The church service ended at the Lutheran Church in New Sweden, Maine as everyone “passed the peace.” It was the first Sunday after Easter, and the 50 people in attendance headed to the fellowship hour to have some coffee. Some of the people complained that the coffee was bitter, but people usually complain about church coffee, so they didn’t think much about it until some people began to get violently ill. By the end of the day, 16 people were hospitalized and one of them would die by the next morning. Police discovered that arsenic had been dumped into the 30-cup coffee maker, making this the nation’s worst case of mass arsenic poisoning. The next shock was that a well-respected member of the church, 53-year-old Danny Bondeson, a potato farmer, was found dead at home from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He left a note implicating himself in the poisoning. The investigation is now expanding to other members of the Bondeson family, whom police suspect may have been involved in the poisonings.
The story behind the story at this point seems to be that there was a disagreement in the church about a communion table. For years the church had a communion table that was against the wall, and the blessing of the bread and wine was done while facing the wall. The Bondeson family had donated a new altar so that the bread and wine could be done while facing the congregation. But traditions die hard, and the board seemed unwilling to replace the old altar, even though a new one had been donated, because they did not want to offend some of those who wanted the bread and wine blessed while facing the wall like it had always been done. Speculation is that not only Bondeson, but other members of his extended family, had become as bitter as the church coffee and decided to teach some people a lesson.
Was the Bondeson family giving for the glory of God or for their own glory? There is a lot of poison going around because people get their eyes off of Christ and onto the wrong things. The Bible says, “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures” (James 4:1-3). We often have very wrong ideas about money and giving.
This morning I want us to take a spiritual journey through the Scriptures in order to get the right perspective on giving. There are people who have a special gift of giving. God has given them a heart to give. They love to give and are always looking for ways to give. They give lovingly and sacrificially. They see giving as a ministry. If we are to receive the gift of giving then we are going to have to have a proper understanding in place. The first thing you have to do if you are going to experience the joy of giving is this: You must recognize God’s ownership of everything. Somebody at the Lutheran church in New Sweden, Maine failed to understand that the church did not belong to them — the church belongs to God. The building belongs to God. The altar belongs to God. The people belong to God. The whole world belongs to God. Even what we give to God is already his. It is a gift from him to us. Part of the ritual in the church where I grew up had the choir sing as the offering was brought forward: “We give thee but thine own, / Whate’er the gift may be: / All that we have is thine alone. / A trust, O lord, from thee.” The Psalmist exulted, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it” (Psalm 24:1).
Whatever we give, we should give it as though we were giving it to God — not to the church or to a budget. You should not give because you want recognition or your name on a plaque. Jesus said, “But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you” (Matthew 6:3-4). What we give is not ours anyway, it belongs to God. If you give something to the church it does not belong to you, whether that is money or some furnishing. You should think of your giving as giving to God, not the church. When we are giving to God we do not give to the things we agree with and not give to the things we may not agree with, we give as unto the Lord and we let him sort it out.
It is my belief that churches often go about the finance campaign in completely the wrong way. How do we do it usually? We publish the church budget. We tell the members that the church’s budget is so much and we challenge people to meet the budget. If that is our motive for giving we are giving for the wrong reason. We give because we love the kingdom of God and we desire to see it grow and prosper. We want the work of God to be done in the world. We should give because we want to give back to God. Our level of giving should not be tied to the amount of the budget, but to the level of what God is calling us to give. If we all tithed we would not even need to have a yearly finance campaign. We tithe because we recognize that everything we have is a gift of God, and we want to give part of what he has given to us back to him. Some people say, “Well, tithing is an Old Testament law, and it is not advocated by Jesus or the other writers of the New Testament.” That is correct, and the reason is that Old Testament law said that 10 percent of everything belonged to God. In the New Testament Jesus taught that everything belongs to God. Those who have the gift of giving don’t feel obligated to give 10 percent of what they have and earn, they delight in giving beyond that. In the Old Testament the tithe was the maximum amount to give. In the New Testament it is the minimum. It gives us great joy to give, for we know the truth of Jesus’ words: “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you” (Luke 6:38). This is a scripture with a promise.
The second thing you need if you are going to grow in your ability to enjoy giving is: You must live a life of stewardship. In the parable we read together today, we hear about a wealthy landowner who has a piece of land in which he invests a great deal. (The landowner represents God in the parable.) He plants a vineyard, builds a wall around it, digs a winepress and builds a watchtower. He appoints certain men (i.e. the people of the world) to be the stewards of his property and crop of grapes. But the stewards of the property want to own the property. Instead of wanting everything to belong to the landowner, they want everything to belong to them. So when the landowner sends his servants (the prophets) to collect what is due him, the stewards mistreat and kill them. Finally, the landowner sends his only son (Jesus), but they kill him as well, saying to each other: “This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.” The people of the world have tried to take over the world that God owns.
A steward is one who owns nothing, but is simply the manager or administrator for the possessions of the true owner. A steward does not look at what he has as belonging to him; he sees his money and possessions as belonging to God. He understands that he has been entrusted with those things to use for the glory of God and the benefit of others. Stewards do not just meet their own needs and desires, they want what they have to be used for kingdom purposes. They give up control of their resources to the true owner.
Jesus taught that our gifts have eternal significance. He said, “Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Luke 12:33-34). We are not investing in a church building or in programs, we are investing in the kingdom of heaven. Paul taught this same principle when he told Timothy what to say as a pastor to his people. He wrote: “Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life” (1 Timothy 6:18-19).
Jesus taught that the wise use of what we have been entrusted with pays eternal rewards, for he said: “I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings” (Luke 16:9). What he meant was that when you use your wealth to bring other people into the kingdom of God, they will be waiting to welcome you into the kingdom because of what you have done for them.
The third thing you need to understand if you are going to grow in your ability to enjoy giving is: You must want to bless more than you want to be blessed. There is nothing better than knowing we have blessed the life of someone else, especially if our gift has been used to bring them into the kingdom. We have to grow from the attitude of loving to get to loving to give. We begin to find joy in being able to do something for someone else. We love to give and see our gift used for the kingdom of God and others coming to Christ. It was Jesus who said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35).
Many of you have been giving like that. One couple gave Eli $500 worth of McDonalds food certificates so he could take the young people out to eat as he ministers to them. Many of you have brought a lot of food and drinks for the wagon ministry. Some bring treats every Sunday for Sunday School without anyone asking. Some people have donated a whole pew for our sanctuary. Someone gave a needy single mom a $200 gift certificate for Krogers. Last week many of you gave generously for Ben Orsborne to go to India. You have made it possible for many in our church to go on mission trips. I am sure that today you will give generously for the work in Honduras. And this was done without fanfare and with no desire for recognition. It was done for kingdom purposes — that other people might come to know Christ and become a part of his kingdom. And you don’t have to be able to give a large amount to give generously. Jesus proved that when he saw the widow who could only put two small copper coins in the temple offering, and said to his disciples, “I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything — all she had to live on” (Mark 12:43-44).
The Bible says, “Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Corinthians 9:7). The Greek word for cheerful is hilaros, which is the word from which we get the word hilarious. God loves a hilarious giver. What a blessing it is to give to others, even though it may mean doing without something ourselves. This is not a burden, but a joy. It frees us from the compulsion to constantly gain more money and have more things. It frees us from the burden of financial concern. It focuses on the needs of others rather than our own. We trust God to take care of us, therefore we can be generous. We don’t have to hoard up for ourselves. We remember the words of Jesus: “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money” (Matthew 6:24). We also remember that he said, “So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches?” (Luke 16:11).
And giving goes beyond our finances. A giving person refuses to spend all of his or her time on their own needs and interests. They give their time to others and the work of the kingdom. They use the things they posses to bless others and share with them. They let other people use their things. They give of themselves with no expectation of a return favor. They don’t give to be thanked, and are not offended if thanks does not come. They want their pay back to come from God. They are building up treasure in heaven.
There is the great story of Zacchaeus in the Gospel of Luke. Zacchaeus was a tax collector which meant he was a Jew working for the Roman government. He was practicing extortion against his own people. But when he came in contact with Jesus, he was transformed. As a result he said, “Look, Lord Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.” Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house” (Luke 19:8-9). In effect, Zacchaeus was saying, “Lord, here is my money and possessions. They are all yours. Take them. What I have in you is more valuable than all the things I possess.” Jesus said, “Freely you have received, freely give” (Matthew 10:8).
Jesus told the parable about the Pearl merchant who had a collection of pearls, but one day found one more valuable than all the other pearls he possessed put together. Jesus said, “When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it” (Matthew 13:46). Now do you think that the pearl merchant cried over having to sell his other pearls? Absolutely not He could not wait to sell them, because he had found one that was so valuable, and so wonderful, that he did not even notice what he gave up to get it.
When I was in high school we had to read the works of Percy Shelly. I especially remember the poem he wrote entitled “Ozymandias.” Shelley imagines that on the largest statue in Egypt there is an inscription that reads: “I am Ozymandias, King of Kings, Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair ” But all that remains of Ozymandias’ mighty works is the desert sands. Shelley uses sarcasm to describe the scene: “Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare. The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Those whose lives are marked by the gift of giving leave a lasting — make that an everlasting — legacy. What they leave behind is not like the desert sand, but rivers of blessing that flow to the throne of God.
Rodney J. Buchanan
June 1, 20003
Mulberry St. UMC
Mt. Vernon, OH
www.MulberryUMC.org
Rod.Buchanan@MulberryUMC.org
The Gift of Giving
Questions for June 1, 2003
1. Is giving a duty or a joyful experience for you?
2. Read Psalm 24:1. Whose world is this? How much of the world does God own, and how does this truth affect the way we should live?
3. When we give, in our heart, to what or whom should we be giving?
4. What should our primary motive for giving be?
5. Shy is tithing (giving10% of your income) not a New Testament principle? What is the New Testament standard?
6. Who owns what you have? How do Christians see this differently than others?
7. Read Luke 16:9. What is Jesus saying here and how does this affect our concept of wealth?
8. Read Acts 20:35. This is a statement of Jesus not found in the Gospels. If you studied your actions, how much would you say you believe this?
9. Read 2 Corinthians 9:7. Is this your attitude toward giving? Is God pleased with your attitude? How could it become so?
10. From what does joyful giving free us?
