It’s somewhat ironic that, having nearly forgotten to take the offering last week, I’m going to preach about giving this week.  It makes you wonder who needs to hear the sermon.  Here you were last Sunday, everyone of you with offering envelope or check book in hand, ready to give, every single one of you, I’m sure, and the preacher almost forgot to stop long enough to pass the plate and give you the opportunity.  Maybe I was still befuddled by the music minister stealing the sermon notes, for the second time!  But, a Baptist preacher forgetting to take up a collection?  Is that really possible?  Could a mother forget her baby or a good husband a Valentine’s card?  A Baptist preacher his fried chicken or offering plate?  Some things are simply inconceivable.  Someone suggested this past week that we might increase attendance if we forgot the offering more often.  What do you think? 

What if we did just that?  What if we took the giving factor out of everything else we do around here?  We sang the songs and preached the sermon, read the scripture and prayed the prayers but never passed the plate.  How would that change things?  Speaking of change, a friend of mine who grew up in another faith tradition told me of his mother going to church with him not long after he started attending a Baptist church.  As the offering plate was passed he put a twenty-dollar bill in the plate.  His very frugal mother was horrified.  So, when the plate reached her, she took the twenty out and put five back in.  My friend tells me that not only did he never see the twenty again but that he never did quite get over his mother making change out of the offering plate.  She was the only one that morning who got more than she gave.  Or, was she?  If she were here and did the same thing this morning would she be the only who got more than she gave?

What is it that makes some people think more in terms of what they get than what they give?  Conversely, what is it that changes them into people who think more in terms of what they give than what they get?  Fundamental to our Rebirth commitment at Cliff Temple is the assumption that our church’s future will be determined largely by the extent to which we think more in terms of what we are all giving more than what we are getting. 

The really scary thing about church is that it’s possible to keep up the routine of spirituality long after the life is gone.  One of the clearest signs that is beginning to happen is when the giving factor gets overbalanced by the getting factor.  Then, like a chicken with its head cut off, a church may well find itself staying real busy running from here to there and making quite a commotion long after all hope of life has been wrung out of it.  It’s an amazing, if sad, thing to watch.  You can almost hear the sadness even as you read the words, “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.”

We’ve all known marriages like that.  Two people who stayed physically and legally together long after they emotionally divorced each other.  The giving and getting way out of balance.  All form and function.  No life.  It’s scary how easily that can happen.  Sad, too, how often it does. 

What’s really interesting is that God doesn’t want a relationship like that with us.  A relationship in which we learn how to do what looks like faith even though it doesn’t involve faith.  So much so that he warns us that if we learn how to jump through all the spiritual hoops without any concern whatsoever for what it means for anyone but ourselves then everything we do, even what appears to be the most radical sacrificial giving, like giving “my body to be burned” (NASV) for the sake of the kingdom, is wasted effort as far as God is concerned and has no eternal value whatsoever.  Like the little YMCA basketball player I once saw who got turned around in the confusion on the court and scored a goal in the other team’s basket.  He scored points but, they didn’t count in the right way.

So, one of the things that has always concerned me about this matter of financial giving is how we can get people to do more than just give their money.  If all we wanted was their money there are any number of ways to get that.

We could try pity.  We could tell them how badly we need the money.  But, is there ever a time that wouldn’t be true?  I hope not.

We could try fear.  The Old Testament challenges those who don’t give at least ten percent of their income with these stern words.  “Will anyone rob God?  Yet you are robbing me!  But you say, ‘How are we robbing you?’  In your tithes and offerings!  You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me . . . Bring the full tithe into the storehouse . . ..”  (Malachi 3:10)  Those are sobering words that might strike fear into anyone’s heart who doesn’t want to be cursed.  And, maybe, it’s a good place to start.  But, it’s a lousy place to finish.  Jesus never commanded tithing as essential to one’s salvation although he did affirm it as a good spiritual discipline.  He also said, however, that to be a faithful tither while neglecting “justice and mercy and faith” was the spiritual equivalent of a chicken running around long after its life had been wrung out by the neck (my paraphrase).  All form, no substance.  (Matthew 23:23-24)  Simply put, if you write God a proper check but treat your neighbor improperly the money you give God doesn’t count for much.

We could try to shame people into giving.  One way of doing that is to tell them that their children are watching.  And, as a matter of fact, they are.  And, what they see is their parents spending their money on what they believe matters most.  What might that be?  There is more than one way to make change out of the offering plate.  One way is to take what properly belongs to God and use it to maintain a lifestyle that is materially rich yet spiritually poor.  Any chance your children have seen you making change out of the plate? 

We could appeal to their sense of fairness.  Is it right, we could ask, that anyone should enjoy all this church offers and expect its ministry in times of crisis yet never contribute one cent to underwriting the cost?  Fully half of this church’s membership does that.  It would not be unfair to appeal to people’s sense of fairness.

We could try all of those things.  But, my greatest fear is that we could force people into a kind of giving, out of guilt or fear or shame, in which they perform the function while remaining emotionally and spiritually divorced from the meaning of it.  So, how do we do both things Jesus said we should?  Give and love at the same time.

The text we have read this morning from 1 Corinthians contains some of the most beautiful language in all of the New Testament.  Commonly, they are read at weddings as an expression of the love to which we all hopefully aspire in our most significant relationships.  The truth is, to understand what leads a person to love like that, you have to read the last words of the text first.  “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face.  Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.  And now faith, hope and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”

Some years ago some friends and I helped remodel a house that had been built in the 20’s.  It was in terrible shape.  The windows were stained yellow and the curtains were stained almost to black with dirt so that the house was pitch-black- dark even at midday.  The very first thing we did was tear down the old curtains and wash the windows.  We were shocked at the change it made once everything that had blocked out the light was removed.

Now, the scripture says, even at our best, our perception is so very limited.  Even our understanding of ourselves is limited as though we can see a little but something is blocking out the full light.  In time, however, when what blocks the full light of eternity is removed, things confusing to us now will finally make sense.  The only thing we do know now is that only those things that grow out of faith, hope and love have eternal value.  So, we invest ourselves there because the Bible tells us that, in time, everything that is not related to faith, hope or love will pass away.

And, its only in having hope for what is of greater significance than what we can see and control and understand right now that we find the courage to love, to give, to be “patient” and “kind,” gentle and humble and always looking for ways to help others get what they need more than getting others to give us what we want.  That ability to take the courageous step from spiritual infancy to spiritual adulthood, from speaking, thinking and reasoning “like a child” to putting “an end to childish ways” is based on hope.  You have to have hope that you can live for something other than yourself without ultimately losing before you are free to love and give and to move from self-centeredness to self-sacrificial giving.

That’s how we can help people discover the joy of giving.  We have to lead them to hope.  Pity, shame, fear and an appeal to a sense of fairness might get them to give money.  But, if we want people to give themselves, so that when they give their money they are giving something more valuable, we have to give them hope.

Do you remember the story of Zacchaeus?  The guy who had to climb the sycamore tree to see Jesus because he was too short and couldn’t see over the crowd?  (Luke 19:1-10)  The truth is that Zacchaeus was up a tree in more ways than one.  As a tax collector, he’d made his fortune defrauding his own people.  But, when Jesus went to his village, he called Zacchaeus out of the tree and then went to his house even though no one else would have anything to do with him.  We don’t know what they talked about.  But, when it was all over, Zacchaeus said to Jesus, “‘Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.’”  Isn’t that interesting?  Jesus gave him hope and tithing doesn’t even come close to describing the kind of giving Zacchaeus did in return.

David Pope has spent the last fifteen years of his life in prison for rape.  New DNA evidence recently proved him innocent.  When he was released from prison he said that the way he survived all those years was to simply shut down emotionally.  He said, “They told me I was someone I’m not (but) once your behind those bars, it doesn’t matter if you’re innocent or guilty . . ..”  (“Innocent man coped with prison by ‘shutting down,” The Dallas Morning News, February 4, 2001)  If the escape from prison by the Connally seven over the Christmas holidays doesn’t prove anything else it proves that if you are going to take a man’s hope away, you better lock the door and do far more than just throw away the key.  If you’ve taken away a man’s hope you’ve taken away one of the last vestiges of existence that separates him from wild animals.  A man without hope is nothing more than life-wrecking rage and cruelty looking for a place to happen.

So, it’s not about taking the giving factor out of our worship.  The truth is that, for far too many, that wouldn’t change a thing.  What will make the change is when we put the hope back in so that people who are shut down and locked in cages of fear and anxiety over what is only material will discover the joy of living for something that is eternal.  It’s about telling them of the Jesus who came to set them free from the spiritual prisons in which their sins have shackled them so that they can know how valuable they are to him regardless of what they are worth to this world. 

If we give people that kind of hope, we won’t ever have to worry about what they give, even if the preacher forgets to take the offering.