2 Corinthians 8:1-7
September 9, 2012
We want you to know, brothers and
sisters, about the grace of God that has been granted to the churches of
Macedonia; for during a severe ordeal of affliction, their abundant joy and
their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part.
For, as I can testify, they voluntarily gave according to their means, and even
beyond their means, begging us earnestly for the privilege of sharing in this
ministry to the saints—and this, not merely as we expected; they gave
themselves first to the Lord and, by the will of God, to us, so that we might
urge Titus that, as he had already made a beginning, so he should also complete
this generous undertaking among you.
Now as you excel in everything—in
faith, in speech, in knowledge, in utmost eagerness, and in our love for you—so
we want you to excel also in this generous undertaking.
I’ve had the opportunity to learn a lot of odd lessons as
a pastor, some of which go against common wisdom. I’ve learned that there are
some things in which what most people think makes sense doesn’t make sense. And
what doesn’t make sense often does. For
example, I’ve learned that how long a
wedding is has nothing to do with its length.
What? Of course it has
something to do with its length? Nope, it doesn’t. Here’s what I mean.
Imagine that you are at a wedding ceremony, and the
pastor comes out and begins to talk. In the most dull, flat, unemotional voice
possible he speak at a pace much like the pace of snow melting on a cold day.
Get into your imagination someone like the teacher in the film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, or the most
boring professor you ever had. The pastor says, “Good morning,… welcome to the
blessed nuptials of our bride and groom. I am Reverend Boring, and I am pleased
to welcome you here today. Let us pray: ‘Almighty, omniscient God. Be with us
in your blessed providence. Blissfully bestow upon us your sanctifying presence
so that we can be lifted into your prevenient grace…’” You get the idea. Now
imagine that the whole wedding is like that. He talks in lofty language at a
snail’s pace, making it tedious, impersonal, and just plain boring. But it only
lasts fifteen minutes. You would think that was the longest wedding you had
ever attended.
Now, imagine another wedding that lasts an
hour-and-a-half, but Elton John plays the piano as Aretha Franklin sings songs.
The wedding sermon is delivered by the greatest preacher you’ve ever heard, and
his interaction with the bride and groom is intimate, down-to-earth, and funny.
Kevin Costner or Meryl Streep reads the scripture and a poem. Oh, and the
wedding is in the National Cathedral or somewhere like that. My guess is that
you would be so taken with the wedding that the time would pass like that. You see, how long a wedding is has nothing to
do with its length.
Another thing I’ve learned is that as a pastor, the things that get us criticized the most are
often what earn us the most praise. The fact is that one of the most
difficult aspects of ministry for any pastor is that we do get criticized, both
personally and behind our backs. People criticize us for a lot of things—mostly
for not being what they want us to be, doing what they want us to do, or saying
what they want us to say. We get emails, phone calls, and personal visits from
people who are disappointed in us. But on occasion we also get that dreaded
anonymous letter blasting us for this or that. Yet the funny thing is that
often the very things we get anonymous letters for are the things that we also
get praised the most for, whether it’s for a sermon, a program, or an
intervention. I had a great example of that ten years ago. As I was walking out
of the sanctuary one Sunday morning, I overheard a member say to two others,
“THAT was the worst sermon I’ve ever heard.” Later that morning another member
came up to me and said, “I was in Fellowship Hall, and there were about 6 or 7
people at a table, and they all were saying how that was the best sermon they’d
ever heard.”
I’ve also learned another important lesson: just as an accumulation of plaque kills your
teeth, an accumulation of plaques kill your church. Too much plaque in your
teeth gives you gingivitis, which you then have to clean out. Too many plaques
in a church give people cringe-ivitis whenever
a plaque-bearing item is moved or gotten rid of. People wince and say, “You
can’t move that or change that. It was given by my great-great grandmother.” It’s
because of this that we’ve developed a “no more plaques” policy in the church.
Churches with too many plaques have a hard time adapting and growing.
Final lesson I’ve learned: stewardship sermons reduce giving in a church. I learned a long
time ago not to give stewardship sermons during the fall stewardship season because
people tune them out. People don’t want to hear about giving money, whether
it’s to a church or anything else. If we listen to public radio or watch public
television, we turn the station or channel during pledge drives. Often churches
that struggle financially talk more about the need for people to give more. The
problem is that the more they do this, the more people get irritated and start
to withhold their giving, or leave the church.
What makes this final little factoid so odd is that
“generosity” is considered to be so central to spiritual growth. We don’t like
to hear about giving, but the Bible is very clear that you cannot grow
spiritually or close to God if you are also not generous.
We’ve been doing this sermon series on the fruits of the
spirit since early August. Paul basically says that if we grow in the Spirit,
and are really open to God in all of life, these are fruits that will naturally
grow in our lives. So, in this series we’ve covered the fruits love, joy,
peace, patience, and kindness. Could you imagine tuning these other fruits out
in the same way as we do the topic of generosity? For example, Rev. Frierson
preached about kindness last week. Can
you imagine listening to her sermon last week and thinking to yourself, “Awwww man, they’re talking about kindness,…
I can’t stand it when they talk about kindness. If they keep this up I’m
leaving this church!” Why is the fruit of generosity so hard to hear about?
By the way, I don’t bring up our not wanting to hear
about money in church as a criticism of anyone in Calvin Presbyterian Church,
but to point out human nature. One of the reasons I’ve been at this church for
seventeen years has to do with your generosity. This is an incredibly generous
congregation. As a result, I haven’t had to give a stewardship sermon for 15
years or so. And this sermon isn’t one, since we are months away from any kind
of fall stewardship campaign. I preach on this topic this morning because it’s
the fruit of the spirit that came up this morning.
Many people want to grow spiritually and grow closer to
God, and they recognize the power of love, prayer, peace, worship, and faith to
get us there. But how often do people recognize the importance of giving,
whether it is giving to church, charity, or someone in need? We are offering a
class this fall from the Dave Ramsey program, Financial Peace University.
Ramsey, who was a financial mess years ago, developed this program to help
himself climb out of financial turmoil. Along the way he read the Bible and
developed a fairly simple biblical formula. Give 10% back to God, put 10% into
savings, and use the remaining 80% for your life. Ramsey says that financial
peace begins with generosity with God.
Paul makes generosity one of the central fruits, and he
writes about the need for generosity constantly in his letters. Our passage for
today is about generosity. He is praising the Corinthians and all of the other
churches in Greece (what was then the Roman Province of Macedonia). Paul
praised them for giving so generously to a mission in Jerusalem for widows. Back
in those days, women were considered to be somewhere between human and chattel.
If their husband died, it would be up to the husband’s family to take care of
them. If the family decided not to the women would often be left to beg on the
street or become prostitutes. The early Christian church created a mission to
help them, house them, and love them. Paul praised the Corinthians for being so
generous to help people they would never see or know.
For Paul, generosity is a tangible, empirical
measure of our spiritual growth. He recognized that if we say we are spiritual,
but aren’t also exceedingly generous, our spirituality is hollow. Bob Leverenz
understood the connection between spirituality and generosity. Back in the
middle 1980s, the Allen-Edmonds Shoe Company had a catastrophe. Their factory
burned to the ground, causing them to lose everything. They lost 50,000 pairs
of shoes, sales records, machinery, files, everything. It threatened to destroy
their whole business, leaving hundreds unemployed. In the midst of their
struggle to figure out what to do, Bob Leverenz, president and chairman of the
Leverenz Shoe Company in Wisconsin, threw them a life preserver. He called the
president of Allen-Edmonds and offered him the use of their New Holstein
factory until they could rebuild their factory.
His plan was that his company would work four ten-hour
days from Monday through Thursday, letting Allen-Edmonds use the plant from
Friday through Sunday. This radical plan captured the attention of the media
throughout the country. Reporters from all over the country, including Dan
Rather, interviewed Leverenz. The one question they asked was “Shouldn’t you be
dancing with glee over the demise of a major competitor, rather than extending
a helping hand?” Bob Leverenz would have nothing to do with that kind of
thinking because his way of thinking had changed deeply a decade earlier.
Back in the early 1970s, Bob Leverenz had gone to a
conference in Miami, Florida, where he heard Leighton Ford, a lieutenant of
Billy Graham, speak. Ford had challenged the business leaders to renew their
commitment to Christ in the workplace, seeking what God wanted, not what people
or convention wanted. Leverenz came back from that conference determined to commit
himself to serving Christ in all of life. In the process, he read Romans
3:27-28, which says that we can do nothing to merit salvation, but that
salvation has already been given to us as a gift. Reading this changed his
life. He realized that he had been going about it all wrong. He had been trying
to get into heaven by doing good things like going to church each Sunday,
teaching Sunday school, and raising money for charity. They were rooted in
self-preservation, not in Christ. He was trying to merit his own salvation. He
realized that salvation was a gift given in love by Christ, and he needed to
live his life sharing that gift of God’s love with others. This change in his understanding
of what it means to be a Christian changed the way he managed his company.
You can see why reaching out to the Allen-Edmonds Shoe company
was not a hard decision. It was a decision that emerged out of prayer, and the
result was that both the Leverenz and the Allen-Edmond companies emerged as
healthier companies. It is amazing what can happen when we root our thinking in
God’s kingdom instead of the world’s (story adapted from “The Vote Was
Unanimous,” found in Chicken Soup for the
Christian Soul).
Giving is about money, but it’s about so much more. It’s
about adopting a generous spirit. How generous we are is a measure of how close
we are to God. If we horde and hold things close, we are very far away. But if
we are willing to give, especially when it cost, we are very, very close
Amen.
