2019-10-22
Brooke Strong
Scripture: Luke 18:1-8
Water Theme: Persistence
Maybe you’ve heard the story of the farmer who lived alone in the Irish countryside, except for a pet dog he loved dearly. One day the dog died, and the farmer went to the parish priest, inquiring if a mass could be said for the dead pet. Father Patrick told the farmer: “No, we can’t have services for an animal in the church, but I’ll tell you what, there’s a new denomination down the road, and no telling what they believe in, so maybe they’ll do something for the animal.” The farmer said: “Thanks, I’ll go right away. By the way, do you think 50,000 is enough to donate for such a service?” to which Father Patrick replied: “Why didn’t you tell me the dog was Catholic?”
Money and stewardship. Not the easiest subject to preach on. And probably not the easiest subject for us to reflect on. Money is a tender subject for most of us. We spend a lot of time thinking about it—what we make, where we spend it, how our personal and work budgets are faring. Will we have enough for a vacation? Are we frittering too much away on hobbies? Are we saving enough for retirement? For many of us, our minds and imaginations spend a lot of time on financial matters. And in many marriages, money is the biggest source of discord. We may thrill to a windfall one minute, and fall into high financial anxiety the next.
So when we come to church on Sunday and the preacher is talking about money, it can make us tense and a little squirmy, and maybe make us wish we hadn’t come that day. As I heard a church member say not too long ago, in a wonderfully confessional vein, “I don’t love coming to worship in the month of October; I find myself wanting to get back to the things that make us church.” I suspect he speaks for many of us.
So let’s talk this morning about why stewardship, too, is church, and why financial support of the church is so vitally important. And let’s remind ourselves that there is Spirit and life, not just in all the church’s other programs, but also in our giving, and that giving, substantial giving, is crucial not just for financial reasons, but for deeply spiritual reasons, as well. The way we apportion our money isn’t incidental to our faith. Just the opposite, in fact. Disposing of our money well is, in truth, part of the very core of our spiritual selves.
Another story: As a man and his family drove home after church one Sunday morning, he was complaining about everything. He said, “The music was too loud. The sermon was too long. The announcements were unclear. The building was hot. The people were unfriendly.” He went on and on, complaining about virtually everything. Finally, his very observant daughter said, “Dad, you’ve got to admit it wasn’t a bad show for just the dollar you put in the plate.” Real giving isn’t just a few coins tossed in an offering plate. It’s an expression of faith. And it asks something of us, doesn’t it.
You and I, as we say, have countless financial demands, and, if we’re not clear about what we’re doing and why we’re doing it, the season of stewardship can feel like just one more burden, one more bill, one more obligation. It is most definitely not that, though. Far from being just an onerous requirement, giving substantially is an opportunity; it’s a chance to engage deeply in what makes us distinctively human.
I want you to take a moment and think about a gift that you yourself have given, a gift that, in the giving, has filled you and enhanced your life. A number of years ago, for her birthday, I gave Mary a week at an artists’ workshop in the Hudson River Valley in New York. Giving that gift made me a better person. It enhanced my life. It filled me with joy, because it filled Mary with joy. Was it expensive? Yes. Was it something of a sacrifice? Definitely. And would I do it again? In a minute, because in the giving and the receiving there was such delight. Giving that gift wasn’t a burden. It was a blessing. Not only was Mary enabled to do something that thrilled her, but I was made richer by it, as well. The giving was its own gift.
This is something of what giving to the church is like. It is far more than just a task. It is also fundamental in our being fully human, and in being fully responsive to the God who has given us life and breath, and in sensing and knowing joy. Giving to the church is, itself, its own gift.
Two themes from the parable Jesus tells this morning illuminate something of what it means to be a generous steward. First there’s the woman in the story. She’s nothing if not insistent. She never gives up. She badgers the judge in the story relentlessly. Worn down by this persistent pestering, the judge finally muses exasperatedly, “[B]ecause this widow won’t quit badgering me, I’d better do something and see that she gets justice—otherwise I’m going to end up beaten black and blue by her pounding” (Luke 18:5, The Message).
If there’s anything that characterizes this woman, it’s her persistence. She never gives up. It reminds me of that famous graduation speech given to the all-boys Harrow School by Winston Churchill years ago: “Never give up, never give up, never give up” he is reputed to have said in the world’s shortest graduation speech, and then he supposedly sat down. That version is apocryphal, but what Churchill did in fact say in the midst of a much more typical twenty-minute speech, was this: “never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in.” And that’s this persistent woman.
There’s something, in other words, to keeping on keeping on. This widowed woman’s diligence is celebrated as a gift. Her practice, or what we might call her discipline, is lauded. Her determination is seen as a blessing. Her perseverance is a manifestation, says Jesus, of “faith on earth” (18:8).
There’s nowhere that persistence in church life is more valued than in the giving of our financial gifts. Happy or sad, we give. Successful or struggling, we give. Young or old, we give. Wealthy or poor, we give. In the same way that, when things are going well, we put aside money from every paycheck for retirement and maybe for a vacation we’re looking forward to, so there’s a richness to life when we put aside money, from every paycheck, that expresses our generosity. Some money every week is saved. Some is designated for pleasure. And, when life is balanced, something substantial is given away.
When our children were small, Mary and I used to give them a dollar a week for an allowance (this was quite some time ago!). When it came time to give them a raise, we hoped to instill some healthy practices in them. So we said to them, “We’ll either raise your allowance to $2 a week, or we’ll give you $5 a week, and you have to save a dollar and give away a dollar. You choose.” It was clearly a no-brainer, because with the larger allowance, they would get to keep $3 instead of $2. At the same time, though, they would learn something of both saving and giving. And part of the unspoken message to them was that both saving and giving are disciplines to be practiced, not just occasionally or when the mood strikes, but over the course of a lifetime. Giving is its own reward, and the depth of its blessing is directly proportional to both its regularity and its generosity. Persistence in giving, along with overflowing generosity, are cardinal virtues. This is why the church encourages pledging rather than just giving when we feel like it. To make a pledge, a promise, and to keep that pledge habitually, is to discipline ourselves in giving. It’s also why, since ancient times, a particular goal has been lifted up as a standard. A tithe, says the church, is what to aim for. It’s not an obligation—there’s no punishment if you don’t give 10% of your income to the church. It is, though, a goal, something toward which to strive. Working toward that goal—striving to tithe—and making giving a disciplined part of our lives is a kind of persistence.
Another element of persistence in giving has to do with the spirit in which we give. It happens from time to time that someone will say, “Well, I’m not going to give to the church if it takes such-and-such a stance, or moves in such-and-such a direction, or does this-or-that with its programs.” And while I understand that we all have hopes and desires for the church, the bald fact is that the church isn’t always going to do what you or I might wish it would do. Sometimes it veers off from what we might like it to do. And if our giving becomes contingent on whether our pet program is funded the way we want it to be, for example, or whether our facilities are dealt with in the way we’d like to see them dealt with, then our giving has become conditional, and we’ve entirely lost the spirit of what it means to be generous givers. Our financial contributions are only truly gifts if they are given as a response to God’s generosity and if we remember that we are all parts of a greater whole that will sometimes travel roads that we might not travel. True giving is a kind of ceding of control—which is itself a vital spiritual practice—for the sake of a community of God’s beloved.
So that’s one theme of this story—the persistence of this widow. That persistence is a model for us as we ponder our own giving. Another alluring and compelling theme of the story is wrapped up in the character of the judge. The widow goes repeatedly to this judge who is totally without any redeeming feature. The judge finally does the right thing, though, and grants the woman justice. And if a corrupt judge does what’s right, says the story, “What makes you think God won’t step in and work for justice for the chosen ones who cry to God day and night?” (18:7, The Message and NRSV). If even an immoral, unethical judge does the right thing, in other words, won’t God be incredibly more generous?
At the heart of this story is the generosity of the judge, and the conviction that, if even the judge comes through, then God is infinitely more likely to be gracious. We are always in thrall to the God who is faithful in all things, the God who embraces us and walks with us and holds us close and works for our healing and inspires us to justice no matter what. That’s the God to whom we give.
At the center of this story, in other words, as it is in the whole Bible, is the richness and bounty of the grace of God. The question that could well be posed to us at every moment of our lives is this: if God is that gracious to us, what’s an appropriate response for you and me to make in return? If someone gives you a compliment, don’t you feel a need to pass it on? If someone lets you use their vacation condo, don’t you want to express your gratitude and pass your hospitality along to others? When we receive a valuable gift, the need is always to say thank you and to give to others in return.
And that’s what’s at the heart of stewardship. God has given you and me a precious gift that we could never have given ourselves. This is the heart of what we discover when we devote time to prayer, which is how Jesus’ story begins—that we “need to pray always and not to lose heart” (18:1). It’s in prayer that we discover God’s never-ending goodness, God’s bottomless affection for us. God has given us life and showered us with beauty and not held our sins and shortcomings against us. God, says Thomas Keating, is “that from which everything that exists is emerging and [to which it is] returning in each nanosecond of time.” So we pray, says Keating, because “[the presence of God] is like adding a soundtrack to a silent movie. The picture is the same, but the soundtrack makes it more alive” (Open Mind, Open Heart, p. 70). When we sense that soundtrack, when we really take in the bounty of what God gives us, what’s left for us to do but to give substantially in return.
So what do you say? How are you and I going to adequately show our gratitude to God during this season of commitment and next Sunday as we return our pledges? Just how generous can we be? One more story: Two men were marooned on an island. One paced back and forth worried and scared while the other sat back and was sunning himself. The first man said to the second one, “Aren’t you afraid we are about to die.” “No,” said the second man, “I make $5 million a year and I tithe 10% of my income to the church. My pastor will find me” (all three stories come from https://www.giveplus.com/blog/money-is-no-laughing-matter-for-churches-sometimes).
So that’s my invitation to you today: make your pledge so generous that, if you’re ever marooned on a desert island, I will so want to find you! But to be serious: make your pledge a reflection of your enormous gratitude for the blessings you receive. Make your giving a persistent pattern, a habit that you simply cannot go without. Because together, with our passionate investment in the life-giving ministries of Federated Church, we will remake the world. And it will be a blessing of the highest order.