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HOW TO MAKE STEALING OR SHARING POSSIBLE. Ephesians 4:25-5:2:
In today's reading from Paul's letter to the church at Ephesus in Asia Minor, the apostle gives a list of instructions on how to communicate honestly, openly, effectively in the church. This litany of Christian virtues is familiar. What surprises me is verse 28 where the apostle states: THOSE WHO ARE STEALING SHOULD GIVE UP STEALING. As this letter and today's text is written specifically to Christians, not to the general population, the conclusion must be drawn that there was thievery in the church at Ephesus. Let's hear the entire passage:
SO THEN, PUTTING AWAY FALSEHOOD, LET ALL OF US SPEAK THE TRUTH TO OUR NEIGHBORS, FOR WE ARE MEMBERS OF ONE ANOTHER. BE ANGRY BUT DO NOT SIN; DO NOT LET THE SUN GO DOWN ON YOUR ANGER, AND DO NOT MAKE ROOM FOR THE DEVIL. THIEVES MUST GIVE UP STEALING; RATHER LET THEM LABOR AND WORK HONESTLY WITH THEIR OWN HANDS SO AS TO HAVE SOMETHING TO SHARE WITH THE NEEDY. LET NO EVIL TALK COME OUT OF YOUR MOUTHS, BUT ONLY WHAT IS USEFUL FOR BUILDING UP, AS THERE IS NEED, SO THAT YOUR WORDS MAY GIVE GRACE TO THOSE WHO HEAR. AND DO NOT GRIEVE THE HOLY SPIRIT OF GOD, WITH WHICH YOU WERE MARKED WITH A SEAL FOR THE DAY OF REDEMPTION. PUT AWAY FROM YOU ALL BITTERNESS AND WRATH AND ANGER AND WRANGLING AND SLANDER, TOGETHER WITH ALL MALICE, AND BE KIND TO ONE ANOTHER, TENDERHEARTED, FORGIVING ONE ANOTHER, AS GOD IN CHRIST HAS FORGIVEN YOU. THEREFORE, BE IMITATORS OF GOD, AS BELOVED CHILDREN, AND LIVE IN LOVE, AS CHRIST LOVED US AND GAVE HIMSELF UP FOR US, A FRAGRANT OFFERING AND SACRIFICE TO GOD.
The church is the last place we would expect thievery to be practiced although the openness of catholic churches night and day, until recent times, traditionally placed religious alms boxes at the mercy of the ramdom thief. Churches nowadays increasingly close down except at services to reduce this random thievery as well as the stealing of church art.
What Paul probably had in mind was the fact that many of the earliest Christian converts were slaves and thievery among slaves was commonly accepted. Though slaves became new persons in Christ, their baptism did not automatically convey a better moral code and lifestyle. Paul was aware of the danger that slaves could, if not counseled strongly, go right on with their thieving. Of course, the same applies to all the commandments and converts may go right on breaking, if not the eighth commandment against stealing, then one of the others read this morning.
The church is vulnerable to stealing for another very important reason which is mentioned by Paul at verse 245: FOR WE ARE MEMBERS OF ONE ANOTHER. In the church its members voluntarily share their faith, their energy in working together, and their money in supporting the church. All is held in common for the good of the church and the cause of Christ. In church work, including its finances, there is no room for the "This is mine" philosophy outside the church. All is held in common. The church is "ours." And in an environment which stressse sharing rather than claiming, the temptation exists to take selfishly and its corollary to coast along on the giving and efforts of others.
In the church we trust one another and it's a shock on those, thankfully rare occasion, when it is revealed that a highly trusted figure has misued church money. It does happen: One of the recent and notorious instances of this was the indictment of the Rev. Dr. Lyons, long time president of the largest black Baptist denomination in America. He is now serving some years in federal prison for having misappropriated millions of dollars of church funds to maintain his mistress and her mansion.
Commonsense financial checks and balances do not in any way undermine trust and confidence in the church. Our congregation should always have two witnesses, preferably three, to the counting of the Sunday collection; two signatures necessary for all checks and money transfers of the church; the public reporting through the NEWSLETTER of income and expenditures; and both internal auditing of church finances by the church council in its monthly review of the treasurer's report and the annual professional outside auditing.
Paul also points us, especially those with an inclination toward thievery, to the helpful alternative: develop the charitable instinct by honest work and generosity, especially toward the poor.
In the first century, Paul must have had in mind by "honest labor" manual labor and artisan work. Nowadays, the work bench has been replaced by the computer console for most of us; his counsel to honest work still pertains to us as does his exhortation to be generous.
Let's be honest about church finances for these few minutes. The main reason for a stewardship push at any time of the year should be to encourage awareness within the congregation of what is required to run the church of our choice. This occasional look at fiscal reality is necessary because most of the time the church operates without public accountability with bills getting paid, and nobody much worries about who is giving what. As I just noted, the worldly approach of "This is mine" simply doesn't track in church finances. Everyone assumes that everyone is giving proportionately to their ability to give.
However, that assumes a lot because naivete and ignorance in church finances is a hundred times more common than any possible misappropriation of funds. Consider this simple example. Since I am usually the first in the Executive Club on Sundays and among the last to leave, I sometimes check this little basket which is normally on the coffee bar for four hours each Sunday. It's there in the hope that we who take refreshments will, at least on occasion, feed the basket with a donation.
Most Sundays the basket is either empty or has a few coins in it. I doubt this is becausse anyone is thieving coins and paper from the basket. Rather I believe it's because almost nobody is putting anything into the basket. The disinclination to give one's fair share is a form of inadvertent thievery.
This is a minor illustration but it does seem to forecast what is going on in our Sunday offering here. The basket is more often empty, too, or nearly so. The fact is that coffee and nice biscuits are not free in life; good worship is neither free though the low freewill giving suggests that many of us think so.
For a congregation composed mainly of persons in business and professional jobs which require exact financial calculations I am surprised at how casual and ignorant we choose to be about the real costs of running our church.
Our regular worshipers are surely aware of the many blessings we have as our church has commenced its fourth year of existence. We have a fairly stable core of worshipers; we enjoy one of the better worship hours in Hong Kong and in a unique place of beauty and inspiration; we run a small but efficient church office nearby and are able to mount some good and sometimes fantastic programs during the week.
The arithmetic of our financial situation for doing what we do is pretty clear since it's all on the public record: it costs about HK$l,600,000 per year to run our church. Divide that by 52 Sundays and it's plain that about HK$30,000 is needed in weekly financial support to keep the church solvent. Our Sunday offerings the last 52 Sundays has averaged $8,000, not $30,000; there are the exceptional Sundays, like the Signal 8 Sunday last autumn, when there was no Sunday worship and no Sunday collection. And the next Sunday there was no increase in giving. There are quite a few Sundays when the collection is as low as $4,000 which barely pays for the incidental expenses of mounting the service &endash; things like the housekeepers, the professional music, the bulletins, and the SCMP advertisement &endash; with absolutely nothing for the main costs of the church &endash; me, my apartment, and our office.
You also probably don't need to pull out a calculator to figure that the average Sunday gift, if there's about l00 adults present for an average collection of $8,000 is $80 per person. But if we need $30,000 a week from the same l00 persons we need an average of $300. IN summary, our offering each Sunday produces only 25% of what we need; our per capita Sunday offering is only 25% of what we spend.
From this little excursion into church finances, some practical questions ought to arise: How do we keep the church going if only 25% of our need is met in the Sunday offering? What other method do we use to bridge the difference? The stewardship campaign is precisely to address those questions and I hope you will pay close attention to what Myron and others are telling us. I can tell you that we need a radical approach to our stewardship. The Roman Catholic Cathedral in Madrid took a radical approach to its stewardship last year. The church has installed electronic machines at every entrance that take VISA, MC and American Express. Though intriguing a bank of credit card machines as we enter and leave the elevators of Central Plaza is not practical. What is to discipline and express our commitment to support the church budget as best each one of us can is a pledged amount payable weekly or monthly or quarterly and, preferably, by bank electronic transfer.
How can we go about changing our modest stewardship inclination with a genuine charitable habit: why do some people find it natural to give regularly and generously while for others every Sunday offering presents a financial crisis toward their conscience.
This morning, arriving here by taxi, and seeing the meter read HK$44, I gave the taxi driver a $50 bill and expected my change. But no change was forthcoming; the driver sat motionless looking straight ahead. So finally I said a bit impatiently: "Change, please." The taxi driver turned toward me and said: "Father, change must come from within."
The charitable instinct does come from within. It can be helped along by disciples such as awareness of the real cost of running a church in Hong Kong, by reliance upon weekly or monthly use of pledge envelopes or electronic transfers, and by the occasional review of one's good fortune in order to evaluate whether giving is proportional or getting out of whack with reality. But the charitable instinct must come from within, reflecting our conviction that we experience our lives with thanksgiving.
We are able to be generous only so far as we have a generous impulse within our hearts.
Paul concludes today's text with this: LIVE IN LOVE AS CHRIST LOVED US AND GAVE HIMSELF UP FOR US, A FRAGRANT OFFERING AND SACRIFICE TO GOD. To be a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God, we need the charitable instinct.
Sharing is the lifestyle of Christians drawn together out of awareness, appreciation and inspiration that God is giving to us. There is little usage and sense of "my" and "yours" in church relationships and stewardship because the church is "ours" and what is "ours" is really God's. Christians know that whatever we identify as "my" or "ours" is a temporary phenomenon. Everything belongs to God.
Paul earlier in this letter at l:3 reminds: BLESSED BE THE GOD AND FATHER OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST, WHO HAS BLESSED US WITH EVERY SPIRITUAL BLESSING. Our charitable instinct is prompted, strengthened, and manifested just as we are aware who's we are and what God has done and is going to do for us.
The Christian charitable instinct allows us to laugh at the seduction of the world which wants us to have a uniquely "me first" and "me now" sense of ourselves. How amusing to read last week of the financial difficulties that Prince Jeffry, the younger brother of the Sultan of Brunei, is experiencing. He can't survive on $300,000 monthly to support his "me first" lifestyle and is petitioning the court to up his pocket money. Prince Jefri is also in court defending himself against the charge that he has embezzled up to three billion US dollars from the public treasury in order to maintain over the past decade his lifestyle of multiple homes, yatchs, wives, children.
When you live on the "God first" principle you will have more than enough.
This is not to say that the charitable instinct which originates in faith is a guarantee of material success. Many churches teach that and that's just another form of spiritual thievery.
Two old friends met one day after many years. One attended college, and now was very successful. The other had never studied, never worked hard, lacked ambition but boasted to his long absent buddy that he had done brilliantly well in finances.
"How" asked his disciplined but only moderately successful ex classmate. Well, one day I opened the Bible at random, and dropped my; finger on a word and it was "oil." So, I invested in oil, and, wow, did the oil wells gush. Then another day I dropped my finger on another word and it was "gold." So, I invested in gold and those mines really produced. Now, I'm nearly as rich as Bill Gates."
The other man was so impressed that he rushed to his hotel, grabbed a Gideon Bible, flipped it open, closed his eyes, and dropped his finger on a page. When he looked his finger rested on the heading "Chapter Eleven."
Wrong if we operate, not from a charitable instinct, but only upon a charitable strategy, in order to enhance our personal gain. The promises of God which issue from faith in God are uttered a thousand times over as in Ephesians l and Philippians 4:l9 MY GOD SHALL SUPPLY ALL YOUR NEED ACCORDING TO HIS RICHES IN GLORY BY CHRIST JESUS. These scriptural promises are not guarantees of tenfold return for giving, not a promise that the Holy Spirit manages a jackpot for the faithful. Such presumption is alien to biblical faith.
The texts which encourage us to give in response to God's care of us initiate us into understanding who's we are, what we have, what we can hold to and what we shall release. The blessings of Christian and scriptural stewardship line us up in ledger columns headed perspective, balance and commonsense. Faith makes a lifestyle possible for Christians in which the generous instinct unfolds naturally.
Pastor Gene Preston
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The Rev. Gene R.Preston14th Floor, Blk 36, Lower Baguio Villa Tel : 25516161 Fax: 25512114E-mail : gpreston@netvigator.com |
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