This sermon was preached at Little Saling and Stebbing.
The reading was the Widow's mite, from Luke 21, 1-4.
It might seem rather insensitive of me to be preaching about money in the current economic climate, and it might seem particularly insensitive of me to be preaching about giving to the church at a time when the papers are full of over the top headlines like “church in meltdown.”
Well, it may be insensitive, but I’m going to follow my calling and do it anyway, and the only apology I will make is if my sums are wrong.
There are lots of reasons to watch TV right now, tennis, football, cricket and the news, but there are still some toe-curlingly cheesy adverts to put us off.
One of my least favourite is the L’Oreal hair care range that has the strap line “because you’re worth it”. It just seems to encourage vanity and self-centredness.
There is a worth that we have though, of course – far more significant than the things that make us choose our shampoo; to God we are worth the death of his son to save us – that’s how much he loves us and how much each of us is worth to him.
Our gospel reading today shows us the response God wants us to give to this good news; last week at Great Saling Cilla was talking about that famous verse from Matthew 10; freely you have received, freely give. She said, I’m told, that if you feel you have received a lot from God, then you should give in proportion to that; if not, then not.
This is a challenge to the church, to be a place where people can receive abundantly from God, and so that verse is a good place to start when thinking about our giving.
Today I am going to be sharing some statistics with you, but also looking at the Scriptures too, as we consider our financial situation.
Money (or parting with it) is always a touchy subject at church. I have been here 21 months now and have never knowingly said a word about it from the pulpit.
In a way I am not being Christ-like in that, because 16% of the sayings of Jesus are about money – should I therefore not try to mirror that in my preaching, though I don’t know a congregation who could stomach a sermon on money every 5 weeks!
I found a website this week called “Global Rich list”. Using data from the World Bank, it enables you to calculate how rich you are in comparison to every other earner in the world, by typing your annual income. If you put in £20000 – about what we get as clergy, it transpires that we are in the top 4% of earners in the world. If you type in £50,000 you are in the top 1% of earners.
This is salutatory stuff in the context of the widow’s mite; Jesus said to his disciples, “I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything – all she had to live on”
In relative terms – compared to the population of the world, we give out of our riches; even if you are on the dole – or jobseekers allowance as they call it today, you come out as in the top 14% of earners. I shall return to the dole later – and I don’t mean I shall be signing on!
It’s about commitment isn’t it? A commitment to God, expressed by a commitment to his church. Even if you have problems with the church – and by the way don’t believe everything you read about the Church of England in the papers at the moment, especially if Ruth Gledhill writes it in the Times - Christian giving is meant to be an expression of worship, an expression of our commitment to God; that widow at the Temple clearly felt she had freely received, so she freely gave, everything she had, as an act of commitment to God, even though everyone around her was being showy and probably looked down at her; she didn’t let that prevent her from dedicating herself to God.
And let’s be sure about one thing; when you give at church, it is a gift to God; you are not paying a subscription to be a member of a club, nor even really contributing to charity – we may be bound by charity law but churches themselves are not charities. So even if you think you haven’t freely received from the church, try to remember the things you have received from God, and give to him freely in return.
So, how much should we be giving?
Well, I am a fan of tithing – of giving away 10% of your income, purely because I have found it to be a practice that enhances my spiritual life and teaches me to be generous. Tithing in this country though is a bit like the crusades - a dark part of church history that we’d rather forget about. In centuries past, the monastic communities and later the clergy grew fat and rich on the tithes of poor parishioners. It was legally enforceable.
Now of course Christian giving is what we call in the jargon a freewill offering. Our epistle makes it clear that our giving should not be reluctant, but significantly nor should it be under compulsion. I cannot force anyone to give money (or more money) in church. The apostle Paul also complements Jesus’ point from Matthew 10 when he writes, “Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly; whoever sows generously will also reap generously”.
We are giving out of our riches, yet our Lord calls us to the total commitment of the widow who gave everything. So does God want us to give all our money to the church now? Well, I’m not going to stop you but I doubt it.
A long time ago I heard a story about a rich Christian who was invited to speak about his life in church. He told how he had come into church as a young man and given his all – his last penny from his pocket in the collection plate, and how he had been so blessed by God by giving up everything that he had become rich. A little boy at the back of the church spoke up and issued the man with a challenge – “if you were so blessed by giving away everything, why don’t you do it again?”
If not everything – because it is hard to exist today without some money – then how much?
I don’t know your incomes, and so I can’t calculate your tithe, and so thought I’d try an experiment; I looked on the internet and discovered that the weekly jobseekers’ allowance – here’s where we get back to the dole – is about £60 a week for an adult over 25.
LITTLE SALING If you tithe that, it amounts to £6 a week, or less than one pound a day, which is £312 a year. And if you gift aid it the church can claim an extra 28p in the pound making £399 a year. I imagine that most of us are on incomes or pensions that are slightly higher than £60 a week, but how does £399 a year compare with your level of giving? If we have a congregation of about 12, each giving a tithe of the dole, in a year our total giving if it was all gift aided would be around £4800. I’ll leave you to go and check the figures from the APCM, to see how that compares with our current level of giving, and I will also leave it to you to consider prayerfully whether you are giving enough, in the light of 1 Corinthians 9, 11, “you will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion”, and the poor widow, who gave all she had to live on. Should you decide to increase your giving I’m sure Malcolm would be glad to hear from you.
STEBBING If you tithe that, it amounts to £6 a week, or less than one pound a day, so how does it compare with your level of giving? If we have a congregation of say 55 adults on a Sunday, each tithing the dole, that makes £ 330 a week, and an impressive figure of £17160 a year.
But our actual Sunday cash collections are averaging at around £375 a week at the moment, so obviously we are not all on jobseekers allowance here.
Aha, you will say, I give by direct debit or in the envelope scheme, I use gift aid
Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that there is a good level of giving here. Indeed this parish is one of the very few in the diocese that raises its entire parish share without doing any fundraising. I put that down to your faith and to the sound biblical teaching you have had over many years in the past. Now however you will be aware I hope from Peter’s recent notices that we are running a little low on funds.
There is much to be glad about here. We are a growing and increasingly active church, so we use the building more frequently, so we have higher electricity and heating bills, and our ministry expenses are higher too. You might think we shouldn’t heat the building so much, but I would say that one of the many reasons why people who try our church out often stay is because this is a warm and comfortable environment. If you invited friends round to your house and wanted them to have a good time, would you keep your sitting room cold?
Our heating issues are compounded by the fact that at the beginning of May the boiler broke down and will need to be replaced at a cost of at least £5000. Don’t even get me started on the roof.
Our planned giving is also quite healthy. While I do not know their identities, I know that there are 39 people who give by envelopes, standing orders and direct tax efficient giving, with a total last year of £29, 816. I was very interested to learn however that if you take away the top 5 givers, you also take away £16, 149 of that total, so it seems we have a few very generous people and some others who give an average of £7 a week – just over the dole tithe. I guess we are all on an income of £60 a week or above, so I have to say that in a Bible – believing church like ours, we might expect the level of giving across the board to be higher. Quite apart form anything else if those top 5 tax-efficient givers were all out on a jolly and were killed in a train wreck, we’d be up the proverbial creek.
BOTH AGAIN I don’t like to increase giving by making people feel guilty. I believer the bible is clear in many places, not just our two readings this morning that giving is part of our worship, and you may not have been given the opportunity to think about that element of your faith for a while. If that’s you, or even if you just need reminding about why we give and what it is for, let’s read 1 Corinthians 9, verse 12 again.
“This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of God’s people but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God”
So it’s not just Freely you have received, freely give, it is also love your neighbour.
I know the context of 1 Corinthians 9 is a one off gift Paul is seeking from the Corinthian to the Macedonian church, but I still believe the principles he applies are appropriate when we think about the way we worship with our wallets.
For Christians in the Church of England today, supplying the needs of God’s people has a number of applications;
For starters, the money you give to the diocese pays our stipend and provides training for us, and resources such as the vocations days, where people from across this benefice have been encouraged to listen to God’s calling on their lives, and the ministry leadership team conference that groups form Stebbing have attended in recent years.
And of course the churches in this benefice generally tend to be very generous to home and overseas missions and other Christian agencies like Bible lands, tear fund and so on.
I guess what I’m saying is we can overcome our reluctance to give to an institution by reminding ourselves that (even when it appears not to be the case) God is alive and well and active in and through that institution. I’m not just here because I think the Church of England is the best boat to fish from; I’m here because it’s where God called me and if he called me into it then I must believe he is here too.
He is here, and he definitely thinks we’re worth it
As a final thought, consider this, when we give our money to God’s church, we are worshipping - giving God his worth.
Think about how much you give - – what is God worth to us? When we give our offering we should be able to say to the Lord in our hearts, “I am giving this much, because you are worth it.”
