Pentecost 17C (off-lectionary)
Stewardship #1 (Celebrate Generosity) – Giving as an act of
worship
October 6, 2019
Deuteronomy 6:4-9 (the shema)
Psalm 95
Romans 12:1-8 (bodies a living sacrifice, be transformed)
Luke 19:1-10 (Zacchaeus’
conversion)
INTRODUCTION
Today, as we
begin our month of focusing on stewardship as an expression of our spiritual
life, we are going off lectionary. The lectionary, in case that word is foreign
to you, is a set of assigned readings for each Sunday, which often hang
together with common themes. But to go with our stewardship theme for today, “giving
as an act of worship,” we chose texts that will highlight that particular
theme.
Our first
reading is from Deuteronomy, and is known as the “shema,” and it is the essence
of Jewish faith, and so also our own faith: that there is only one true God,
and we are to love God with all that we are. This collection of verses is the
reason we come together each week to worship: it is to set our sight and our
priority on God and God alone. Our Psalm today gives us a chance to do that: Psalm
95 is the quintessential praise psalm, that lauds the Lord for all that He has
done.
Our reading
from Romans brings our understanding of worship a little deeper still: Paul
describes our very bodies, and every way we live, as an act of worship. When
this is properly aligned, we will indeed see all of our actions and decisions
as expressions of worship of and devotion toward God.
And finally,
our Gospel is the delightful story of the “wee little man” Zacchaeus. He was a
dishonored and disliked chief tax collector who nevertheless seeks Jesus out,
and in his conversation with Jesus, Zacchaeus experiences a major shift in his understanding
of wealth, and leaves the encounter rejoicing.
We’re thinking
about the act of worshiping today, so as you listen to this line-up, consider
how you feel when you worship, how the experience of worship moves your heart.
In particular, think about how it feels in worship not just to receive the
living Word of God and the promise of grace, but also how it feels to give –
your time on a Sunday morning, your praise, your attention, and yes, your
offering. Let’s listen.
[READ]
Grace to you and peace from God our
Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
A book I often
recommend, especially to couples, is called The Five Love Languages.
Anyone heard of it or read it? The author describes five different ways, or “languages,”
by which we express our love for someone, or by which we expect to see another’s
love be expressed to us: gift giving, quality time, words of affirmation, acts
of service, and physical touch. I have long used this idea in thinking about human
relationships, but this week I started thinking about it in terms of the love
between God and us. As we might expect, God, who encompasses all of everything,
expresses love for us in all of these ways – gift giving in the form of
all the many abundant blessings we enjoy every day; quality time in the
form of being “Emmanuel,” God with us, every moment of our lives; words of
affirmation in the form of the Bible (though I admit not all of the words
in the Bible are especially “affirming,” at least not on first reading, but they
all do, ultimately, lead us to life); acts of service in the form of the
ultimate act of service, Christ dying and rising again for us; and physical
touch in the form of the sacraments, baptism and communion. God, it turns
out, is pretty good at loving us!
But all of
these things really have something in common: in every case, love is about God giving
something to us: our very lives and what we need, God’s presence, the Word, God’s
own Son, and the sacraments. When God loves, you see, God gives. This should be
no surprise to us – just check out the most famous verse in the Bible: “For God
so loved the world, that He gave…” As Bible scholar Mark Allan
Powell observes, “God gives because God loves. God gives to us
because God loves us.”
The ancient
Israelites understood this. Since the beginning of faith, the essence of
worship, which you could describe as a response to God’s generous love, was to
give something back to God. In ancient Israel, this came in the form of a
sacrifice: an animal, a grain offering, a liquid poured out… something of value
to the worshipper was given at an altar as a way to worship the Giver of all
things. It used to be that these offerings were then burned, because where they
went was not the point so much as the act of giving. Somewhere along the line
someone said, “Hey, isn’t this kind of a waste? Couldn’t we give this food to
the poor, or use it to pay the priest?” And that seemed pretty reasonable and
good stewardship of resources, so they did, and that is what we still do. When
we give to God, via the Church, it goes to support the mission of the Church. But
it did and does sort of distort the initial purpose of an offering: that it didn’t
matter what the offering was for, so much as it mattered that the person was
giving something valuable to God as an act of worship, of love and devotion. The
giving, you see, is not about someone’s need to receive. It is about the giver’s
need to give, the giver’s spiritual need to worship.
We see this need
for the lovers of God to give in the stories of Jesus, too. Today we heard the
story of Zacchaeus. Let’s compare him to another rich man. Remember the rich
young man who asks Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus says
to follow the commandments, which the man says he does. Then Jesus says, “You
lack one thing: sell everything you own and give the money to the poor, and
follow me.” You remember the rich young man’s response? “He went away grieving,
for he had many possessions.”
Zacchaeus, on
the other hand, offers his wealth joyfully and without being asked. It is
purely a response to his encounter with Jesus. Zacchaeus, you see, knows that
his life was not in a great place. He is rich, yes, but also despised for his
dishonest livelihood as a tax collector. He needs something to change, and believes
that Jesus can help him make that change. He seeks Jesus out, climbs a tree so
he can see him. And then, the moment Jesus reaches out to him, his response is
one of love, praise, and worship: he offers what is valuable to him, half his
riches, and vows to make good with all whom he has wronged. Zacchaeus is
different from the rich young man because his motivation is different: he gives
not to gain something, like eternal life, but simply out of love and devotion
to God.
That’s what Mark
Allan Powell says, too. “God gives because God loves. God gives to
us because God loves us. And,” he goes on, “when we give our
offerings to God as an act of worship, we reflect that love. We love God back.”
In other words, we give because we love. We give to God because we love God.
The other stuff is good too – we also love our church, and want to participate in
our mission – but the primary reason we give is that we love God.
What a beautiful
notion that is – that we could love God, worship God, by giving
to God. That’s why we include offering as a part of our worship service:
because of all that we do, sacrificial giving to God is the most worshipful!
Sure, we do other worshipful things – we sing hymns of praise, for instance –
but while we can sing a hymn and not really think about it or mean it, it is a
lot harder to give our money and not really think about it or mean it. When we
give to God, especially when it is an amount that we really notice, our hearts
cannot help but go there, to the one to whom we give. As Jesus points out, “Where
your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Where you devote your valued resources,
that is what you will love.
Which makes it
all the more remarkable that this is precisely what God has done for us. God
has given all of the most valuable resources for our sake: the earth, our
breath, our bodies, our brains, our family and friends. God has given the Word,
to lead us and fill us with life. God has given His Son, first as a way for us
to know and love God, and then as a way to show us the way of life, to redeem
us from all that would hold us captive. And God has given us this sacrament,
which fills us with His grace and assures us of His promises.
Today, five young people will receive
that gift for the first time. They will hear those words, “given for you.”
Given for you, God says, because I love you. As you come forward to receive
this gracious gift today, along with these young people, remember how marvelous
those words really are. “This bread and wine, my own Son, my very life, is given
for you. Because I love you.” May we, as recipients of God’s many gracious
gifts, and most of all the gift of His Son, be moved to love him back “with all
our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our might.”
Let us pray… Generous God, you
give because you love, and you give to us because you love us. Help us, even
when we live in doubt or fear, to love you back with all that we have and all
that we are. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.”
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