23rd July 2006Sixth Sunday after Trinity

The Reverend Mary Spredbury, Diocesan Finance Advisor

May I speak in the name of the one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

It’s very good to be with you this morning in this magnificent building –I’ve been inside the church before, but never to a service so it is a real joy to be here and share in your worship this morning.

We give to need and we need to give.

I’d like to start with a story – a family were on holiday and decided to attend the local church on the Sunday morning.  As they walked down the path in the church yard after the service they started talking about what they had experienced.  The mother though that the prayers had been dreadful – totally irrelevant.  The father thought that the sermon had been far too long and boring.  The daughter thought the hymns were dreadfully old fashioned and the organ playing appalling.  The little boy thought for a moment – I didn’t think it was bad for a pound for the four of us he said.

So often our giving gets stuck in a rut. We carry on giving what we’ve always given.  When someone reminds us to think about it, we put it up a pound or maybe a few pounds.  We don’t often sit down and really think afresh about our giving – we just start from where we are and put it up a bit.  Well this morning I want to encourage you to think afresh about your giving – to think both about what you have received and why you are giving. I want to talk about stewardship.

So what is stewardship all about – well the word itself is an odd one- not one we use in other situations.  Some churches don’t like to use it at all but we haven’t really come up with a better one.  Stewardship is about how we live our lives as Christians – it’s not about giving money to the church although that is a part of it. Stewardship is about how we use all that God has given us – gifts, time, skills, and experience – and money. It is about how we live the whole of our lives. Our understanding that our relationship to the things of God is one of stewardship involves:

  • the whole of the individual (time, abilities and money)
  • the whole of life (all that we do all the time at work, home, recreation and church)
  • all aspects of the world - ecology, love of neighbor, global village

Within this what we do with our money is just one aspect – but somehow it is the one we find it hardest to talk about and sometimes hardest to respond to.  I think this has always been so – one in three of Jesus’ parables and one is six of all his recorded sayings are connected with money or possessions so it was a difficult issue then.

It has been said that, as Christians, we give to need and we need to give.  We need to give as part of our faith – giving isn’t an optional extra – it is an intrinsic part of our faith – it is part of our expression of faith as disciples of Christ.  We give partly because God has been so overwhelming generous in his gifts to us, shown supremely in the gift of his Son who died for us, as we were reminded in the reading from John.  God’s grace is freely given to us – out giving is in response to that grace.  A former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, said the question we need to ask of our giving is not “what do I need to give” but “how can my giving reflect something of God’s love for me?”- that is a tremendous challenge.  Of course our giving can never truly reflect God’s great and unconditional love for each of us.  However we believe that we are made in the image of God – God is the supreme generous giver and we are called to give generously as well.

We also give to need – giving funds the vision of the church.  Giving also funds the future of the church – were it not for the generosity of our forebears we would not have the church in London that we do today.  They saw the challenge of the need for new church buildings and more clergy to meet the needs of people moving from the countryside into London and rose to that challenge funding many buildings and paying for clergy.
Today in London we face a similar challenge as we try to bring the message of Christ to a growing city that is both ethnically and socially very mixed.

One of the ways we do this is by funding University Chaplains like Fr David so that we can reach some of the many students who come to London to study. Many churches are thinking about new ways of reaching people today in this post-modern and increasingly secular society.  It is a real challenge for all Christians in London and it is one of the reasons why all churches are encouraged to have a mission action plan so that they have a strategy in place for the next year or so.

However giving is not just about giving because the church needs money – as Christians we would still give to the work of the church even if it had plenty of money already because there is always more that we can do. Giving back to God through the church is simply something we do as part of our faith.

The reading from Ephesians this morning reminds us that we are all part of the same Christian family – “citizens with the saints and members of the household of God” – as with being citizens of a country, being members of the household of God brings with it certain responsibilities – I do believe that God gives to each Christian community the resources they need to be the people of God in that place and to join in the work of God in that place – sometimes however we are a bit reluctant to use all that God has given us in his service.

The passage from Ephesians reminds us that we through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ we have been brought near to God and are part of his kingdom. This means that our values and way of life are not the same as the world around us – or at least they should not be.  We don’t value people by the size of their house or whether they are wearing designer label clothing – we have different values and ideals – values and ideals modelled on Christ Jesus himself.

I believe strongly that it is the responsibility of every member of a church community to make a financial commitment to their church – the only exceptions are those who have no income at all of their own and of course can not therefore be expected to make a financial commitments (although of course they may well be very committed in other ways).

There is a tendency to think that our individual offerings will not make a difference. In a village in France a well loved local Mayor was retiring.  It was decided that he would be presented with a huge barrel of red wine – his favourite.  It was agreed that everyone in the village would provide a jug of wine and during the mayors last week there was a steady succession of villages all tipping the contents of their jugs into the giant barrel.

On the final day there were the usual farewell speeches and the barrel was loaded on to the back of the Mayor’s truck for him to take home. Later that evening as he relaxed and reflected on what a splendid day it had been.  He decided now was the time to sample his generous gift of wine – imagine his surprise when he turned on the tap and out flowed pure water.  All the townsfolk had thought that no one would notice their jug of water amongst so much wine!

The message of this is that the contribution of every individual, however small or insignificant it seems is important and valuable – important and valuable to us, the church community and more crucially important and valuable to God.
I don’t for a moment propose to try and tell you how much you should be giving – that is something for you to work out for yourselves by thought and prayer.

St Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians has some very useful advice about giving.  St. Paul was writing to the church in Corinth to raise money for the church in Jerusalem and makes a number of key points about giving:

the first of these is that we should put the money aside on the first day of the week – that is we give to God out of what we first receive – we don’t give to God what we happen to have left in our pockets or bank account at the end of the week or month – indeed on that basis I and I suspect many others would have virtually nothing to give to the church

The second point is that giving is regular – St Paul uses weekly but if you are paid or receive a pension monthly then I would suggest that giving should be monthly rather than weekly

The third point is that we give from what we are given – that is we give in proportion to what we receive.  I think this is common sense really – clearly a wealthy person would be expected to give more than a less well off person. It is a useful exercise to work out exactly what percentage of your pay or pension you are giving to the church and then try and gradually increase it year on year.  We know that on average people are giving about 3% of their take home pay to the church at present.

The final (and most challenging!) piece of advice from St. Paul about giving is in his second letter to the Corinthians.  St Paul says “The point is this – the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion for God loves a cheerful giver”.

Well there is not much hilarity at my own church when the collection plate comes round – although I understand in our link Diocese of Mozambique that people dance as they come down the aisle to put their offering in the bowl.

What St Paul is saying I think is that giving is not about feeling pressured or being made to feel guilty.  It is about thinking and praying about what is right for you. I am certainly not here to tell you how much to give – that is a matter between you and God and when you have thought and prayed and come to a right decision then you will know that yourself.

I’d like to end with a verse from St. John chapter three verse 16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life”

We give to the church in response to that great love so that the work of God’s church on earth may continue to thrive and grow.