Gratitude - May 2, 2021
Deborah Laforet 2 Corinthians 9:1-15
Gratitude
This month we are focusing on stewardship, and specifically we are looking at discipleship as one definition of stewardship. Each week, we will look at discipleship through a different lens: this week is Gratitude In the next month, included in your email with the YouTube worship link with be an attachment with suggested activities for the week, I will offer a different method of giving on Sunday, and we’ll get to know a beautiful hymn written by David Kai, a diaconal minister, based on the reading you just heard. And every Sunday, we will focus on snippets of this reading you just heard, where we will learn about stewardship and discipleship through these words written by Paul, one of our first evangelists.
I read this passage from Paul a few times this week, and I gotta tell ya, it feels manipulative. Paul is writing to this community and telling them that he is coming to visit, but he’s sending some people ahead of him. In this letter, he tells this community that he has been bragging about them, bragging about this amazingly generous gift that had been promised. This promised gift, he tells them, has inspired others to do the same, and in fact, he is bringing with him some of these others to visit this generous community. He’s sending people ahead though just to make sure this generous gift is ready as promised, because he would hate to get there with his visitors and have it not ready. This would be humiliating for everyone, but especially this most generous community.
Paul writes that he doesn’t want to get there with his guests and have it seem like he is extorting the community or taking something that is being given reluctantly or because Paul demanded it. He wants his guests to know that this gift was given freely and without coercion. This is where we hear one of our most famous lines in the bible. In the Inclusive Bible, we heard, “You must give according to what you have inwardly decided - not sadly, not reluctantly, for God loves a giver who gives cheerfully.” What we often hear is, “For God loves a cheerful giver.”
It was Paul’s job to travel all over the Mediterranean and spread the good news of Jesus Christ, to inspire others to follow Jesus Christ, and, this is the part we don’t often talk about, to ask for donations to support the “saints” or the “holy ones” of Jerusalem. These donations supported the ministry of the followers who had given up fishing to spread the good news of the life and the resurrection of their teacher, Jesus of Nazareth. These funds would have also supported other evangelists, spreading the good news outside of Jerusalem, and other communities who were less advantaged and needed extra support.
The is not a job I envy. I am not a church planter and do not find it easy to ask people for money, but this is what Paul did, and he was good at it. Some wonder if there hadn’t been a Paul whether there would be a Christianity. He formed communities of Jesus followers and he asked them for money to support other communities of Jesus followers.
But his writings have survived and have been passed along and rewritten for thousands of years because they did so much more than just ask for money. The passage we’re focusing on this month is the second half of our reading, verses six to fifteen, in which Paul talks about why we give and we will looking at different verses throughout the month.
So why do you give? I can tell you why I give. I give when my heart tells me to. I give monthly to DUCC, which is Diakonia of the United Church of Canada. It’s an association of diaconal ministers, or they’re my diaconal community. Jeff and I give monthly to the first United Church we attended. It’s where the boys were born and baptized and it’s where I began my journey towards becoming a minister and we know they are still doing good work in their community. Jeff and I give monthly to this community. This is where our boys became men. It’s a community that feeds us and a community that is working on its mission in the community of Oakville, to connect, engage, and transform. We have the United Church of Canada Mission and Service Fund in our will, another fund that we know does a lot of good in Canada and around the world. Do we feel obligated to make these donations? Were we coerced into it? No.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t use your head. Wherever you are donating, you need to make sure they are a valid charity, a healthy organization, a charity that is doing the work it has promised to do, but usually we give because we feel a connection to the work, because we know the work is needed, and sometimes because it’s a community we love and want to support.
Jeff and I make these donations because we want to make them. We are giving of our finances and our time, because we are grateful. We are grateful for what we receive from them; we are grateful for the work they do; we are grateful that they exist and we want to ensure they keep existing.
Paul writes, as he explains why he’s bringing these special guests with him, that, “In this way we will dispel all doubts that it,” this gift, “comes as a bountiful and free gift, not an extorted one.” (9:5) These are the most beautiful gifts and the ones that inspire others: the ones given without conditions, the ones given with generosity, and mostly, the ones given with gratitude and thanksgiving. We live in a world of abundance, where it is possible for everyone to have enough. Unfortunately, there are those born with an excess of resources and many born without, but it is possible for everyone to have enough.
This earth is bountiful and can nourish all life on the planet, and for this we give thanks and praise to the Holy One. Jesus was a prophet who pointed towards the injustice of our world and tried to spread abundance through his word and his healing touch, and for this we give thanks and praise to the Risen Christ. This world is filled with people who try everyday to ensure that the abundance of the earth is spread to all people and that healing messages of love and compassion and mercy are for all people, with no judgement or shame, and for this we give thanks and praise for the dedication, commitment, and generosity.
When we live out of sense of abundance and gratitude, it’s easy to give out of that abundance with gratitude. Name your abundance. Look around you, think about your life, and name what is plentiful. It might be what you own, it might be relationships, it might be the hours in a day that you get to do what you love, it might the sunshine and the spring flowers. Even during this pandemic time, even during times of sorrow, loneliness, grief, anxiety, there is abundance to be named and for which to be grateful. Which means we all have an abundance to give, and not just out of our pocketbooks, but time with loved ones or time with someone in need, skills that can help others, love and laughter and compassion, that when shared, multiply. So much abundance; so much to share.
May you know that sense of abundance in your life. May gratitude fill you up and spill over into this world. May we all live and give out of abundance and with gratitude May it be so. Amen.