Genesis 28 : 10-22 Matthew 14 : 13-21 Sermon So the topic this morning is money. When it comes to asking questions about how our faith shapes our priorities, how our trust in the gospel influences our lives, it doesn t get much more direct than when we look at how we spend our money. Last week, after the sermon on talents, someone commented that it had made them feel guilty. Well of course that was not the purpose. Christianity is always about forgiveness not guilt. Perhaps guilt is a necessary step on the road to the kind of changes we want to make in our lives, the first step that leads towards turning around and living more positively and more gratefully, but it is certainly not the purpose. Nor, let me assure you, is guilt the purpose of this morning s sermon. So I am not going to do what I heard a fellow pastor had done, even though I think it was quite clever, and even though it makes a good point. When the offering had been gathered in, and he stretched his hands over the money to pray, he said Lord, never mind what we sometimes say about you. This is how much we really think you are worth! I m not going to do anything like that. And with apologies to our Finance Committee, I m not going to ask you to give more money to the church. So you can relax! Instead, to help us to think about money - I want to talk about Jacob. Jacob seems always to have been what we in Glasgow would call, a chancer. He always had a scheme on the go, was always plotting to turn things to his advantage. Today, depending on where he lived, he might have been a trader on a street market always looking to turn a profit, not asking too many questions about where the goods come from. Or he might have been a trader on the stock exchange, buying and selling things he knows little about but still managing to earn something along the way. And what I want us to think about is the bargaining which he does with God, the deal he tries to negotiate. Remember how he starts out in our
2 story - rejected and alone and guilty and vulnerable, with only a stone for a pillow, God comes to him in a dream and gives him the most wonderful promise. I'm giving the ground on which you are sleeping to you and to your descendants. Your descendants will be as widespread as the dust of the Earth; they'll stretch from west to east and from north to south. All the families of the Earth will bless themselves in you and your descendants. Yes. I'll stay with you, I'll protect you wherever you go, and I'll bring you back to this very ground. I'll stick with you until I've done everything I promised you." Deals don t get much better than that! At first, Jacob s reaction is what we might expect. He responds with awe and with worship. He takes the stone he had used for his pillow and stands it up as a memorial pillar and poured oil over it. He christened the place Bethel, meaning God's House. He thought he had been alone in a wilderness but now he has discovered that God had been there with him all the time. He thought he had no future but now he has been given everything he dream of and more. Out of immense gratitude he promises that he will give God a tenth of everything that God is going to give him. This is almost the origin of the practice of tithing in the bible, of giving a tenth of your income to God. Many years later, as recorded in the book of Leviticus there would come the commandment that all the people must give a tenth of the increase in the value of their land and property to God as an act of thanksgiving. But not yet this is a spontaneous gesture by an overwhelmed Jacob. Or is it? We would tend to think that giving a tenth of our income to God would be edging dangerously towards the generous side, but in the story of Jacob is actually sounds distinctly mean. From a position of total weakness Jacob has suddenly been promised everything he could imagine or want, and he offers 10% as a token of appreciation, maintaining the right to use the other 90% in whatever way he chooses. So I think we are invited to ask the question - is that an appropriate way to respond to God s generosity?
3 But even that is not really the problem. I said that out of immense gratitude he promises that he will give God a tenth of everything that God has promised to give him, but that is not really what happened. For what Jacob makes to God is not pledge or a promise, it sounds more like a negotiation. He says: if you stand by me and if you protect me on this journey on which I'm setting out, and if you keep me in food and clothing, and if you bring me back in one piece to my father's house, then you will be my God and of all that you give me I will give you a tenth. This is not really a great a statement of faith is it. It is not really an enormous outpouring of gratitude. Not only does he insist on the right to keep 90% for his own personal use, but he will only offer the 10% once he is sure that God has kept his side of the deal. When God hadn t even offered a deal, just given an unconditional promise. Jacob may have been willing to give the 10%, but it was hardly a done in a spirit of thanksgiving. And here is what I think is the real issue, here is the vital thing that we need to get right if we are to have a healthy Christian attitude to money. God doesn t deal in balance sheets, he deals with human hearts. The first thing we need to sort out is not what is in our bank account, or even what is in our offering envelope, it is what is in our heart. Do we recognise what God has made possible for us? Do we appreciate that? Are we grateful for that? These are the key questions that underlie everything else, and when we keep our handling of money separate from these questions, we will end up with a financial system that has no moral basis, and we will end up with family budgets that have no evidence of a sense of stewardship. You see it not about how much we give or how much we hold back. Jesus demonstrates in today s gospel story that he can manage fine with whatever people offer to him. It is what leads us to make those decisions which is crucial for us.
One of our readings last week contained what has become a well know phrase, Each should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. I think that is really significant. Jesus says so many things which warn against the love of money, about the dangerous effect wealth can have on our lives. He implies that it is really difficult to understand our dependence on God when we are so obviously self reliant. I ve read Jesus saying many deeply challenging things about money but I haven t yet found the bit where he says, however if you give a decent contribution to the church then everything will be OK. In one story where he tells of two people giving money to the temple it is the one who gives a small coin, not the one who gives a substantial tithe who is described as righteous. Because it is what is in our heart that matters, not what is in the plate. Another time he condemns the Pharisees, not for a failure to pay their religious dues but because they make sure they hand over exactly the right amount, rather than handing it over with deep gratitude and joy. Because it is what is in our heart that matters, not what is in the plate. I ve actually heard a pastor, not the one who prayed over the offering, a different one, telling his congregation that if they couldn t give joyfully then they shouldn t give at all, because God doesn t want money that is given reluctantly. And he said that if they only gave their pledge to get God off their back then they should stop giving because God doesn t want money that is given reluctantly. And that may not be the sort of advice that you get in church growth manuals but it does sound like the sort of thing which either Jesus of Paul would say. The heart of a Christian attitude to money is the vision we have of being people who have been given everything, who have been handed a wonderful inheritance, who have been promised an unimaginable future, who have had all of our debts cancelled and all of our bills paid. If we don t have that vision of how much we should be thankful for then no amount of money if going to bring us contentment, and no amount of calculated giving if going to make us feel good. 4
When we are afraid, when we are anxious about the future, when we feel the need to protect ourselves, then money will be very important to us because it appears to offer us what we need. When we rejoice, when we are grateful for what we have been given, when we discover that we can trust God to give us what we need each day, then money becomes something we can use to do good in the world. 5 How can I ever thank the Lord for all his gifts to me? It was the question of the Psalm writer all those many years ago. And when we think about money, especially in these days of economic turmoil when it threatens to look so complicated, that should still be first question in our minds. Not how much do I have but how thankful am I? Not how much do I need to give but how can I show my thanks? Not what can I give to God but how can I use all that God has given to me in his Service. May God grant us such a vision, such a promise, such a full inheritance, so much more than we could ever dream of paying for.