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Written by Rev. Dr. Jeanne Knepper
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Monday, 01 December 2008 |
God has given us, Jesus said, God has given us this wonderful gift, bigger than we can imagine getting, because God loves us, and all God asks of us is that we go out and use it in the world. Tell the story, share the love, use the resources to make life better, to rejoice, to live in the love of God and to share that love with our neighbors. But some people, he said, some people operate out of fear and want you to be afraid, telling you that you must fear God as harsh master, reaping what he does not sow and gathering what she does not plant. These fear-mongers are like the third man in the story, burying the gift because they live so fearfully, denying the generosity of God, even when it was God who gave the gifts in the first place, gave them without restriction, without condition.
Fear—we all experience it, at one time or another. It’s a part of life. But what is not a given of life, what is a choice, is to let fear control our choices. That, Jesus implies, is a great sin, a terrible choice to live smaller than we have been created to be, to live as though we are not the beloved Children of God, to live, really, as though God, and God’s dream for us, is only a daydream, pretty, but not a part of the real world.
FEARLESS GENEROSITY
Deuteronomy 14:22-29; 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11; Matthew 25:14-30
November 16, 2008
Today is the first Sunday of our yearly financial campaign. It’s a time to talk about that topic we mostly avoid, our resources—talents, energy, time and wealth—and how we use them. It was perhaps fortuitous that the lectionary gave us the parable of the talents and the First Thessalonians admonishment to live unafraid, but I will own up to choosing the passage from Deuteronomy. I wanted to look at the concept of tithing as it first appeared in Scripture.
The idea of regular giving goes way back. It appears in Exodus, where the Hebrew men were admonished to gather three times yearly, at the Passover, at the feast of first fruits, and at the harvest, to praise and worship God, bringing their own first fruits, their own first-born lambs and calves and first harvested fruit and grain for the celebration.
In Exodus, the commandments about these celebrations follow immediately after commandments to preserve justice for all and commandments to keep the Sabbath, for land and for all people. Listen to that text: [Read Exodus 23:1-12.]
In Deuteronomy, the concept is made more explicit—set aside a tithe, a tenth, of all your produce. But for what?
Set it aside, first of all, to carry to the place of the Lord, to feast there, you and all you household.
Set it aside, second, to ensure that the Levites—the clan designated to be religious leaders, who had no inheritance or allotment of land—to ensure that the Levites would eat.
Set it aside, third, every third year, to preserve the well-being of the community, so that Levites and widows and orphans and resident aliens would all be able to eat their fill.
Set it aside, in other words, to create a community of well-being. Tithe because we are all connected to each other; because I can not be well off if you are hungry.
Set it aside, finally, because this is how we live the command to love God, self and neighbor, by recognizing that we do not exist apart, by celebrating the connection with the very best we have to give. Set it aside as a marker that we are free people, not enslaved by Egypt or by want, who can choose to care beyond our own households. Set it aside for the same reason that we honor Sabbath, because we have been given this great treasure, our freedom as Children of God, and we need to build our awareness of that gift into all the patterns of our lives.
We are Children of a God who loves us immensely, without bounds. This is the message Jesus taught over and over. God loves you, he said, like a Papa, like a Mama. The Scriptures tell us of God’s love. We are called to live out of our awareness of that love, extended to all people. When we do so, it will change, redeem, set our lives free.
But certain people, he told us over and over, certain people who were in positions of leadership, have been cautioning you to be afraid, to govern your lives by rules and laws so as not to upset God. They’ve been telling you to live small, scared, careful. Here we have this great gift from God and they’ve been hiding it away, burying it under laws and regulations and customs and rules so that you, God’s beloved children, are living lives of fear. This is not how God would have you live, he said.
And then he told a story, a story we heard today, about a man who set out on a long journey and entrusted his servants with huge gifts. How huge? A talent, the smallest amount he gave, is the equivalent of 20 years pay for a laborer. If we imagine, now, that the lowest-paid laborers earn about $7 an hour, then, in today’s dollars, a talent is about $280,000. Whoa!—that’s a lot of money.
The man gives the first servant 5 talents—over a million and a half dollars, the second one gets more than a half million, and the third gets $280,000. Talk about winning the lottery, big time! Can you imagine, just for a moment, what you would do with that gift? Invest it? Buy a car or a house? Send children to college? Create a pension? Support the church? Give to your favorite charity or justice-seeking group? Dig a hole in the back yard and plunk it down into the cold, wet dirt for safe-keeping?
Huh? Bury it?—I don’t think so—do you?
But, you may say, there weren’t any conditions on the gift. Was he supposed to keep it safe, to invest it, to grow it, to use it—he didn’t know what to do. He was scared. What if he used it to buy land for his son, to endow his daughter, what if he did that and it was the wrong thing? What if he made a mistake? Do you hear the fear, winding him up, tying him down? Do you hear how he retreated into the mindset of slavery—Oh, no, what if I do something wrong, better to do nothing at all.
God has given us, Jesus said, God has given us this wonderful gift, bigger than we can imagine getting, because God loves us, and all God asks of us is that we go out and use it in the world. Tell the story, share the love, use the resources to make life better, to rejoice, to live in the love of God and to share that love with our neighbors. But some people, he said, some people operate out of fear and want you to be afraid, telling you that you must fear God as harsh master, reaping what he does not sow and gathering what she does not plant. These fear-mongers are like the third man in the story, burying the gift because they live so fearfully, denying the generosity of God, even when it was God who gave the gifts in the first place, gave them without restriction, without condition.
Fear—we all experience it, at one time or another. It’s a part of life. But what is not a given of life, what is a choice, is to let fear control our choices. That, Jesus implies, is a great sin, a terrible choice to live smaller than we have been created to be, to live as though we are not the beloved Children of God, to live, really, as though God, and God’s dream for us, is only a daydream, pretty, but not a part of the real world.
Is that so? After all, isn’t this a world where terrible things can happen without warning, where a windstorm might blow a tree onto your roof tonight, or you might receive an awful medical diagnosis tomorrow? Isn’t this a world where we are not sure about the security of Social Security, where jobs might fly overseas in a heartbeat? Isn’t there a lot to be afraid of? How, exactly, are we to live unafraid in an unsafe world?
Paul addressed that, in part in his letter to the congregation in Thessalonica. Listen to a part of what he had to say, this time translated be Eugene Peterson:
About the time everybody’s walking around complacently, congratulating each other—“We’ve sure got it made! Now we can take it easy!”—suddenly everything will fall apart. It’s going to come as suddenly and inescapably as birth pangs to a pregnant woman. But friends, you’re not in the dark, so how could you be taken off guard by any of this? You’re sons of Light, daughters of Day. We live under the wide open skies and know where we stand. So let’s not sleepwalk through life like those others. Let’s keep our eyes open and be smart. Since we’re creatures of the Day, let’s act like it. Walk out into the daylight sober, dressed up in the faith, love and hope of salvation.
God didn’t set us up for rejection but for salvation by our Master, Jesus Christ. He died for us, a death that triggered life. Whether we’re awake with the living or asleep with the dead, we’re alive with him! So speak encouraging words to one another. Build up hope so you’ll all be together in this, no one left out, on one left behind. I know you’re already doing this; just keep on doing it.
There are forces within our culture that want us to be afraid, of calamity, of judgment, of each other. Do you know that? People who are afraid turn to rules and patterns to promote supposed safety, the first one of which is, don’t trust. Don’t trust strangers, don’t trust your neighbor. Stay separated, isolated. And gather enough, for yourself, to cover anything that might happen. You’ve got to be prepared. Look out for number one, for you and your own family.
Over against this, we hear the words of Deuteronomy: Set aside a tithe, so that no one in your community will go hungry. Set aside a tithe, so that you can rejoice in community.
Do you hear the different visions? We have a choice to make: Will we believe we live in a world governed by an angry, punishing or absent God, a world filled with those whose lives are desperate, self-centered, vicious and limited, a world where we must be on guard at all times; or will be choose to believe that we are beloved by God and surrounded by people who desire good for themselves and each other, even if they often don’t know how to achieve it?
The Hebrew people had no experience as free people, as a community. They had lived the lives of slaves, disposable, contemptible. They had no reason to care for others, none but one: the God who brought them out of slavery commanded them to live as people who were part of community, each and every one of them acting to create well-being for all, and to do that as an act of love and praise for God.
I’ve spoken of tithing as a way to build community, for the Hebrew people. Can it be the same for us? Suppose we began to believe that we, this community that is University Park United Methodist Church, that we would not let any member of this faith community go hungry, go without shelter, go without medical treatment. Could we do that? Could we trust that?
I’ve often noted that the people who come to me asking for assistance, asking for a hand-out, have no community around them. Alone, they can be overwhelmed by life. Can we imagine a faith community where no one fears being left alone to face the hardships of life? Could we create such a place? Would it be worth believing in, worth investing in? Are we on that road?
In this next weeks, we will consider some of these questions. We may be called to be bigger and more faithful than we know. We may be called to take our resources and our talents and create community, create belonging, create a place that nurtures life. Let’s all think and pray about it: how is God leading us?
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