In another generation, people often made promises with this qualification, “If the Lord’s willing and the creek don’t rise.”  This was back in a time when America’s population was predominantly rural and getting to and from places meant fording streams on horseback or by carriage.  “If the Lord’s willing and the creek don’t rise,” they’d say.  If it’s God’s will and all circumstances turn out favorably, we’ll be there.  One question.  What if the Lord is willing and the creek rises anyway?  What then?  Is God’s will for us at the mercy of life’s changing circumstances?  

This sermon is the last in a series of six devoted to our church’s Mission Statement, Sharing Christ Through Caring Relationships.  Today, we focus on the last of our nine core values, “Sacrificial Giving.”  We discovered this core value for our church when we were looking through the first church’s scrapbook, as recorded in Acts 4, and discovered how those first Christians experienced the working of God among them even as economic uncertainty swirled around them.  In today’s text from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthian church, the apostle is praising the Macedonian Christians for their generosity.  He had been taking an offering for the Jerusalem church whose members were suffering severe persecution and poverty.  Churches from all over responded to the call for help and, in the process, modeled for churches even twenty centuries later what Christian generosity in action looks like despite changing and often unfavorable economic circumstances, if the creek don’t rise, or it do.

Someone’s thinking, the preacher’s sure taking a long time to tell us he wants our money.  You might well be thinking that I’m about to lay it on thick, try to make you feel guilty for not giving more money, or any at all to this church.  Maybe you’re like the little girl who became restless as the preacher's sermon dragged on and on.  Finally, she leaned over to her mother and whispered, "Mommy, if we give him the money now, will he let us go?"

After all, this is the first quarter of the year, typically one of the most difficult quarters of the year for any church financially.  And, we’re not immune to what other non-profit organizations all over the country are suffering in this economy.  Even our state and local governments are trimming their budgets at the very same time utility companies are raising their rates by double-digit percentages and gasoline is beginning to scare $2.00 a gallon.  And, if something doesn’t change in the next few days we’ll be at war with Iraq, a war that has already begun to send negative ripples through our economy, no to mention what it may ultimately cost in other ways.  To say the least, the economic creek is rising and there’s not one thing any of us can do about that.  Or, is there? 

If the ancient church is our model, then, as it so happens, despite horrible economic conditions, we do have power, we do have choices.

We can joyfully participate in giving that helps others.  “We want you to know, brothers and sisters, about the grace of God that has been granted to the churches of Macedonia; for during a severe ordeal of affliction, their abundant joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part.”

This is the image of joyful giving.  Whatever this “severe ordeal of affliction” may have been, this ordeal had become the mortar in which the Holy Spirit became the pestle grinding together both their “abundant joy” and “extreme poverty” which overflowed in “a wealth of generosity.”

If you’re looking for a sermon on tithing you won’t find it here.  If these people had only given a tithe this story wouldn’t be in their scrapbook.  What you will find here is a family of believers who dipped into the well of their despair with a bucket of joy and gave sacrificially, far beyond their ability.  They chose to participate by giving out of their joy.  What God wants from us, in good times and bad, is just for us to experience joyful participation in giving to others in need.

The other day I let a young woman go ahead of me in the grocery line because I had a full cart and she only had a couple of items.  I’d had a tough day that day, and the thought of doing something nice for someone else felt good.  Sure enough, the young cashier had to call for help because the scale wasn’t working and she couldn’t weigh this young girl’s tomato.  (“Marv, frustrated preacher who always picks the slowest line in the grocery store getting frustrated waiting on the tomato girl in aisle nine.”)  Finally, they got it weighed only to discover that the tomato put the bill over the amount she could afford.  She needed $4.29.  She only had $4.  She told the cashier to put the tomato back.  Not so fast, I’m thinking.  I’d given that tomato a good portion of my life.  So, I offered the twenty-nine cents.  I didn’t owe that girl anything.  I didn’t even know her.  But, it was the smile on her face that brought joy to my heart and helped me end the day feeling very fulfilled. 

I couldn’t go back and undo what had made my day miserable earlier on.  But, when I chose to participate in giving that helped someone else, I discovered a joy that only comes when you give just for the sake of giving and nothing else.  These early Christians had already discovered that kind of giving, joyful giving.  In fact, Paul reported that they begged “earnestly for the privilege of sharing in this ministry to the saints.”  They couldn’t stand the thought of missing out on the opportunity to joyfully participate in helping meet other people’s needs.

Our joyful participation in accomplishing his kingdom’s work is all that God wants from us.  If we are giving out of any other motive than joy then, whatever we’re doing, we’re not giving.  If we’re giving because we need God to do something, we’re bribing God.  It’s a tradeoff.  Only joyful giving is true Christian giving. 

No matter what life’s circumstances may bring, we can joyfully participate in helping others.  We can also trust the generosity of  God. 

Generosity is a key word in understanding true Christian giving.  It’s one thing if we tithe.  It’s altogether another if we ever discover generosity.  The closer you get to generosity, the closer you get to joy.  Jesus once had high praise for a widow woman who gave “‘all she had to live on,’” and went on to say that others “‘gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty (Mark 12:43-44).’”  What makes people do that?  The closer you get to generosity the closer you get to joy.  Listen as Paul encourages the first Christians.  “Now as you excel in everything, in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in utmost eagerness, and in our love for you, so we want you to excel also in this generous undertaking.  For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.”  “The generous act of our Lord,” he said.  A generosity that expresses the commitment of God to redeem us, no matter what, even if it means, and it did, impoverishing himself.  Generosity is born in us the closer we get to the generosity of God, a generosity that transcends life’s changing circumstances.  God, in ways sometimes impossible for us to see or understand, will, out of his abundant riches, generously provide everything we absolutely must have in his own good time (Philippians 4:19).

There was once a farmer who lived in an ancient place and time.  A time when a man’s wealth was measured in simple terms.  One day, as he was working with his horse in the field, there was a clap of thunder, the horse was spooked and ran off up the mountain.  His horse was gone and so was his means of making a living.  When all the people in the village heard about it, they consoled the old farmer, “We are so sorry you lost your horse.  What bad luck!”  “Bad luck,  good luck, who knows for certain?” the old farmer said.

Sure enough, a few days later his horse came back from the mountain with several other horses that had herded around it.  The old farmer not only got his horse back but was also able to corral all the wild horses, too.  All his neighbors rejoiced.  “Now you have many horses, you are very wealthy!  What good luck!”  “Good luck, bad luck, who knows for certain?” the old farmer said.  Soon, the farmer’s only son went to break the horses.  One of them threw him and his leg was broken in several places.  All his neighbors said, “We’re so sorry to hear of your son’s misfortune.  What bad luck!”  “Bad luck, good luck, who knows for certain?”  Before long, war broke out and all the able-bodied young men in the village were conscripted to fight in the war.  But, because his leg was so badly broken, the young farmer’s son couldn’t fight.  Before the war was over nearly all the young men who went off to war were killed, but the farmer’s son was spared.

Of course, the moral of the story is that it is impossible to tell the full meaning of any one event in our life until we are able to see it later in the context of all of life’s meaning.  It is impossible to judge the ultimate by the immediate.  What may appear to be the very worst thing that could ever happen to you might well turn out to be the doorway to the very best thing.  This is what it means to trust the generosity of God.  The creek of life’s changing circumstances won’t ever rise so high that it separates us from God’s commitment to love and redeem us.  Indeed, if the creek ever sweeps us away it will only be to another place where God’s purposes for us can and will be even more fully revealed.

Christian giving is giving that sacrifices out of joy.  People give sacrificially out of joy when their safety and security don’t have anything to do with life’s changing circumstances but on their willingness to rest in the grace of God and his unchanging, uncompromising commitment to redeem them, if the creek don’t rise, or it do.