Talk for ALIVE@6 Sunday 10th May 2009

Why Give?

Giving has to be one of the most talked about and in some ways misconstrued parts of Christian living. There are countless theories on how much or what anyone should give – and even more ideas as to what should be done with any money that is given. Depending on which church you go to, the person in the pew can be subjected to harangues, pleas, guilt trips, one demand piled on top of another, and of course emotional blackmail. The subject is more likely than almost any other to turn people off church – we’ve all heard the comments about the ‘church always being after your money’.’

Recently Jan Brind sent round an email with clangers gleaned from church magazines across the globe, and it included this gem:

The Associate Minister unveiled the church's new campaign slogan last Sunday: 'I Upped My Pledge - Up Yours.'

I am sure I am not alone in hearing horror stories of services where the minister or leader has spent half an hour pleading with the congregation to yield yet more from their already pruned wallets – and has then driven away from the church in the latest model Mercedes.

When I was a teenager (a rather long time ago), I went to a Lutheran church in Germany, where offerings were collected by means of a bag on the end of a long stick. This implement was carried around and poked at you by one of the most miserable people I have ever seen – and if you hesitated at all in dropping some coins in, he waved it up and down in impatience – which simply added to the general humiliation of the experience.

Comedians thrive on lines like ‘My church welcomes every denomination – fivers, tenners, twenties…..

But it doesn’t have to be like that……..

Giving is, in my view, a natural response to the love that we receive. Every time we give something to anyone, there is a transfer of love – and of course, here I am not talking just about money or goods. There are some people who refuse to receive anything from anyone, saying that ‘they don’t need charity’ (my parents’ next-door neighbour is a case in point – even when my mother took her some of the dahlias from their garden when she was ill, she tried to refuse them). For these people, I can only speculate that they are so afraid of receiving love that they shut the door on anything that might involve it. Admittedly, it is sometimes hard to receive things, but as Christians we should all have the grace to accept things even if we don’t want them!

Of course, most of the time, we assume that giving is associated with material things, chiefly (in this day and age) money. However, it may surprise you to know that not a huge proportion of the Bible is concerned with giving. It comes up, of course, in various contexts, but the underlying implication is that giving is part of the norm for Jews and Christians.

The first mention of giving to God is of course the story of Cain and Abel; I have to admit that it took me many years to understand why Abel’s gift was acceptable to God, and Cain’s wasn’t; the people who actually wrote down the text of Genesis may well have thought that it was too obvious to state the importance of ‘first fruits’ being offered to God. I always felt rather sorry for Cain……

Whenever giving is mentioned, the subject of tithing tends to come up as well. Tithing is one of the issues that many evangelical Christians assume is the norm for giving – and yet even this subject is not clearly discussed in the old testament (let alone the new).

Possibly Abraham brought the concept with him from Ur in Assyria, the capital of which was Babylon. Various texts of that time refer to the giving of one tenth of goods.

The law of Moses made it quite complicated – it was done on a 7-year cycle (produce, livestock, increase of the land, etc). Tithes were used to support the Levites, who were assistants to the Israelite priests (who were the children of Aaron and, therefore, a subset of the Tribe of Levi) and did not own or inherit a territorial patrimony. Their function in society was that of temple functionaries, teachers and trusted civil servants who supervised the weights and scales and witnessed agreements. The goods donated from the other Israeli tribes were their source of sustenance. They received from "all Israel" a tithe of food or livestock for support, and in turn would set aside a tenth portion of that tithe for the Aaronic priests in Jerusalem.

There is no specific command to give a tenth of one’s goods in the New Testament. It could be argued that it wouldn’t have needed to be mentioned, as the general principle was ingrained in Jewish society of the time. However, the application of this practice purely to money overlooks the fact that Israel’s tithes were agricultural rather than financial.

Tithing in the Christian church took a while to get going, but was well into its stride in the Middle Ages (construction of tithe barns etc). The right to receive tithes was granted to the English churches by King Ethelwulf in 855. The dissolution of the monasteries meant that many tithes formerly made to churches disappeared into the pockets of (secular) landowners and in 1836 the Tithe Commutation Act brought the system of tithing to churches in this country to an end. However, it is still a thriving practice in countries such as Austria, where the so-called church tax is compulsory and Catholics can be sued by the Church for not paying it. Anyone who wants to stop paying it has to declare in writing, at their local municipal council, that they are leaving the Church. They are then crossed off the Church registers and can no longer receive the sacraments. The tax amounts to about 1% of the income.

Like so many issues in the Bible, you can argue it either way. The imposition of tithing was obviously a very useful way of getting income – a means to an end, rather than a spiritual discipline. Jesus did not attempt to dissuade people from paying tithes – rather, he looked to a different attitude. In Mark’s gospel there is an account of Jesus pulling up the Pharisees for tithing their herbs, but forgetting to honour God.

From this we learn that it’s the quality of what we give that’s important, not the quantity. Again, Jesus highlighted this when he picked out the widow who put two coins into the offertory box at the temple – ‘she gave all she had’.

It is my firm belief that giving touches every part of our lives, and it’s not what we give that is so important, as cultivating a giving mindset. Here is a picture of a waterfall. You will see that of course the water pours down the rockface, and settles into a deep pool after hitting the bottom. But it is essential to the smooth functioning of the watercourse that there is an outlet for the water from the pool. If water has nowhere to go, it becomes stagnant.

This, I believe, is an allegory for the love of God flowing into our lives. The more love that we can give out, the more space there is for Him to fill up the deep pool of our souls.

Giving is also tied in with the way in which we view our possessions. A miser will let nothing go – not even stuff that s/he has no use for. It is easy enough to give away things that we don’t need, but as Christians we are sometimes called to give sacrificially – it can hurt!

In the reading you heard the often-quoted phrase ‘God loves a cheerful giver’. The word ‘cheerful’ is translated from a Latin word ‘hilariter’ – which is the root of our word ‘hilarious’. So, God loves a ‘hilarious’ giver – puts a rather different slant on it, doesn’t it? I like to think of hilarious giving as something rather like Robert throwing water out of the font at us.

Of course, this is not something that any of us can take lightly in the current economic climate. The prevalent emotion in society at the moment is fear, particularly in a financial respect. ‘Fear is fuelled by the spectre of unpaid bills and the dread of social shame that is often the mournful companion of depleted financial circumstances.’

However……..

If we can’t give money, we can give of ourselves – particularly time. Giving time to someone is one of the greatest things you can do. That might mean simply being willing to listen to someone who wants to offload a problem, or spending an afternoon with a lonely person. Time is very precious to us, and so often we don’t allow enough time for the simple things in life; is there a connection between the amount of time we spend with our families and the statement by Unicef that our children are the unhappiest in Europe?

2 Cor 9: 6 – There is another challenge to our attitudes in verse 6 - sow sparingly and you will reap sparingly…..and God is able to provide. Actually to stand on that precept and incorporate it into our lives is actually quite scary – and not something for the nervous.

Thus one may hesitate to give generously to God if one is worried about meting one’s own needs, but God is able to meet all our needs. The implication is that we could make a leap of faith in committing time, talent or tithe to God (have you seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade – towards the end of the film, he has to make a leap of faith, which to his eyes means stepping out over a steep chasm – and yet when he plucks up the courage to do it, there is suddenly a path for his feet).

I promised that I was not setting out to make anyone feel guilty today. That is still true – but I hope that perhaps you might feel challenged to review the way in which you look at giving. During the next song you might want to ask God to speak to you and show you a fresh way in which you can give thanks for all the love he has given you.