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"Commit Intentionally"
A Sermon preached by Dr. Laird J. Stuart
18 October 2009
Psalm 135:13-21; I Corinthians 9:6-15
When Paul writes, "The point is this: the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully", he is pointing to three actions. He is pointing to something God does. He is pointing to something we are to do. He is pointing to something God does with us when we are doing what we are called to do.
When Paul wrote these words he was facing a big and bright challenge. We need to hear his words. We need to hear Paul speak about Christ and the Church. We need to hear God speaking through these words. Because we at Calvary Presbyterian Church are facing our own special big and bright challenge.
Paul's big bright challenge was to collect money for an offering. We have used this passage several times in recent years. It is always helpful to review the circumstances Paul was facing. His words did not come out of thin air. They were written in response to specific circumstances and real-world challenges. The first Christian community, the first Christian church or congregation, was in Jerusalem. It was made up of people who had converted from Judaism to Christianity. They became known as Jewish Christians.
Peter, Paul and others believed God wanted the Christian Church to be open to everyone, people who were Jewish but Gentiles as well. There are passages in the Old Testament in which God expressed the plan to create a new community of faith, a successor to Israel, that would be open to everyone in the world. Peter and Paul both challenged the Jewish Christians to admit Gentiles into the Church. They sought to break open the Church so it would be welcoming to everyone and hospitable to everyone. There was a lot of resistance. Then, as now, people can get more attached to their version of the Church than to God's version. Peter and Paul persisted. Paul and others travelled extensively to establish congregations of Gentile Christians.
Then, a drought came to the region of Jerusalem. The church in Jerusalem was trying to help people who were victims of the drought, but their capacity to do so was limited to the funds they had. Paul, no doubt inspired by God, had a vision. He would raise money from the Gentile Christians for the mission of the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. The offering had two purposes. It would raise money to help the Jewish Christians in their mission. It would also help to build a bond, in Christ, between the Gentile Christians and the Jewish Christians. It would show the Jewish Christians that the Gentile Christians shared their faith and shared their mission.
This is the offering Paul is discussing in this passage. It was a big and bright challenge.
It was a big challenge because it was hard to get Gentile Christians in faraway places to give money to those distant people in Jerusalem. Then, as now, people love to say let's take care of our own first, resisting the expansiveness and reach of God's mission in the world. It was also a big challenge because some of those Gentile Christians knew the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem did not like them and did not want them in their church. It is hard to give money to people who do not like you. It was a big challenge because communication was not easy then. Paul did not twitter. He was not on Facebook. All the remarkable apparatus for communication we have in the internet now was unavailable to them. They had to travel to each other and send letters to each other to explain a plan and to follow-up on it.
Big as the challenge was it was also bright. Paul believed it was God's work. It was for the Church of Jesus Christ.
Paul, perhaps with some frustration showing, gets to this point in this letter and says quite directly, in so many words, "Look, here's the point!"
Well, our challenge, here at Calvary Presbyterian Church is also big and bright.
Every year we assemble a Proposed Operating Budget for the next year. Almost all congregations do the same. Here at Calvary the operating budget is assembled in a long, open and careful process. It unfolds over several months. It works through a series of meetings engaging the pastors, other members of the staff, and many of the officers. Finally a Proposed Operating Budget comes to the Session for its revisions or approval.
The Session of Calvary Presbyterian Church has approved a Proposed Operating Budget for 2010 which will require a $60,000 increase in pledged giving. That $60,000 is our big bright challenge. It is not a lot of money in a budget of almost $1,900,000. Yet these are still difficult times for many people. The cab driver who brought me to church today used to work in a bank. He got laid off. He is driving a cab and hoping to get a new job that will enable him to reclaim the kind of life he had before. These are difficult times. They are difficult times for some of the people who assembled this budget and for some of the elders who approved it.
They believed it was important to leave that $60,000 increase in the budget for several reasons. Part of it has to do with the staff. Bless their hearts, the Session wants to give an increase next year to our staff. The staff did not receive an increase this year. They only received an increase for half of 2008. It is time to give this tangible sign of approval and appreciation to a very hard-working and dedicated group of people. There is also a desire to fill a position left open this year. It is the position of Assistant to our Director of Family Ministries. David Barnes is our Director of Family Ministries. We have realized that we need to renew our youth ministry here at Calvary. We want to fill this position with someone who could work with David. If he or she can assume some of David's responsibilities with children, David could devote more of this time to our junior and senior high members and their families. David has been a junior high teacher for many years. He is gifted in working with young people. It would help us recover an important dimension of our ministry if he could devote some of his remarkable energy and enthusiasm to our junior and senior high members and their families. We also want to support our Director of Communications, Sara Butz. This is a part-time position. Some day we will have a full-time Director of Communications. The Planning Team of 1999 called for a full-time Director of Communications. We have a lot to communicate to each other. We have a lot we would like to communicate out into the community around us. For the past eighteen months, a special gift has allowed us to expand Sara's hours. That gift runs out at the end of this year. If we are to keep Sara just at her current level of work, we need to have the Operating Budget assume more of her salary.
A second reason for the increase relates to our worship and music. For many years we have had special concerts during Advent and Lent. Our choir and an orchestra fill the chancel and lead the concerts. The cost of the concerts is paid in part by the offering that is taken during each concert. Part of the cost comes from our Operating Budget. Recently, we have had to decrease the money for these concerts from our Operating Budget. Without this increase, we would have to eliminate all the money for the concerts. We also want to continue our Jazz Services. We have had these Sunday evening jazz services on some evenings during the year, but most of them have been on Sunday nights during the summer. We have been doing this for two years. They are wonderful services. Usually about half the people who attend are from the community. They see the service in Calvin Hall and sometimes just walk in off the street. These services have been funded by the Calvary Foundation. It provides funding for new ministries to see how they work and how they might be improved. But the Foundation only supports new ministries for two years. Then, if the ministry is useful and good the church needs to assume responsibility for funding the ministry. If we are to continue our jazz services in 2010, the Operating Budget needs to assume the funding.
The third reason for the increase is our determination to maintain our mission giving. The needs are too great out there in our neighborhoods, our city, our state, our nation our world. Our mission giving, as it is, accounts for only about ten percent of our budget as it is. In my time with you it has been as high as eighteen percent and there had been a goal of reaching twenty-five percent.
It is a big challenge to increase pledge giving by $60,000 for next year in these uncertain times. It is also a bright challenge. The officers and everyone who has worked on this budget believes it is for God's work. It is for our witness and work for Christ. It is to help us in our mission to connect: connect with Christ, connect with one another, connect with our city and connect with our world.
To meet this big and bright challenge another goal--along with the specific dollar amount--was approved by the Session. We want to increase the number of members who pledge. We want every member to pledge. For some reason at Calvary we have a smaller than normal percentage of people who pledge, compared to other churches we have a smaller base of pledging. Many people give, but they do not pledge.
We need to have everyone who is a member of Calvary to make a pledge this year. We need to have everyone make an intentional commitment to pledge. A pledge represents an intentional commitment to support the church through the year. We need to have everyone do this: actually fill out a pledge card and sign it or do so on-line.
You might think that in calling for everyone to sign a pledge card I am preaching to the choir. But, as someone once said, preaching this to the congregation may be like preaching to the choir but not everyone in the choir is singing.
If you have children in school, the school expects you to give. If you are on a board, the board expects you to give. Someone said the other night they had not heard the message before that Calvary needs to have its members pledge to give. Well, hear the message now! We need everyone to make an intentional commitment to sign a pledge card for next year.
To that end, let us listen to Paul's message. As he brought God's word to those Gentile Christians facing that big bright challenge, he can also bring God's word to us as we face our big bright challenge.
Paul is writing about something God does. Paul is writing about something we are to do. Paul is writing about what God can do with us when we are doing what God calls us to do.
Here is what God does: God gives so we can live and give.
Paul writes that God will supply seed for the sowing of giving. He starts with this simple and straight forward observation. What you reap in life is determined by what you sow. Any farmer would know that and even in Corinth, a sophisticated city, people know enough about farming to know reaping was dependent on sowing. But they also knew that many philosophers had made the same point about how life works in a larger sense. Philo, Aristotle and Cicero, among others had taught that an outgoing and generous approach to live in general tended to bring back generous returns and rewards. Everyone then and now could think of exceptions, but it was generally believed to be truth. This is how life works: sow sparingly and you reap sparingly, sow generously and you reap generously.
Yet Paul is not offering general philosophical or practical wisdom. He is making a claim about God. His first point is that before we do anything, God is already providing for us enough to be able to be generous. He expresses his principle about giving in verse six but then in verse eight, nine, ten, and eleven he backs it up. He says God provides. God provides enough for you to give.
Notice Paul does not say God will give you everything you want. What Paul does say is that God will give you enough so you will have enough to share.
Paul is speaking practically and materially here. This is not just a spiritual law or rule. He is saying God will provide the provisions we need to sustain our lives. It is like Jesus teaching us to pray for our daily bread. Jesus was not just referring to spiritual bread but to real bread. A friend of mine recently pointed out that while we do not live by bread alone, we also need the bread, the real tangible bread for daily life. God knows this. God has provided this incredibly abundant world to sustain us.
God does this. God provides so we can live and give.
Then, we are to give and to give generously.
Paul does not want anyone giving under compulsion. God does not want any grumpy givers. God is not interested in people who think giving is losing. This is why Paul first points to what God is doing for us. Then Paul calls people to give and to give generously. No one can tell another person what a generous gift would be based on what they have, but giving generously is the goal. Giving generously is God's hope for us. God does this: God provides for our living and our giving.
We do this: we are to give and give generously. Then God does something with us. As we do God's work we draw closer to God and God draws closer to us.
This is what Paul is referring to at the end of this passage when he writes about "the surpassing gift of God's grace" that is given to people as they do God's work.
In Luke's Gospel Jesus told a parable about a man who had abundant crops. He tore down his barns and built bigger barns thinking he was then secure in life. Yet then died and his barns full of crops were of no help to him. Jesus said it is better for us to become "rich toward God." As we do God's work we draw closer to God and God draws closer to us and we become "rich toward God."
The psalmist was expressing the same message. He wrote about people who worship idols. He has two messages. He said that idols of silver and gold cannot see and cannot hear. He is also saying that people who worship silver and gold become like those idols themselves. They become people who cannot see God and who cannot hear God as God moves in their lives and in their world.
In another one of Paul's letters, his letter to Timothy, he writes about how our life changes as we give and grow closer to God. We come alive he says, with real life.
As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.
"…the life that really is life" is life with God now and life that has the growing confidence of life with God forever. As we do God's work we draw closer to God and God draws closer to us.
Paul's belief in the necessity of giving and in the value of giving comes up again and again in his letters. It was woven deeply into this Christian faith. Here is one other testimony from him to us as we face our big and bright challenge.
Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow….if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit. So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up. So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.
This is not rocket science. God gives so we can live and give. It is then up to us to give and to give generously. Make a commitment, an intentional commitment. Sign a pledge.
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