(Note: I've combined the two original blogs on giving into one post here.)

We’ll be starting at the only place a Sunday message about the financial offering can start… at a place of profound and sincere thanks.

Gratefulness. I am grateful for the financial offering here at CIB. It reflects the heart and soul of a community, the giving and receiving of gifts. And here at CIB the giving has been something for which to be thankful. So, “Thank you, really.”

You see, we are a congregation, an institution, an entity. We have a campus, rental properties and various assets. We have a budget, several bank accounts, loans and paid employees. We have bills.

Let’s face it… we want it all, don’t we? We want to have a campus. We want to worship in the sanctuary, somewhere above 50°F degrees and below 80°F, right? We want to be involved in global missions, do some local ministry, never run out of candles and do some good in the world… that’s who we are, an institution committed to God and to the good that God wills for this world. Of course, we’re not just an institution; we are also a family, a collection of friends, a gathering of disciples, learners, followers, pilgrims. No institutional aspect should be allowed to negate or over-shadow those aspects, but they all come together to create our present reality.

And here’s our present reality… we need to pay more bills, both this year and next year. We need to think about three things right now: 1) finishing this year with a commitment to our monthly giving, 2) making any end-of-year gifts that we can, and 3) planning for next year’s monthly giving.

Wow. Sounds like we just called a business meeting to order and spirituality just left the room… but that’s not the case at all.

Bringing gifts and offerings, gifts and offerings of money and wealth, has always been a part of worship for God’s people. The spirituality is very easily mapped… the wealth is God’s in the first place, and bringing it back to God is about being faithful and about growing ones’ self in God’s realty… it’s worship, it’s gratitude and it’s participation with God.

Here we are… let’s be fully here. A deep beauty is present in the widow’s offering of Mark 12:41-44. The beauty present is in the faith and expectation of the woman… if she’s giving all the wealth she has to live on, then from where does she expect to gain life? Of course, her faith is in God.

Life. Eternal Life. What is that thing, “eternal life.” It gets thrown around in the gospels pretty often, like in John 17:3. read that one verse out loud… I think there’s not a clearer picture available to us of knowing the eternal than when we see in the woman of Mark 12.

I heard a speaker to explain an understanding of eternal life, especially in connection with John 17:3, as living in the awareness of the eternal: awareness. It’s the difference in living that we see in a plant and a kitten: awareness. A plant is certainly alive, but has no awareness of a simple game with a rubber ball. A kitten has an acute awareness. We can certainly live this life with no awareness of the eternal, and we can amass many distracting treasures along the way. But will we live on that path?

Giving our wealth, hard earned wealth, is a reflection of where we perceive life to originate. We see it originate with God. And so our participation is total. Our wealth is redeemed and it participates along with every other part of our selves. The woman at the Temple challenges us to rethink wealth and giving as we rethink life. What changes must I make in my life to reflect its true source? Would such changes allow me to give much more to God's church and our church family? For me personally, the answer is yes. I'm much in need of such a challenge and such a change.

So here is our paradox of the day… we need to give like the rich, and like the poor. Maybe it works to say it this way, changed just a little… we need to give like the rich folks that we are, and give like the poor folks that are we.

Part of our reality here at CIB is that we’re not giving enough to pay all our bills, mundane bills or really cool ministry bills, either way. We could, we can, and we must. Recognizing that life is a gift of God’s, right along with the wealth, right along with the awareness, is recognizing that life is not what we can purchase, but with whom we can participate.

I was gearing up to have pledge cards this week. But instead of giving them out today, I’d like to ask you spend a week in thought and prayer with me. I am not ready to fill out my pledge card for 2008 just yet. I need to sit and think on my participation in 2007, reflect on it and pray. Then I need to dream a little on 2008. Our budget is not crazy much. In fact, I think it’s under what we could do, but it’s still more than we’re currently doing.

Next week we’ll pass out pledge cards and talk about the money thing a little more. I hope you’ll join me this week in praying and reflecting on our financial giving. I also hope you’ve started the list of what you’re thankful for in this holiday season.

(Here begins part two)

Well, well. I think we started with the heart of giving last week, but this week we need to talk about the mechanics a little.

It seems to me that today we have a couple of misplaced expectations that are often preached. I hope that we just too carried away with enthusiasms, though from watching TV preaching in my younger years, I think I’ve seen some downright foul play. First, there’s the “health and wealth” gospel of giving to receive. Secondly, there’s an abuse of the tithe, when it becomes a magical, mystical number for those who truly give.

Tithing. If you’ve grown up in a church, then I’m sure you’ve heard the term tithing before and maybe more. Maybe you’ve been pressured to tithe, commanded to tithe, and even promised riches beyond your wildest dreams if you tithed.

The tithe was instituted among God’s people, the people of Israel as a way of worship, a way of supporting the temple and the priestly ranks. The tithe was an offering of “first fruits,” a way honoring and thanking God at the moment a blessing entered into existence. So when the crops are brought in, when an animal is sold, when wealth is created or received, God receives an offering in the form of a tithe.

And by the way, the tithe is not the sum total of giving expected of God’s people in Israel, it rolls along with the hospitality expected to be given to strangers and the gleanings left in fields for the poor. Every harvest time the owner of the field was commanded not to strip the field of every obtainable head of grain, but to leave the dropped heads and excess for the poor to arrive and collect. (Leviticus 19:9-10)

Today we can say that we spend a good bit of time looking at the tithe in the Old Testament writings and looking for it in the New Testament. In the New Testament writings we can see it clearly in the teaching of Jesus when he points out the flaws of the Pharisees of his day. They tithed religiously, but missed the point. Jesus used their legalistic keeping and dishonoring abuse of the tithe as a chance to point to the heart of the tithe, the spirit instead of the letter of the law. (Matthew 23:23-24)

Except for Jesus’ correction to the Pharisees about their tithing, nothing can be seen in the Apostolic writings of the New Testament other than a discussion in the letter to the Hebrews. In that instance it’s an explanation of the supremacy of Melchizedek’s priesthood. Not real applicable to our discussion of financial offering. (Hebrews 7)

It’s worth mentioning that we do see the earliest recorded church collecting money. Paul especially orchestrated an extended collection of funds to help hurting people, giving instructions to the Corinthians about collecting and holding money to eventually be sent off. It’s not a discussion of offering as much as an example of how Paul thought, “Collecting it up over time before his arrival will be better than trying to raise it all at once after he arrives.” (2 Corinthians 9)

The discussion in 2 Corinthians 8 & 9 revolve around a collection by Christians for Christians… a gift of financial relief. This is not a discussion of tithing, but it is an example of very practical talk about using money in chapter 9 and a hugely interesting talk about God’s desired equity of wealth in chapter 8.

I am not interested in the least in binding the tithe on this church family as a legalistic expectation. At the end of the day, I personally strive to tithe in a normal biweekly giving, and then be ready for other opportunities to give. I'm not always as successful as I'd like to be. The tithe is an amazing thing... it feels good to do it, and I can't really always quantify that. Must be a God thing. I like to think of the tithe today as being two things: 1) a great goal for some of us to shoot for, and 2) a great starting place from which others can launch.

In response to the idea of giving to receive… it’s tempting to see that happening in 2 Corinthians 9. There’s the whole “sowing and reaping” that immediately sounds like stock exchange advice to us. Sweet! I’m banking with God because I can get a higher interest rate than with the bank! And it is sometimes reached that giving $1,000.00 at church is going to get you $100,000.00 in returns. That’s simply narrow-sighted. Paul never says that God pays monetary offerings back in monetary dividends. In fact, he’s not even talking specifically about numerically quantitative returns in that discussion, but about the heart of the giver. The heart can be grudging or it can be joyful in it’s giving. And again, God’s promise in that chapter is that God’s giving to you will be cheerful and that God can provide what you need. What you need, not what you want. I think that giving to receive is as tacky as giving grudgingly with a sour look on your face.

Have you ever been given a begrudged gift? It’s not very satisfying. It doesn’t feel like love, it doesn’t feel like God. Giving to receive is as tacky as it sounds regardless of the circumstance. And by the way, giving with a grudging heart is no picnic either.

Thankfully, chapter 9 is preceded by chapter 8, a clear illustration that we do not give to receive, but that we receive to give. The people of God receive the blessing of God to share with the beloved world of God. Our weekly giving may not be exactly analogous with the collection in Corinth, but the spirit of the collection is definitely corrective for our use today. We have wealth, a gift of God in our lives, but not a gift for our exclusive, personal use. We are gifted to gift. Look again at the clear expectation in Chapter 9, verses 8 & 11:

^“And God will generously provide all you need. Then you will always have everything you need and plenty left over to share with others… Yes, you will be enriched in every way so that you can always be generous.”

We are a people who graciously share our gifts with one another and the entire world around us because we recognize that our Gifting God will not only take care of us, but will always gift us for the care of the world. We are a receiving people who thankfully give.