"Question is Why, Not What"
2 Corinthians 9.6-10
It is Stewardship Sunday, and I want to share some thoughts with you about the word “stewardship.” So tell me if this scenario sounds familiar to you. First off the word “stewardship” is explained as us being faithful managers of all the resources with which God has entrusted us. And then, traditionally, these words are further explained in terms of “time, talent, and treasure.” And then those words are further explained in terms of giving more money to the church and its mission. Am I correct so far? Over the years I have come to understand this as learning about stewardship from the outside in. Today, I’m hoping to change that so we might see stewardship from inside out. I’d like to share with you a brief theology of offering. It arises out of a simple premise: Why we give is every bit as important as what we give.
In many ways, giving money is the easiest part of our stewardship. I can’t tell you how many times someone has said to me, “I can’t be there to help, but I’ll be glad to send you a check.” Sadly, one of the quickest ways to get someone off your back is to make a financial contribution.
So, yes, when I talk about a theology of offering, I am talking about money, but I also want us to think about everything we have to offer, not just money … and the underlying question to it all is simply, why ?
Why would you contribute a significant portion of your resources to the church. Only as we are clear about that, do we stand a good chance of becoming what Paul calls, “a cheerful giver.”
My theology of offering consists of three points, and the first is this: All that we have and all that we are belong to God. We have nothing to offer except what God has entrusted to us.
Job said it best: “Naked I came out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I depart: the Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” (Job 1:21)
Some years ago I was in a clergy study group, and we were working on the Parable of the Wicked Tenants , as found in the twenty-first chapter of Matthew’s gospel (Matthew 21:33-41). The parable talks about a wealthy landowner who leased his vineyard to tenant farmers but, when he sent a servant to collect the rent, they beat the servant and sent him home empty-handed. This happened more than once. Finally, he sent his son to collect the rent, and they not only beat him, they killed him. The tenants weren’t satisfied to profit off the landowner’s vineyard; they wanted to be the landowners. In the end, they got what was coming to them and, as you might guess, it wasn’t the vineyard — it was the landowner’s wrath.
One of my colleagues suggested that a good title for a sermon on this parable would be, “It’s mine, and you can’t have it! ”
That’s the way we’re likely to feel when we lose sight of God’s sovereignty over our lives: It’s mine, and you can’t have it — unless I say so. I’m in charge, I’m in control.
The truth is everything belongs to God – our health and vitality, our days on this earth, even our ability to accomplish the goals we set and the motivation to set them in the first place. We are not owners, but stewards of what God has entrusted to us. William How got it right when he penned the words:
We give Thee but Thine own,
whate ’ er the gift may be;
All that we have is Thine alone,
a trust, O Lord, from Thee.
Once we get our head around that, we are free to move to the second point: Our offering to God is simply a response to God’s prior offering to us – the countless blessings we’ve received – and, most especially, the offering of God’s Son, Jesus Christ.
John says in his first letter, “We love because God first loved us.” (1 John 4:19) In much the same way, we give because God has first given to us.
Here’s how it is: God gives to us, and we give to others. We’re to be conduits of God’s grace and love and, as long as we understand ourselves to be conduits, not containers, the blessings flow freely.
For many years, Bob Guptil, was the shop teacher at Machias High School in Machias, Maine. He was one those handymen who could do just about anything. After he retired he was always getting calls. They’d ask him to make a coat rack for their classroom, or build a bookcase, or repair a broken desk. Bob always said yes, and he always said it with a smile. And when the job was done and the teacher said thank you, he had a stock answer. He’d say, “Don’t thank me, thank the man upstairs.”
As a member of Centre Street Church, where I served, Bob and I had a number of conversation about faith. I never asked his directly why he did all this for people, but if I had, I’m pretty sure he would’ve told me, in his own way, that all this stuff around him – his tools and lumber and nails and glue and the ability to put them all together in a useful way – it didn’t belong him, but was simply his to use for the benefit of others.
“Don’t thank me, thank the man upstairs.” That’s the spirit of someone who knows the One from whom all blessings flow. When that spirit lives in us, then we are able to go on to the third point of our little theology of offering, and that is: The proper attitude for offering our gifts to God is not guilt or fear or any form of obligation or coercion, but in humility, gratitude and an abiding sense of joy.
Over the years, I’ve heard well-meaning stewardship people say some pretty desperate things about why we ought to support the church. Here’s one example:
Now folks, we all know it takes a lot of money to keep the doors of the church open, and there are only so many of us, so it’s important for everyone to do his part.
This is your basic gravy bowl approach: We all know that if on Thanksgiving day you have ten people at your table and you set a gravy bowl in front of them, each person at the table get one tenth of the gravy. Like wise in the church you add up all the expenses and divide them by the number of members, and you have what each one is expected to pay. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just that this is not what it means to make an offering to God.
Neither is this, spoken by another well-meaning saint, who stood before the congregation with fingers pointing in all directions and said:
There are some of you sitting out there today who aren’t paying your fair share, and you know perfectly well who you are!
This is the guilt and shame-on-you approach, and it has nothing to do with making an offering to the Lord. What we give to the church ought to be given of our own free will and not forced in any way. The Apostle Paul told the Corinthians when he asked them to make an offering to aid the church in Jerusalem,
Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. (2 Cor. 9:6-8)
Let’s be clear: There’s no charge for membership in the church of Jesus Christ. We don’t pay dues. We’re not assessed for our share of the expenses. We’re not taxed in any way.
We don’t take even up a collection. Did you know that? We receive an offering. There’s a big difference: A collection is a means of passing the hat to raise money; an offering is a means of praising God to show our appreciation for God’s countless blessings. Rev. John Birsch, a colleague from Ohio, assisted our church one year with its stewardship program. A couple of weeks ago when I began to thinking about this service I found the letter he had written to our congregation that year,
As we approach this important time in the life of the church, may we remember why we give: We give out of love and gratitude to God and out of love for each other.
Let me wrap it up in this way: Why we give our money, our time, our talent, our creative energies is every bit as important as what we give. A theology of offering can help us be clear about why we give what we give. Mine is pretty simple and if it fits for you, I invite you to make it yours, as well:
All that we have and all that we are belong to God. We have nothing to offer except what God has entrusted to us.
Our offering to God is but a response to what God has given to us — the countless blessings we’ve received — and, most especially, the offering of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of our sins. So that . . .the proper attitude for offering our gifts to God is not guilt or fear or any form of obligation or coercion, but humility, gratitude and an abiding sense of joy.
To put it as succinctly as possible, we joyfully offer our gifts to God from whom all blessings flow, grateful to Christ who died for us. If this is our motivation for giving, we are certain to feel good about it, and what’s more, we are in for a real blessing. Amen.
