Sermon Archive
God loves a cheerful giver
Sermon preached by Kenneth Boyd at Holy Communion and Matins on 23 September 2007
Deuteronomy 8:7-18 ; 2 Corinthians 9:6-15 ; Luke 17:11-19
One day last week I was told a rather improbable story by a retired gentleman named Patrick - not, I hasten to add, any Patrick we know in St John’s: the story arrived, as so much now does, by email.
In one of the houses in Ireland where my family lived [Patrick wrote], the owners were informed that a little girl had turned up, looking desperately thin and hungry. So the girl was brought in and given lunch, after which she was taken upstairs and put to bed, the door locked and the windows secured so that she couldn’t help herself to any valuables.
When she was sent for so that she could have tea she had vanished.
So the moral of the story, Patrick concluded, was:
‘Be not forgetful to entertain strangers; for thereby some have entertained leprechauns unawares.’
Now the story, as I say, is improbable. But given its origin in old Ireland, the family concerned presumably were good Catholics, Anglicans or Presbyterians; and if so, one of the things the story could be said to illustrate is the ambivalence of many Christians towards wealth and charity, property and poverty. The family were charitable towards the little girl, but not sufficiently charitable to let her enrich herself with their property. But this ambivalence - having contradictory attitudes at the same time – has been characteristic of the Church’s attitude towards wealth from its earliest days.
The Church’s problem, scholars have pointed out, was this. In the Gospels, Jesus tells his disciples to give up their livelihood to follow him, and he tells the rich young man for example, that if he wishes to be perfect, he must sell all his possessions and give the money to the poor. Now if Jesus believed that the world was about to end, giving up your property would make sense, since it would be of no use to you in those radically transformed circumstances. But it is not clear that Jesus did believe that the world was about to end, nor is it clear that he intended everyone, even all his followers, to give up everything. Jesus and his disciples, for example, seem to have relied on friends or family with property (Mary, Martha and Lazarus in Bethany perhaps) to give them a base between their missionary journeys, and as the Church began to grow and spread across the Mediterranean world, the local congregations founded by Paul and others often met in the homes of property-owning and sometimes wealthy Christians. But by this stage, Jesus’ words about giving up everything to follow him, were no longer words spoken to particular people in particular circumstances, but part of the tradition handed down by the Apostles, and as such to be taken seriously to heart by all Christians. Did that mean therefore that all Christians were commanded to sell all their possessions and give the money to the poor?
The Church, throughout its history, has answered this question in two different ways. On the one hand there have been those, like the Desert Fathers or St Francis of Assisi, who took Jesus’ words more or less literally, embracing poverty as a vocation. But even they, like Jesus and the early Church, often relied on the support of followers who owned property, or while individually without property, were part of a monastic institution which itself often became very wealthy.
On the other hand however, from quite early on, a different tradition of interpreting Jesus’ teaching developed. This tradition recognised the deep truth of what Jesus observed after the rich young man had failed to take his advice: “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God”. [Mk 10:23] His point here, according to this tradition, is that wealth can blind a person to their spiritual and social needs. Wealth of any kind, status or reputation as much as money, may give those who possess it greater self-confidence; and this may lead them to feel superior to other people who lack it, and to think and act towards those other people in ways which are arrogant or unfeeling; and which fail to recognise the extent to which we all depend on one another for our well-being. Yet wealth is also vulnerable, and those who possess it may at the same time be preoccupied with the need they feel to protect their wealth, and not to run any risks, in case they lose it and have nothing left to rely on. This combination of self-confidence and vulnerability may mean therefore, that the wealthy person never gets to the point of fully recognising our true human condition, as social animals, with a sense of eternity in their minds, who come into and depart from this world naked. They can get through the world, of course, but in their vulnerable attachment to their wealth they fail to realise their human social and spiritual potential. According to this tradition therefore it is not wealth itself, but attachment to wealth that is the problem; and although for some people, like the rich young man in the gospels, the only way to achieve their potential may be by selling all their goods and giving the money to the poor, for others it may be found by learning how to rely for their self-understanding, not on wealth, status or reputation, but on God’s love and mercy, and by a simpler, more social and more charitable life-style.
Now this interpretation of Jesus’ teaching, of course, was not without risk. In saying that the problem was not wealth but attachment to wealth, and emphasising the blessedness not of the poor but the poor in spirit, it left the door ajar for both hypocrisy and abuses. Throughout the Church’s history, this interpretation could be used to justify both the Church itself, and individual Christians, when they amassed a degree of wealth, and betrayed a degree of indifference to the poor, which were clearly incompatible with Jesus’ teaching. But also throughout the Church’s history, such hypocrisy and abuse had repeatedly provoked protest and reform, as in the case of St Francis, or the Protestant Reformation itself; or more recently, in popular movements like those associated with Liberation Theology in Latin America. That theology perhaps comes close to the spiritual and social heart of the matter in its slogan ‘For the poor, against poverty’. It shares Jesus’ insight that those who were, and knew themselves to be, really poor, had a more realistic understanding of the human condition, and thus were more open to receiving God’s love and mercy than the wealthy. But it also believed that poverty was ‘the result of injustice, that is to say, of sin’, and it argued that the poor should ‘cease to be objects of charity, and become the agents of their own liberation.’
‘For the poor, against poverty’, brings us close to the spiritual and social heart of Jesus’ teaching on wealth and the Church’s ambivalent response to it. Relying on our wealth, status or reputation can blind us to our true human condition and distract us from realising our true human potential. So too, of course, can the unrelieved oppression of grinding poverty. The underlying message of Jesus’ healing and feeding miracles is ‘Go and do likewise.’ But we do not live by bread alone, and human needs are not only material but also spiritual. In that respect, those who know themselves to be poor, have the advantage of knowing just how reliant they are on God’s love and mercy, of accepting that love and mercy, and of joyfully giving thanks for it.
Now that, I think, is the insight on which St Paul builds in this morning’s reading from 2nd Corinthians, which, in the Charis bible studies last week some of us struggled to understand – especially how St Paul relates the idea of the wealthy Corinthian church giving financial help to the poorer Jerusalem church, with the idea of their generosity resulting in thanksgiving to God. A very helpful commentary, which I came across only later, explains that the key to what St Paul is saying is in the word charis itself. It is a Greek word both for gracefulness and for thanks – as in grace before meals, or eucharist, literally the giving of thanks. In giving financial help to the Jerusalem church, the Corinthians are taking part in what the commentator calls ‘a charis circle, in which the wealth of God’s grace enables an abundance of human generosity, which in turn inspires an overflow of thanks to God’. This is a matter not of the ‘haves’ giving ‘charity’ to the ‘have-nots’, but of different human needs mutually supplying one another within a loving circle which begins and ends in God.
This vision of the charis circle, of course, does not necessarily tell us what to do about some of the troubling questions about giving which emerged from last week’s bible studies. Might it sometimes be wrong to give money, either to someone begging on the street, or to a developing country where it may go straight into the pockets of corrupt politicians? How pure are our motives in giving? Do we give in the expectation that we will get something back – if only a sense of our own moral superiority? Or do we give because we would feel guilty about not giving? Wouldn’t meeting the needs of poorer people from increased taxation, be more efficient, effective and just, than leaving so much to individuals and charities? Or instead of deciding for ourselves as individuals which charities to support, shouldn’t we give more to the church and ask it to give more to other charitable causes? These raise complex moral and political questions which the vision of the charis circle does not necessarily help us to resolve.
But perhaps that is not what we should be looking for from this vision. Where it can help rather, is by deepening our understanding of ourselves and the world, so that we can more honestly and realistically seek our own answers, as individuals, as a church, and as world citizens, to these difficult questions. By comparison with most other human beings today, you and I are rich and privileged, and with privilege comes responsibility. But on a deeper level, what we share with all other human beings is greater than what divides us. All of us are social animals, with a sense of eternity in our minds, who come into and depart from this world naked. In that sense we are all poor. But we are all also, invited to join in that great charis circle of giving and receiving, which begins and ends, not in our efforts, but in God’s generosity. And because that circle begins and ends in God, and does not depend on our efforts alone, more important than all our questions or misgivings, are Paul’s words: ‘God loves a cheerful giver’. When we have the God-given confidence to be realistic about ourselves and the world, but also to be cheerful, we show by our trust in God that we have begun to understand what God wants from us.
Apart from the email, this sermon is indebted to The Church and Wealth (Studies in Church History Volume 24) edited by W J Sheils and Diana Wood; Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd 1987, and especially ‘The Vine and the Elm Tree: the Patristic Interpretation of Jesus’ Teachings on Wealth’ by J A McGuckin (pp 1-14), and ‘Liberation Theology: the Option for the Poor’ by Peter Hebblethwaite (pp407-421).
The commentary referred to is that of J Barclay on 2 Corinthians in Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible, edited by JDG Dunn and JW Rogerson; Grand Rapids: Wm B Eerdmans Publishing Co 2003.
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