We have spent these last few weeks focusing about the kind of people we are. We are a covenant people who have by our presence here agreed to be church together. We are a worshiping people, who honor and give thanks to the living God. Today we consider what it means for us to be a giving people.

So will this be a stewardship sermon, and isn’t that code for open your checkbook and give the church more money? Yes it will, yes sometimes it is, but today, I want us to think about stewardship and giving in terms of giving our lives and not just our money. It is about giving ourselves to the church of Jesus Christ prayerfully and often sacrificially, and not just to a budget. Let me say out loud what most of us already know.

“Budgets can enable congregational leaders to be faithful in their stewardship of the church’s resources. What budgets cannot do, however, is motivate the majority of people to give. People do not give to budgets. They give less from the head than from the heart. People give to other people, to needs, to causes, to things that make them feel good and happy…people realize that there are costs to maintain the building, pay the insurance and utilities, and to support the pastor and others. They give to the mission and ministry of the church. If they are going to give anything more, the church needs to answer the basic question: ‘Give me one good reason why I should’” (Revolutionizing Stewardship in the 21^st Century. Dan R. Dick. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998, p.93).

The one good reason is because we are called to practice prayerful sacrifice. By prayerful sacrifice I mean that we seek God’s counsel as we discern what to do and how to give, and we understand that we live sacrificially. Sacrificial living is about letting go of something, giving away our time, our talents, our treasure in order to gain something more, a fuller worship service that would not be the same if we were not here, the gift of organization or song or whatever our talent is so that our life together is enhanced, our treasure, our dollars so that we have the resources to do what we have been called to do.

Prayerful sacrifice is what we need today because it is hard to hear Malachi’s call to bring our tithes, ten percent of our income to God’s house, or any house without it. It is hard to hear that word from God as a word to us when we hear at the same time the money being drained from our wallets by gas prices that are higher than we have ever seen. We still hear the echoes of people crying for life-saving help from the highways and rooftops of the Gulf Coast, and as we count the cost of helping them rebuild their lives, their homes, and their businesses, we will hear the call to give to them, and we will. But I want to invite us to listen carefully to God and to rely on God’s holy Spirit to give us the desire and the will to share our lives with others who need the same sense of life and hope God has given us.

That is what Paul wanted the Corinthians to understand. He writes to them in order to encourage them to finish collecting an offering they began receiving the previous year. They are raising their funds to help support the church in Jerusalem, in the same way we help to support the Christian Church in Ohio and the Disciples Mission Fund that goes to our regional office now in Columbus, and to Indianapolis and all over the world. He tells them a story about another congregation that on first glance has nothing to give. There are three things for us to know about the Christians from Macedonia: they were poor in a time when, as is true now, financial resources equaled access and power. They were Christians when it was not always safe to proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord, and they belonged to a particular territory; these are the churches of Thessalonica, Philippi, and Beroea, but they were not free in their place, instead they lived under Roman occupation. The Macedonians were faithful people and they teach us four lessons about prayerful sacrifice.

First, they teach us that prayerful sacrifice can lead to crazy inspired math. Their ordeal of occupation plus their great joy in knowing Jesus Christ as savior and friend, and in being part of the Christian community plus their extreme poverty equaled a wealth of generosity.

For many of us, occupation plus joy plus poverty might well lead us to adopt a glass is half empty attitude that causes us to decide to guard closely what little we have because we do not believe we have enough to share. “So don’t expect too much of me, because I will be keeping what I have thank you. These are times of anxiety and scarcity, you know.”

But look at what the Macedonians did. They did the math occupation plus joy plus poverty and discovered not great scarcity, but great abundance, and that when they put what they had together, they had more than enough to share with the church beyond their region. So they insisted that they be allowed to contribute to the offering of the church in Jerusalem, just as people of limited means gather together to help people in need now. The Macedonians teach us that we do not always have to have a lot in order to share what we have with God’s people.

The second lesson comes as we understand our priorities. Prayerful sacrifice helps us stay focused, and that is not always easy. We are distracted by demands, real legitimate demands on our time – there is work and school, family, church and other organizations. There are demands on our talents – as people want us to give what we have to their program, their cause, their needs. And we know there are demands on our money. There are bills to pay, gasoline to buy, food to put on the table, clothes to put on our backs, there is a church that needs all that we can give and we want to give even as we know we have given all we can. What are we to do?

The Macedonians could make the offering in Jerusalem the priority because they made God a priority. Before they volunteered, before they shared their gifts, before they gave a dime or a dollar, before they did anything they first gave themselves to the Lord. They made a faith commitment and that faith commitment helped them to make and keep other commitments.

Our faith commitments help us to make and keep our commitments too. We are committed to hospitality, we do not just talk about diversity here, we are committed to living it, and we are committed to each other. Can we commit ourselves to prayerful sacrifice too?

The Macedonians were led to give of themselves because of their love of God. And they teach us the third lesson about prayerful sacrifice. When I think about prayerful sacrifice, I think the generosity of our congregation. I think about our ministry team leaders and our deacons and elders, our choir members and soloists, our liturgists and lectors, the ones who are paid and the ones who give freely in ways we do not even know. I think of all of you who support this church so much in all the ways you can because you love this church so much. You have my gratitude for all the ways you give, and if I have not thanked you personally, please know that I am nevertheless grateful for all the ways you give.

When we offer ourselves we imitate those who have gone before us, but we cannot look only to them. When we give of ourselves, we identify not only with the ones who preceded us, we identify with and imitate the One who gave himself for us. Paul says to the Corinthians, “look at the Macedonians”. But he points beyond them to Jesus who still shows us how to give.

“’You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich’ (v.9). Paul is not thinking of the actual poverty of Jesus’ earthly life; a poor wandering preacher with no place to lay his head. He is not contrasting the poverty of the cow shed of his birth with the magnificence of the palace where he might have been born. Rather Paul is contrasting heaven with earth. Before his life on earth Jesus was rich in every way. In human form, he lost it all” (Interpretation series. Second Corinthians. Ernest Best. Louisville: John Knox Press, 1987, p.77).

That is prayerful sacrifice.

As we learn from Jesus, we learn the fourth lesson which is vital to our sense of feeling honored and respected as we give. We are all expected to give, but as we practice prayerful sacrifice, we start where we are with what God has given us.

“A Christian steward serves God out of love and gratitude for these gifts, knowing it’s not how much we give, but what we do with what we have that is important” (Stewardship and You. Channing-BETE Co. p.3). Some sing, others make a joyful noise. Some can pray aloud, others pray silently. Some of us love to talk, others of us are more shy and offer ourselves more cautiously. Some of us can tithe, some of us can give more than a ten percent and others struggle to give one percent. It’s all alright, because the point is to do what you can, to grow as you share your gifts, and trust that God will be with you as you let yourself give of yourself and your resources as God leads you.

Does the church need your financial support? Absolutely. But we need you more. We need you here sharing what you can, bringing your gifts and receiving ours so that together we are the giving people God wants us to be.

There are three reasons God wants us to be a giving people.

One, children are watching us build and hold this church for them. Suzanne Webb, who was the interim Regional Minister here in Ohio, tells the story of the time her home church in Indianapolis, Northwood Christian Church, moved into their new building. The new building was across the street from the old one and she remembers that she and the other children in her kindergarten Sunday School class led the procession from the old building to the new one and that someone was carrying one of those wooden offering boxes that was in the shape of a church. Those children were the symbol of the next generation of church members and they had the privilege of leading into a new building the adults they had been watching.

Two, giving in whatever form we do it is an act of faith that what we give will be prayerfully received with grace and appreciation. And prayer and action go together. If you saw the National Day of Prayer service from the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul in Washington, you might have heard the Episcopal Bishop of Washington, John Bryson Crane, say that “prayer without action is mere poetry”. Prayer leads us to act in the name of God and our faithful acts of giving make sacred what we do in the church and in the name of Jesus Christ.

Three, we are here because the people who came to this church before we did gave of themselves to support it. Suzanne is now the pastor of Union Avenue Christian Church in St. Louis. Union Avenue is now a congregation with the resources in people and talents and time that it needs. But it was not always so. There were years in that congregation’s life when there was little money, little talent, little hope, and people who did not feel like giving their time to the church. But there were people there who were prayerful and who gave of themselves sacrificially. Suzanne says that when there was no hope, people kept the doors open. And because they did they are the congregation they are now.

I declare to you with all that I believe that we are people of hope, we pray here and work and plan here, there are folks here who give sacrificially here, and we are in fact the ones who are holding open our doors open for the children who are here and for whomever it is that will be the next generation of leadership and membership for us. As we keep these doors open, and I believe we have it in us to do so, let’s be prayerful, expecting God to be with us. Let’s sacrifice, holding so sacred what we have that we cannot help but give a portion back to God and God’s church.

When we do, God will open the windows of heaven; and the blessings pour out. That is when we will be able to do our own crazy math and discover that when we give ourselves to God in prayerful sacrifice, there will be an abundance of what we need and more, God will be sanctified, and we will be able to consecrate all of our gifts, all of our time, all of our talents, all of our treasure, and all of our lives to the glory of God.

Lord bring that day and may Jesus Christ be praised. Amen.

Dr. LaTaunya M. Bynum
Senior Pastor