11/6/66

Scripture: Read John 3: 1-16.

What about asking people to give themselves and their money to Christian causes? There may be some cynicism about fund-raising and fund-raisers. Perhaps this is natural in a world so much of which is money-conscious and money-mad. Some people even say that the world has invaded the church and has come to dominate its life. Some of this cynicism is justified. It is all right for us to consider carefully and critically the methods and motives that we employ in presenting to possible donors the case for giving to a worthy cause. However, we do not need to be diffident or apologetic about “giving” itself. For giving is of the essence of Christian faith.

The disciples of Jesus followed one who gave of himself completely - everything that he was and had. They, themselves, learned to be givers; persuaded others to be givers. Paul encouraged Christians of a favored location to take up a generous offering and send it to Christians of a needy spot. Probably giving is the most significant thing that a person does!!

We live in a business culture. Everyone wants some kind of job --- an occupation wherein he or she can transform working energy into money (wages or salary) which, in turn, can be used to purchase the result of someone else’s toil. Money is the stored-up stuff of living effort. In a valid sense, it is life itself ..... to be directed, spent, given, or stored for a while against a future day of spending or giving. In one way or another, practically every man or woman is an earner. In some cases it is just one member of a household who is the one who brings home the wage envelope or salary check, but each member of the family helps, in truth, to earn it.

We may suppose that most people work in order to have the necessities of life. But should not Christians work out of a sense of Christian vocation? It is too confining just to work for a living. The calling to be a Christian involves some personal concern for fellow workers, for customers, for many others as a necessary part of one’s vocation. It is an act of Christian service to make a positive contribution to the welfare of others through honest labor. Earning is important.

So, also, is spending important. After one has earned his or her money in salary or wages, he or she usually brings it home and shares it in the family. This family sharing and budgeting is an exercise in Christian stewardship. There is probably much to be heard about “Christian Family Money Management.” One expresses his stewardship in the way one’s family spends its money. But spending is not the most important act of mankind.

Giving is the most significant act of a person, because it expresses one’s highest sense of values. When a worker leaves one job and takes another job because it pays higher wages or salary, this is to be expected in our kind of society; and it is not very significant. When one’s income improves so that he can move from a Plymouth or Ford to a Buick car, or from one car to two car status in the family, it is significant, but not terribly important. When, however, a man who has been giving nothing to Christian education begins to make a big annual contribution to the scholarship fund of a Christian college or seminary to help needy and capable young people get an education, something of real importance has begun. When a person who has been giving an occasional dollar to his church, or a few cents per week, begins to express his belief and concern by giving, say, 5% or 10% of his income, or perhaps more, to his church, something important has occurred in his life and continues to work in his life. There is satisfaction in these gifts.

But giving is different from spending in its returns. For the return is psychological and spiritual rather than tangible. In a really good business transaction both seller and buyer should profit. In a giving transaction the donor (giver) gives over something of value. He gets back a great deal, but it is not measured in dollars or material so much as in the satisfaction that comes from giving help where that service counts.

T. K. Thompson is a UCC clergyman who has given a great deal of service in the cause of intelligent stewardship in our denomination, in the interdenominational field, and later in an Eastern college. Thompson points out that the reason why giving is the most significant act of a person is because it is a means of expressing love. Every person loves -- to some extent; in some cases not very widely, but perhaps at least loves parents, or wife, or children. Perhaps he loves his country. There seems to be the beginning of significant love in every person. While most people work at their vocations for money, in the last analysis they work for those they love. It is this community of love, in ever-widening circles, from individual to family, to community and to the world’s peoples, with which we are concerned as a church. As one learns to expand the range of his love and concern, one becomes a better Christian.

There is a happiness in generous giving, though the happiness may not be the direct return from one’s gift. Giving is of the essence of the Christian faith because happiness, or “blessedness”, is a by-product of giving.

Ralph Sockman has pointed out that happiness is never the result of direct search for it. A young woman and her escort went to a city night club for their first such visit. After they returned to her home, she talked over the evening’s experience and impressions with her family. And this was her reaction: “I was not too disturbed,” she said, “by the off-color stories, by the too-heavy drinking, by the scantily-clad dancers. What really bothered me was the number of terribly unhappy, middle-aged people running after a good time and failing miserably.”

I think we might agree that true happiness is not pursued and captured. True happiness comes from commitment to a great cause. It is a by-product that may come, in some cases, through the reverses and unexpected sorrows and trials and frustrations of promoting a good cause.

November is the month in which the American Thanksgiving holiday occurs. Our thoughts gravitate to the trials and persistence of the Pilgrim fathers. From our point of affluence and comfort, we spend little time envying them the stern circumstances in which they lived. We may even think them to be a too-rigorous people to be enjoyable as friends or acquaintances. But there are careful historians, Sidney Mead and others, who have set forth the thesis that our Pilgrim forefathers-in-the-spirit were a happy and zestful people. They moved in the firm conviction that they were carrying out the will of God in the establishment of the Plymouth Colony in a New World. It was this sense of a divine purpose that gave them the almost unbelievable energy and resilience to face what most of us would call impossible hardships.

William Bradford’s history of the Plymouth Plantation recounts the difficulties of the first winter there in Massachusetts: “In these hard and difficult beginnings, they found some discontents and murmurings arise among some, and mutinous speeches and carriage in others; but they were soon quelled and overcome by the wisdom, patience, and just and equal carriage of things by the Governor and better part, which cleaved faithfully together in the main. But that which was most sad and lamentable was that in two or three month’s time half of their company died, especially in January and February, being the depth of winter, and wanting houses and other comforts; being infected with scurvy and other diseases which this long voyage and their inaccommodate condition had brought upon them; so as there died sometimes two or three of a day, in the aforesaid time; that of 100 and odd persons, scarce 50 remained. And of these in the time of most distress there were but six or seven sound persons, who, in their great commendations be it spoken, spared no pains, night or day, but with abundance of toil and hazard of their own health, fetched them wood, made them fires, dressed them meat, made their beds, washed their loathsome clothes, clothed and unclothed them; in a word, did all the homely and necessary offices for them which dainty and queasy stomachs can not endure to hear named; and all this willingly and cheerfully, without any grudging in the least, showing herein their true love unto their friends and brethren. A rare example and worthy to be remembered. Two of these several were Mr. William Brewster, their revered Elder, and Myles Standish, their Captain and military commander, unto whom myself and many others, were much beholden in our low and sick condition. And yet the Lord so upheld these persons, as in this general calamity they were not at all infected either with sickness or lameness. And what I have said to these, I may say of others who died in this general visitation, and others yet living, that while they had health, yea, or any strength continuing, they were not wanting to any who had need of them. And I doubt not but their recompense is with the Lord.”

The reason that these sturdy people could continue to rejoice in the Lord even after the death of half their company and the serious illness of most of the rest, was expressed in a sermon by John Winthrop. “We must delight in each other,” he said, “make others’ condition our own, rejoice together, mourn together, always having before our eyes our commission and community as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of spirit in the bond of peace. The Lord will be our God and delight to dwell among us as his own people and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways so that we shall see much more of his wisdom, power, and goodness, and truth, than formerly we were acquainted with. We shall find that the God of Israel is among us when ten of us shall be able to withstand a thousand of our enemies; when he shall make us a prayer and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations ‘the Lord make it like that of New England.’” It is from such great commitments that great joy comes.

Here is a man who lived in our time, in a midwestern state. He died six years ago at the age of 93. He lost his dearly-loved wife some nine years earlier. But his friends were amazed at how he continued, despite her death, to live with the same positive outlook, activity and personality that he had long evidenced. Someone concluded that the reason for his continued strength of spirit lay in a simple, direct commitment to Jesus Christ expressed in his loyalty to church and two great causes. He had long been a trustee of a good college. He continued in that service for the rest of his life -- a total of more than 60 years of attention to that college as a trustee. He also served for 30 years as an active member of the Department of Stewardship and Benevolence of the National Council of Churches. The secret of his long, alert and happy life seems to have been in his quiet and vigorous commitment to two or three great Christian causes.

The Apostle Paul illustrates, in his life, the great joy that comes through Christian commitment. Few people in history have suffered the combination of discouragement and difficulties that beset the life of Paul. He was weak in physical vitality, a ‘thorn in his flesh.’ He was persecuted by fellow countrymen and foreigners alike. He was hated by the reactionary silversmiths in Ephesus. He was stoned, he was beaten, had often been shipwrecked. Yet his letters in the New Testament are brimming with confidence and joy.

We have noted that giving is the most significant act of the person, and that happiness is but the by-product of giving in a committed life. Now let us say, with T. K. Thompson, simply and directly, that giving is at the heart of God, for giving is loving, and God is love. The Bible makes it clear that love is the nature of God. And this is the ultimate reality that holds the world together.

Today I remind you of a sentence in the Statement of Faith adopted by the 1959 meeting of the General Synod of the United Church of Christ, and which we usually read together at least once a month. God “calls us into His Church to accept the cost and the joy of discipleship.” The cost is a great deal more than the amount of money that we pledge and pay to our church. It is more than the time that we give to our church, and through the church. It is more than the talents that we spend through the church. The joy of discipleship is something which I hope we can understand. For, despite the misunderstanding of a lot of folk who think that there is something dull and somber about being a Christian, the truth is that discipleship is a truly joyful matter. Perhaps the joy becomes more apparent when we understand better what it costs.

Today I want to underline the joyful nature of our church participation. It is no light and flippant matter, but is an expression of deep satisfaction. And today I want us to be reminded that we are multiplied through our church.

Today is Stewardship Sunday. Part of our response to it is in bringing our expression of interest, our declaration of support for the church during the coming year. The maintenance of our fine, historic, beautiful church home, the use of its facilities, the spirit of understanding and help to others, the sharing of support of the church’s program and mission, depend upon our loving concern expressed in our gifts.

The Christian Church is an amazing institution! Think of its age -- nearly 2000 years. This particular congregation, right here, is much more than 100 years old. Think of this church’s world-wide geographic distribution. It is on every continent; I suppose in every nation. It is by no means dominant in every land. In some countries it is a very small part of the total life of the country. But it is there! Its members are witnessing with an effect that is like yeast in the great mass of life. Think of the church’s variety in worship forms and government. Think of its inclusiveness of all kinds of people. When I think of these things I’m glad I’m a part of it.

Think of the dynamic influence the church has had through the ages in changing lives for the better, in spreading the precept and practice of love; in establishing schools and hospitals and social welfare centers. Think of its influence in the struggle for freedom from slavery; of its concern for decent working conditions; of its contribution to art in painting, and music and architecture. We covet for the future the variety and virility and strength the church has shown in the past.

Of course we know the church has often violated its trust and has unwittingly misrepresented the God it professes to serve. I am not forgetting all of the common hypocrisies to which we are party; the same of the church’s inquisitions, bigotry and divisiveness. It is one of the miracles of religion that it can survive the institutional wrongs committed in its name.

I belong to the church in spite of its shortcomings. And I think most of you do, too. For we believe deeply in the church’s ultimate and permanent objective of making man conscious of his relationship to God. Out of that relationship come new activities in each era as people try to express their gratitude to God for what He is and what He does.

The church is the institution that keeps our local charities motivated. The United Fund in our American communities, including Hawaii, is being subscribed at this time of the year. One reason why people are willing to support the agencies for which the United Fund campaign is conducted is that the church members of each community understand the philosophy of sharing. People need an enduring motive for their caring for their fellow men. The church understands the need for all sorts of philanthropies; and it undergirds them and maintains a continuous supply of people whose Christian faith impels them to serve their fellow men.

There is a great lift to be found in thinking of the countless young people who, influenced by our churches, have moved into lives of service in all kinds of good organizations. Of course some of them seem to have forgotten the church for a time, but they have been inspired through it, and, if some of them ignore it for a time, they usually come back to it when they start their own families. This happens generation after generation, not because the church is so skillful, but because people who expose themselves to it in even its crudest forms are relating themselves to an organization which is avowedly trying to keep people close to God. And such a contact does something significant to people!

You and I have come, this week, to the time when we examine the proposed budget of our church for the coming year. A budget committee and the church council have gone over the church’s needs and possibilities carefully. They have hammered out their estimate of the needs and the cost of the several facets of the church’s life and activity and service for a year. It is not an extravagant budget. But it is a workable plan for enabling this church to be an effective organization of Christian people.

The Church Council knows that responsible officers need to have good tools available to aid them in their work. It has suggested the salary and perquisites for a minister at a figure which it is hoped will free him of undue financial worries so that he can give his energies whole-heartedly to the work that must be done. The house of worship and service where we meet and the parish building and parsonage must be maintained, kept in repair, protected with insurance, equipped with lights, telephone, water and so on.

I am happy that Imiola Church undertakes to raise and give a responsible amount for missions. It is hard to realize how important and effective our mission dollars are in the cause of Christ’s spirit among peoples near and far.

Let us come to our decision on the support of our church and its program with a real love of life, an expectation that there is untold joy in sharing, in the giving of our money, our time, our worship, our attention and service. It is for the love of God, for Christ’s sake, and for the redemption of people including ourselves that we give. Let it be done so well that we may hope for God’s blessing on our lives in this church and through it, with other churches, to people near and far.

“For God loved the world so much that He gave his own Son, that whosoever has faith in him may not just die, but may live and love eternally.” [John 3: 16].

-------------------------------

Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, November 6, 1966.

Also at Imiola Church, November 9, 1969.

(See sermons of 11-5-61, 11-12-61)