"Generosity as Thankfulness"
God's graciousness and the abundance of enough
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Text: 2 Corinthians 9:6
If only you'd been able to look in their eyes the way that I was able to, and to see the great sense of honour and joy and pride that they had, you would have been as moved as I was. The eyes that I was gazing into were the eyes of 45 new Canadians who received their citizenship in this church in a ceremony put on by the department of immigration just a few weeks ago. Not only was I privileged to give them the message that day but also to shake their hands and give them their certificates - they were now Canadians. They'd come from as far away as Australia and as close as Ohio, from as disparate lands as Iran to the very beautiful place of the Caribbean. They came here that day and they declared that they were Canadian.
Afterward, over coffee and muffins, we talked about what it was to come to this country. We talked about the power and the beauty and the expanse of the land that is Canada. I reminded them of the line by the great Canadian M.L. Morton, that from the hinterland to the borders of the metropolis, the greatness of the land is part of all Canadian psyche. It is in many ways what defines us, but it is not only a land that is gorgeous and expansive and gracious. It is also, as we see this morning, bountiful. It is also a land of peace. Many people who had come here came from places of conflict, of years of war, of internecine murder and destruction. I reminded them of the words of the humourist Stephen Leacock who said, “Of all the countries in the world, who is like us? Three thousand miles of forts and not a single frontier.” It really is an amazing place.
This past week when I visited the United States and was in Cambridge, Massachusetts walking through Harvard Square, there were people trying to raise money for Barack Obama. One enthusiastic young man in a T-shirt came up to me and said, “Would you like to support Barack?”
I said, “I'm sorry, it won't do you much good.” I smiled, “I am Canadian.”
A young woman coming in the other direction said, “I envy you.”
I had a great warmth in my little tummy.
Let us not be complacent, the land isn't ours by divine right, the land is ours as a gift from God. That's why our passage from the Apostle Paul reminds us of that very fact. On this Thanksgiving Day, we need to take stock of the fact that what we have is a gift from God. The Apostle Paul put it very succinctly, he said, “We are to be thankful.” We are to be thankful because of the one who supplies the sower, who gives bread for food and who multiplies our seeds.
At the time, he was writing to the church in Corinth - a smug, complacent, self-sufficient group of people. He was reminding them that they needed to be generous, they needed to be kind and they needed to understand what God had done for them. He held up as an example the people of Macedonia. He said, “The Macedonians have practised a spirit of generosity.” For two chapters in the Book of Second Corinthians he goes on about the Macedonians. It must have upset the heck out of the Corinthians to hear this, but the fact of the matter is, the Macedonians had been generous and had sent money back to the home church in Jerusalem, particularly to help the poor and needy, and he didn't want the Corinthians to forget that they needed to be liberal and gracious and kind in their giving as well. For Paul, all of this was predicated on one reality: That God is the source of everything.
In this magnificent passage, as a classic lawyer, the Apostle Paul builds an argument to reinforce how important it is to understand that God is the source of everything. He starts by making an affirmation on the principle of return. Paul puts it very, very clearly. He says that we are to remember this: “Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously.” In this great line, Paul is saying that there is a correlation between our giving and our receiving. For the Apostle Paul, all of this was predicated on the fact that God is the one who is the first giver, that it is God who is gracious. He goes on to say that God will give abundantly… mightily, abundantly.
Now, there have been some who have looked at this word, “abundantly,” and misunderstood it. The Greek root is perisseuo, a word that, in Paul's writing, is associated with a gift. In other words, we have an abundance because God has given it. It is not a right, it's a gift, and when we have abundance it is something that is the product of divine grace. The problem is, in the church throughout the ages, particularly the 20th century, there have been two extremes and they come into the 21st century as well. The first extreme is to actually deny the abundance of God, to look at the paucity of the world, the poverty of the world, the injustice of the world, the depravity and degradation in the world. In particular, many of the existentialists of the early and mid-20th century believed that all was bleak and that all that we have is existence; there is no greater being and there is no real abundance.
Some theologians have got caught up in that same idea. They have forgotten this day of Thanksgiving, they have forgotten that this world is filled with beautiful, magnificent, glorious things and that God has been gracious to us. There are those who forget about abundance and deny it.
On the other hand, and there was an article to this effect in the Toronto Star yesterday, there are those who purport to believe that abundance is our right - not only that it is our right but also that abundance should be in everybody's life - the prosperity gospel. There have been these “snake-oil salesmen,” as I call them, running around telling everyone that they can have all the affluence in the world by some sort of magical formula or gift of God. This had led many poor people to destitution, it has led many poor people to believe that they are only authentically blessed when they have all the material possessions around them, and many have gone into great debt in the belief that somehow, through some mystical activity of God, all debts will be removed. They've led people astray.
The abundance that Paul talks about is referred to by John Calvin, who said it is not about an abundance of excess, it is the abundance of enough. Paul uses that word “enough” in the text. In this passage, it is not excess that he's talking about, rather, it is the recognition that God in God's graciousness has given us so much. But the problem is that there have been some who have greedily taken this abundance for themselves. Regardless of what it might do to others, they have hoarded it with ridiculous and obscene amounts of money and they have done it at the cost of many ordinary lives. This is greed.
I read a wonderful story by a man named Peter Kajanga who is a pastor in Tanzania, Africa. He tells the story of a farmer who had an infestation of rats on his farm so he decided to put out a trap. But there was one, great, fat rat - a clever rat - who thought he was smarter than all the other rats. When he heard that there was a trap he thought maybe he should invite all the other rats around him to go take the food from the trap. You see, his idea was that if he could get some rat to go into the trap to get the meat, it would trigger the trap, kill that rat and then he could go in and get the meat. So he went around convincing all these rats, one after the other, to go in to get the meat. They were trapped and killed while he got to eat the meat. The only problem was that the fat rat ran out of other rats. There were none left, but he was so greedy for the meat he'd become used to that he decided he'd still get it. So he went into the trap backwards and every time a little bit of his tail would be taken off by it. In his gluttony and greed he kept going until he had no tail left. The clever rat was still so desirous of the meat that the trap finally got him. As Peter Kajanga said, “This is what happens to humans when they are greedy. It not only kills you, in the end it takes the lives of others at the same time.”
That's what happens, my friends, when we lose sight of who the giver is. I love what Warren Buffet said in Christianity Today in 2000: “If you were a jerk before, you'll be a bigger jerk with a billion dollars.” In other words, if you have no concern for others it doesn't matter, in the end you're still a jerk. And jerks bring others down with them.
I would like to suggest to you that you can try to play around with all the mathematical formulae to get around real value (and that's what's been going on), you can be too clever by half, but you are like that fat rat and greed brings others down. Sadly, that is what's happening. All of this, my friends, needs a rethink and the rethink is that in this world, everything that we have and own and are has come from divine grace, from a divine source. Paul's not kidding when he says, “You will reap what you sow.” We'd better start sowing the seeds of thankfulness and understanding that abundance is a gift.
There is a second affirmation in Paul's writing: Abundance is for the purpose of generosity. Paul says that we might receive these things abundantly but then he adds, “So that you may do good works; so that you may do the good works of righteousness. So you may help others; so you may give to the poor.” Paul was trying to tell the Corinthians, “Look, if you have much then you should give much, the Spirit should move you just as it was in the very form of Jesus Christ, the Supreme gift of God, a gift that requires a gracious response.” He then outlines three things that we need to do to be gracious and generous. The first is that, if we are generous, we should make that decision first of all in our hearts. He uses the Greek word, kardia, from which we get “cardiac,” the centre of our being. We are generous because the Spirit has moved the centre of our being; we are gracious because of God's work in our hearts. Then he says, “If you do that then you will give not only graciously but also without reluctance.” You know that phrase, “A joyful giver?” God loves a cheerful and joyful giver. It is right here in this text. In other words, we will give from the depths of our hearts because we have been touched by the love of God.
My friends, there are many people who are hurting at the moment. There are people who are about to retire who are deeply concerned. I've run into so much fear. In fact, I read The New York Times on Thursday and I saw the word “fear” eight times in various essays and op-ed pieces - eight times. I don't want to sow the seeds of fear this morning; that would be unfaithful. I'm just recognizing that there are people who are hurting and there are going to be more who will hurt. The world is going to need a spirit of generosity; it's going to need a spirit of sharing and graciousness; it's going to need a spirit that's kind to the poor; it's going to need people, who, as Paul said to the Corinthians, “Have a thankful heart.”
I believe that knowing this, and believing that this is the will of God, is the way forward. It is something that the word of God says to the world with clarity and power, and maybe nothing else says it. The great fear is that people are only going to be looking at their own minute concerns and lose sight of the big picture. Just as the Corinthians became obsessed with themselves and lost sight of the needs of the poor, the great challenge of our age right now is to have the spirit of generosity. I'm not saying, “Give, give, give to the church.” As United Church theologian Doug Hall says, this is a truncated form of stewardship. Paul says, “Look after the saints first.” Yes, but you need to be generous to the world. It is that spirit of generosity to the world that is needed.
William Frederick Faber, one of the great English Christians of the 19th century, once wrote this about the relationship between the creature and the creator:
Our conclusion is this: The creature is that whatever may be his attainments and his inclination, the only knowledge worth much of his time and trouble, the only science which will last with him and stand him in good stead consists in his study of the character of God. He received everything from God, he belongs to him, he is surrounded by him, his fate is in God's hands, his eternity is to be with God in a companionship of unspeakable delights.
Oh, my friends, how we need that spirit of thankfulness in that very God. When most people had gone home from the reception of new Canadians and all the cake had been eaten, (not by me alone, I'm generous, I shared a quarter of it) the flags lowered and the certificates returned to their envelopes, one woman from the Caribbean sought me out. She said, “Reverend Stirling, perhaps you are one of the few who would understand what I am about to say.” She's been in Canada 10 years and she'd come from very, very poor roots, struggling to even make it here. But she was really proud of the moment and these were her words to me: “I want you to know that I am thankful to God for being in such a generous land.” May we have that same sentiment because of the abundance we have received. Amen.