Exodus 35: 4-29, 36:2-7; 2 Corinthians 9: 1-15
Steve Lindsley
March 24, 2013
Listen to Sermon
Perhaps you’ve been lucky enough in your life to know someone like Oseola McCarty. Mrs. McCarty was a Mississippi washerwoman, born in the early 1900’s. She had to drop out of school in 6th grade to help take care of the family. Oseola began doing laundry and ironing people’s clothes for money – anywhere between $2 and $10 a bundle. She would always put the money in a savings account at the First Mississippi National Bank and never took anything out.
After almost 75 years of washing people’s clothes, the balance in her account stood at a whopping $150,000 – which at the age of 87, she promptly gave in its entirety to the University of Southern Mississippi for scholarships for needy students. When she was asked why she gave money to a school she had no ties to, Oseola responded that she wanted others to have an opportunity she never had herself. And when she was asked why she didn’t spend some of the money on herself, her answer was always the same: as far as she was concerned, she did. (Guideposts, Sept. 1995:5, pgs. 88-89. Also http://www.usm.edu/pr/oola1.htm, visited on 9.27.2004)
Or maybe you’ve heard stories like the one Bishop McCabe used to tell. At the time, the bishop was leading a rather large congregation in the throes of a huge capital campaign – the goal of which was to raise a million dollars for a huge missions initiative. All the plans had been made and carried out: the information had been sent, the sermons preached, and now it was time to wait for the response.
Each day Bishop McCabe received dozens of letters, some from disgruntled members who scoffed at the lofty, unattainable goal. One day, he came upon a letter from a 7-year old boy in his church. As he opened it, out rolled a badly battered nickel. The letter, scribbled in handwriting only a child could appreciate, read: “Dear Bishop McCabe, I am so glad you are going to get a million dollars for missions. I’m going to help you get it, too! Here’s a nickel! It's all I've got now, but when you need any more, call me!'(http://www.homileticsonline.com/subscriber/illustration_search.asp?keywords= stewardship&imageField2.x=0&imageField2.y=0, visited on 9.27.2004)
Or maybe you’ve heard stories like that guy we hear about on this Palm Sunday. We don’t know his name, because we’re not told one, but let’s just call him Jonathan. Scripture tells us that some strange men came to Jonathan on the streets of Jerusalem. We need to borrow your donkey, they said. And when he asked them what for, the only reason they gave was that “The Lord needs it.” And so Jonathan let the strange men take his donkey, like you and I would let a stranger take our only family car. He had no idea that the next time he saw his donkey, it would have Jesus on its back; the crowd surrounding him singing praises and laying palm branches at its feet, just like our children laid their palm branches before the cross today.
So what is it about people like Oseola McCarty and the 7-year old nickel boy and “Jonathan?” What is it about people who give, and give for all the right reasons – not for notoriety or to earn “brownie points?” What kind of people give of their time and talents and treasure in such selfless and amazing ways?
Now if it sounds like I’m prepping you for a Stewardship/Discipleship sermon, I sort of am! Sort of.
Today is the final day of our Spring Discipleship, where Tom McCluskey and Hampton Hatcher, co-moderators of our Discipleship Ministry Team, have posed the question to you: What Can I Do? What can I do for this church and its mission of helping build God’s kingdom on earth? Today is also the fifth and final chapter of the book we’ve been studying this Lent, Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations. We’ve talked about radical hospitality and worshipping passionately and being intentional in our faith development and taking risks in mission and in service.
And today, we come to EXTRAVAGANT GENEROSITY. Being generous with our time and our talent and our treasure. And not just token generosity. Extravagant generosity! You know what that word “extravagant” means? It can mean two things, according to Merriam Webster’s. It can mean, “lacking restraint in spending money or using resources.” Which can be a good thing, but can also be a bad thing, too.
I’m personally more drawn to the second definition: “exceeding what is reasonable or appropriate; or absurd.” How’s that for a stewardship slogan: Absurd Generosity! Don’t laugh – because that’s not too far removed from what the apostle Paul lays before the Corinthian church in our scripture today. If it sounds like Paul was also giving a Stewardship/Discipleship sermon, it’s because he was!
Each of you must give as you have made up your mind,
not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.
And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance,
so that by always having enough of everything
you may share abundantly in every good work.
Keep in mind that Paul is writing to a congregation that is not too far removed from ours. People of all different means, coming together as one body of Christ to join in one mission. And that’s why the beauty of Paul’s words to the Corinthian church – and to us – is that it paints a much larger scope of responsibility than the traditional understanding of church giving. Extravagant, absurd generosity, Paul seems to say, cannot be reduced to a simple math equation. Rather, our giving should be a response to the wonderful things Christ has done in our lives – not as some kind of repayment, but as a joy-filled reaction. We don’t really have to think all that hard about it. We just do it.
I wonder if that’s what’s behind those extravagant generous folks I mentioned earlier. I wonder if that’s what led Mrs. McCarty to donate her entire life savings to a single school, or a little boy to give a simple nickel out of his piggy bank toward a million dollar campaign, or that unnamed guy on this day long ago to say to those strangers, “Sure, you can have my donkey.”
I wonder if that’s what happened here, in this church, on December 24, when you all gave over $1200 for our new Saturday Sandwich ministry in a single offering. I wonder if that’s what happened right after that service, when I was accosted by half a dozen folks who wanted to help Dennis – a man none of you knew – to get home to Texas to his family. I wonder if that’s what is happening with our “Raise The Roof” campaign, where all signs indicate that we will, in fact, meet and possibly exceed our $100,000 goal? I wonder if that’s what happens every time a Friends Feeding Friends list fills up the Sunday it’s posted, or when one of our elderly gets a phone call or visit from a member of this church every day of the week, or when good church folk show up on your doorstep after your knee surgery with chicken pies and lasagnas?
Is that what Extravagant Generosity looks like? Is it like what happened with the Israelites in our other scripture today? I mean, it’s pretty amazing if you think about it, right? Pretty absurd. And the thing is, there was no strategic plan, no capital campaign. Just Moses saying to the people: Look, do this for me, would you? Gather an offering together for God. We’ll take whatever: gold, silver, bronze, fine linen, goats’ hair (yes, goats’ hair), acacia wood, lamp oil, spices and incense. We’ll even take your skills, because it’s not all about money and possessions. It’s about your time and talent, too. We need to build a tabernacle, a church, to worship God during our journey into the Wilderness. We need you to be generous and to give extravagantly!
And scripture says everyone left the presence of Moses; and when they came back, they brought all kinds of things, whatever they had, whatever was needed. Women and men, young and old – all of them brought something to the Lord. So much of it, in fact, so much of it that Moses actually had to put the skids on it. Did you hear me? Moses had to tell the people to stop giving their money, stop giving their gifts, stop giving their time, because it was too much, because it was absurd. Stop it, he told them. Cut it out! It’s too much. Too much!
Can you imagine a Sunday morning in this church, around the end of the year, when someone has to come up here and give “that talk;” and so after the announcements are done I say something like, “And now, I’d like to call Mike Beal up for a special announcement:”
Good morning. Friends, I come before you this morning to share some difficult news. And I know this kind of talk rubs some people the wrong way, but it needs to be said. My friends, your church needs you to stop giving so much! Alright? It’s too much! If we had line items in our budget that we were going over on; if we had bank accounts that were close to bottoming out, we might need more funds. But we don’t, we’re nowhere near that; which is why Discipleship is respectfully requesting that you consider a percentage decrease in your pledged giving for next year. If you could do that, that’d be great.
And I hate to be the bearer of more bad news, but we also need you to stop giving so freely of your time and your talents. The sign-up lists are already full, and we don’t know who put the waiting lists up there – it wasn’t us. I mean, your enthusiasm for being SPARK teachers for our children is admirable, but honestly, a 6-to-1 teacher-to-child ratio is a little overkill, don’t you think? And it doesn’t matter how many times you ask them, or in what ways you try to cozy to a member of the Mills family, there simply aren’t any more spots for the summer Mexico mission trip. I’m just shooting straight with you all; I don’t like telling you this anymore than you like hearing it. The hard truth is that your extravagant generosity is…well, frankly, it’s absurd! So, on behalf of the session, we are asking you – begging you – please, cut it out! Thank you very much.
I’m not going to lie, y’all, I’d love to hear that announcement made someday! Wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you?
What is it?? What is the magical potion, the silver bullet that can turn churches into Exodus chapter 35 and 36 kind of churches? How can we catch, like lightning in a bottle, those beautiful instances where First Presbyterian Church has given with extravagant generosity, so we can open that bottle and replicate it when we’re trying to meet an operating budget, or trying to find folks to instill the story of our faith in our children?
I’ll tell you how. In a few minutes, you’re going to be given an opportunity to be like one of those Israelites and to bring your gifts to Moses and to God. Today is Dedication Sunday for Spring Discipleship, where we focus on giving our time and our talents to God in service to the church. You’ll notice an insert in your bulletin; it’s been in there for a few weeks already. And hopefully you’ve notice that, unlike in years past, there’s not an exhaustive list of every single role and responsibility for you to check as you see fit. That’s because Tom and Hampton wanted you to focus not on what the church thinks we need, but what you think the church needs. Sure, there are the standard tasks of ministry, as our sign-up boards out there remind us; and we need your time and talents there for sure. But we also need you to prayerfully think on your own what you have to give to God’s church, and what you feel called to do for God’s church. So at the end of the sermon, Ellen will play some soft organ music and you’ll be invited to fill yours out – children, youth and adults. And then, like our children who laid their palm branches at the foot of the cross this morning, you can lay your commitment in this basket during the offering, after the offering plate has made its way down your pew. This, my friends, is time for you to think outside the box, and to dream big, and to be a people who embrace extravagant generosity. Just do it!
Because I’ll tell you this – dear old Osceola McCarty didn’t wait until someone else gave first – she just did it. That nickel-kid didn’t wait until the giving “felt right” – he just did it. Jonathon, or whatever his name was, didn’t wait to see if a better use of his donkey came along – he just did it. Those Israelites didn’t think about whether Moses and their religious leaders had “earned” their giving – they just did it.
So at the risk of sounding like a Nike commercial, maybe all we need to do to be extravagant givers is to JUST DO IT. Don’t wait for God’s extravagant generosity to come to you – just do it! Don’t wait for the giving to “feel right” – just do it! Don’t wait to see if something better comes along – just do it! Because the extravagant generosity of our God that we long for so much, it’s already in us. It’s in this church. And it’s absurd! May we never be afraid, as the body of Christ, to be absurd! In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, thanks be to God. AMEN.
Recent Comments