September 20, 2009 Sermon

Money
Mark 12:38-44

We find God at work when things come together a bit too perfectly for coincidence. Last Sunday I preached about praising God through music. I noted how Psalm 47 urges us to clap our hands while singing our praises. Now Dan Carlson had originally chosen a quiet hymn to close worship that morning. But after reading the psalm and my sermon title (Worship Music) he decided to substitute in Joyful, Joyful, which we “do” with high energy and spirit. Ludwig van Beethoven composed the music for Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee as part of his ninth symphony. During my sermon—and nobody knew I was going to say this—I mentioned that classical music deeply moves me. Dan and I did not coordinate this. It just happened. Or did it? We both believe the Holy Spirit of God worked it.

This week we have another God-incidence. Last Monday the elders met. As usual they had to grapple with our church's finances. Because of the bad economy and our having opened our second building last winter, we struggle month to month—often day to day—to pay the bills here at NLCC. This month the elders decided to address the problem faithfully and proactively. They determined to send you the email you received a couple of days ago. But first they worked diligently to get the message right. Emails with variations of the text flew between them. I left early Tuesday morning for a Presbytery meeting in Mackinaw City. When I returned that evening, 32 emails on this topic alone awaited me. Now for the God-incidence: nobody, including me, remembered during that meeting that I had planned some three months ago to preach today on giving money to the church.

Give regularly and proportionately. Give to help the church pay the bills. Give to help the church get the Gospel into our own hearts and minds—and out into the world. Give to help yourself enter into a more meaningful, effective life. Give regularly and proportionately. God works all around us. See this and respond. Give.

The episode we read today in the Gospel of Mark happened near the end of Jesus' public ministry. For one thing, it appears in chapter twelve, near the end of the Gospel. More importantly, it occurs in the midst of terrible conflict between Jesus and the religious establishment. The hatred they have for him has the kind of potency that takes time to ferment. Just before this encounter at the temple treasury Jesus told a parable that dramatized the guilt of Jews in killing God's prophets. Irate, the scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees have each taken a crack at him. They have set him traps, asking questions with no right answer, questions that would earn him the anger of the mobs following him no matter which false choice he picks. Should we pay taxes even to the corrupt and wicked Caesar? If a woman marries seven brothers in this life, whose wife would she be in the next life?

But Jesus refuses to play along. Pay your taxes he says, but make sure you reserve your worship for God alone. Legal definitions of marriage do not matter during eternal life, he says, because we will experience it in the presence of the living God. Jesus relentlessly stays on message. God is One. God is our Lord. God is Love. God, God, God. Finally an earnest young man asks him a sincere question. In all the complicated, demanding law of God, which is the most important commandment? Jesus answers with a quote from the first of the Ten Commandments: love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. He then adds a second “first” commandment: love your neighbor as you love yourself. As the hatred of the religious establishment closes in on him like a hangman's noose, as that hatred will in fact cause his execution in mere hours, Jesus insists on preaching the love of God and our obligation to respond to it.

Our passage contains one of the final teachings Jesus squeezed in before the cross. Time is wasting. Everything he says now has ultimate importance. And what topic does he choose? Giving: giving for the correct motives, and giving in the correct proportions. Beware of people who love to give publicly, he says. Watch out for people who enrich themselves at the expense of the poor and then make a spectacle of giving a little of their ill-gotten gains back to the community. Give, but give because you love God and your neighbor, not because you love to sit at the heavy-hitters' table at the donors' reception. Give, and give proportionately to your ability. God sees what we give. That is all that matters.

Give. Give quietly. Give regularly. Give proportionately. Preachers hit an ironic barrier when we want to illustrate the right motives and practices of giving. The people who give quietly do not want to become sermon illustrations! I will speak therefore of people I have known in churches a long time ago in a galaxies far, far away. A retired man of limited means would rent an industrial carpet cleaner and sneak into the church late at night to do the sanctuary. We would find out he had done it only from the distinctive odor of the cleaning solution he used. A baseball player who had won the Cy Young award would give thousands of dollars to a church with two stipulations: that his gift go into the general fund (giving him no control over how it was spent) and that he receive no public credit. A woman taught 3rd grade Sunday school for over four decades, even after her epilepsy medication began to lose its effectiveness, because she recalled the 3rd grade as the year her own faith became real. A teen girl baby sat the choir director's kids for free during his wife's six-week recuperation in the hospital when they had no insurance. When the pastor told her story to a group at coffee hour she (gently) reprimanded him because she had made him agree not to tell anyone.

Give. Give quietly. Give because you love God and want to help the church proclaim the Good News of the Gospel, not the good news of your own generosity. Give proportionately. Give what you can. Jesus praised the widow he saw humbly put two coins in the temple offering box. He understood it took great sacrifice for her to give—far more sacrifice than that undergone by the scribes who hired trumpet players to lead them up to the offering box so they could drop in their pocket change. My Granddaddy Riggins used to say that if they have to pay to advertise a product so you will buy it, you do not need it. Likewise, if you have to have credit for giving, you have not truly given. Give. Give quietly. Give proportionately.
The Northern Lakes Community Church finds itself in a bit of a pickle. Our region's unemployment rate is astronomical. Our members' unemployment rate matches it. Meanwhile, in a case of stunningly wonderful timing, we completed our second building last winter. We have expanded our ministry. Our attendance and participation numbers are growing. Praise God! But how shall we pay for the continued work of Christ that we are trying to accomplish? Give. Give quietly. Give proportionately. Give as you can. Jesus praised giving when correctly done. God gave. “For God so loved the world that he gave His only son.” Jesus gave. He gave himself that we might not have to perish but might have eternal life. Give in response to the love of God. Give as you can.

I ask that each of us give regularly and proportionately to our church. I make this appeal in full awareness of how tough times have gotten. I praise God that my own position as pastor of this congregation seems somewhat secure, but I have at times wondered what I would do if it all fell apart around here. Meanwhile, I know more than a few of you have already confronted the fearsome reality of job loss. I thank God for the giving I see already going on around here; giving of time, money and skills often done by people who might appear to have nothing left to give. This is not a preacher scolding a church for being selfish. This is a preacher who remains optimistic about the ministry of the church he serves precisely because he sees its people giving quietly and generously in every way (not just money) despite the worst economic times most of us have ever experienced. Thank God for the Northern Lakes Community Church. Thank God for the giving Lord we serve. Thank God for the chance we have to give in order to bring the Good News about him to our part of the world. Please continue to give. Give quietly. Give proportionately, as you can. Let us all, together, take our offerings and lay them humbly before our God, that Jesus might use them to save and to heal more and more people.