Prop. 22 B, Oct. 7, 2012 - Stewardship
The Church of the Epiphany – Glenburn
The Rev. Craig C. Sweeney
Soli Deo Gloria
We heard the first of 4 lessons from the Book of
Job this morning – the only book in the Bible that deals
with the theological conundrum of theodicy – that is, how
can a just and merciful God permit evil things to happen.
Ultimately, the answer given in Job isn’t very satisfying,
but we’ll deal with that in a few weeks.
The first thing to remember is that the ‘satan’ is not
the devil. The modern version of the devil, or Satan, is
first promulgated by Dante and the Inferno, in the 14th
century. To ancient Jews, the word ‘satan’ meant
‘adversary.’ In the king’s court, there would be a satan,
who acted like a prosecuting attorney.
So this morning the satan is moseying around God’s
court and God asks him what he’s been up to and then
asks him if he has noticed God’s servant Job – the most
righteous and God-fearing man of all. The satan retorts
that Job is righteous and God-fearing because God has
blessed him so much: it’s easy to be righteous when you
are rich and healthy. The satan bets God that if Job
falls on hard times things will be different.
So God gives the satan permission to give Job a hard
time, but to spare his life. The satan sends Job a plague
of boils which make his life miserable. He scratches
endlessly and sits down in ashes. His wife, obviously an
impatient woman, advises Job to curse God and die. But
1
Job replies that he has received good from God and so it
is only right that he receive the bad things, too. Job
trusts that the God he loves will make things right. Job
trusts God, even in the face of adversity. Job trusts
God to care for him. We, too, should trust in God to care
for us.
Now jump to the Gospel. The Pharisees ask Jesus
about getting a divorce. The OT testament is quite clear
on this – all a man has to do is give his wife a certificate
and he can divorce the woman for no reason. This was
considered charitable – for it meant the woman could
remarry rather than be abandoned to poverty.
But the Pharisees are trying to get Jesus to take a
position on what was at that time a controversial issue.
They want to trap Jesus. And Jesus, in typical rabbinical
style returns with a question of his own: what did Moses
tell you? In other words, what does Torah say, which is
what I just mentioned about the certificate.
When they answer with that, Jesus cites Genesis:
God made them male and female, therefore in marriage a
man cleaves to the woman and they become one flesh.
Jesus says that the Torah permits divorce because of
the hardness of human hearts and then goes on to
condemn remarriage after divorce as adultery.
Now we all know divorced people who have remarried
and we don’t think of them as adulterers. I am the
product of a divorce and though my father remarried, I
never thought of him as an adulterer. Thankfully over
the centuries the church, except the Romans, has come
2
to understand that if a marriage relationship has
fundamentally collapsed, it is merciful and gracious to set
that marriage aside. The Church usually takes mercy as
more important then rules, grace as morally superior to
enforcement. Grace – undeserved love and mercy – is the
principle of what Jesus teaches us. I think he is so tough
on divorce in this Gospel because it makes the woman
fundamentally weak and at risk. This is grace indeed,
especially in those days when women were so powerless.
Grace and trust.
Then finally, we have Jesus drawing the little
children to him to hold and bless them. Again, the
children were economically useless in those days and a
nuisance until they could help with the work. But Jesus,
God in human flesh, tells us that if we don’t receive the
kingdom of God the way a child does, we won’t ever get in.
And how do children receive our lessons about God? In
absolute faith, total acceptance, with complete trust.
Children trust their parents and children trust God.
Trust and grace and trust.
I have stressed grace and trust this morning
because next Sunday is Consecration Sunday and we will
have a guest preacher. Thus this is my annual chance to
speak to you about money. More accurately, it is my
chance to speak to you about giving money away. Giving
money away requires gratitude for God’s grace, and it
requires trust in God’s providence for us.
There are really two ways of looking at the world
and at our lives. One is with a theology of abundance and
3
the other is with a theology of scarcity. If we look at all
of God’s creation, it would seem that a belief in
abundance is obvious. Yet the vast majority of us, and
certainly every vestry I’ve ever served with in the last
25 years live in the certainty of scarcity.
That is because we are talking about money, of
course, and very few of us believe that we have enough
money. And, in fact, very few churches have enough
money to fund the budget that they want. I’m not talking
about the Baptists and others who strictly enforce the
tithe. If you want to know how they can afford such
large buildings, support so much mission work, send their
kids on fantastic trips, the answer is simple: their
members tithe.
I would guess that on average, we here at Epiphany
give around 3% of our income to the church – that’s about
the national average. Think what we could do if we
tripled that giving! That would increase our pledges from
about $170 k to over $500 k! What holds us back?
Trust, I think. We are afraid that if we increase
our giving to the church, we won’t have enough left over
for all that we think we need. We simply don’t trust God,
don’t believe that God will – in fact – somehow teach us to
be content with what we have, that God won’t somehow
help us find a way to give more.
The amazing thing is that every person I’ve known
who tithes tells the same story: it’s easy. Some just
made the dive and started giving 10% and were astounded
to find that they had plenty left over to live on. Most,
4
though, simple increased their giving by 1% each year till
they reached 10%. They will tell you that they really
didn’t notice because the incremental change in dollars
from one year to the next was so small. But they will
never tell you that they just couldn’t do it.
I remember a bank president back in Kansas who
came to me one year and told me to stop talking about
tithing – no one could possibly do it and I was turning
people off. I saw him years later and he told me that he
had decided to try and found out that he felt so good
about it that he was giving more then 10%.
Now he was a wealthy man and I know many in this
room are on fixed incomes and God knows that, too. But
all the rest of us can take an incremental step up each
year – Robin and I have. It truly is hardly noticeable.
We now give at over 7% and I hope to increase that to
8% this year – that’s well over $100/week for us.
I have found that when I am worried and
frightened, if I just decide to trust God to handle things,
they always work out. I believe in a God of abundance,
not a God of scarcity. I’ve been broke, but I’ve never
gone hungry. I trust God, he’s never let me down. Do
you? Do you trust God?
Another favorite saying of mine is that we need to
live in ‘an attitude of gratitude.’ The core of my faith is
about gratitude – gratitude for God’s incredible grace.
Grace is God’s unconditional love even for those of us who
least deserve it. I’ve been through hard times, but
things have always worked out and I see the hand of God
5
in that. I see in that that God loves me – me! And if God
loves me, you can be certain that God loves you. Grace.
And in point of fact, the money we give to the
Church is truly an offering to God. We give back to God
because ‘all that we are and all that we have are gifts
from God to begin with.’ Every skill, every brain cell,
every thing about us that we use to produce the income
we need to live is a gift from God. How can we not give
back to God in thanksgiving for those gifts? God doesn’t
need the money, but God’s work in the world is done
mostly through the church so a gift to the church is truly
a gift to God.
And God in Torah demands that we give offerings, a
tithe. We are to give 10% of our time, talent and (not
‘or’) treasure back to God, for time, talent, and treasure
are all gifts from God. And God demands that we give
for the simple reason that giving feels good. We all enjoy
giving gifts to those we love, seeing their loving reaction.
God is a giver and we are made in God’s image: we are
designed to give. And if we love God we will want to give
back to him, it’s our way of saying ‘thank you, Lord.’
God is a God of abundance, not scarcity. God will
provide. Last year, and unexpected gift covered our
budgeted deficit. This year and unexpected gift has
covered almost half of our deficit. But in simple
numbers, we wouldn’t have a deficit if people simply
increased their giving by 10%. I intend to do this, not
our of duty, but out of love and gratitude for all that God
has done for me and my family. How about you? Amen.
6