Lessons from the Daily Lectionary – Saturday, March 28, 2009
Psalm 29, 126; Jeremiah 23:9-15; Romans 9:1-18; John 6:60-71
Meditation: Vera White was our speaker yesterday at a stewardship seminar put on by the presbytery. She was wonderfully personable and related her own story about giving that I found quite compelling. What made it enjoyable was that while she was talking about money, she put it in terms that we quite uncalculated.
Vera is an associate executive presbyter in Pittsburgh Presbytery, employed to help with new church development, mission and stewardship. She said that when she first came into the job, she felt quite at home with the new church and mission parts of the job description, but not the stewardship part. In order to take steps toward the end of leading in stewardship efforts, she and her husband made a decision about their own stewardship. They would tithe. They would give 10% of their income to the ministry of their local church. As they did, something of a new perspective came over her. She began to feel rich.
She explained that her newfound well-to-do-ness came from the fact that she saw a list of the monetary gifts given to the church. Before, she and her husband had been in the middle somewhere. Now with their 10% giving, they suddenly rose right up to the top of the chart. She and her husband were now “major donors,” a category she had earlier reserved for those who had large financial resources. What this meant in terms of her monthly budget was that she had to hold onto her beaten-up, well-driven Geo Metro, instead of getting a new car. But like in the Cinderella story, the pumpkin became a chariot because driving the Geo meant that now she was a “philanthropist.” She and her husband gave a tithe.
I laughed about all of this, relating to her tithing story and glad of it. She said that the real richness in tithing was that her giving became a whole lot less about calculation – what budget numbers need to be met, what cuts could be made – and much more about the joy of being generous as a way of acknowledging how generous God is. Just think of the blessings of God’s generosity which are all around: Beauty; Love; Kindness; Hope; Justice; the compelling stories about Jesus! One doesn’t calculate the value of a night’s rainfall on the roof. Instead, we wait for its effects: grass turning green, flowers blooming in garden and on tree. Vera White’s commitment of generosity suddenly had her enjoying a new standard of wealth, much of it so very freely given.
Our texts from Romans and the Gospel, as well as our two Psalms invite us to some sense of this kind of generosity, I’d say. They try to lead us out of calculations and the language of requirement, law, entitlement. The kernel of the Gospel is in Peter’s words to Jesus. When others found his words too difficult and left, Peter in staying said: “Where else would we go to find the words of life?” Abundance, grace, joy, mercy are the foundational words of our Christian faith. On this weekend day, give some thought how you are rich in them.
Prayer: Generous God, thank you for the beauty of a new spring. Thank you for the fellowship of believers and for the joy of sharing life with neighbors and friends in our community. Thank you for our family members we love, and also for those you call beloved who may live on the other side of the world from us, or maybe just on the wrong side of the tracks. Let us grasp your holiness in the grace you lay before us, which is also meant to define us as your children. Amen.
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