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Sunday, February 08, 2009
Will a person cheat God?
6th in a series on Questions from the Bible
By Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz
6 For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, have not perished. 7 Ever since the days of your ancestors you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. But you say, "How shall we return?" 8 Will anyone rob God? Yet you are robbing me! But you say, "How are we robbing you?" In your tithes and offerings!
I think there has not been a time like the past three months in all my forty years of ministry. The national recession is affecting all of us in a very sad and difficult way, and it seems that every week I talk with, or hear from, church members who have no job because of a reduction in work force or whose job has been seriously affected and changed. One of our business leaders told me his salary had to be reduced for a time and other active members of our church have found themselves suddenly without work.
One of those instances was last week when we were in a meeting of our special budget committee and a committee member came to the meeting reporting he had been laid off that very day.
I have received some very poignant letters from members telling about the uncertainty they are feeling and saying that they want to make a pledge to the ministries of our church but they are feeling so uncertain that, while they don’t feel able to sign a commitment card, they will continue to give.
My heart has been hurting about these persons and others. I know you feel that same concern so the first thing I want to do today is to take a time in silent prayer for us to lift up these persons and others who have no job or who feel uncertain about their future. Will you take some silent time in prayer with me right now?
(Time of silence)
The other thing going on with me is some wondering about how we can work together as a community, and as a family in this unique congregation, when the recession is affecting most of us, but for others of us, life is more stable. As Josh Van Manen mentioned, from last June through December, our building fund income was exactly on target. This is a sign for me that we want to keep expanding what we are doing.
We want to keep expanding our ministries, not only to the nine or ten new families who worship with us for the first time every Sunday, but for the hundreds of others around us who are looking for a church of open hearts, open minds, and open doors. We want to keep expanding for those looking for a church that gives them a chance to learn and think and grow and serve others. There is a dire need for a church like this, where children can be nurtured in faith and youth and adults can grow a moral compass and find a safe place in the storms of life.
The challenge of keeping our ministries strong and vital has been the other thing on my mind and heart in the past three months. Let me give you a specific: our receipts in January 2009 were down by 22% from January 2008. This is a serious challenge. You heard Josh’s report that because of the change in economic conditions, we will need to make some serious changes in our 2009 budget. We want to have a balanced budget. We can’t operate in the red. We are projecting less income this year than last, so this means some hard decisions. You should know that the team of lay leaders who are working on this are compassionate and conscientious and so far have spent about 16 hours, in four separate meetings over the past three weeks, getting income and expenditures together. This is painful work and very challenging work and I ask you to keep that group in your prayers.
So here we are in a very difficult time for our country and our congregation. In our sermon series on questions from the Bible, we run up against these blunt words from the prophet Malachi. I tell you that I did not plan this topic this way! Malachi seems unnecessarily harsh, except at the heart of his words is his belief, the same as the belief of Jesus, that when we put our relationship with God at the center of our lives, only then do our other worries and challenges fall into place. Malachi is warning the Hebrew people that they have forgotten to put their relationship with God at the center of their lives, as evidenced by their failure to bring their tithes and offerings to God.
See, even in the most difficult times, our faith tells us that we need to think beyond ourselves, that we can still find a way to serve God and others. I saw this dedication in a letter from one of our older members last November. She wrote me saying that she is living almost entirely on social security now but she will still be giving, as she can, because the work of her church is important to her. Her resources have diminished but her faith has not diminished. That is true of most of this congregation, and that is the faith we are all aspiring toward.
Our sermon series is about questions. Let me share with you some of the other questions that have come to my mind these past few days. The first one is as uncomfortable as Malachi’s question: I wonder if God is seeing in our lives right now the ongoing practice of living and giving beyond ourselves? We have a need to live lives larger than just ourselves, even in a time of financial distress. I wonder if God needs to see our generosity first before God is able to keep on blessing us? That is a really uncomfortable question; at least it is for me.
Other questions: How blessed do you feel this morning in spite of economic conditions, how blessed do you feel? Another question: what do our calendars and checkbooks say about what is most important in our lives? Our words don’t matter as much as our actions. Jesus says that.
In a time of stress and uncertainty, we can learn more fully about ourselves, we can have our true selves revealed, our true character revealed. More questions: Where are your true commitments? That is what the checkbook and the calendar questions are about. What are you most committed to? I like Dr. William Sloane Coffin’s quote on the front of your bulletin: “Socrates got it wrong; it is not the unexamined life but the uncommitted life that is not worth living.” What is the economic crisis showing us about where our true commitments are? That is also the question that Malachi raises in a more blunt fashion.
Still more questions: How are you moving in your faith from being a receiver to being a participant, from being a consumer and an admirer of Christ, to becoming a disciple of Christ? It is normal and expectable to begin as a consumer of church, to begin as a spectator, all of us do that. Do you remember comedian Flip Wilson’s old story? Someone asked him about his faith and he said he was a Jehovah’s Bystander, hadn’t progressed enough to be a witness!
We all begin as bystanders and admirers and consumers of Christian faith. It’s OK to begin there, but we will miss a great deal if we stay on the sidelines and are not able to become participants and disciples of Christ, because that is where the abundant life is. Where are you in that spiritual journey? Sometimes it takes a bold step, like an act of generosity and giving and sacrifice and service, to move us to the next level of faith. Sometimes a sacrificial act of generosity can open the door to a deeper faith!!
Let me phrase the question a little differently: How is your faith changing you from being a self focused person to becoming a more generous person? How is your faith creating a spirit of generosity in your life? It should be doing that or it is not authentic faith, Biblical faith.
I ordered a children’s book this week that I saw featured in the Denver Post, a book about a lady who loves to knit hats and give them away! It is based on a true story about a real person who does this! It reminds us of the joy of giving and sharing. Jesus tells us that there is more joy in giving than in receiving. Have you discovered that joy yet? Is that teaching from Christ becoming true in your life?
Another question: Is your faith requiring anything of you? Is your faith asking you to sacrifice? Catholic priest Richard Rohr is the author of the book that Father Dick Ling and I will be teaching in a couple of weeks in our class entitled, “Growing Up Catholic.” He has a chapter on the good parts of religion and the bad parts. One of the characteristics of bad religion, he says, is undemanding faith, faith that does not ask anything of us!! Mahatma Gandhi says the same thing in his list of the seven deadly social sins:
Politics without principle Wealth without work Commerce without morality Pleasure without conscience Education without character Science without humanity Worship without sacrifice
Let me expand. There are many good things about being the size of church we are. By worship attendance, we are in the top 100 congregations of the 38,000 United Methodist Churches in America. The main, good thing about this is that we are reaching a lot of people, which Christ commands us to do. This command is in our purpose statement of, Inviting and Receiving and Forming people into disciples.
There are other good things: We can do major projects like building three Habitat for Humanity homes in the past two years; Sponsoring a refugee family; Providing lots of Thanksgiving baskets; Providing Rainbows workshops for 60 grieving children at a time; Providing Disciple Bible study classes and other classes last fall for 500 people to be formed and nurtured into disciples of Christ.
One negative thing about being the size we are, actually it is a mix of positive and negative, is that we are a place where new people can come and get lost for a while, be spectators and consumers for a while, just sit back and listen and observe. The good thing about that is that most of us need to start that way! It only becomes a negative if people get stuck there and don’t move to the next level of becoming involved and being a participant, more than a consumer and putting their dollar a week in the offering plate.
We have worked hard in this exceptional congregation to lift up the expectations as well as the rewards of following Christ, the commitment as well as the benefits. What that means is that other churches come here to learn about how to be a high commitment church. Our worship attendance is remarkable compared to our membership. We have, on average, 1300 worship attendance compared to 1800 members. This is almost unheard of. Our average operating pledge amount of $3400 from 600 families is very high. Where we have some room to move is in the other 800 households who give something once in a while. That average is $400 per year. That is the group who can make a difference for us on Second Mile Sunday March 15. That is a mixed group. For a few of the families in that group of 800, giving five dollars a week or a dollar a week may be sacrificial. That is the case for some. But for most of us, generous giving looks different. For most of us, we are not a dollar a week church or a five dollars a week church. Our faith, when it is a mature faith, asks more of us. It asks for our heart and when Christ has our heart, our calendars and our checkbooks will always follow!
Let me ask one more question that I have been wrestling with, along with the special budget group of fellow leaders in our church. What is our basic posture in life? Is it a posture of abundance or a posture of scarcity? For me, it means striking a balance as we plan life together in our families or our work or in our church. It means striking a balance between faith and realism. I think both are very important and I am certainly working to find that right balance, because just one or just the other gets us into trouble.
I close with one more quote that I like from Father Richard Rohr, who will be with us on April 25. Father Rohr says in his book, True religion is not membership but transformation. True religion involves changed hearts. Jesus said that also. How is your heart being changed, being transformed by your relationship with the God we see best in Jesus Christ?