Luke 21:1-4 & Matthew 13:44-46

“What Does A Christian Give : Money, Time and Talent, Good News and Love and Devotion”

Rev. Tom Harris

October 25, 2009

          Last week I discussed the question, “To whom does a Christian give?” and made the argument that a Christian reveres and support his or her faith community first and the faith community then is called to generously give to the poor and needy through all its programs, building, staff and ministry. The week before that I asked “Why does a Christian Give?” and answered that a Christian gives according to her faith in order to love. We love people through our giving whether it is the people of our own faith community or people we may have never met on the other side of the world. Our giving makes our love more than just a feeling. It puts our love into action.  But, if we want to love more than we do now by giving more generously we must first ask God to give us greater faith. Giving requires faith. If we do not have faith behind our giving we will feel resentful or bitter. So, we give first according to our faith in order to love others.

          Now I will spend the next four weeks answering the question, “What does a Christian give?” The answers will be “Money, Time and Talent, Good News and Love and Devotion.” So, let’s start with money. A Christian gives money to his or her faith community.

          The fact is when we give a dollar bill to the church we are giving a part of ourselves. Maybe it should not be that way, but it is. We exchange our lives for money every day. When we have a job we exchange our time and our skills for money. If we work 40 hours a week we are working about 35% of our waking hours. That’s time we could be spending with our families. It is time we could be using to seek our own pleasure. It is time we could be using to improve ourselves in other way. But, we take that time and give it to our employer and our employer gives us money in return.

          Of course, that 35% of our week does not include 12-20 years spent educating ourselves in a particular field so that we would be qualified for a particular job.  We are giving our employer the benefit of all that training and effort and in exchange we are getting money.

          Maybe we have some family money like an inheritance. That money is the result of the time, work, skill and education of our ancestors. They gave of themselves and received money in exchange and passed that part of themselves on to us when they died.

          As Christians we are called to give our entire selves to God; to lay our whole lives before God. The extent to which we fulfill that calling is partially measured by the amount of money we give. Of course, there are other ways to give which we will talk about in the coming weeks. But, today we are focusing on that part of our lives that we exchange for money. We give that part of our lives to God by giving a portion or all of our money to God.

          We read this morning, the well know story of the widow’s mite. The widow knew the value of money better than the rich people, because she had so little. Every cent mattered to her. Every cent represented her ability to provide herself food or clothing. But, when she heard God’s call to give everything, she responded by giving all her money; all she had to live on.

          Then we read two parables about how much a strong, vital relationship with God is worth. Its like a treasure hidden in a field or a pearl of great price. Its interesting that in some ways the people in both parables are foolish. If the pearl merchant for instance sells everything so he can have this one pearl, then how will he live? You can’t eat a pearl. You can’t live in a pearl. And if he sells the pearl for money to buy food then he doesn’t have the pearl anymore. The difference between the pearl and a living relationship with God is that unlike a pearl a relationship with God will sustain us. A relationship with God through our faith community will feed us and care for us. God will provide. That relationship with God according to these parables is actually worth all the money we have.

          Every year I talk about the importance of figuring out the percentage of our income that we give. If we give two percent of our income now we should seek to be more generous by giving 3 percent. If we give 5% we should seek to increase to 6% or more. Keeping in mind all the while the example of the widow who gave 100% and keeping in mind that in order to increase the percentage we must first ask for greater faith to do so.

          I think of the percentage of our income that we give kind of like a dip stick for our spiritual life. In your car the dipstick measures that amount of oil in the engine. Your car needs oil or it won’t work. Oil is not the only thing your car needs to work, but it is one of the things. Giving money is not the only thing we need to do to have a vital spiritual life, but it is one of things we need to do to have a vital spiritual life. If we do not give money our spiritual life will not work despite other spiritual fluids that may be adequately full. Measuring our giving by the percentage of our income we regularly give to our faith community is like checking the dipstick of our spiritual life. If you have ever looked at your dipstick you know there is a range on it. If the oil is below the lower level of the operational range we need to add oil. If it near the top we are OK. If it is somewhere in the middle we are OK but we might add a little just to be sure. But, if it is getting near the bottom of the range, even if it is still in the acceptable range we should probably add to it immediately because it might slip to the critical level when we aren’t looking and your car will stop working. It’s the same with percentage giving.

If we are at 10% your OK. We could give more and will be blessed if we do. But, we also might want to go check your other fluid levels like prayer time or volunteering or some of the ways of giving we will talk about next week because at 10% of our income our giving level is OK.

If on the other hand we are at 1%, we really are below the operational range. Our spiritual life is in serious trouble. Remember if we make $30,000 per year and we give 1% that means we are giving $300 per year or $25 per month or $5 per week, less than we pay for cable TV. Let’s face it, if we are giving 1% of $30,000 we are not giving generously. We are not only not doing our share as a part of this community, but our personal relationship with God is in trouble. I know those are hard words but I just visited my mechanic this week and he had no trouble telling me I needed an $80 power door lock because my broken one was going to drain my battery and that I needed a $200 oxygen sensor and that I needed a $30 oil change even though it only had been 3,000 miles since the last one and that I needed a $60 ignition crank sensor thing which is only thing I brought the car in for in the first place. So, if he had no trouble telling me all these things I needed to buy to keep my car running, then as your pastor, I feel OK telling saying that giving 1% of our income to our faith community is just not enough.

          If we are at 2% our spiritual dipstick reading is still pretty low. Our spiritual life is running, but at any moment things could seize up and our engine will stall. At 3% we are barely in the operational range on the spiritual dipstick. At $30,000 per year 3% would be giving $900 per year. We are not going to seize up but we better not push our spiritual life too hard either. No high speed or high altitude spirituality for us.

          Again, the spiritual life has lots of things to monitor: prayer and meditation time each day, Bible study; personal and group, regular attendance at worship, service to others, obeying the commandments, etc. But, giving money is one of the critical fluid levels to monitor in the spiritual life and we monitor it through percentage of our income.

          I know that this is hard stuff.  I may have just told some of you that your spiritual dipstick is reading too low. But, that’s my job. If we are not giving at least 3% of our income and we want to have a vital relationship with God, we need to increase. If we are at 3% we still need to increase in order to have a well running spiritual life. Remember the widow and her giving. That’s not just a story. People give 10% or more to their churches all the time. A few people give away everything to serve God. But, there are plenty of tithers who give 10%, many of whom we look down our intellectual nose at as fundamentalists. But, when it comes to generosity to their faith communities they are fundamentally putting us to shame. As sure as our car needs to be maintained, our spiritual life need to be maintained and it costs money. Remember the pearl of great price. A vital relationship with God, a vital spiritual life is the most valuable thing in universe; more valuable than anything else we have. And like other valuable things it will cost us money. Amen.