“Father, the hour has come, glorify your son so that your son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people to give eternal life to all you have given him” (John 17:1-2)
In a month or so’s time I am going to have a hernia operation, so yesterday morning I went to UCH for my pre-op assessment. The nurse recognised me. She had been at a funeral for her cousin here at St Barnabas two and a half years ago. In fact she had been at the house as I had visited her dying cousin. She talked about how precious the funeral had been, about the sense of hope she had received.
When the standing order comes out of your bank account or you put your envelope in the collection plate, it may not feel like it, but part of what your money is contributing to is hope.
“Father, the hour has come, glorify your son so that your son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people to give eternal life to all you have given him” (John 17:1-2)
Of course what your money pays for is many other things too. Joy- the joy of a christening or a wedding like the ones we have had in the last few weeks. Relationship with God “I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world.”(John 17:6) When next week on Pentecost, even if it is only just one person, when someone goes up for prayer ministry and has a really profound life changing experience of the Holy Spirit, that experience could not have happened without your donations paying to keep God’s work going in this place. And not just relationship with God, but community with one another “that they might be one as we are one” (John 17:11). That fellowship that we have with one another comes from you to keep God’s work going in this place.
So thank you, thank you thank you
Thank you for the ways you have been giving already and thank you for all the ways you have responded to the Stewardship Campaign so far.
One of the ways in which some you will have been responding to the stewardship campaign is to put a legacy to the church in your will.
Jesus gives us eternal life, but the one thing we know about money is “you can’t take it with you”
When I was vicar of Holy Trinity Barkingside the Church Building was in fantastic state. Just before I arrived the entire building had been redecorated and every flaw repaired. A new beautiful stained glass window had been put in. How had all this been paid for? Because of a committed Christian called Audrey Campbell. Her husband had died before her and she had no children, so she left the value of her entire house to the church. You know how much houses are worth.
Well there are not many of us who have no children we need to provide for, but it is amazing the difference leaving even a small percentage of an estate to the church can make.
So before I go on, Margaret is going now to talk a bit about legacies
….
While I added the Malachi reading because it was a stewardship Sunday - the 1 Peter reading and the John reading are just the normal readings for this Sunday - but it’s amazing how the Holy Spirit can give us readings that speak powerfully to our circumstances.
Our second reading (1 Peter 4:12-19) is about suffering as Christians.
I think the danger for us in the west is we have it too easy. I heard once of a Chinese pastor who prayed that persecution wouldn’t stop, or else Chinese Christians might turn in half hearted Christians like us in the west.
What does my faith cost me?
Very early every Sunday morning, rural Chinese Christian Simei Tong sets out from her small house in the mountains. She walks for two hours, along narrow, winding pathways and village lanes, until she gets to the home of her blind friend, Zhou Maoying. Taking hold of her arm, she carefully guides her as they walk for another hour. (Watch the video below.)
When they reach Luo Shui village where their little church is located, they have one more hurdle to overcome: they have to cross a stream by wobbling across a series of stepping stones. Their friend Yang Jinying, who also takes two hours to get to church, recently slipped and broke her arm while crossing the stream. (1)
They travel for two or three hours to get to church and are there every Sunday. Me? You? It’s easy for us to get here, isn’t it?
In North Korea there are only 500,000 or fewer Christians, and one in 5 of them is a prisoner in a labour camp - a death camp similar to Aushwitz. Can you imagine if we had to worship in secret and one in five of us was rounded up and sent to place like that.
Some will be imprisoned for a few years, some for decades, others until they die. They are forced to work for long hours, clothed in rags, with just a few hundred grams of food each day. They are subject to mental and physical torture and are always at risk of being killed.
Hea-Woo says, "When I was in the camp, there was so much death all around me. When people died, we stripped them of their clothes and had to bring the corpses to the mountains. Others were burned in crematoria and their ashes were scattered over the road. We had to walk that road every day. I thought, 'One day the other prisoners will walk over me'. We didn't mean anything to the guards. They beat me so hard I thought I was going to die. When we worked, we were not allowed to rest, because we were criminals. Our only use was to work."
And yet, the church in North Korea continues to grow. Hea-Woo says, "When God told me to evangelise in the camp, I refused at first. But God kept insisting. And in the end, all I had to do was give the people God pointed out to me a message of hope. God had prepared them to accept the gospel. These ladies who converted already knew me. They saw me washing the clothes of the sick and sharing my food with the weak. When we formed a secret church inside the camp we shared everything with each other." (2)
What does my faith cost me?
One of the bible’s principles of Christian giving is that it is meant to be sacrificial.When in 2 Samuel 24:24 David wants to build an altar on the threshing floor of a farmer called Araunah the Jebisite, Araunah tries to give him the land and the cattle to sacrifice too, but David insists on buying it for a fair price because “I will not offer offerings to the Lord that cost me nothing”.
Imagine how much more it feels to you when your loved one spends hours trailing around the shop to find you the perfect present compared with if they just pick something up without thinking on the way home?
Or think of an engagement ring - tradition has it that it is meant to cost two months salary. Would you want your fiance to buy you a ring with whatever spare change they had in their pocket?
So what does my faith cost me?
Will I “offer offerings to the Lord that cost me nothing”?
I think perhaps sometimes it is easier for people who have had really dramatic conversion experiences. In Malachi God tells us “I will rebuke the locust from you so that it will not destroy the produce of your soil and your vine will not be barren” (Malachi 3:11) and “See if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing” (Malachi 3:10)
I think of that speaker we had a few weeks back from Christians against Poverty. His life and his family had completly fallen apart through the debt he had got into. Through the work of CAP and through becoming a Christian, his life was turned around. No wonder he completely throws himself into it.
Or take someone like David who was addicted to Cocaine. He talks about how he was stealing. How he had to pawn everything he had to pay for his habit. How he didn’t have a place to live. Then he came across the Christian charity Teen Challenge which introduced him to Jesus and got him off drugs. When becoming a Christian means getting out of that mess, no wonder David is completely sold out for Jesus. (3)
But those of us who never experienced the locust like that - do we realise how precious the eternal life is that Jesus has given us?
Is it too easy? What does my faith cost me?
I’m really challenged because you and I - we are not going to have to pay with our lives. We don’t have to walk two to three hours to get to mass. Compared with other people in this country People in this church are VERY generous. Christians in this country give away far more than non Christians do. But compared with Christians in North Korea or rural China - what does my faith really cost me?
When I am thinking “Can I afford to increase my giving”. When you are thinking, can you afford to increase your giving.
It cost Jesus his life to give us eternal life. What does a small increase in giving cost me?
I am going to finish with a story that makes me uncomfortable because if I find it helpfully uncomfortable, perhaps some of you will also find it helpfully uncomfortable. It might not speak to you at all, but if I find it challenges me, perhaps it might challenge you.
There was a farmer in Arkansas that was very poor. He only had a few hundred dollars a month, but like many poor people he was a very faithful giver and every month however little he had he always gave a tithe, a tenth of it, to his church. Then suddenly they found oil on his land and he was making $300,000.00 a month.
He commented to pastor, “ a tenth of that, $30,000.00 a month is too much, I can’t afford to give this much.”
The pastor agreed this is a big problem. The pastor told the man, let’s pray that God will take this problem away.” “yes” said the man
“Ok” said the pastor “ Let's pray your oil wells all dry up and that you go bankrupt, then you will
not have this problem of giving so much.”
The oil man bowed his head and repented, for he took God’s blessings as a big burden. The man said, May I never again find giving as a burden. (4)
Amen
(1) (https://www.unitedbiblesocieties.org/rural-chinese-christians-go-the-extra-mile-for-their-faith/)
(2) source Open Doors website
(3) source Teen Challenge website
(4) (sermon by Wade Hughes on this site)
