February 18, 2007 Sermon

Unnoticed
Luke 21:1-4

Somebody once asked Leonard Bernstein, the great conductor of the New York Philharmonic, to name the most difficult instrument to play. “Second violin,” he answered, “because everybody wants to play first violin.”

Matt Redman quotes Bernstein in The Unquenchable Worshipper, the book the Praise Team is studying this season. We have reached Redman’s chapter entitled, “The Unnoticed Worshipper.” Here he uses the Bible story we just read, the one about the widow who put two copper coins in the offering box, to make a crucial point: God measures our giving differently. We get caught up in the sheer size of things. Who gave the most? Some churches actually publicize the names of what they call “major donors”. In fact, our lenders urged us to do this very thing during our pledge drive when building our first building. They wanted us to follow a set program that would have included publishing the names of those who gave “leadership gifts”. To its credit, our building fund committee decided to publish either all the names of those who gave—with no amounts attached—or none of them.

God measures giving differently. Jesus observed a widow placing two pathetic little copper coins in the offering box at the high temple in Jerusalem. This was a very public place. Directors of Development (a euphemistic title that actually means, “Staff who manipulate donors into giving more than they intended”) have always understood that one of the best ways to maximize giving is to make it a public competition. People in Jesus’ day who could afford it hired musicians to parade down the street in front of them as they made their way to the temple to give. Then, when a proper crowd had gathered, they could make their gift in front of a suitable number of witnesses. We know this actually happened because Jesus harshly criticized those who did it.

Now here comes this widow woman with her two copper coins. The footnotes in my Revised Standard Version of the Bible tell us that these coins had virtually no worth. As with the penny of our day, it took a handful of them to buy just a slice of bread. Jesus, being God, measures her gift differently than the crowd watching her would do. He perceives that two coppers is all this woman has to give. And she gives them. She has nothing in this world. She may starve. But she gives all she can. And Jesus proclaims that her gift outweighs the bags of gold a rich man might donate and never miss.

From Jesus’ words we learn that God measures our giving not according to how many slices of bread it might buy, but according to how our giving compares to our keeping. The Bible teaches proportionate giving. The Bible teaches that God measures our giving according to what we have. The biblical standard is tithing, giving one-tenth of what we have. God does not require nearly so much as government; still, one-tenth is quite a lot. And it is the baseline. We need to hear this tough message, pray about it, and do our best to meet the call. Yet we need also to hear a couple of cautions about giving. On the one hand, God calls us to give of everything we have and are, not just of our money. On the other hand, giving does not save us. We cannot buy our way into heaven. We give because God gave—and gives.

God calls us to give of everything we have and are. A woman who belonged to the church we served in suburban St. Louis was the sole heiress to the Weyerhauser Paper fortune. She lived in a rambling, rustic home on hundreds of (ironically) forested acres. I honestly do not know how many houses she owned on how many continents, but I do recall her family had a hunting lodge in Tanzania. Like the Morrisons from the Presbyterian Church in Traverse City, Midge opened her huge house to church groups who wished to hold retreats there, charging not a penny.

Midge was a very modest person. Talking about her wealth made her uncomfortable. Once, however, she spoke to a regional Presbyterian Women’s gathering held at our church. She claimed that preparing and leading a women’s Bible study was much harder—and more rewarding—than giving money. She did not know the Bible particularly well. She did the classic stay-one-chapter-ahead-of-your-students thing. But she wanted to understand the Bible and she believed others should, too. She told the women that often she did not even know how much money she had donated to the church. Her financial advisors and accountants took care of that, following her directions to give proportionately. She knew all too well, however, how much she gave to her Bible study. She gave time. She gave prayer. She gave care.

People who knew Midge well knew a genuinely humble woman. They knew a woman who never dressed competitively nor worked references to her riches into conversations. They knew a woman who believed in Jesus. Midge would probably be angry if she knew I was using her to illustrate a positive faith trait in a sermon. But the fact remains: she gave in a way that Jesus would honor, or so I perceive from my limited, human position. He gave his life. She gave back to him. You cannot buy your way into heaven, but you can give your way into a meaningful life.

On the other hand, giving does not save us. Only one thing saves us: faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. Giving comes after believing. We must keep relearning this lesson. Jesus’ followers did not understand it. He had to explain things to them. “I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them;” he said, “she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.” She gave because she believed. Apparently she believed, among other things, that God would provide for her even if she gave all her money. She believed that God had already saved her, why not trust God to keep looking after her?

Fifteen hundred years later the western Christian church endured a terrible upheaval, in part because of an argument over whether giving saves. A practice called indulgences had arisen. Any Christian could visit his or her local priest and, for a sum of money “given” to the church, receive an indulgence, a piece of paper stating that when they died God would forgive their sins more quickly and permit them to enter heaven on the fast track. This may sound ludicrous to us, but indulgences were big business in the medieval church. People sincerely believed that by giving they could gain preferential treatment at the hands of God the Judge. They believed, though they would not have liked to have heard it stated quite so bluntly, that they could buy their way into heaven. They believed their giving could save them.

At that time Martin Luther accelerated a pulling apart of Christianity that had long been a-brewing. We call that pulling apart the Reformation. The Reformation created the division between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism that remains to this day. To Luther, the selling of indulgences was evil. He wanted it ended precisely because of Bible teachings such as the one we read today. Ironically, after the Catholics and Protestants pulled apart the Catholics stopped the selling of indulgences. Now all responsible branches of Christianity teach the same message about giving: it does not save us. But it does come as a response to Christ’s already having saved us.

Jesus praised a woman who gave her all. But for many of us the longer we live, the harder it gets to give anything at all. Our obligations—both financial and personal—pile up. We owe on the credit cards. We lack the time. We have to pay to educate our children. We amass grievances against churches and the pastors and people in them. We build up a long list of reasons not to give.

Only one reason to give can stand against all this: the fact that Jesus gave his life so we might have abundant life. Give because he gave. Give time. Give money. Give care. God measures giving differently. Thank God for this fact with your giving.