GIVING LEADS TO HAPPINESS
(Preached on Sunday, June 15, 2008)
So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, AAfter I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?@ -Genesis 18:12
This story sounds impossible, doesn=t it? Yet we do believe that with God Aall things are possible.@ One of the pastors whom I read online, from Australia, told a story about conducting the funeral of a Christian woman who at the age of 19 years was diagnosed with cancer and had received radical surgery. At the age of 21 once more she had extensive surgery and her doctors sadly informed her that she had only a few months to live. They got it wrong. She was in her 87th year when she died. In between she bore children, buried her husband while he was relatively young, raised her family, threw herself into numerous philanthropic activities, and ran a boarding house for social misfits right up to her 85th year. She died of the same cancer that she first contracted when aged 19.
The God we worship is One who achieves the unlikely through unlikely people. I think it was Nikos Kazanzakis who wrote: AGod is a potter. He works with mud.@ I find it very encouraging that this God of the Bible does the unlikely, not just with people of outstanding gifts but also with ordinary people. God works with common clay; mud like us. In fact, if you look at the entire history of the people of Israel in the Bible, there are not GREAT things being recorded. And all this history is going on at the same time as the mighty empires of Egypt, Babylon & Persia, with all their amazing building projects, and their learning and culture being developed, along with the Greeks and the Romans, not to mention the great cultures of India and China.
I find it most encouraging. You don=t have to be a genius or a saint to be used by God for the blessing of this world. While God may be achieving great things through other peoples and nations, God is bringing love, compassion, Jesus, to the world through the Jews. The God who achieves the unlikely, often uses very flawed material with which to work.
The question for us then becomes the question put before Abraham and Sara, AIs anything too wonderful for the Lord?@ Far too many of us live lives too small because our vision of what God can do in us and through us is too small. Far too many churches function with too small a mission, too small an outreach, because their vision of what God can do through them is too small. There are many reasons to dream modestly C limited resources, few participants, survival concerns C but the problem with defending these reasons is that they leave God out of the equation. The last time I checked, God was not even close to overdrawing the divine account!
We should realize when we read these Bible stories they are not confined to the human plane of possibilities. Neither Abraham nor Sarah first believed God=s promise, and they were not persons of great faith. But these stories in the Bible are dealing with divine promise and power, and that makes all the difference. Indeed, that=s true through the entire Bible, and it=s true throughout every faithful soul=s life. You are set about, surrounded before and behind, with God=s power and God=s promise, and with God all things are possible when they accord with God=s promise and purpose.
So it was that Abraham and Sarah found joy and happiness in their lives. Because God was faithful to God=s promise to them and because they continually took actions to live into that promise. One of those actions was their hospitality shown these three strangers, who turned out to be divine messengers. Without pushing it too far, I think one lesson of this story is that when we give, we always receive a blessing.
In fact, researchers at the University of British Columbia and Harvard University, recently reported in the March issue of the journal Science, that people who made gifts to others or to charities reported they were happier than folks who didn=t share. Through several surveys of different test groups, and some experiments with some of the groups, they clearly established that personal spending was unrelated to happiness but higher Aprosocial@ spending was associated with significantly greater happiness. Their conclusion is that it is not a matter of how much money you have, but given what you have, how can you make little alterations to do something for others.
So, the Bible and Science suggest that giving some of what I have to others leads to happiness in my life. But, how much will do that? How much should I give?
The Bible says three things about how much:
1. It speak of FIRST FRUITS giving, in which what is shared from all we have been given comes Aoff the top@ C a good reminder that, before all else, God and what God does for us is priority number one in our lives.
2. Then, it teaches the TITHE C the giving of ten percent of one=s income and belongings through one=s place of worship.
3. Finally, it goes beyond tithing to teach PROPORTIONATE GIVING C meaning the more we have, the more we should give.
All together, these three standards might be expressed in this way: In gratitude to God for all that God in Christ does for us, we should give at least 10% of our income right off the top, going beyond that in proportion to what we have. Now I know some of you are thinking to yourselves, AHe=s crazy! That is just too much!@ But remember what I said last week, God always asks too much of us. Is this teaching any harder than Jesus= command to Alove our enemies?@
There is a wisdom here that even Forbes magazine recognizes. In Forbes online, February 14, 2005, a Forbes columnist wrote about tithing. AIn the red states the face of tithing is often a pompadour on Channel 46 beseeching you to wire $1,000 to his 800 number. The money, he croons, will return to you tenfold, in divine time, perhaps as a shiny new Harley-Davidson. In the blue states the face of tithing is a Natural Resources Defense Council Hollywood-style shakedown. ...but wait a minute. Along comes a friend C educated and rational C who is glad to tell you his experience with tithing. He says: >When you loosen your grip on possessions, you become more willing to take a chance. Entrepreneurial risk is less terrifying. Tithing requires discipline, but that discipline begins to show up unexpectedly in other areas of my life. When I began to tithe, I was able to rise earlier in the morning. I am more patient with people... Tithing puts you in touch with people=s needs. This is an excellent habit to acquire (if you want to succeed).... When you tithe, you begin to see your role as a steward of resources. You don=t engage in wasteful spending.=@ The Forbes columnist concluded, AWhy does tithing work? Nobody knows. Only that it does for many.@
Our tradition of faith gives us standards to follow. This becomes legalism when we forget that the real bottom line is God=s amazing grace, out of which these standards arise. Just as the Ten Commandments are prefaced with the reminder of God=s deliverance from slavery, so admonitions to tithe follow the reminder that God has blessed us beyond measure. The best response to high standards is not to lower them to a comfortable level, but to ask God=s grace and guidance to help us grow.
The solution for those who feel they cannot tithe is to respect the standard and grow towards it by the grace and guidance of God. You can start where you are, perhaps at the national UCC average of about 1.5% of your income, and ask God to help you increase that percentage every year until you reach the 10% tithe. For some of us tithing is inconceivable; for others, it=s the least they can do; for all of us, we can pray about it. Remember, God loves us and wants the best for us. God wants the best for Christ Church. All that we have and all that we are comes from God. Nothing is too wonderful for God!