casamurphy made
this comment to one of my
diaries last night:
Local parties is where it is at: I have noticed that the budgets of most local parties is astoundingly meager. Many large city party organizations have smaller budgets than a small church.
If the "roots" set targets to get 5000 sustaining [$10 per month] contributors to local parties AND got enough of "us" elected to precinct positions to control those budgets then we could get out the "word" as a legitimate counter force to big media.
Forget the consultants and number crunchers. With 10,000 sustaining members and 20,000 volunteers, a local party could afford to deliver a bi-monthly newspaper to every door in a major city -- and engage many of our neighbors in a healthy political dialogue in the process.
I honestly don't know if this would work, or if murphy's math works out (the average small church runs on about $100,000 a year. What do local parties get?).
But hell, it's time to take back our party, and then take back our country.
Read this week's sermon in that light.
II Corinthians 9:6-15 November 21, 2004
Our epistle lesson for this morning is what we preachers like to call a "difficult text". Usually what that means is that we have a hard time doping out the meaning, or that we have a hard time communicating that meaning to you, the congregation. In this case, it's the latter.
See if you can follow this. Paul, as I've often said before, is hitting the Corinthians up for money to fund further apostolic work. He's not asking for a grant to cover his living expenses; he'll take care of that himself by working as a tentmaker. Instead, what he's going to do with the money, as he explains in chapter 8, is use it for poverty relief in whatever site he's going to next. It's a simple formula that churches still follow today: preach good news and help the people out, and hopefully some of them will join your church.
So far so good. Where the difficult part comes in is Paul's theological reasoning for this collection. That is to say, he wants the Corinthians to understand that their giving is not just a "good deed," but an act of faith, and his reason for saying that is fairly complicated.
See if you can follow this: God chooses to give to us generously, because, well, because that's what God does. Out of that generosity, we always have enough to meet our needs. Sometimes we're even blessed enough to have more than what we need. As God gives, therefore, so should we: through freewill and generosity. That the Lord loves a cheerful giver doesn't mean that we should pony up our dues with a smile on our face; it means that God loves those who can give as he himself gives.
Thus far, we've gone up through my sermon last week: God gives us enough and more than enough, and so we ought to share abundantly with one another and with the world around us. Remember that one? But Paul is not done. He continues the thought: if we can give generously, God will "supply and multiply [our] seed for sowing and increase the harvest of [our] righteousness." Furthermore,
You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity, which will produce thanksgiving to God through us; for the rendering of this ministry not only supplies the needs of the saints but also overflows with many thanksgivings to God.
He's not promising monetary reward for the Corinthians' giving. This isn't a business deal with God. Because this money goes to the poor, it's an act of kindness, which God always appreciates, and which will cause those whom it benefits to give thanks to God. But if it is also given freely and cheerfully by the Corinthians, it will "overflow" with thanksgiving. Giving thanks to God in the form of money for the poor is a double blessing, in other words. We give thanks, the recipients give thanks.
And Paul is still not done! (I told you this was complicated.) It appears that the Corinthian community is made up of people who have come to Christianity primarily through Judaism, but the people Paul intends to help are Pagan converts. So the money he collects from the Corinthians will help to achieve his overarching goal as an apostle: to bring these two communities together:
Through the testing of this ministry you glorify God by your obedience to the confession of the gospel of Christ and by the generosity of your sharing with them and with all others, while they long for you and pray for you because of because of the surpassing grace of God that he has given you.
In other words, if you can make it past this hurdle, you will have demonstrated that you are faithful people who do what needs to be done, and that faith will not go unnoticed. God will see it, as will the people you give to, and they will both reach out to you in the same way that you have reached out to them. Little wonder, then, that Paul can say "Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!"
Let's recap: God chooses to give generously, and so should we. If we do, it will be a testimony to our faith, and we will receive love as we have given it. And there's thankoffering for you. We're not just saying "thank you, God". We're putting some flesh on gratitude by giving in the same way we have received.
Which brings us to the challenge of this text. As one of my commentaries points out, Paul is very eager here to accomplish his goal of bringing together Jews and Gentiles through the offering he's collecting. And yet, that never happens. Instead, he's sold out by the Jewish community as a troublemaker, and he goes off to prison and execution in a Roman jail. We don't know what happens to the money.
Part of what it means to give in faith is to give in the face of risk. The reward of giving is a stronger community and a stronger faith. The risk is that the money does no good at all.
And yet we are called to give as God gives, and to love as God loves. That means to scatter the seeds far and wide, and hope for the best. If that's not a challenge to you, it should be.
What would it mean to pay the employees of your church not out of what you could afford, but out of what kind of thanksgiving you thought was due to God? What would it mean to pay your benevolences in the same way? To say not that we gave X last year, so this year we'll give X+ so much, but to say, "We're going to give not until it hurts, but until it feels good again"?
I'm not trying to get myself a raise here, or to tell you that you're not paying enough in benevolences. I'm trying to get you to see that giving in thanks requires us to take on an entirely new perspective, and that's Paul's point. Christians give in a new way because God has fundamentally changed the equation in his indescribable gift to us in Jesus Christ. We live in a world transformed by the grace of God, and we ought to give accordingly. So don't listen to me as you decide what to give this morning, either to the church or the Thankoffering collection. Listen to your heart and ask yourself: can I risk giving in love and faith? Can I risk giving without expectation of reward? Can I give cheerfully and freely and in thanksgiving to the God who provides me with every blessing in abundance? Amen.