How Was Your Harvest This Year?
October 7, 2007
Tobi Thiessen
Text:
1 Corinthians 11:17-34
In the 1 Corinthians passage that was just read, Paul is severely chastising the people at Corinth for failing to be true to the spirit of the Lord’s Supper. Disunity, humiliation of those who have nothing, allegations that they despise the church of God… The rebuke is severe and makes us wonder what was going on.
Thankfully, we have Bible commentaries to give us insight into what may have led Paul to write this letter. When preparing for this sermon – a day both of Thanksgiving and Communion – the Richard Hays Commentary on 1 Corinthians made me realize that Paul’s rant to the people at Corinth may be quite appropriate for us today. I’ll come back to this point.
I Want to be Faithful
I have been the treasurer at TUMC now for ten years. (This is not a record, by the way. The previous two treasurers also served ten years each.) Anyway, this time of being the treasurer has been educational and tremendously inspiring. It’s not the accounting side that is the inspiring part. That’s just something I do for kicks. No, it’s the rare chance to see people expressing their faith through their money – the way they bring their offerings to the church – that has been inspirational.
For example:
– There’s the person who always brings an offering of crisp, new bills
– There’s the person who used cash and did not want a tax receipt, because she thought that would taint her motive for giving.
– There’s the person who puts a cheque in on Sunday, but dates it for the coming Friday, because payday is Friday. On the first day of the week, he dedicates a portion of the income he expects to make in the coming week.
– There’s the highschool student who started giving $20 per month (by pre-authorized payment plan) and has continued throughout his university years even though he is not in Toronto anymore. He had to stop for a few months because his bank account was changing, but he recently contacted me to start it up again, and asked me to take out the extra for the months he missed, so that his annual commitment would be unchanged.
– There’s the person who signed up to give donations to TUMC by pre-authorized payment plan because she was going to stop attending in person for a while. She wanted to continue to express a commitment to this community and to this church, even though she was dealing with issues that pulled her away from us.
It has been our policy at TUMC for several years now that the treasurer and the pastor meet once per year, so the treasurer can talk to the pastor about the congregation’s giving habits, especially of any changes from regular patterns.
The giving of your financial offering is an expression of your spiritual health. A sudden drop in giving could be a sign that something has gone wrong in the person’s life. Whether the drop is because of a loss of income, or whether the person has an issue against God or against the church and has stopped giving, it is good for the pastor to hear about it. On the opposite side, if someone’s giving suddenly increases, it is also good for the pastor to hear about it. Something good is obviously going on in that person’s life.
In our annual meetings, Gary and I would go through the list of TUMC donors and I would mention the kind of inspiring stories I’ve already told you. Gary was always as deeply impressed as I at the sight of these people in our midst who are so conscientious about bringing their offerings before God.
A person who had attended TUMC for several years without donating money asked me once how to donate. I was surprised, because to me it’s a simple as putting a cheque in the offering plate. So I asked her what she meant. “Well, I want to be faithful,” was her reply.
I want to be faithful. It’s a discipleship issue. I think that summarizes well what I have seen many people at TUMC attempting to do with their offerings.
Being faithful with money, in addition to being faithful in spirit and behaviour, is quite difficult in our society. Most of our knowledge and information about personal financial management comes from the secular public: banks, newspapers and magazines, television and so on. Since I went to business school myself, I am well familiar with capitalist thought and practices. And that is not to say that when I started as treasurer, I wasn’t interested in being faithful with my money. Of course not. I’m only saying that my knowledge and attitudes about money, and perhaps yours too, were shaped by secular messages. Some of it may be decent information but let’s face it; secular organizations are in the business of making money for themselves. They are going to give out advice that benefits them.
God is Owner of All
So in these ten years of being treasurer, in addition to being inspired by the offering practices of many in our church, I have also had a few mind-opening moments from reading Mennonite stewardship materials.
In the 1995 document Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective, Article 21 on Stewardship states: “We acknowledge that God as Creator is Owner of all things.”
The notion of God as Creator is not, by itself, a radical idea to me. The part that bends my mind is thinking of office towers, vehicles, computers and bank accounts as things that are created and owned by God. Didn’t I buy that computer? Didn’t I earn the money in my bank account? It’s easy to think of the beautiful, natural world as God’s creation, but once we get to these man-made items in the city, thinking of them as part
of God’s creation and therefore owned by God is more of a stretch.
It took me a while to process it. Yes, God created people with brains to think, mouths to speak and hands to use. Therefore, by extension, everything that people take from this world to put to other uses (whether that’s material to build an office tower or a church, a computer or a book or a Bible), does come from the world God created and therefore continues to belong to God, even in its human-manipulated form.
And if God is the Owner of all things, what does that mean?
The world in all its abundance, as Renny R. pointed out in his sermon last week, was given to us to manage and enjoy. If God continues to be the Owner and we, the managers, then we need to use all things, man-made or otherwise, in ways that are faithful to God’s set of values.
Understanding God as the Owner of the urban world has been, as I said, one of the eye openers of my time as treasurer.
Article 21 in the Confession of Faith continues,
“In the Old Testament, the Sabbath year and the Jubilee year were practical expressions of the belief that the land is God’s and the people of Israel belong to God. Jesus, at the beginning of his ministry, announced the year of the Lord’s favor, often identified with Jubilee. Through Jesus, the poor heard good news, captives were released, the blind saw, and the oppressed went free. The first church in Jerusalem put Jubilee into practice by preaching the gospel, healing the sick, and sharing possessions. Other early churches shared financially with those in need…
“As stewards of money and possessions, we are to live simply, practice mutual aid within the church, uphold economic justice, and give generously and cheerfully…”
Speaking of giving cheerfully, Tom Yoder Neufeld, professor at Conrad Grebel University College, has something interesting to say about that well known verse “God loves a cheerful giver”. He is going to be the featured speaker at the Mennonite Church Eastern Canada fall session on October 27. The session is a consultation with congregations about stewardship issues. It is part of MCEC’s on-going initiative called “The Generosity Project, An Invitation to Generous Living”. Anyone who has heard Tom Yoder Neufeld speak, knows that he is a dynamic and compelling speaker; very thought-provoking and fun to listen to. At a planning session for the October 27 MCEC event, we were talking about the themes for the day, and this verse “God loves a cheerful giver” came up.
“You know,” said Yoder Neufeld, “there are times when I just can’t imagine what causes translators to choose certain words. If you go back and read the Greek, you’ll see it’s not a “cheerful” giver God loves. That’s really an understatement. It’s ‘God loves a ridiculous giver’. God loves it when we are completely excessive in our giving, to the point of being ridiculous.”
Yoder Neufeld went on about verses before and afterwards that support his interpretation, and then launched into discussing a different passage in Romans where, he said, “he really gets exorcized at the translation,” but if I tell you everything now you won’t be interested in going to the MCEC session on October 27. Suffice it to say, if The Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective was written after consulting with Yoder Neufeld, they might have said:
“As stewards of money and possessions, we are to live simply, practice mutual aid within the church, uphold economic justice, and give generously to the point of ridiculousness.”
Ridiculous generosity is very much how God has treated us. Renny pointed that out last week. If we seek to follow God’s example, we can be ridiculously generous ourselves.
In the commentary on Article 21 of the Confession of Faith (which is in the library, if you are interested), the authors note that “our tradition of simple living is rooted not in frugality for its own sake, but in dependence on God, the Owner of everything, for our material needs. We depend on God’s gracious gifts for food and clothing, for our salvation, and for life itself.”
You can see that the values expressed by Mennonites are contrary to conventional North American social mores. Usually you hear that:
a) you deserve more than you have; and
b) you can get credit to buy what you deserve, just in case you don’t have enough cash now.
Mary Jo Leddy, who published the book Radical Gratitude, contends that our economy is built on chronic dis-satisfaction. Ingratitude is ingrained in our economic system, which promotes our need for more and better goods and services, thereby encouraging a state of constant craving and inner dissatisfaction, which expands until it “implodes” into dissatisfaction with oneself.
Leddy calls her book Radical Gratitude, because she believes more thanksgiving is required. But thanksgiving is not the mere tallying up of one’s blessings. Rather, it is something more extreme. Gratitude wells up when we become conscious of the gift of life itself, leading to the liberating realization that “I am enough, I’m good enough, and I have enough.” It’s a realization that enables new choices in life.
It sounds good to me.
In addition to Leddy’s book, there are plenty of other stewardship resources that help us be faithful with the resources we have been given by God. For example, the Mennonite Foundation continues to develop excellent study materials. I like how they remind us of Christian values and challenge us to think differently about how we view possessions, money and resources. Specifically, they hold central the notion of God as Creator and Owner of all, and that helps us stay focused on our role as managers.
Your Income is Your Harvest
I maintain that as urban Christians it is a constant challenge to keep viewing our incomes and possessions as owned by God. It is not hard to be grateful – we know perfectly well that we are financially far better off in Canada than in most of the world. But it is hard to remember, in this land of plenty, that all these resources, including the money we earn at work, are owned by God and entrusted to our use by the grace of God.
I do believe it is somewhat easier if you are a farmer. That’s why thanksgiving fes
tivals have been celebrated in agrarian societies around the world since the beginning of time. The farmer plants and manages his fields to the best of his capacity but ultimately it is the weather that determines whether or not he has a successful harvest. When your annual income is at the mercy of the elements, you can’t help but acknowledge that greater forces than your own determine your success or failure.
The urban dweller, in contrast, gets a city job after completing school and earns a regular salary. Where is God? In the city, it is pretty easy to view our economic successes as those of our own making. We feel in control. Sure, if you suddenly got laid off (which might be like losing a crop to a hail storm), you could get angry at God, but since there are executives above you or around you making decisions, it is more likely that you will be angry at them.
I gave this sermon the title, “How was your harvest this year?” because I want to challenge us to view our city incomes as our personal harvests. It might be easier to see God’s role this way.
Of course, the question “how was your harvest” can be interpreted to mean many good things in your life, but since it is Thanksgiving, a time when farmers, in particular, are grateful for a successful year producing food/income, I am using it specifically to talk about the money we earn.
The soil is the family and society in which we were raised. The seeds are the efforts we choose to put in: which school, which field of study, which type of work. I won’t stretch the analogy to try to describe what weeding or chemical spraying might mean in the urban life. You can use your own imagination.
As part of the worship this morning, people were invited to bring a symbol of their gratitude to church. In a rural church at Thanksgiving, the Communion Table gets covered with samples of produce — harvest vegetables; grains. I don’t know what a meat producer would bring, but we know that in the Old Testament, animals were slaughtered and brought to the temple for their offering. Here, we’ve brought things we’re thankful fo, but by and large, they are removed from the basic necessities of life. We take those for granted, don’t we, thinking of “more important things” like “family” or “health”.
Even though in the city we are not dependent on a single time of year to earn our annual income, it is important to see the opportunity for earning that income as the sun and rain conditions that farmers pray for and celebrate upon receiving. Let’s remember to be thankful for the urban harvest. It allows us to eat, be sheltered and clothed, and leaves us some to spare. Can we celebrate our harvest by being generous, even ridiculous in how we share the bounty?
Back to 1 Corinthians
Let’s go back now to Paul’s angry letter to the Corinthians. They were celebrating the Lord’s Supper but by doing so were causing division and dissatisfaction. Paul’s focus is on how they observe the event.
At that time, the Lord’s Supper was not a ritual using the communion elements. It was a community meal that included communion as part of it. Perhaps it was something like the meal we have during the Good Friday service, since that includes communion.
They did not have a specific church building. They met in people’s homes. When Paul hears that the common meal, which should be the symbol of their unity, has become the source of their disunity, he sees it as an abuse of the tradition. Paul then uses this problem with the community supper to highlight issues of inequality within the church.
In the Hays commentary on 1 Corinthians, the author writes, “Paul’s vision of community comes in conflict with the Corinthians’ conventional social mores which require distinctions of rank and status to be recognized at table: the more privileged members expect to receive more and better food than others.” (p. 194)
This is the kind of criticism we hope no one lays on us. Does our culture in North America make us, the privileged, expect to receive more and better from life than those in the Third World? That’s an uncomfortable thought.
Some of the Corinthians may have considered themselves patrons of the community because they were hosting the gatherings at their homes. A less wealthy member of the community would not a home large enough to host. But still, despite the self-perceived largesse, the wealthy hosts were observing status distinctions in the fare that was served and the manner in which it was served. This is highlighted when Paul says that they humiliate “those who have nothing”, by giving the least well off members nothing at all.
It is possible that wealthier members also helped the host, by bringing food contributions to the host’s house. And yet, they seem to be consuming it just by themselves, and not sharing it. This enrages Paul because it further contravenes the principal of the communion meal.
Paul then recounts the origin of the Lord’s Supper as the death of Jesus, and makes two points. First, the sharing of the Supper calls the community to think about Jesus’ death for others; and second, the death is understood to initiate a new covenant. Hays says, “To be in covenant relation with God is to belong to a covenant people bound together by responsibilities to God and to one another; the character of this new covenant is shown in the sharing of the meal.” (p.199)
By disregarding the purpose of the common meal and following conventional social values, the Corinthians are ignoring the fact that the new covenant, sealed by Jesus’ death, changes their relationship to one another.
At the end, Paul calls for introspection. He says, “Let a man examine himself… For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment upon himself.” Here it is expected that Paul did not mean that you examine your own sinfulness and repent before taking communion, although that might be a good idea. What Paul is really talking about when he says “body” is the “body of Christ”, the whole church. Acting selfishly and exercising your own social privileges is acting without consideration for the whole body of Christ and therefore breaks the covenant with God.
As we participate in communion today, on World Communion Sunday where other Christians around the world are also receiving communion, let us hear Paul’s words and be careful not to let our actions look like those of the privileged people at Corinth.
Today we celebrate Thanksgiving – how was your harvest this year?
Today we celebrate communion – are you resisting cultural norms and working towards oneness with the wh
ole body of Christ?
Amen.