Don’t Give to the Church
“As Jesus sat near the temple treasury, he watched the people as they dropped in their money. Many rich men dropped in a lot of money; then a poor widow came along and dropped in two little copper coins, worth about a penny. He called his disciples together and said to them, “I tell you that this poor widow put more in the offering box than all the others. For the others put in what they had to spare of their riches; but she, poor as she is, put in all she had she gave all she had to live on.”
October 19, 1980
A while back, I saw a cartoon drawing of two men in church. One of the men is looking over his shoulder at two big ushers with their arms crossed standing in front of the exit doors. Behind the stern-faced ushers, the man sees a chain and padlock attached to the handles of the doors. The man turns to his friend sitting next to him and nervously says: "Uh-oh, this must be pledge Sunday!"
And so it is today, although our ushers don't have the doors locked. (They'll just take your names if you leave early.) But before you go, I want to say a few things to you. Perhaps some things that will surprise you. Today, I want to share some reasons why you should NOT give to the church. Last Sunday, Mr. Curl very effectively emphasized why we should give to the church. So, in this election year's interest in "equal time", here is the other side. If you, therefore, are looking for some good excuses not to give to the church, then get out your pencil and paper.
In all seriousness, the sermon idea – “Don't Give to the Church!” – is not just a gimmick I cooked up. Indeed, it came to me when I was reading Mark and Luke's account of the poor widow Jesus saw putting in her two cents worth at the Jerusalem temple.
Outside the Jerusalem temple, the place people of Jesus' day thought God was more present in than anywhere else, were 13 offering boxes. These 13 offering receptacles were called the 13 Trumpets because they looked like trumpets stood up on their wide ends. Gifts put in each trumpet went to some phase of the temple worship of God: the sacrifice of animals, the incense, the wood, and the like. So, what Jesus saw that day was a bunch of people lined up putting their money in the temple trumpets for their offering.
Apparently, most of the people were of the well-heeled, tailored, and manicured set. In an impressive display they dropped in their cash. From the looks of them, Jesus figured out real quick that they had plenty more where that came from. About that time, a woman who looked like she should be lined up in front of the food stamp office instead of the temple got in the offering line. She dropped in two coins. Just all she had. Not much. didn't take a genius to figure out that she wasn't giving leftovers. She was giving the grocery money. This moved Jesus.
Now, if he was praising small gifts, then most of us would be in good shape. But he had something else on his mind. In her he saw the real reasons people should give to their God. In the others that day, evidently he saw reasons not to give. So, with some guesswork, educated guesswork I hope, I would like to share my notions of why you should not give to the church.
(1) DON'T GIVE TO THE CHURCH, IF ALL YOU ARE TRYING TO DO IS BE NICE! We Americans have a real thing about being nice. I can't count the times each day I say and have said to me: “Have a nice day.” The last time I got a traffic ticket, the policeman, as he handed me my ticket, said: "Rev. Morgan, have a nice day.” You see, nice people keep their fingernails clean, chew with their mouths closed, say "please" and "thank you", and give a few dollars to the church, the United Way, and whoever is collecting at your door for the Dandruff Foundation. To give a few dollars of our leftovers is nice. Indeed, a few dollars to worthy causes function as sort of good luck charms. I'll give a little bit away so I won't feel guilty about spending the rest of my money on me and what I want. And don't get me wrong. It is nice to be nice. I don't know what the church and other causes in the community would do without the dollar bill leftovers from nice people. It's nice to be nice. But being nice and being Christian are two different things.
Whatever was on the widow's mind that day, it wasn't being nice or impressive. Who could she impress anyway? She could have kept her two measly coins. The temple wouldn't have cared.
We can pass it off as superstition. But just maybe Jesus saw something else in her. Remember, for people in Jesus' day, there was no place on earth where they experienced God's presence more than their temple. And so maybe, just maybe, that old woman knew of God's presence and love in her life. Perhaps God's life-giving and life-changing love was so real to her that she could do nothing else than give him all she had. I believe she had been so touched by God's gift of life to her that she was looking for ways to give more, not less.
Giving your leftovers to the church and charity is nice. And it's nice to be nice, just not particularly Christian. Being Christian means not being nice but sacrificial. It is the only authentic response to a God who we believe has given sacrificially with his son to us.
Being nice is setting limits to your concern: do your thing and then forget it. Being Christian is an unlimited liability to God and his children in the world: teaching, feeding, bugging in his name. Christians just can't write off all of those worrisome people in the world that nice folks avoid. So, if being nice is your goal in life, then don't give to or get involved with the church.
(2) DON'T GIVE TO THE CHURCH, IF YOU DON'T THINK GOD WORKS THROUGH HUMANS. I once heard a man say that the church has a lot of gall to say that money given to it is the same as giving to God. After all, how can you connect the divine holy God with what bumbling stumbling humans do? Although I believe the church stacks up better than any other business or government institution in society, look long enough and you may find some dollars that could have been spent better. Yes, it takes some guts to connect what we humans do with what God does.
In fact, this criticism goes way back to the beginning of the church. The earliest Christian heresy came from people who could not even believe that Jesus was in some part human. These people were called Gnostics and they subscribed to a view called Docetism. Docetism comes from the Greek word doceo - meaning to "appear" or "seem". They said that Jesus only "appeared" to be human. He only "seemed" to have a real flesh and blood body. For the Gnostics, human beings were so prone to mistakes, lust, and pain that God would not have disgraced himself by getting mixed up in human skin. And in the tradition of the Gnostics, there are those today who scoff that God really uses the bumbling stumbling human institution of the church.
The problem with the Gnostics and the reason the early church labeled them heretical is that they missed the point of what God did in Jesus in the first place. God's love came alive in the flesh and blood life of Jesus. And because God's love worked through the Son, we humans have the hope that God's love can come alive in all of his sons and daughters on earth, even in that son and daughter of God that is you and me.
I've just finished reading a powerful book by the Japanese Christian writer Shusaku Endo. In it, Endo speaks about Jesus and his disciples: "The disciples were, so to speak, pretty much like the rest of us after all – a collection of no-good cowards and weaklings. Nevertheless, all of a sudden, following the death of Jesus, their eyes were opened. Weaklings and cowards they had been, but nothing could intimidate them after that, not even death. They never flinched at any physical terror. For Jesus' sake they stoutly bore the rigors of distant journeys, and stoutly they held out under persecution. Peter underwent martyrdom in Rome about the year 61 A.D. Andrew was put to death by starvation...and Bartholomew was skinned alive.... The usual way in reading the New Testament is to keep the spotlight on Jesus, but if we go back and read again to see the disciples playing leading roles, then a singular theme emerges – how weaklings, cowards, and no-goods metamorphize and transform into characters of unshakeable faith.” My point in quoting Endo is to remind us that it wasn't Jesus in his flesh who spread the Gospel in the old Roman Empire. It was Jesus in the flesh of the disciples Paul, Peter, and countless other nameless ones who spread the news that God is real, he loves us, and our lives matter.
So what about money given to this church as money given to God? This building is costly. But in it my children learn that God loves them and that they are more than a computer number. In this building our youth learn about God's ways and Christian values to make decisions about their bodies and their lives. Through the God-given talents of our choir's music, I receive strength to live by and encouragement to not give up. Gifts given this church provide pastors to be with people in hospital rooms and with others to whom life has thrown bitter curves. Because of money given to this church, this world has a few less corpses of hungry children. In this world of nations constantly preparing for war, the church is about the only voice reminding us that even our enemies are our brothers and sisters in Christ. And when these matters of life and death are going on through the church, I believe that God the ultimate life giver is supremely involved.
Yes, it is audacious to say that money to the church is money given to God. But as God as my witness, I believe it. Yet, if you don't believe God uses humans and the church, then don't give your money.
(3) DON'T GIVE TO THE CHURCH IF YOU ARE TRYING TO GET GOD TO LOVE YOU WITH YOUR GIFTS. Jesus didn't mean to put those people down that day who lined up to ostentatiously drop their money in the temple offering boxes. He saw in them what he sees in you and me. He saw humans wanting to feel okay about their lives. He saw humans who try to prove they are important by their clothes, their possessions, and their position in the community. He saw humans who were trying to convince themselves and others that they were worth something. He saw humans who put others down in the desperate attempt to put themselves up. He saw humans, like you and me, who want to be loved with a love that doesn't let go. And all he had to say is you can't earn God's love. He simply gives it to you. Just accept it and love others the way you have been loved.
Anyone who has been to seminary in the last two generations has had to read the theology of the Swiss theologian and pastor Karl Barth. Barth's theology fills many thick volumes. The print is small. And even his footnotes have footnotes. Millions of words he uses to express who God is, who Jesus is, what the Bible is, and who humans are to be. Late in his life, someone had the audacity to ask Barth if he could summarize his theology in a few words. And the old man did with these words: "Jesus loves me; this I know, for the Bible tells me so."
So, if you are giving to the church to impress God or to get him to love you, don't bother. It would be a misrepresentation for us to take your money on that basis. If there is a God, and I believe there is, and if Jesus was right, and I believe he was, then God loves you already. It's free. Don't give to the church to get God to love you. He already does. Give because he loved you first.
Motivation for true Christian giving starts on the day that it finally bowls you over: "I'm alive! A million things could have stopped it, but I'm here. My life isn't painless and it sure doesn't always go the way I want it to go. But I am alive and my life comes from beyond me as a wonderful gift. Motivation for true Christian giving begins when it dawns on you that God may really be real, not just a product of human imagination after all. God really does love you. And he has shown you and me just how much he loves us in Jesus Christ. God gives us our lives and his love, a love that our meanness and deaths cannot stop.
Christian giving begins when we realize that our lives will never be worth a flip, we will never really be happy until we use our lives, our talents, time, and yes our money in the way the life giving God wants us to use them. We are called to be stewards. And stewardship is not just a fancy word the church uses for "fork over your cash" either. A steward is one who cares for something entrusted to him by another. Christians realize that their lives, the lives of others, and even the world are gifts entrusted to us by God. We are his stewards, his caretakers, of life. And God needs all the help he can get from us to make this world more liveable for more humans. So, we give – not our tokens and leftovers – we really give of ourselves and possessions for his work on earth.
Some time ago, you may have seen the "Sixty Minutes" TV show when they interviewed a man who investigates people by analyzing their canceled checks. He stated that without actually seeing a person, he can tell what kind of person he or she is by simply going through a year's worth of their canceled checks. Their checks reveal whether they are family minded or not, whether they are good managers, whether they dress expensively, what kind of cars they drive, and what kind of vacations they take. The checks show how much they spend on themselves and how much they spend on others. You see, how we spend our money gets us out of the realm of "say-so" and into the reality of "do-so". I may talk big, but only spend my money on what I really care about and what I really believe in. Make no mistake. The way you and I spend our money is a deeply spiritual matter. It expresses what really matters to us. So, my closing question today is: what would the investigator find out about you if he analyzed your checks? Would your checks reveal a caring Christian or just another look out for number one nice guy?
Amen.