Sermon Title: "Why Go to Church? 4- Money Matters"
Date: October 24, 2010
Minister:  The Rev. Charles Ensley

Lesson:  1 Timothy 6:6-19

Last month I began my fall sermon series on why we go to church.  The first reason was community.  The second reason was real people.  The third was reaching out.  Today’s is money matters.

In the aisle of a grocery store, a pastor encountered a woman she had not seen in church for a long time.  Now that scene alone is fraught with unease.  Do you skip that aisle and move over two aisles?  Do you ask how her kids are doing?  Do you say you miss her at church?

After exchanging pleasantries, this particular Colorado pastor did say, “We miss you.  Is there anything our church can do for you?”  To which the woman replied, “Yes, there is.  You can stop asking for money all the time.”

Does the church ask for money all the time?  One of our members wrote to the financial committee last week and said that it seemed we do, and there are lots of other good causes in the world we should be supporting.

I grant you that if this fall you visit most any Protestant church that uses the calendar year as their fiscal year, you’re going to hear a lot of announcements and even sermons about giving money—specifically giving money to the church to support it and carry on its ministries.

Let’s look at our requests for money throughout the year and exactly what they benefit.

Each year at this time we conduct a stewardship drive in order to create a budget for the next year and determine where the support is going to come from.  Do you know our church’s annual budget for this year 2010 is $586,000?  That’s over a half-a-million dollars!  And 80% of that budget comes from the pledged and loose offerings you, the congregation, contribute.  The budget is used to pay staff salaries and benefits for 13 employees.  It pays the utilities, property taxes, maintenance, office and cleaning supplies, choir and handbell music and Sunday School curriculum, repairs for this block-wide building, the Youth Center across the street and our Sky Forest Retreat Center in the mountains.  Eight percent of the pledged and loose income goes to mission work.

We take four special offerings each year:  two go directly to benefit the church at Christmas and Easter.  The other two, One Great Hour of Sharing during Lent and Neighbors in Need in October, go outside our church to provide disaster relief, support hunger programs, send medicine and relief supplies to Third World countries, both through the United Church of Christ and Church World Service.

We offer a wealth of opportunities throughout the year for you to participate in specific mission projects, either with your time and energy or by contributing funds.  These include your own purchases used to cook the food that is served each month at Christian Outreach in Action.  You may purchase Third World Handarts to provide a living for impoverished artisans, or contribute through the Alternative Christmas Market to support the efforts of Church World Service, Heifer Project and Habitat for Humanity.  You may contribute funds to underwrite the 200 waterproof blankets we’ve spend a year making to give COA at Christmas.  Maybe you’re sponsoring a walker in today’s CROP Hunger Walk.  Perhaps you plan to buy a bag of groceries to bring to our Thanksgiving food drive benefitting the clients at Woman to Woman and Centro Shalom.  Or you buy clothing, toys, small appliances for one of the dozen Christmas families we sponsor.  You may pick and choose from any of those mission projects … if you wish.  No one says you must support all, or any.

I am not going to count the sale of scrip gift cards, for that is money you would spend at the grocery store, gas pump, restaurant or mall.  Yet, did you know your purchase of scrip at face value contributes $7,000 annually to the church budget?  Nor am I going to count the current sale of Entertainment Books, for you receive a value in return, but so too do our Christian Education programs receive a boost through your purchase.

Does it seem like the church is asking for money all the time?  Why, yes, it does.  But it’s not all to keep this building up and running and staffed and programmed.  We give some of that money away.  Our gifts do reach the far corners of this earth.

I hope this is good response to the complaint that the church is always asking for money.  It is, however, not the whole response.  Any worthy charity can make the case for asking for money because of all the good it does.  The church isn’t simply a charity with a religious sheen on it.  Christians aren’t simply do-gooders who also pray.

Doing good for others, or the commandment “love your neighbor as yourself,” is the second of the two great commandments Jesus spoke.  The first is:  “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart…soul…and mind.”  (Matthew 22:37)  For Christians, giving out of what we have has as much to do with the first great commandment as with the second.  Or expressed another way, we should give not only to do good for others, but also because it’s necessary for our own spiritual well-being.  It’s part of the way we love God with heart, soul and mind.

The apostle Paul gets at that in his first letter to Timothy when he addresses the negative impact money can have on our souls.  He acknowledges that spiritual gain comes to us “in godliness combined with contentment.”  But he warns about the dangers of making it your sole ambition to be rich by stating that oft-quoted axiom:  “For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.” (1 Timothy 6:10)

In a careful reading of the text, Paul never says that having money is evil, but the quest to acquire great sums of it and how it is used may be evil.  We’ve all heard of the plague of a great many lottery winners and recipients of lawsuit settlements:  they are awarded a large sum of money, but through bad investments, wasteful living, bad luck or being swindled, there is a pattern of them losing most of it, and sometimes ending up penniless. 

Obviously, we live in a world that runs on money.  We cannot have a decent existence without money, and Paul was well aware of that even twenty centuries ago.  But he also recognizes that the lure of money and the acquisition of possessions it makes possible are so dangerous to our souls that we have to release their power over us.  And one of the best ways to do that is by opening our hands and giving some of it away.

In the conclusion of today’s lesson, Paul addresses Christians “who in the present age are rich.”  He tells them not to allow their wealth to make them “haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches.”  Rather, Paul says, they should set their hope “on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.”  And lest they miss the point, he spells it out:  “They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.” (18-19)

Notice he doesn’t say they should be generous and ready to share because that’s good for others, though no doubt Paul would agree with that.  No, he says they should be “rich in good works, generous, and ready to share” because by so doing they “take hold of the life that really is life.”  They should be generous because it’s one of the things that makes them, the givers, spiritually healthy.  Here’s a good example:

You may recall that the popular author Stephen King was walking down the road near his New England home one day in 1999 when he was struck and severely injured by a minivan.  A few years later, in a commencement address at Vassar College, he referred to both his accident and the earning potential of the graduates, saying:

“Well, I’ll tell you one thing you’re not going to do, and that’s take it with you.  I’m worth I don’t exactly know how many millions of dollars ... and a couple of years ago I found out what ‘you can’t take it with you’ means.  I found out while I was lying in the ditch at the side of a country road, covered with mud and blood and with the tibia of my right leg poking out the side of my jeans ....  I had a MasterCard in my wallet, but when you’re lying in the ditch with broken glass in your hair, no one accepts MasterCard.”

King went on to discuss what the graduates could do with their earnings from their graduation until they leave this earth:

“Of all the power which will shortly come into your hands ... the greatest is undoubtedly the power of compassion, the ability to give.  We have enormous resources in this country — resources you yourselves will soon command — but they are only yours on loan.  ... I came here to talk about charity, and I want you to think about it on a large scale.  Should you give away what you have?  Of course you should.  I want you to consider making your lives one long gift to others, and why not? ... All you want to get at the getting place ... none of that is real.  All that lasts is what you pass on.  The rest is smoke and mirrors.”

Finally, King mentioned a local charity which helps the hungry, the sick and the homeless.  He said he was making a $20,000 contribution to it and challenged audience members to do the same.  And here’s one more thing he said:

“Giving isn’t about the receiver or the gift but the giver.  It’s for the giver.  One doesn’t open one’s wallet to improve the world, although it’s nice when that happens; one does it to improve one’s self.  I give because it’s the only concrete way I have of saying that I’m glad to be alive and that I can earn my daily bread doing what I love. ...  Giving is a way of taking the focus off the money we make and putting it back where it belongs — on the lives we lead, the families we raise, the communities which nurture us.”

Maybe that’s why the church always seems to be asking for money, both for the church, and for others.

A Note from the Preacher:

Portions of my fall sermon series are conceptually based on some sermons preached by the Rev. Dr. Melanie Rosa at Lakewood United Methodist Church in Lakewood, Colorado.  Dr. Rosa is now District Superintendent of the Mile High/Pikes Peak District, having served churches large and small, rural and urban for 25 years.  Dr. Rosa allowed use and adaption of her material in Homiletics, from which I adapted some ideas for this sermon.

King, Stephen.  Commencement Address, May 20, 2001, http://commencement.vassar.edu/2001/010520.king.html