"Excelling in Generous Giving: The soul needs to create and give"
October 28, 2012
Rev. Kathryn Ransdell, writer,
with Lucy Baerg, Kendra Foster-Mitchell, Tim Scorer, speakers
Kendra: There's some Sundays in the Christian year when a minister would not mind having laryngitis.
Tim: Just as there's some Sundays in the Christian year when a congregation would not mind if their minister had laryngitis.
Kendra: For Kathryn, having laryngitis on this particular Sunday of Stewardship is as frustrating as if she could not speak on All Saints, Christmas Eve, Good Friday, or Easter Sunday morning. All of these are significant times when faith intersects the practical living of our days. Today's text from Corinthians is one of Kathryn's favorites in terms of how it allows us to look into the lives of early Christians.
Tim: Consider Macedonia. A good guesstimate on the distance between Macedonia and Corinth is give or take 550 km. It's a good 660 km between Vancouver and Nelson, just so we can locate ourselves. One commentator describes Macedonia as a prosperous area, famous for timber and precious metals. It was located on the plains of the gulf of Thessalonica and covered the great river valleys into the Balkan mountains.
Kendra: Paul was somewhere between Macedonia and Greece when Titus rejoins him, reporting to him of his experiences in the Corinthian churches. This was the nature of Paul's letters. He would start a house church, continue on his travels, then when hearing concerns after his apostles visited the churches, Paul wrote a personal letter to them. Paul's letters most often were a response to a question or conflict within the house churches. A thorough reading of the letters helps us to reconstruct the issue facing the house church that prompted the letter. Paul was part-pastor and part-coach in his letters. Paul's letters included prayers of thanksgiving, encouragement and doctrinal teaching. In today's letter, Paul is following-up with the Corinthian churches on his teaching of giving to the church.
Tim: In Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, he gives directions on how to give according to what he taught the churches in Galatia: "Now concerning the collection for the saints: you should follow the directions I gave to the churches of Galatia. On the first day of every week, each of you is to put aside and save whatever extra you earn, so that collections need not be taken when I come. And when I arrive, I will send any whom you approve with letters to take your gift to Jerusalem. If it seems advisable that I should go also, they will accompany me."
Kendra: At this point, we need to remember the economic situation of the earliest Christians. In the earliest of days, there were wealthy people in the churches, but the churches were still under extreme persecution by the Roman Empire. There were also a great deal of poor people in the churches, including widows and children who lost husbands and fathers to the persecution. It's important to remember that this was a time before the middle class, before RSPs and savings accounts. Without generalizing or romanticizing, these are people who live hand to mouth in a bartering economy. Very similar to the communities I work with in Ecuador (perhaps you want to make your own comparison here, Kendra.)
Tim: Paul keeps it simple: Put whatever extra you earn aside. But we have to remember that the money was going directly back into the Christian community. Paul did not have the overhead of budgets and staff and printing and communications. Whatever money was collected was redistributed to those according to need.
Kendra: Somewhere between that instruction and this letter, something happened among the Corinthian house churches that Paul needed to remind them on the practice of giving. He tells them of the Macedonian people, who even while being persecutived, their joy + their poverty somehow created an overflow of generosity.
Tim: If that's not enough of an example, then Paul tells them to consider the sacrifice Jesus made for them. We might call this a guilt-trip. Paul calls it examples on how to be followers of The Way. And if followers of The Way are to excel in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in eagerness and in love, they are also to excel in giving. Giving is part of The Way. At the very heart of all of this, is that each one of us makes a choice to fully give ourselves to faith, God, and this church. When we fully give of ourselves in a friendship, marriage, relationship or vocation, we give not expecting a return. We give because that is the nature of relationship...to outdo one another in love.
Kendra: Kathryn especially wants you to take note of verse 10. Paul gives his opinion, the Greek word is pronounced "no-may." His opinion is this: It takes more than just beginning--you also need the desire to keep going. Your readiness to desire something will get you started, but you have to keep desiring so that your abilities allows you to complete what you started.
Tim: This is good advice for any issue in life. Here Paul applies it to giving. For those in the early churches who heard the needs of the widows and orphans and the house churches and who were motivated to give, beginning is the first step, but then, you need desire and ability to bring something to completion. There's something to having a practice in life of doing what you say, letting your yes be yes and your no be no.
Kendra: Specific to giving, Kathryn wants you to take note of verse 12. If the eagerness to give is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has and not according to what one does not have. We must take this verse and root it deeply in our 21st century selves, who so often think we have nothing to give. Everyone has something to give. And, every soul needs to give. So don't get caught up in an internal self-critic about what you are able--or not able--to give to the church.
Tim: Remember, Paul said that giving is one way we excel in being followers of The Way. Giving is a spiritual practice, just like praying, fasting, attending worship, visiting the sick or caring for the poor. We are called to give our money and our time, and right now, Kathryn wants Lucy Baerg to share her story of how the Spirit moved in a coffee moment with Kathryn in early September.
Kendra: Returning to our text, the remaining verses of this passage deal with the very real nature of what giving meant in the early Christian church. When they gave, it directly helped the situation of another Christian who had nothing. Paul's house churches were an experiment in a redistribution of resources so that there was a fair balance between abundance and need. So that one person did not have too much or another person have too little. This is the kind of radical economic practice that is required in places of extreme poverty. Either share or go hungry.
Tim: 2,000 years later, when we give, we are giving to a local church that keeps a budget to keep a building properly maintained, a staff employed, programs running, missions operating. But the heart of giving remains the same. Kathryn's mantra is this: The soul needs to give. She holds this mantra because we are so heavily weighted down in a consumerist culture. Our worldview is shaped to believe our telos for being is to consume. We make a radical statement to culture when we deny consumerism and instead live fully as people who produce...produce, create, give...when we dig down deep within ourselves and ask what we can do for someone else rather than what I need to do for myself.
Kendra: Kathryn's example of this week...when she was on day 4 of the flu, she began to have a pity party. God stopped her cold about 2 hours into the pity party with this command (she put it in quotes not because she was hearing voices from her fever, but it was a clear message from God: "Pray for those who are chronically ill."
Tim: Kathryn wants you to know that she believes the people gathered as the congregation of St. Andrew's-Wesley at this point in history have been brought together for a reason. What Christianity shall be in a post-Christendom world has not yet been revealed. And it is part of this congregations work to find the Third way--the new way--of being church in society.
Kendra: Kathryn also wants you to know that she knows how wise and able you are in accomplishing what you want. In the best possible way, the people in this congregation have a way of getting done what they want done.
Tim: So let's get done what God wants done. Some nudge, invitation, program or feeling brought each one of us to this church. Let's throw ourselves wide open to Spirit, hold nothing back, and wade into this thing called Christian community. In some ways, our "internal chatters" about the yearly Stewardship campaign reveals something about our willingness to hold nothing back in our relationships with one another in this church. What we say to ourselves when we are asked to give reveals something about the quality and depth of our relationships with one another.
Kendra: Kathryn wanted to end her sermon with the story she included in Gleanings two weeks ago, the one about the power of giving, the power of 57 cents and the impact that can be made when a church has a kingdom-of-God vision.
Tim: A first-hand account of it is in a sermon delivered December 1, 1912 by Russell H. Conwell, pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Philadelphia. Rev. Conwell said the little girl's name was Hattie May Wiatt. She lived near a church where the Sunday School was very crowded and he told her that one day they would have buildings big enough to allow everyone to attend who wanted to.
Later, Hattie May Wiatt became sick and died. Rev. Conwell was asked to do the funeral and the girl's mother told him that Hattie May had been saving money to help build a bigger church and gave him the little purse in which she had saved 57 cents.
Kendra: Rev. Conwell had the 57 cents turned into 57 pennies, told the congregation the story of little Hattie May and sold the pennies for a return of about $250. In addition, 54 of the original 57 pennies were returned to Rev. Conwell and he later put them up on display. This was in 1886 when 57 cents was no small savings account for a little girl from a poor family.
Tim: Some of the members of the church formed what they called the Wiatt Mite Society which was dedicated to making Hattie May's 57 cents grow as much as possible and to buy the property for the Primary Department of the Sunday school. A house nearby was purchased with the $250 that Hattie May's 57 cents had produced and the rest is history.
Kendra: The first classes of Temple College, later Temple University, were held in that house. It was later sold to allow Temple College to move and the growth of Temple, along with the founding of the Good Samaritan Hospital (Now the Temple University Hospital) have been powerful testimonies to Hattie May Wiatt's dream.
Tim: Kathryn ends her sermon by saying, "Thank you" to the person who left the 57 pennies on her desk while she was in Rome, a reminder to her to keep God's vision ever before us, that united in the Spirit and empowered by our diversity, this congregation can keep its light shining as a beacon for hope, grace, acceptance and love. We are called to be producers, creators, givers.
Kendra: May we cast off that which has divided us and may we embrace the call to be radical followers of The Way, excelling in faith, speech, knowledge, eagerness, love and giving. Thanks be to God. And may all God's people say, "Amen."
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