Giving With A Generous Heart
Do you have a generous heart? I had to ask myself this same question. I think in some ways the answer is yes, I have moments of generosity, but no my heart is not overwhelmed with generosity. The easy thing to do is compare ourselves with others and say “Well at least I am giving more than them - though again if we are honest, we can’t be sure of that”. It becomes harder to say we are generous when we compare ourselves to God’s generosity and what He wants for us. If God gave us 100% of what we have and are, and yet, we aren’t willing to give back even 10% of that. If God gave us everything knowing full well that we would screw it up, and we aren’t willing to trust our ever-faithful God with our first fruits or wages. If God gave up His life, His only Son on the cross, and yet, we aren’t willing to forgive our neighbor, or our spouse, or someone else who just screwed up - it would seem that we have a long way to come in having truly generous hearts. I don’t say this to guilt you, or to make you feel bad, I am saying this because it is important to recognize. We have a truly generous God. We have to spend some time shaping our hearts in thankfulness for all He has given, and learn how to respond to God’s generosity with something in kind.
When writing this sermon I initially started thinking about transactional giving or even receiving. This can often be looked at as a negative, I find myself judging my own transactional giving. Oftentimes, I can give and I hope for 30% in return. I don’t think this is wholly bad. We want to inspire generosity in others. We want to create relationships of mutual service. We want to see our love returned. It becomes bad when we demand it of others. I have been guilty of that a few too many times in my relationship with Mary Anne.
The interesting thing is that my call to ordained ministry started very much as a transactional conversation with God. Here I was as a 24-year-old actor, discontented with life. God had begun to give me dreams, visions, special interactions, and prayers all pointing me to how much He has given me and still wanted to give me. After finally recognizing how God had helped me through my speech impediment, my dyslexia, miraculously healed me from an accident that left me deaf, strengthened me through bullying and so much more, I began to realize that I owed everything to God. The phrase that kept repeating in my head and began me on the road to devote my life to the church was a simple one, “If God has given me so much, why haven’t I been willing to give even a little back”. - You may not have been saved in the same way I have, but we can all say this because we know God has given us our very lives. - This simple phrase kept rattling in my brain in every situation and the more and more I thought about it, the more and more I realized it was true. I began to see how much daily God was giving me, how he had brought me to this exact moment, how there was so much joy and life at my fingertips if I only reached out to Him, yet I could too easily ignore the gift, or ignore the generous hand and most of the time I would not respond in kind. We can let ourselves off the hook because we are not doing X, but are we really responding to God’s generosity?
Interestingly, our first two readings from Malachi and Proverbs are very much transactional. They skip the step of recognizing how much God has given, but that is present throughout the Bible from creation to Abraham’s blessing, to Moses' deliverance, to David’s Kingdom, to Jesus' birth, death, and resurrection, and to the New heavens and the New Earth where pain and death will be no more - along with plenty of the more mundane but wonderful gifts in between.
Malachi and Proverbs challenge us to give even a little back and see how God responds. In Proverbs Solomon is trying to teach his child, what he has experienced and known. He says, My child, “Honour the Lord with your substance and with the first fruits of all your produce; then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be bursting with wine”. As we all do, Solomon wants the best for his child and so he knows the way to the best is through a generous heart that gives honor to God through everything that we have. God responds to that generosity with fullness. We should want this fullness for ourselves and for those around us.
God’s promise is greater than Solomon has realized though. In Malachi God says to us: “Bring the full tithe - even 10% of what I give you - into the storehouse, so that there may be food in my house, and thus put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts; see if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing”. This is amazing to me. God has already given us everything. We should already be willing to give 10% back, but what God says is, if you are willing to be generous back to me, just wait and watch and I will give you more than you can imagine. “Put me to the test, see if I will not open the windows of heaven and pour down an overflowing blessing”. If you can respond to my generosity, I will always outdo your generosity with such bounty that has its very source in the pure and perfect gifts of heaven. Test God. Invest in Him and you will see the result.
I want to take a moment to talk about two important ideas: First fruits and Tithing. There is a pattern in modern culture to wait until the end of the year to see how much we will have, and how well we did at earning and saving money, and then we may give to organizations out of what we now know we can handle and often give knowing that it will put us in a different tax bracket. This seems like a practical and prudent way of doing things. First-Fruits is the opposite. First fruits is when we give at the very beginning before we know what our year will look like and how well we do. In fact, the term comes from an even more dangerous time, because when we say first fruits in an agrarian society, we literally mean the first fruits that were harvested. So, farmers, which was most people, would give from their very first harvest, not knowing if they would get a second or third, without knowing how big they would be. This might seem impractical and scary, but that’s because it is about faith. It is about responding to God’s faithfulness in how he has always given, by giving in return and trusting that He will continue to provide us with everything we need. Most of us are in more comfortable places, that it would be hard to get to such faithful trusting giving where we don’t know if there will be enough for our basic needs, but no matter what we can all give in trust rather than the overflow.
The giving of “first fruits” also has a very significant theological purpose. It first appears after God saves the Israelites from the curse that killed the firstborn. The Israelites deserved the curse too, but they were saved by the blood of an innocent animal. God reminds us “I have saved you, but your first of everything should still be mine, so honor me with it. Make it holy and commit it to me”. Most importantly though, giving our first fruits becomes a reminder of our deliverance through God giving us His firstborn, Jesus Christ. First fruits can and should be a great response of thanks and faithfulness.
As tough and challenging as the idea of the first fruit may be, Tithing is even more. Tithing is the idea of giving 10% of everything we earn. I have heard the question, is this before or after tax? If you are serious about that question, it’s up to you. Start with after-tax and see where God leads. But 10% is tough. There is so much we have to use our money on these days, what would giving that 10% do to our lifestyle, our savings, and our vacations? I am challenged by that too. It would definitely change them and change how we live, but if we can learn such thankfulness, only imagine how this might train our eyes and hearts to see and experience the world in a new way that is far better than any vacation, or special event. Only imagine how God will respond to such generosity. Only imagine how such investment in God’s Kingdom will bear fruit. God has given us 100% are we willing to give 10% back? We wouldn’t stand for the same thing in most of our relationships.
I am not talking about these to guilt you. The church could do with more, sure, but our generous hearts is about our trust in God, it is about how much we have faith that God will provide, it is about how much we are truly thankful for all that God has given us, it is about honoring God for His prolific generosity and ultimately, it is about us taking steps to meet God where He is and become like Him.
In light of these ideas, we can begin to understand why Jesus seeing this widow give 2 pennies to the temple treasure is often called the widow’s might. Was this literally everything she had? Jesus seems to say so. Yet, her great strength and courage is to give it to God. Something few of us can do. How does she survive after this? Well, she trusts God and I have no doubt God meets her there. Especially, because we know Jesus had pity on those people at the feeding of the 5 thousand and so many others who showed even a modicum of faith. He will do the same for us.
This giving is not just about the stuff we give, it is about shaping our hearts to be generous and thankful. Generosity is about the money and the stuff, but it is also about the time, energy, and presence. There are so many ways to give and today God is challenging us to grow in our giving so that we might grow and become more like him. There are so many ways to share and build up the work of the Kingdom and God has given us so many resources and gifts that we can use to join in His work. Giving in our time, energy and stuff is how we do that. Thank you, God for giving us so much. Thank you, God, for giving us such a purpose. Thank you, God, for promising that you will still give us more. Let us meet Him there as we grow in that same kind of generous faith. AMEN
Giving in and outside the church
Needs based evangelism
