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Sunday, October 17, 2010

Defined By Generosity

By Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz

Scripture: Proverbs 22:9 Good News Bible 

⁹ Be generous and share your food with the poor. You will be blessed for it.

We are almost at the end of a sermon series on Biblical principles of financial management and on Discovering Joy Through Simplicity and Generosity.

The program is being used across the US this fall in many of our 34,000 United Methodist Churches and we have had a challenge getting in some of the books for you. We have had plenty of the other materials: the mirror clings which give us some simple guidelines for management:

• Put God first in your living and giving
• Create a spending plan and track your expenses
• Simplify your life and live below your means
• Establish an emergency fund
• Pay off credit cards and use debit cards or cash when possible
• Practice long term savings and investing habits

Nothing in this list is new for most of us, it is just that we all need, and I include myself, to be reminded and encouraged regularly.

I have been carrying, like many of you, my Contentment Key Tag with the word Contentment on one side and the prayer on the other.  It has been a good reminder for me the past few weeks of the difference between want and need. We have plenty of these left.

We have also said to each other that the practice of simplicity and of living below our means are very Biblically based practices and they are at the heart of the financial management courses offered by Dave Ramsey and others. Many of you have already learned to do this so you can feel more secure and you can enhance the spiritual discipline of generosity. They are also countercultural and subversive in a culture that is saturated with materialism and with a message that says having more is the only key to contentment and happiness.

Those messages are what make it challenging to live simply and to put the Biblical principles into practice.  In addition it means that we need to keep encouraging each other regularly. I hope you have felt that encouragement.

Today we are looking at another deeply Biblical value, the practice of generosity, the teaching by Jesus that there is blessing for us as we share what we have with those in need. Generosity does something good for us and in us.

I want us to look at the three word sermon title once more, DEFINED BY GENEROSITY. Is that something you want for your life? Do you want to live a life defined by generosity? Do you want at the end of your life, to be remembered, among other memories, as a person who was known for her or his generosity?

We had a large memorial service in the sanctuary on Friday for a member of our church whose life was defined by generosity. There were many other important ways that we remembered Tom Clark on Friday. We thanked God for Tom’s integrity, his work ethic, his love for country exhibited by his 20 year Air Force career as an officer, his mentoring hundreds of students in his role as college professor and then Dean of the graduate Business School at Louisiana State University, and his sacrificial service to his Methodist Churches in every city where he lived. We thanked God for his constant and attentive love for wife Mary and their two adult daughters Karen and Courtney and grandchildren Avery and Jordan and A.J.

We were able to talk a lot about Tom’s generous spirit and constant practice of generosity. He did so many things for others. He freely gave swimming lessons to friends at his gym. Three months ago he met with one of our church members who was trying to discern what the next steps should be in her very successful small business and offered his expertise as a business professor to this entrepreneur. He would carry dollar coins with him always and would give them to people at times. One of the last times was after worship a few weeks ago when he spoke to a child sitting near Mary and him.  The child had been well behaved through the service and Tom sought out the child after the benediction and gave him a dollar coin and praised him for being in worship.

Tom and Mary have lived lives of servant leadership, not only with the time he offered in teaching classes here on ethics, but also with their family’s support of our ministries and our new building. They were among the first to make a generous pledge almost three years ago when we were planning our ministry expansion and they were among the first to complete that gift.

We said in the memorial service that Tom Clark’s life was DEFINED BY GENEROSITY. That is a virtue, a spiritual value that I hope to be remembered for at the end of my life, among other things. Is that a goal for you? I hope it is.

We did something that we almost always do in our memorial services. We stole this exercise from Steven Covey in Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Coveye asks us, as we begin with the end in mind: Imagine your funeral. It is a sobering thought. He asks us to think about who we hope will be present. He says: Think about what you hope people will say about you. Then, be honest with yourself and look inside yourself and ask yourself, am I living right now in the way that I hope people will be able to say those nice things about me?

And Covey says: If you cannot answer yes to that, then start today living in the way that you hope people will remember you!

DEFINED BY GENEROSITY.  Is that one way that you hope people will think about you at the end of your life? Our lives? Are we practicing that generosity right now?

If we take all these Biblical principles of financial management seriously, we will be going against the flow, going against our consumerist culture that tells us, the only way to be happy and to be really content is to have more and bigger and newer and better, but the emphasis is on MORE. And then we came up against the life style of the thirty three miners who, thank God, were rescued as we were glued to our screens this week. We began to think about what would constitute enough for them and what is more than enough for us.

Our culture says, grab, get, hoard, preserve, accumulate, gather, spend, and keep it ALL! Gain and accumulate everything you possibly can. 

Christ tells us something different about the key to abundant life, and so does the fellow who started this contagious Methodist movement 250 years ago, John Wesley. Wesley’s rules for financial management are at the top of your bulletin. They are simple and they work. Wesley starts with the same principle that we hear all around us.

EARN ALL YOU CAN. It is a good thing to earn and to have money. Having money is good, worshiping money, idolizing money, being controlled by it, is dangerous and gets us into trouble.

Second on Wesley’s list is SAVE ALL YOU CAN. We had the privilege of hearing St. Andrew friend, Jerre Stead, talk last Monday night about the future of the US economy and the world economy. Jerre is the CEO of an information company, I H S, and you may hear his I H S economist quoted regularly on National Public Radio. One of the members of the audience asked what advice Jerre would give to her kids in their thirties who she worried would have a less comfortable life than that of their parents. One thing Jerre said was that they, and we, need to be saving much more than we realize.

EARN ALL YOU CAN. SAVE ALL YOU CAN. THEN GIVE ALL YOU CAN.

Wesley practiced these rules in his own life by keeping his expenditures level for many years and just saving and giving more as his resources increased!

There are some Biblical reasons for these three principles and they are the same principles that are taught in Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University, classes that we are offering and will continue to offer.

When we practice the spiritual discipline of generosity, we feel joyful about it, something good happens to us and in us. Have you discovered that? Jesus says it; there is more joy in giving than in receiving! Does that make sense to you?

This month we are about 80% or so through our fiscal year at St. Andrew for our program budget and coincidentally, we are also about 80% or so through our three year capital giving in our three year building fund pledges. This means that we hope all of us can be about 80% along in our giving so far to each of those programs; the current operating ministries and our ministry expansion program. Judy and I were able to get to that 80% mark just this week and I hope each of us can make that as well.

And when I look at what our family’s giving supports in God’s work, I feel really joyful!

• Most of you know about the Rainbows program for children who have lost a parent. Let me tell you what our giving is doing for children in that ministry right now. We have 39 children, most not from our church but from neighboring schools where they have been referred to us. Thirteen of those children right now are grieving the death of a parent, others are grieving a divorce. Kids are getting support and help and hope by being here with our ten volunteer leaders every Monday night. If that is all that your giving was doing, would you not feel good, even joyful, about that?
• Let’s talk about other children, the 70 or so children who are now in our children’s music program who are singing in worship today! This is the largest group we have ever started the program year with, and those numbers typically increase by the month.
• Then let’s talk about the grief recovery group that started a couple of weeks ago for ten of our members and friends who are finding help and hope as they adjust to the loss of a loved one.

I hope that your heart is warmed to hear about the difference each of you is making because your giving supports those and a hundred other programs and ministries of transformation and comfort and renewal here at St. Andrew.  And, that does not even mention the difference that we are going to make when we have more space to do ministry. In the first service in that new sanctuary we will celebrate 55 of our youth publicly affirming their faith in Christ! What could be a better way to open that space than on confirmation Sunday?

There is joy in giving and we give outside self for two other reasons: because Christ has told us that when we lose ourselves in something greater than us, we find the best life possible. Thirdly, we give because Jesus tells us that we don’t really OWN anything at all. We are managers and stewards for a while and in Jesus’ story about the three managers or stewards, we are expected to make a difference with what we have, and we will be asked, at the end, what difference did you make? Did you use it well, did you share it with others, or did you just hoard it for yourself?

Our book has three principles for how we give back to God.

The first principle is that our giving beyond self is to be sacrificial. You know what that is for you and your family. You and God know what is sacrificial. There is a Bible story about this; Jesus is teaching in the temple in his last days of his earthly life. Large crowds have gathered hanging on each word. People are coming by dropping their offerings in the temple treasury box. Then a poor widow comes and drops in two of the smallest coins. They are called a widow’s mite.

Jesus stops teaching, points to the poor widow and says: she gave more than anyone else. Others say: That can’t be. We saw all these comfortable people coming and putting a lot of money in the box.

Jesus says: What they gave still left them comfortable, they gave out of their leftovers, but what she gave was really costly and sacrificial.

Our giving beyond ourselves has to be more than tokenism. It is to be sacrificial. What is that for you? Five per cent of your resources each year?  Four per cent? Nine per cent? You know the answer, you and God.

Our giving is also to be proportional to how we have been blessed. That will vary at different times in life. Our giving is to be an expression of our trust in God. When Cathy Dunwody decided to fill out her pledge card, she took a risk, and she took a step that required her to trust in God first! Was she right to do that. She says she was!

Finally, people of faith are asked to use the tithe as a target for our giving to others. A tithe is ten per cent. Jesus affirms the tithe as a principle for all of us. Judy and I have been giving away ten per cent of our income each year since 1972 except for last year when we had some financial reversals as many of you did. This year we are right on track-almost completely through with both our building fund pledge and our operating pledge, and we will complete those by the end of December. We have had to re arrange some things in our lives and spending habits, but we are right on track as of today with 80% of those amounts already given to God’s work through this church.

Here is what my friend Adam Hamilton says about the Biblical practice of tithing.

[VIDEO]

It could be that tithing or taking two more steps toward tithing is a faith step to get you off your spiritual plateau. It could be that the level you have stayed on is keeping you from getting closer to God and the life God wants for you. Could that be true? Is the spiritual stagnation you may feel possibly connected to your lack of joyful generosity?

Can you think and pray about that between now and next Sunday when we all bring our estimate of giving cards to God’s altar table.

Here is one closing story that you may have heard.  The twenty seven year old pastor was in his first church out of seminary. He was visiting some of the members of his small congregation and was seeing a family in a poorer part of town. He was driving the new Mustang that he had received from his more comfortable brother who had given the pastor this car as a seminary graduation present. It was just a basic six cylinder, entry level car, but he loved it and was a little embarrassed by it when he pulled up to the home in a very simple neighborhood.

The eight year old boy playing in the front yard saw the pastor drive up and was very taken by the new Mustang. The pastor greeted the boy who talked about how much he loved that car and how great it must be to have a brand new mustang. The minister, sort of embarrassed by all this, explained that he himself could not have afforded that car, but that it was a graduation present from his older brother.

Here is what the child said as he looked longingly at the car: “Gosh, I wish I could be a brother like that.”

The pastor did not believe his ears. “What did you say?”

I wish I could be a brother like that, not have a brother like that, but BE that generous.

When we bring our cards for God’s work to the altar table next Sunday singing our favorite hymn, Here I Am Lord, we will have the chance to also be a sister and brother like that.  We will have the opportunity of sharing our selves so others may know Christ and be changed and comforted and given hope. We too will be defined by generosity.