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Giving By Rev. Jonathan Gale Sunday 9th October, 2011 Deuteronomy 26: 1 - 15 26When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it, 2you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name. 3You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, ‘Today I declare to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our ancestors to give us.’ 4When the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the Lord your God, 5you shall make this response before the Lord your God: ‘A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. 6When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labour on us, 7we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. 8The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; 9and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. 10So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.’ You shall set it down before the Lord your God and bow down before the Lord your God. 11Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house. 12 When you have finished paying all the tithe of your produce in the third year (which is the year of the tithe), giving it to the Levites, the aliens, the orphans, and the widows, so that they may eat their fill within your towns, 13then you shall say before the Lord your God: ‘I have removed the sacred portion from the house, and I have given it to the Levites, the resident aliens, the orphans, and the widows, in accordance with your entire commandment that you commanded me; I have neither transgressed nor forgotten any of your commandments: 14I have not eaten of it while in mourning; I have not removed any of it while I was unclean; and I have not offered any of it to the dead. I have obeyed the Lord my God, doing just as you commanded me. 15Look down from your holy habitation, from heaven, and bless your people Israel and the ground that you have given us, as you swore to our ancestors—a land flowing with milk and honey.’
5Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, 2he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. 3He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. 4When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, ‘Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.’ 5Simon answered, ‘Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.’ 6When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. 7So they signalled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. 8But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!’ 9For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; 10and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, ‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.’ 11When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.
Today I’m going to talk about giving. There are two aspects of giving I want to focus on. The first is giving as an act of worship, and the second is that it takes courage, obedience and faith to give money. These annual “money” talks are often dreaded by priests but for some reason or other, probably due to my father’s healthy attitude towards giving, I’ve never found the subject awkward. Yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting up with an old school friend whom I hadn’t seen for 39 years. It was great seeing Richard again, and especially pleasant knowing that he still loved and served God, as we were both converted at the same time. The school Richard and I went to has a tradition around saying grace. It was a boarders-only school so the whole student body was together at meal times. The prefect on duty would intone, “The earth is the Lords” and the whole school would reply, “And the fullness thereof!” These words are from Psalm 24: 1 (repeated by Paul in 1 Corinthians 10: 26) and a more modern translation would read, “The earth is the Lords, and everything in it.” The idea was that we were thanking God for the food because God owns everything that exists. We don’t own anything – we are merely stewards – we look after things for a brief while for God who is the real owner. That’s why the real crime in theft, for example, is not so much that we are inconveniencing the person from whom we steal. It is that we are telling God he doesn’t know what he’s doing in giving the (stolen) article to someone else; that in fact he should have given it to us to look after. It’s a different way of seeing things: understanding that we own nothing. It is all God’s and we are stewards who look after things for God for a short while. The Israelites would certainly have understood this clearly, and in our Old Testament reading from Deuteronomy we find a fascinating passage in which God sets up a ritual in the form of a worship service whereby the Israelites take a tenth of their produce and ceremonially hand it back to God as a sign of their gratitude for this Promised Land flowing with milk and honey into which God has lead them. The idea of giving one tenth goes as far back as Abraham. In our reading we see that giving to God has both a theological and a practical purpose: · a theological purpose - an acknowledgement that everything belongs to God, along with an expression of gratitude to God for the abundance of the land, as well as a · practical purpose – to keep the worship going and to take care of the priests and Levites. It’s interesting that Moses contextualises this giving in worship – i.e. giving to God is a form of worship. It reminds me of Paul’s comment to the church at Rome where he says in Rom 12: 1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable worship. As someone once said, worship is a great deal more than singing a few hymns. It is giving of our whole selves to God, and everything that entails. So giving is an act of worship. Giving is also an act of courage. In our New Testament reading we see Jesus on the shores of the Sea of Galilee where he borrows Peter’s boat and uses it as a kind of pulpit. He puts out a bit and all the people stand on the shore while he preaches to them. When it’s over he turns to Peter and says, ‘Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.’ Now you notice Peter’s not all that enthusiastic. ‘Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing’, he says. He’s not exactly brimming over with co-operation here. But then he changes his mind and says, ‘Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.’ Somehow Peter dredges up a bit of obedience. It must be obedience because it sure as anything isn’t faith. Faith creates enthusiasm, but Peter sounds pretty glum - ‘Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.’ So Peter almost reluctantly sets out as Jesus commanded, and they bring in such a large catch, he has to call in another boat to help them haul up the fish! You see whether it’s giving time, energy or money, it doesn’t matter. It’s doing what pleases God that brings reward in life. If your faith is not there, be obedient. If you do have the faith, go for it – that’s more like the cheerful giver that delights God. C.S. Lewis it was who said that if we don’t feel like doing something we should simply obey and do it anyway. As we are obedient God will take care of the feelings. Larry Christensen says, “You make the forms, and God will pour the concrete.” It can be like that for giving. You notice Jesus required Peter to head into deep water. Here’s a true story. At primary school I couldn’t swim. At the annual swimming gala everybody had to take part, so they invented a race called the 5 yard dash across the width of the pool. I ran across in the shallow end. And yet, by the time I was 18 I was playing water polo for Western Province Defence (that’s Army, Navy and Air Force combined) - and we won the league that year - and that included the University of Cape Town who had 5 international players in their side. What happened? Well I started in the shallow end of the pool with a game. I’d toss a round little river stone a few metres ahead of where I was, take a breath and dive under to retrieve it. Pretty soon I was doing breast stroke under water in pursuit of my stone. But then I did something important: I took a step of courage and started going into deeper water where I could just stand. It wasn’t long before I was swimming. It’s a similar thing with giving. Sometimes it’s a bit frightening. It takes courage to give. We have to take a step of obedience and faith and just do it. There’s no rule about percentages or amounts. The Old Testament had a rule of 10% and many people attest to God blessing them in all sorts of ways when they do tithe, but you can’t justify that as a rule in the New Testament. It’s the principle that’s important. As Paul says, 2 Corinthians 9: 6 the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. 7Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. When Peter put out into deep water he found the investment he’d made in obeying Jesus caused an abundant catch of fish. He took a step of faith and was rewarded. So what can we conclude? Well it’s this: regular giving is important to God. It’s a spiritual thing. It’s a form of worship. It takes obedience. Sometimes we don’t feel like it, but like Peter we just do it. It also takes stretching oneself – putting out into deep water. That takes faith so that the fear is driven out. That stretching isn’t being foolish. God doesn’t want us to go short. But it is about prioritising; spending our time, talents and money on the really important things. It’s setting an amount and gradually increasing it until you know that the level is satisfactory. Charmaine told us a story once about how she used to go to the swimming pool as a young person and how she started diving off the lowest board and gradually worked her way up. Whenever she conquered a new board, she’d wonder why she’d feared the previous one just a few weeks earlier! Giving is an exciting form of worship. It enables one in a very practical way to align oneself with building the Kingdom of God, and it brings both joy and peace. Speaking of kingdoms, I’m going to end by reading a verse from 1 Chronicles 29: 9 which describes an event around preparing for the building of the temple. 9Then the people rejoiced because these had given willingly, for with single mind they had offered freely to the Lord; King David also rejoiced greatly. God bless us all as we willingly and courageously give to the building of Christ’s Church, for in so doing, we worship the God who provides for all our needs. AMEN. |
