Next Sunday we are bringing our pledge cards to pledge our financial commitment to the life of this congregation and God’s work in it for the year 2004. Very often churches struggle about how to talk about money and the church’s need for it, as well as our need to understand money in our life of faith. I think there are a couple reasons for that struggle. When I was in Flagstaff I gave a lecture every semester at the community college concerning the relationship between Christianity and our sexuality.  There was a stereotyped idea about what they thought I would say.  I made sure I didn’t say what the class thought I was going to say, but I didn’t say what they wanted me to say either. As long as I left them thinking, I figured I’d done my job. Every semester the first thing I would ask them was, “Do any of you have any relationship with institutional religion?” Rarely was a hand raised. Then I would say, “Well, where do you get your notions about what Christianity is?” Invariably they would talk about the religious programming on TV. Notice that I didn’t say Christian programming, I said religious programming.  Their notions about Christianity, because of what they saw on religious programs, left them extremely cynical. 

Do you remember Brother Ike from the 70s? Brother Ike was a man who wore a mink coat and drove a Cadillac, and told people that God wanted them to send him money so that he would live in luxury. I will give him credit.  He was up front with his requests.  Sometimes I think the cynicism of the secular culture is the result of the belief that some churches want money so that the people on the top can live well.  Certainly that is the image portrayed by some media people over the last three or four decades.  I resent that image. It’s not accurate at all. Ninety per cent of the congregations, at least in this country, are quietly doing the work that God has called them to do without a whole lot of fan fare. The salary of people working professionally in the church is no where near the equivalent of people with an equal amount of education in other occupations. I’m simply saying that the church uses its money well.  

For me and the people on the finance committee this is a nervous time of year. We understand that this church has committed itself to many important ministries. If we are to be fiscally responsible, we must base a budget on what you have pledged and are willing to give. I think the nervousness comes from knowing that if we don’t get exactly as much as need, we have to make some hard decisions about what is most important in our ministry. And we will make those decisions if we have to. But when I think of the generosity of this congregation, I hope that doesn’t happen. We live in this beautiful sanctuary and we have paid the vast majority of its debt.  There is a $900,000 debt that still has to be paid as well as the monthly mortgage payments. I tell you because I want you to be clear on why I’m preaching today so earnestly about how our giving relates to our faith.

Now I will tell you a true story. There was a man named Clarence who grew up in a church named Ashworth Memorial.  When I came to that church, its personality was very much reflected in its name. In many ways it was more of a memorial, looking backward more than looking at present and into the future. There were many plaques in memory of people covering walls all over the church. I teased them that the walls may to collapse due to the sheer weight of all these plaques. I referred to it among my ministerial colleagues as the church with the cemetery inside of it.  There is nothing wrong with remembering people. Nothing at all. But when churches focus on the past, we are in trouble. The Bible is grounded, not on the past, but on the present and what God’s promises.   There was a running battle between me and one of the members of the Board of Trustees.  There was a narrow patch of grass in front of this church and big sign that said, “Keep Out”, because they didn’t want people stepping on the grass. Can imagine driving by the church and seeing a big sign that says, “Keep out”?   What would you think?  Every now and then I would steal the sign and hide it. And then one of the trustees would go and try to find it. There were many wonderful people in this congregation. I cherish my memories of them, but it just seemed collectively that they had gotten into a slump about how they saw themselves. The average age of that congregation was about 72, but the town the town did not reflect that demographic. Clarence had grown up in this church. His father had been a dispatcher for the railroad in this little town.  Clarence had gone away to the university, graduating from the University of Virginia medical school.  He returned to his hometown and practiced medicine during the 30’s and 40’s. This was a booming blue-collar town. The stories were legion about the Saturday nights that Clarence spent sewing up people that had been shot or knifed or just hit with a fist at one of the bars that lined Main Street. There are other wonderful stories about him going up and down the hollows of this area in the middle of the night, helping mothers bring new life into this world. I met Clearance when he was 74 years old and he was still practicing full time. His office, typical of the era in which he practiced, was in his home, and he was still charging $3.00 an office visit in 1982. He wouldn’t turn you away if you didn’t have the $3.00.  He had a big fight with the Social Security people because they insisted that he take Social Security.  He thought was a waste of money because he didn’t need it. He though some one else should have it. Clarence was forty per cent of the annual budget of that congregation. For the entire time that he had been a member of that church he refused to take any official positions because he thought that the amount of money that he gave might somehow influence the decisions that were being made.  He never wanted to be viewed as controlling the church. I’ve never known a person with as much integrity in my life as Clarence. When Clarence died, he willed his entire estate to this church.  Both of his children had done well in life and really didn’t need his money. He put one stipulation on his gift to that church. It had to help the children of that community.

Jesus says something in today’s text that he repeats over and over in Matthew’s gospel. He says that how things look on the outside is not nearly as important as what really is inside of us. For some of you, it might be scary to think that God actually knows what’s on the inside because in many ways we spend a lot of time trying to hide what we are because we are ashamed or embarrassed.   I think that after 45 years struggling with who I am and with God knowing who I am, I would probably rather God know what’s inside of me than anybody else I know. Jesus makes clear to us that it is our inward intent that is always more important than what people may see on the outside.

Jesus made it clear that whatever we do about our giving, the motive needs to be correct.  A friend gave me an article about an extremely wealthy and successful baseball player who boasted about giving ten per cent of his income to his church. I remember saying to my friend, who was very impressed by that with the amount of the gift, that he should be giving ninety per cent and that he shouldn’t be boasting about the size of his gift. If he is giving for the right reason, he doesn’t need to brag about it. Now some of you may disagree with me about that, but I will remind you of Matthew 6.  Jesus makes clear that our giving comes from our hearts.  If we give correctly, we give out of gratitude. God has manifested himself to us through Jesus and has redeemed our souls. The gratitude for what God has given us is the reason we give, if we give at all.  I disagree with some of the people in my denomination, and maybe some of the people here, about what people call percentage giving. And let me tell you why. I honestly feel that the New Testament example about giving is so radical that if preachers really preached it, we’d be in big trouble.  We would have to start living by that example. What Jesus said to us about God’s kingdom is that it is not something we give part of ourselves in part to, but every part of which we are. What he requires of us is a generosity that makes out lives change. That must impact us in a way that leaves us uncomfortable.  The kind of giving that we do must come from the heart and must reflect our understanding of how gracious God has been to us. Once we understand God’s graciousness, our response is also to be gracious. What we write on the pledge card and what we are giving in other places besides this congregation reflects something at the core of who we are as spiritual beings. Are we the squirrel that hides it for ourselves because we’re afraid to let go of it?  Our lives would reflect that kind of living. Or are we people with generous hearts who give because God has been so generous to us and who, in our giving, discover the joy of what it truly means to be Christian.

One last story.

A man in one of my churches had been born dirt poor. He had been smart and industrious and had managed to acquire quite a bit. There was hardly a month that went by that he would not ask me if there were any one hurting, were there any real needs. Over a period of years I cannot tell you the number of people whose rent was paid or hospital bill taken care of because of the generosity of this man. He made it clear to me that I was to be the only person to know the source of this money, and his accountant wrote the checks so that no one in the church knew what he was giving. He once said to me that God had been so good to him that he worried whether the money he had was going to be able to do as much good as he wanted. Not long ago in that town a gift had a major impact on the children who lived there.  I’m fairly sure, without being told, it came from this man. This man understood what it meant to be grateful to a generous God who had been generous to him.  He also knew the joy of being able to take what God had given him and see it make a difference in other people’s lives.  His unwillingness to take any credit for it gave him the true gift of seeing others lives transformed. Not all of us have the financial resources of the two people in the stories I’ve told you today. But God has blessed all of us and it is our giving from God’s generosity that reflects whether or not our spirits are where God would have them be. May God be with us all. Amen.