July 2, 2006
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
There’s a story about three little boys who were bragging about their fathers. The first boy said, “My dad scribbles some words on a piece of paper, calls it a poem, and people give him $50. The second boy said, “That’s nothing! My dad scribbles some words onto a piece of paper, calls it a song, and people give him $500. But the third boy said, “I’ve got both of you beat! My dad scribbles some words onto a piece of paper, calls it a sermon, and then it takes four church members to carry all the money people give to him!”
At first that is how the apostle Paul must have felt. Apparently the money was coming in so fast he needed other people to help carry it all. It seems that in Jerusalem, Christians were going hungry and they didn’t have money for the bare necessities. Therefore, Paul spread the word to the other churches around the Mediterranean to let them know what was going on and to inform them about the desperate need that was there. To help the Christians in Jerusalem, Paul announced that he was organizing a collection. He was really hoping that all of the churches would take part.
Initially the response that Paul got was overwhelming. Money and pledges were coming in left and right. But as time lapsed and the needs of the Jerusalem Christians faded from the consciousness of the other Christians, the money slowed down. Paul started to review his records to see what was going on. He noticed that a big part of the problem was that the church in Corinth had made a huge pledge, but they were not following through with it. At first the Corinthian Christians were all fired up about helping and giving. But when it came time to actually make out the checks, their attitude of giving seemed suddenly to disappear.
Attitude of Giving
When it comes to generosity today, the challenge that we have is that many people think in terms of exchanging gifts with other people rather than straight-out giving. As a National Public Radio listener, I end up three or four times a year tuning in when they have their fund drives. Instead of just the appeal of giving donations to fund good programs, your donations entitle you to receive all kinds of gifts—mugs, t-shirts, magazines, tote bags, a whole grab bag of goodies. The idea is that when we make a donation to support a worthy cause, we still expect to get something back. Such giving lacks an attitude of gratitude.
We do this too. When we give or buy gifts for others, we expect reciprocal presents. And if that person fails to give us a gift in return, we most likely would take him or her off our list for next year. Such giving, of course, is utterly lacking in grace. Instead, such giving is based on calculation and an expectation of some return. Perhaps the Corinthians were bickering about what would they get in return when they send monies to Jerusalem.
Motivating the Corinthians
Paul needed to understand the Corinthian economic world in order to motivate them to complete their commitments. As a cosmopolitan culture where economy, status and religion were all based on competition between individuals and groups (much like our own), the basic incentive that drove people was the desire for “excellence.” In 1 Corinthians, we see Paul arguing with the Corinthians to stop trying to climb over one another to be the best and most worthy. He told them to move toward equality and unity in things like worship and the use of spiritual gifts.
It wasn’t that the Corinthian Christians were unwilling to help with a worthy cause, they simply lack incentive. They were lagging behind. So Paul starts where they are. He told them that if they want to demonstrate “excellence,” here is the perfect chance to do so (8:7). The Macedonian churches at Thessalonica and Philippi had already given sacrificially and enthusiastically to this offering, even though they were dealing with their own poor economic conditions. Despite their own poverty, these people gave beyond their means and “begged for the privilege of doing more.”
The poor Macedonians have outdone themselves, writes Paul to the wealthy Corinthians. So, it’s your call. What are you going to do in response? In the Greco-Roman world, what was most thought of with high regard was to imitate people and model their lives after them—this includes having an attitude of gratitude. Paul was giving the Corinthians a positive form of peer pressure, an incentive to be like someone else or even surpass them in character and practice. Be like the Macedonians! Paul was encouraging them to take their words and their faith, and turn them into action.
Good Intentions
You may be wondering why you are listening to a stewardship sermon in July. In some ways, this is a perfect time right in the half way mark in the year to remind you of the pledges you made on Pledge Sunday last October for 2006. This is a perfect time for some of you who are going on vacation to send in your offerings before you go and not lag behind. We all may have good intentions, like the Corinthians did, yet failing to follow through with concrete acts of faithful giving.
So often when it comes to money, we focus on satisfying our own wants and desires first, and then offer to God what is left over. It is like what has been going on with the Jordan River. Back in the nineteenth century the Jordan River carried such an immense amount of water into the Dead Sea that the Jordan River was 180 yards wide at the point where it emptied into the Dead Sea. Yet today the Jordan River at that point has been reduced to the size of a mere creek, just a few feet across. What has happened is that on both the Israeli and Jordanian sides, they have siphoned off more and more of Jordan’s water for personal use, resulting in less and less water reaching the Dead Sea every year. As a consequence, some experts believe that the Dead Sea may totally disappear in less than fifty years.
How much of the money that flows into our lives is reaching God? Are we good stewards of the wealth that God has entrusted to us, or are we siphoning off more money for our own wants and needs than we should?
We frequently cite the role model of generosity is the poor widow who placed her two small coins into the temple treasury. Her gift shows us that how much is given is less important than how much is left over after giving. When we have an attitude of gratitude, we don’t worry about how much we still have left, we only focus on what God is calling us to give toward his kingdom work.
Imitate Christ
Paul not only encourages the Corinthians to follow the example of the Macedonians in their giving but even more so the example of Christ, who “became poor so that by his poverty you might become rich.” All that they have, materially and spiritually, is the result of the grace of God and that grace is, in fact, a form of wealth in itself. God has poured himself out for them in Jesus Christ—how can they not do the same for others?
There was a time when Mother Teresa wanted to build a multimillion dollar AIDS facility in Washington, D.C. In the hope of receiving a large donation for that undertaking, she paid a visit to Edward Bennett Williams, a Washington attorney and one time owner of the Baltimore Orioles and Washington Redskins. Aware that Mother Teresa was coming and knowing what she wanted, Williams had decided that he felt uneasy about donating to such a project, but he was willing to contribute to just about anything else Mother Teresa wanted him to give to.
When Mother Teresa and some of her sisters arrived, she wasted no time explaining what she wanted to do. Williams said, “Mother, I would love to help you on any other effort, but this one I am not sure we are interested in funding.”
Mother Teresa responded, “In that case, let us pray.” After that silent prayer went on for what seemed to be eternity, Mother Teresa then looked up and said, “Mr. Williams, as I was saying, I am here to ask your support for this AIDS hospice.” Knowing that he was beat, Williams took out his checkbook and asked her how much she wanted.
You may have already turned in your pledge for this Sunday when we took the offering. You might have dropped in your gift for the special offering that we are receiving today and next Sunday for the New Life Center and the House of Love in Chiang Mai, Thailand. But like Mother Teresa inviting Mr. Williams to give to a worthy cause, we will be taking the Communion Offering in just a few minutes. Might you consider giving more of what you have to help women and children in Thailand who need your help?
Seeing the Need
I know that Thailand is very far away. Most of us have never been there let alone visiting the New Life Center and the House of Love. Many people say they don’t give because they are uncertain whether the donations will actually reach the intended recipients. I guarantee that this is not a concern here and we cannot use this feeble excuse for not giving. Sometimes we try to shield ourselves from even hearing those pleas for help.
For instance, all of the largest cities including San Francisco in the United States now have laws that in some manner either restrict or ban people from begging in public. If the truth be told, most people like those kinds of laws, because as long as we can set it up so that we do not have to see poor people, we can trick ourselves into believing that there are no poor; therefore, there are no people we have to use our money to help.
Last Thursday, I went with Don Fong to visit Martin de Porres House of Hospitality on Potrero Avenue. Martin’s as it is affectionately known, is a free restaurant, serving breakfast and lunch for homeless guests. For the past year, Don has been volunteering there during his lunch time serving hearty soup and washing the guests’ plastic soup containers. Remember not long ago, Don asked us to donate any extra plastic or glass containers that we might give to these guests to use? When it was his job to wash out these containers before filling them up for the guests to take some soup with them, he noticed how tattered these containers were.
Martin’s believes that all persons have dignity; all persons have the right to be respected. At Martin’s, each person is a guest and is to be treated as such. It says that eating is a right, not a privilege, and that feeding the hungry is a matter of justice, not charity.
I can see why Don Fong gives up his lunch time to volunteer at Martin’s. When you spend time at the soup kitchen, you find yourself touched, even changed. It is one thing to think about poverty as a social or economic problem, but poverty takes on a whole new dimension when you personally get to know someone who is poor. You discover an incredible cross-section of humanity and realized that these are all God’s children. Some see this as a miracle. But some see it as problem because “the poor” are not always pretty, and it is easier if “they” are invisible. But when we can see how much we have been blessed with abundance both materially and spiritually, we know that we have received the grace of God.
Paul writes, “For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ that though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.” We didn’t deserve this. We never earned this. It was pure grace, a gift from God that we are grateful for.
With an attitude of gratitude, we volunteer our lunch time to help those who are guests in God’s house because we know deep in our souls that we all have one time or another received grace before.
With an attitude of gratitude, we know that we can give more to help young women who were victimized by human trafficking and little girls and boys affected with HIV at birth and abandoned by their own villages because we know deep in our souls that we have all been disenfranchised before.
With an attitude of gratitude, we can come to this table of our Lord and receive the bread and the cup and remember the sacrifice Jesus made on the Cross so that we may have our sins forgiven because we didn’t deserve this nor earned this.
Bragging Rights
At the heart of Paul’s message to the Corinthians, it compels us to recognize that we have all experienced God’s blessings in our lives in some way. Instead of always being on the receiving end, we are invited by God to join with God in giving generosity to others. Just as the boys were bragging about what each of their fathers can do, can we brag that we have an attitude of gratitude at FCBC? When we consider our own giving practices, do they sufficiently express the gratitude we have toward God?
Everything belongs to God in the first place, but God has seen fit to share it with us—even to the point of sharing God’s own son in Jesus Christ. Even if we don’t have a penny to our names, we are rich because of God’s grace toward us. We give not to get, but because we have received. We love because we have been loved.
Our attitude of gratitude to give of our time, our talents, our treasure in God’s service has nothing to do with what we’ll get in return. Instead it has everything to do with what God has already done for us.
It’s God’s grace. God’s gifts always come to us on the way to someone else.
Let us pray.
Lord of life and our creator, fill us with your Spirit and set us on good earth. We confess we fail to use your Spirit’s gifts and frustrate your purpose. Forgive us for our stingy attitude and grant us an attitude of gratitude. We dedicate our hearts and lives to your plan. Help us to practice the words we have heard so that we may bring honor and praise to your name. Amen.