extreme poverty of a billion people. $6 billion could provide universal primary education $9 billion could bring clean water to most of the world s poor $13 billion could provide basic health and nutrition for everyone in the world. 5 Stewardship is an issue of faith. We do not have a money problem. We have a generosity problem. What if everyone hoarded their money? What if everyone wasted their money? OR What if everyone gave generously? Imagine the possibilities! Proportionate giving is a challenge, and tithing at 10% is even more so, but I challenge you to give it serious consideration. You do not have to do it all at once, build up to it. Very few people can just suddenly give 10%. You make the decision, and you work slowly up to it. Start at 1%, then increase the next year to 2%, and the following year to 3%, and so on until you reach your goal. With God s help many of us can take a leap of faith in our giving and give more. We ve talked about firstfruit giving and proportionate giving. There is another way of giving too: extravagant giving or sacrificial giving. 4 Email Message First Week in Excel in the Grace of Giving (New Canaan, CT: Parish Publishing, LLC). www.parishpublishing.org. 5 Richard Stearns, The Hole in Our Gospel: What Does God Expect of Us? (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2009), 217-9. -4-
(Third. Extravagantly). Our giving can range from a token contribution at one end of the scale to giving sacrificially at the other, where giving really hurts and we have to give something up. For some of us tithing is sacrificial giving, for others of us with higher incomes, then perhaps it is not. We may have to change our lifestyles, be willing to say No to things - to give some things up. When we give generously, then we become a channel for God s blessings to flow through. I love this quote from the Persian poet Hafiz written back in the 14 th century: I am a hole in a flute that Christ s breath moves through. Listen to the music. 6 I don t know about you, but I want to be that hole. And I want my giving to be so ingrained that it becomes automatic. Adam Hamilton, a UM pastor tells this story. They have a midweek service for people from nursing homes: including many Alzheimer s who don t remember much. They bus them in for it. They sing old hymns, some join in. They don t take an offering because the elderly don t have money readily available. One lady had taken one of offering envelopes out of pews, tried to write her name on the front it (just scribble). She put it in offering basket on way out of church. In it was a packet of cookies that she must have had from the nursing home. That was her treasure that she gave because she knew that was what she was supposed to do. That was all she had. 7 When we treat all that we have as being owned by God, and act as God s stewards, then our behavior changes. Through the intentional practices of firstfruits giving, proportionate giving and extravagant sacrificial giving we are transformed. <Example>. A Filipino doctor was treasurer of his church. A poor employee of his hospital was sometimes scheduled to work on a Sunday. So she would bring her weekly offering to him if she had to miss the service. One week she came to him with more than the usual amount. He asked her why and she said it was for the special offering for typhoon victims on another island. The kind doctor told her that it was too much for her to give and took the extra amount out of his own wallet. She started to cry, and the doctor said he was trying to help. When she was finally able to talk, she said you are taking from me the greatest joy I have in my life! 8 What if we proactively give in an extravagantly generous way? Through first fruits giving. Through proportionate giving. Through sacrificial giving. What will God do in our lives? What will God do in this church? What if we reject fear? What if we put God first 6 http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/41181-i-am-a-hole-in-a-flute-that-the-christ-s 7 Adam Hamilton, Leadership Institute (Church of the Resurrection, October 2010). 8 Paul R. Lindholm, First Fruits: Stewardship Thoughts and Stories from Around the World (Pasadena: Hope Publishing House, 1993), 118. -5-
and serve God not money? Then imagine what the Holy Spirit could do. And What if everyone did that? Thanks be to God. Amen. Let us pray. O God of abundance and grace, we thank you for the many material gifts in our lives. Increase our understanding of how greed lessens joy while generosity increases it. Break the bonds of our acquisitiveness. Teach us to give from our hearts and not from our leftovers. Transform us into extravagantly generous givers. Use us as channels of your grace, so that others can feel your love. In Jesus name, we pray. Amen. -6-