If You Give the Church a Penny…
2 Corinthians 9:6-15
Laura Joffe Numeroff is the author of a beloved pre-school classic entitled, “If You Give A Mouse A Cookie.” Now, some of us may be quite familiar with the book, but others may not… So, let me begin this morning by reading this classic to you…
Now, put yourself in the role of the little boy, who out of his generosity decided to share his cookies with the mouse. And yet the mouse was never happy. Give him a cookie and he wants milk. Give him milk and he wants a straw. Give him a straw and he wants a napkin and on and on it goes until you’re back to the beginning where he wants another cookie! And you know the whole cycle will start again. So, why should you even give the mouse a cookie in the first place? Right?
I wonder how many Christians see giving to the church in a similar manner. If you give the church a penny soon the church will want a dollar. And if you give the church a dollar, then they will not want to ask for more money… but then they’ll want you to lead a Bible study. And seeing how good you are at leading a Bible study, they’ll ask you to work with the youth group. And you’ll be such a hit with the teenagers, that they’ll ask you to start a youth choir. But there’s no funding in the budget for a youth choir, so the church will ask you to give a penny…
Often stewardship is seen as “giving to the church” and each year the church comes back and asks you for more time, more talents, more treasure. Like the never satisfied Mouse, the church always wants more… more…more.
But wait, that’s NOT how it is! Or at least that’s NOT how stewardship is SUPPOSED to be. When we give the church a penny, we’re not really giving it to the church, but we’re giving it to God – to glorify God and to equip and enable the body of Christ to do the work of God in the world.
There’s a verse buried in the middle of today’s reading from 2 Corinthians. Verse 12: This service (of giving) that you perform is not only supplying the needs of God’s people but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God. Giving to the church (much like attending church) is not to be seen as a chore. Unfortunately we pastors and budget committees and stewardship teams do a pretty poor job of helping God’s people put stewardship and giving into a proper Biblical perspective. We mistakenly lead people to believe that giving is a “chore” and instead of building up cheerful givers who return to God from the abundance God has given, we in turn create people who “have to tithe.” That is NOT what we want. And according to scripture, those are not the gifts that GOD wants! Each person should give what he or she has decided to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a CHEERFUL giver.
Hmmm, how many of us are cheerful as we place our offerings in the plate? Come on, I sit up here in the chancel each week. I see you as the ushers move down the aisle collecting the gifts that we are bringing to God. And I rarely see a smile as you place your gift in the basket! In fact I can’t really describe the looks on most of your faces as you place your gift among the gifts of your brothers and sisters. A gift that represents your entire life – not just your money. It’s certainly not joy! But it also isn’t a regret or mournful look. I guess I could describe it as a passive look. Just another rote thing that we do in worship, another thing to check off the bulletin’s things to do list. Another week, another gift, a few minutes closer to the end of worship…
But that is NOT the cheerful attitude that God desires in his children. God loves those who give cheerfully and who give with a sense of gratitude and thanksgiving for all God has done for them. I’m sure God delights in the African tradition of dancing forward your offerings. The ushers don’t come to you. You bring forward your gifts with dance and song with a cheerful and grateful heart. Can you imagine our church family… no, I won’t go there!
Now, I would be remiss if I didn’t say that God has a standard of giving for his children to live up to – the standard of a tithe (of giving 10% of your treasures AND your time to the work of God in the world). There are people that give more than a tithe and there many people who give a lot less! But again, what can you give cheerfully? What is God calling you to give?
Often our stewardship sermons are centered around the giving of money. But today, I would like to take a few minutes and imagine what could be accomplished for God if each one of us tithed our TIME.
Let’s see 24 hours a day, 7 days a week is 168 hours in one week. A TITHE of that is 16.8 hours a week (a little over 2 hours per day). But for your math challenged pastor, we’re going to round down to 16 hours per week of service to God!
Now, what could be accomplished for the glory of God if we each committed to giving 16 hours a week to the work of God in the world? Let’s consider how we might be spending that time. We’ll be generous – let’s say we each committed to 1 hour a day of personal devotion time (reading, praying, studying) that’s 7 of our 16 hours.
9 hours remain. Again we’ll be generous and say we spend 2 hours each Sunday and 1 ½ hours each Wednesday in Bible study and worship with our church family. So we’ll subtract 3 ½ hours from our 9 - that’s 5 ½ hours left for each of us to give to God’s service. It could be visiting some of our church family that can’t come to worship regularly. It could be serving at the Community Service Center. It could be helping paint the nursery. It could be serving on a committee. It could be cooking for Wednesday evening dinner. We each have talents and gifts that we could share in the remaining hours of our 16 hour tithe.
How many of you are already thinking - I’m too busy to give 16 hours to God? And how many of you are thinking - if I give the church 16 hours this year, next year they’ll want 17 hours! And pretty soon the church will be EXPECTing me to give 24 hours a day. Again – we aren’t giving the hours to the church… we are giving them to God.
God has given each of us 168 hours a week. It is up to us how we spend them. Are we all busy? Absolutely. But we will not be rewarded in heaven for our earthly busyness! We will be rewarded for the amount of time we spent glorifying and praising God. And quite frankly that SHOULD be 24 hours a day. There should be nothing happening in your day that does not give you opportunity to praise God in thought, word, deed and service. God wants all 168 hours a week to be devoted to being a disciple – why are we worried over committing 16 of them to God?
Giving to God is not at all like giving a mouse a cookie. For once you give a mouse a cookie, the mouse requires more and more and you the giver receive less and less. Giving to God is like planting a crop or a garden. Whoever sows sparingly will reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. In other words, who ever gives sparingly, will receive sparingly and whoever gives generously will also reap generously. But like planting a crop or a garden, the return on giving time, talents and treasures to God is not instantaneous…
You may give hours and hours of service before anyone says thank you. You may share your Spiritual gifts of teaching and never know the impact of your lessons on the life of others. But the worldly return is not what is important. The ultimate return on our giving to God - be it time, treasure or talent – is the reward of life lived in the eternal kingdom.
Scriptures again and again assure us of the promise of God to give us what we need for our living. God’s giving is so abundant that we cannot out give God! Through our faith and the assurance of the scriptures, we know that God is always going to give back to us three, seven, ten, a hundred fold. When we give our time to God’s service – no, we don’t get blessed with more hours, but we receive the gift of time management and the gift of prioritizing that which is important for our lives and the glory of God. When we give our talents to God, we are rewarded with the assurance of giving glory to the One who has given us the gift. When we give our treasures to the Lord, we are rewarded by knowing that through the gift we give lives can be changed through missions and ministries that bring the truth of the gospel to the world around us.
Giving is the cornerstone of our faith. For God so loved the world that he GAVE his only son that whosoever believes in him will not perish but will be GIVEN eternal life! Jesus GAVE his life that we can live. Many Apostles gave all they had to the early church that we might have the gospel here and now. Church fathers and mothers throughout Judeo-Christian history have sacrificed their comfort and their standard of living - and many even their lives - to ensure the future generations of God’s world would receive the message of grace and salvation.
So, what gift are you willing to give to the glory of God? What gifts of time, talent and treasure do you have stored away that God may be calling you to give to ensure the future of God’s message of love to the world?
If you give a mouse a cookie, he’ll want a glass of milk, then he’ll want a straw, then he’ll want a napkin… and on and on it goes. But God’s version of the story, we aren’t the little boy, the giver who gives and gives without return. No, in God’s version we are the mice who receive many gifts from God. The mice who always want more. The mice who sometimes forget to share. But God continues to give us blessings.
The more we receive, the more we want, the more God deserves in return. Through the sacrifice of our lives, let us praise God whose giving knows no ending. Amen.
