Out of Our Wealth

Luke 21:1-4

October 29, 2017 • Mount Pleasant UMC

When you hear the word “wealthy,” who comes to mind? How much money does someone have to be to be considered “wealthy”? The answer usually is, “More than me.” In reality, most of us here this morning are considered wealthy by the world’s standards. You can go to a website, globalrichlist.com, which will calculate where your income stands in comparison to income across the world, and the amazing thing is that anyone who makes $25,000 a year or more is in the top 2% of income earners in the world (cf. Rainer, The Money Challenge, pg. 88). That’s sort of a staggering statistic in our country where poverty is defined as less than $24,600 for a family of four. 98% of the people in the world make less than that every year. And I get issues surrounding “standards of living,” and how our standard tends to be higher than others, but I also know when I was in the Middle East last summer, my eyes were opened to a new reality. People there generally make quite a bit less than we do, and yet their cost of living is also higher. Everything tends to cost more. Another place we visited this past summer, gas was over $5 US a gallon, and wages were considerably lower than what they are here. “Wealth” is a relative term, and while most of us never feel wealthy, in comparison to the rest of the world, we truly are.

Yes, it’s that time of year again: the time when we talk about money. And we talk about it at least once a year because money has such a deep and profound influence on our lives. Money controls much of our lives. What we do with what we have says a lot about our character and what is important to us. The Bible—and Jesus in particular—actually has a lot to say about money, possessions, the stuff we have or the stuff that has us. Scripture has some pretty clear guidelines about how we should handle money—and the message is not, as a lot of people assume, that money is evil. But the Bible says instead that the love of money is the root of all evil (1 Timothy 6:10). Money is actually neutral as a spiritual force. It’s what we do with it that determines the positive or negative power it has in our lives, and that’s why the Bible gives us clear guidelines for the way we interact with our finances. For the next three weeks, we’re going to be working through three of those guidelines, three that have particular impact on the way we live in our world today. I’m going to give them all to you up front, and then we’ll spend the next three weeks working through these ideas: give generously, save wisely and live appropriately. If we can get a handle on these three ideas, it is my belief (and the witness of Scripture) that we will begin to live a life with greater purpose, greater contentment, and greater impact. We will begin to live a life that is “Greater Than.”

We begin on what I always imagine to be a sunny afternoon during the last week of Jesus’ life. Luke isn’t quite clear on which day this happened—sometime between Monday and Wednesday, it appears. Jesus has been teaching in and around the Temple courts in Jerusalem; in fact, I think it’s a safe bet to say he’s become quite a familiar figure in that area during those days. He’s already had his authority questioned, his patriotism called on the carpet, and his religious credentials tested. So I sort of picture Jesus sitting off to the side, perhaps in a shady spot, as Luke says he watches people coming forward to give their offerings to the Temple. In those days, they didn’t pass an offering plate during the worship service. Rather, there were thirteen, metal trumpet-shaped receptacles installed around the courtyard into which you would come and drop whatever coins you wanted to give. These receptacles would have officers standing near them, someone who was responsible for counting the offering as it went in. Now, you can imagine that as those who were wealthy, who had many resources, came and brought their coins, the noise the offering made going down into the receptacle was quite loud (Card, Luke: The Gospel of Amazement, pg. 229; Bock, NIV Application Commentary: Luke, pg. 526). I imagine the officer standing there could tell just by the noise about how much was being given. Undoubtedly, they would thank the giver and make a big fuss about the gift. Could it be this practice Jesus had in mind when he said to his disciples, “When you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full” (Matthew 6:2)?

Presumably at the end of the line, Jesus sees someone who grabs his attention and his heart. There is a widow—we usually assume she is old, but Luke doesn’t tell us that. It’s just as likely she was a young widow with no way to provide for herself. All that Luke really tells us about her is that she is poor. She is needy. She has virtually nothing; in fact, Jesus says, the only thing she has to her name are two small copper coins. Luke tells us they are lepta, the smallest of all the coins of her day, worth less than a penny. In fact, based on the daily minimum wage of the day, each of these coins was worth about five minutes of labor. As she dropped them into the trumpet-shaped receptacle, they probably made very little if any noise, and it’s unlikely anyone even noticed her gift. I picture the officers being too busy congratulating the wealthy ones ahead of her. This widow makes her gift and walks off because she’s not looking for credit. She’s looking for how she can humbly serve God. No one notices her—except Jesus (cf. Card 229; Bock 526).

There are four things we can notice about this widow’s gift, and the first is this: this widow made it a priority to give. For one, she made the journey from wherever she lived to the Temple to put her gift in the offering. She could have stayed home, and more than that, she could have kept her gift to herself. Or she could have kept half of it. Jesus says this is all she had to live on (21:4). No one would have blamed her if she had just given one coin and kept the other. But her heart is one that does not want to hold anything back. Giving is her priority, and it’s a priority she likely learned growing up in her faith. All throughout the Old Testament are repeated commands and expectations that giving back to God should come first. The Scriptures call this “first fruits” giving. For instance, in Proverbs, we hear his word: “Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the firstfruits of all your crops” (3:9).  That tradition goes way back historically. When Moses is giving instructions to the people, just before his death, about how they are to live once they cross over into the Promised Land, he tells them to take a portion of the first crops that are raised in the land there, bring it to the priest, and have him offer it as a gift to God. Later in their life in the land, Moses said, they should present a first fruit offering to the Levite in their town, and that offering would then be used to feed the fatherless and the widows (Deuteronomy 26:1-15). In both cases, it wasn’t that they were to bring what they had left over. They were to bring the first things that grew. Moses told the people: before you get your share, give God his share. Make God a priority.

Now, let me be clear because this sort of language is often misused today. I’m not talking about “first fruit giving” in the way the TV and internet preachers talk about it. Typically, that’s the language they use to get you and others to send them money, and the promise is that if you give to them, you will get something in return. If you send them money, they often say, God will have to send you a blessing. Sorry, but that’s not what the Bible really says. The first fruit offering was meant for two purposes in Israel’s history: as an act of gratitude to God and to take care of those in need. This is not about what we get. We give our first, our best because God deserves it. This is about being generous because God is generous. God himself gave us his first (and only) son—his best—as an offering for our salvation. When we make generosity a priority, like this widow did, it’s one way we live out the image of God within us. But it starts with a choice, and a realization that if we don’t make generosity a priority, it won’t happen. The widow gives first.

And she gives it all, which brings us to the next observation: giving should be done proportionally. Let’s think about the contrast between this woman and the others Jesus observed giving that day. We know that Jesus considered her gift “real giving,” because he commends her in particular. But what about the others? Did their gifts not count? It’s not that their gifts were unimportant or unappreciated; quite the contrary. Obviously, from a simple worldly standpoint, the gifts the others gave would go much further. So why does Jesus speak so highly of her two, tiny copper coins? It because of proportionality. Jesus puts it this way: “All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on” (21:4).

In the Scriptures, from the beginning of God working with his people, a standard was set, a standard known as a tithe. A tithe is simply ten percent of your income—proportional giving. In Numbers 18, the tithe was given to support the Levites, who were the priests and religious leaders. They had no land that was their own; they had no other employment by which to support themselves. But the people then, as we do now, struggled with that, so much that by the end of the Old Testament, God accuses his people of robbing him. How? By not giving their full tithe. By holding back part of the ten percent he asked them to give. The tithe, as I’ve said before, is the only place in the Bible where God says we can test him. God speaks through Malachi the prophet this way: “‘Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,’ says the Lord Almighty, ‘and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it’” (Malachi 3:10).

Every once in a while, I have people say to me, “But Pastor, isn't the tithe an Old Testament concept? We’re New Testament Christians!” There are two problems with that idea. First, the tithe is still active in the New Testament, and, as we’ll talk about in a moment, the idea is actually expanded. And the second problem is that Jesus himself said, “Truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished” (Matthew 5:18). As far as I know, heaven and earth have not disappeared and everything has not yet been accomplished because Jesus has not yet returned. Jesus himself did not say, “I’m abolishing the tithe; you don’t have to worry about that anymore.” If anything, in his attitude toward this widow and others, he affirmed proportional giving. We’ll come back to that idea in a minute, but here let me just say that I realize not everyone can immediately start their giving at ten percent. For some, that’s a goal, and we’re going to talk about that more in the next couple of weeks. But the Biblical concept, and the idea embedded in this story in Luke, is not equal gifts or equal amounts, but equal sacrifice. The truth is this: people with various means are able to give different amounts and in different ways. We may not all be able to give huge amounts, but for all of us, there is something we can be proportionally generous with.

The third truth in this passage, then, flows out of that idea: giving is to be done sacrificially. We tend to appreciate the amount of a gift that is given; Jesus, especially in this story, looks on the heart and sees the sacrifice involved in the giving. In Luke’s account, those who are wealthy still had plenty left when they were done; the widow had nothing. One Biblical scholar put it this way: “Giving out of abundance is appreciated, but it costs little. Giving out of life means that basic things may be given up in order to honor God” (Bock 527).

I’m reminded of a story from the life of King David, recorded in 2 Samuel 24(:18-25) in which there is a plague on Israel because of David’s disobedience. So David wants to build an altar to offer sacrifices and worship to the Lord, but he does not have the land to build on. A prophet tells him to build the altar in a certain place, but that land is owned by a man named Araunah. It’s his threshing floor. So David goes to visit Araunah and asks Araunah to sell the land to him. Araunah, honored by a visit from the king and humbled that his land would be used for something so holy, offers to give the land to David, but David responds in words that we all need to consider. He says, “I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing” (24:24). David could have taken the land; he’s the king after all. David could have had Araunah forcibly removed. Instead, this man after God’s own heart, who often got it wrong, realizes the importance of sacrifice if he’s going to truly offer what he has to God. “I can’t give back to God if it costs me nothing.” Giving is sacrificial, and that was, of course, seen ultimately in Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. Since the cross, love can only be seen as being linked to sacrifice, and as I said earlier—when God wanted to give to us, he gave generously, sacrificially. How can we do less?

The fourth principle, then, is this: giving should to be done cheerfully. As I said earlier, I have always pictured this widow as old, perhaps in ill health, shuffling along to drop these two coins into the receptacle. I’ve always pictured her as sad, as if giving these two coins was a difficult thing for her to do. I don’t know if that image came from some flannelgraph somewhere (kids, ask your parents what that is), or if that’s the way it was in the comic book Bible that we had in our Sunday School growing up. I don’t know where that image came from—but it didn’t come from Scripture. Luke doesn’t say she is old, and he doesn’t say she’s sad when she gives her coins. It seems this was not an obligation, but something she wanted to do, something that brought her joy, even in the face of her own desperate situation. As one scholar puts it, “By contributing her two coins, she communicated an appreciation and trust for God that few others experienced” then or now (Bock 528). In fact, Jesus commends her for her act, not because the Temple needed the money but because, as has been true throughout history, she needed to give. It was a spiritual discipline, and one best done, the Bible says, cheerfully.

Paul, writing to the troubled Corinthian church, challenges the church to be generous in their lifestyles and in their giving. He reminds them of a physical law: a farmer who is stingy with the seed he sows will in turn produce a sparse crop. The same is true in the spiritual world, Paul reminds us. If we give to God’s cause stingily, we shouldn’t expect great things to happen in the kingdom of God. That’s getting back to what I said earlier: we don’t give so as to get great things back in our own lives (that’s a twisting of the Scripture). We give so that great things can happen in God’s kingdom, and the blessing we will receive is, really, twofold. One, we will have satisfaction knowing we were a part of what God is doing and two, we will know that the god of money does not control us or have a strong hold on us. Paul, as I said earlier, doesn’t stay by the standard of a tithe. As a good Jew, he would understand a tithe to be the basement, the foundation, the starting point. Paul’s vision is for giving beyond a strict tithe, and, more, that we would do it cheerfully. Here’s the way he puts it to the Corinthians: “Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Corinthians 9:7). I’ve taught this before, but do you remember what “cheerful” really means? The word Paul uses could actually be translated “hilarious.” God loves a “hilarious” giver—far beyond giving with a smile on our faces, this is a call to giving joyfully, without abandon, without worry. Our goal is to be able to give generously simply because it brings joy to God’s heart and to ours.

So, how do we do in that regard? George Barna, a Christian pollster, did a study not long ago that was released under the title The Generosity Gap. In that study, he found that nineteen out of twenty Christians surveyed said generosity is important to them. 96% of Christians believe in being generous, that it’s important. However, only 16% of those same Christians believe generosity has anything to do with money. 32% are willing to be generous with their service or volunteering, 30% were willing to be generous with emotional and relational support, and 12% said they could be generous with hospitality. While 78% of those surveyed said they were satisfied with their level of giving, 56% said they gave less than $50 to their church and charity last year. I want you to hear that: $50 for the year to church and charity combined. And we’re content with that. All of those statistics remind me of someone who said that the last part of a Christian to be converted to Christ is our wallet—or our checkbook, or our debit card.

Reading those statistics made me think of a man who called me many years ago after I preached a sermon like this and asked whatever happened to the good old days when we could just give our time to the church. As we talked, I shared that I do think we’re called to give our time. The membership vows that we take in the United Methodist Church call us to pledge our prayers, presence, gifts, service and witness to Christ through the church. It's not a “choose what you want to give.” Jesus gave us his all, and calls us to give him our all as well—prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness. I also tried to gently remind this man that times have changed as well. Public utility companies don’t want our time, and the church does have bills to pay. Apparently I wasn’t all that gentle, because he hung up on me at that point, but I wasn’t trying to be unkind. Those things are a reality, and if this is the congregation Jesus has called us to be a part of, then it’s our collective responsibility to make sure the congregation has what it needs to move forward, to answer God’s call to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. And to do it cheerfully, because God loves a cheerful giver.

Of course part of the reality of our situation is that we’re so deep into other financial obligations that even if we have the desire to be generous like this widow, it’s hard to live that out. In particular, we are drowning in credit card debt in our culture. Over the last decade, the average American credit card debt has risen 11%, and that’s despite having gone through a huge financial crisis just a few years ago. The average American family today has $16,425 of credit card debt (which means we pay an average of almost $1,300 in credit card interest every year), $180,000 on their mortgage, about $30,000 in car loans, and over $50,000 in student loans. Now, I tend to be a competitive person, but personally, this is one area where I want to be below average! The total personal debt held by Americans today is $12.73 trillion dollars. I can’t even imagine that amount of money, can you? So I get it. Debt hampers our generosity. I know this to be true: if we’re going to be able to give generously and cheerfully, we have to be “freed up” financially, and over the next couple of weeks we’ll talk about some strategies to be able to do just that. To be able to be generous, we need to learn new ways of living, new ways of relating to our money, Biblical ways of finding financial peace so that we can be more like the widow Jesus saw outside the Temple—not in her poverty, but in her generosity.

We’ve titled this series “Greater Than” out of Jesus’ own words in John 14: “Whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father” (14:12). We hear “greater things” and we think, “How could we do greater things? Jesus healed the sick, raised the dead, and all sorts of other miraculous stuff! How can we possibly top that?” What if the “greater things” he’s talking about isn’t all the supernatural stuff? What if the “greater things” means we’re going to be able to do things together that we couldn’t do alone, that through the power of his spirit, we will become generous, loving, self-giving, kind people? What if the “greater things” he was talking about means that we will come together with all our resources to win the world for his kingdom? Because this mission—making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world—I can’t do it by myself, Pastor Rick can’t do it by himself, and you can’t do it by yourself. Even as Mount Pleasant Church, we can’t even do it by ourselves. We need each other, the whole body of Christ. That’s why pastors pray together here in this place every Tuesday across denominational and theological lines. That’s why the body of Christ gathers to combat racism and terrorism and all the other “isms” that threaten our world. It’s because we know that together we can be “greater than” we would ever be by ourselves. Together, as generous and hilarious givers of our prayers, presence, gifts, service and witness, we can accomplish those “greater than” things Jesus talked about. Let’s be that sort of people, Mount Pleasant, people who live with the spirit of a widow Jesus saw outside the Temple one sunny afternoon. Let’s live “greater than,” generous lives. Amen.