Are You A Taker Or A Giver?
Sermon
Sermons on the Second Readings
Series II, Cycle B
It was quite a picture -- on the front of the New York Times magazine. There were the "Little Big People" as the cover article names them -- "little big people" who are precocious, even out of control, with affluent parents who have only themselves to blame.
The picture shows a yuppie- dressed eight- or nine-year-old boy, stylish, cool with his own cellular phone in hand. In the center is a modishly over-dressed twelve- or thirteen-year-old girl, stylish, sexy, and eating high priced Chinese take-out food. On the right is a blas?, cool ten-year-old boy, attired in the latest pseudo-athletic styles, holding his tiny personal portable television beside his baseball cap. These are the children who have had it all, says Lucinda Franks in her cover article.
Herself a mother of a nine-year-old, Franks says her generation of parents has tended to give their children everything. They wanted their own children to have the childhood they never had -- empowering them with all the rights and honesty of feelings and independence they never had. But then she asks, "Will our independent children thank us for making them the center of the universe, or have we robbed them of a childhood they never can regain?"1
Franks describes third graders discussing suing the teacher because of her disciplinary action. She relates the story of a seven-year-old boy who told his female classmate she was "so yucky you must have sex with Nazis." Franks tells about upper west side Manhattan sexually precocious fourth graders who had a dating party to which their parents delivered them, no questions asked, as the little girls bounced in with their halter tops and bicycle shorts.
Members of my generation, says author Franks, have given new meaning to the cult of child worship. We have given them so much with their lives crammed full of gymnastics and tennis and French lessons. Instead of playing creative games of fantasy, today's little child may be playing a substitute game on his Nintendo screen. "He is," says Franks, "a computer whiz, a little philosopher, and a tiny lawyer, bursting with opinions on the president, on the best museums, the best vacation spots, and the college he thinks he will attend."2 But you will note there is nothing about religious beliefs or spiritual values or the idea of sharing with those in need.
A social psychologist, speaking recently to a church group, spoke of the fantastic materialistic over-indulgence of children today. She related the story of her own child's friend's birthday party. No simple balloons, soda, and ice cream like the old days. Now it's a trip to the favorite restaurant with a group of 25, then on to the movies or beach or game room with presents galore, or even an excursion to Disney World. Each parent then tries to outdo the other in the lavishness of the child's party, so that by the time the child is 25, he will need something like Malcolm Forbes' several-million-dollar birthday bash in Morocco to make him think he had been to a party.
If there has been extraordinary materialistic indulgence, there has also been an indulgence of authority. Some parents, says Franks, are always asking their children if it's "okay," asking their permission. A ten-year-old boy told the author, "Trust me, I know some kids who are guilty of parent abuse." He continues, "They feel like they own their parents and that they could just take all their parents' money out of the their bank account and run away if they wanted." One family therapist commented, "Sometimes I think I'm too old-fashioned to practice in today's world. Half the time the children act like adults and the adults behave like children."3
Are we getting the picture? It starts at birth -- cared-for, coddled, diapers-changed, sucking at the breast for as much and as long as we want, continuing to suck, to demand, to exploit, to expect, and to insist we get what we want when we want it well into childhood, then into adolescence and into early, even late adulthood. So many of us become professionals at taking and taking and taking; but did we ever, do we ever, really give? Who are you? A giver or a taker?
I
Let's think about our times of poverty. Are we a giver or taker in poverty, in times when we have little?
A friend of mine remembered a little of the Great Depression. But he remembered its effects and the tremendous impact it had on his parents and those of their generation. They recounted story after story of how difficult were the times, of how there was little money for anything. Fortunately, they were living on the farm at that time, and could grow most of their food and butcher their own meat. Nevertheless, difficult as the times were, there always seemed to be enough, for social gatherings and church suppers. There always seemed to be enough, because even in their extreme poverty, people shared.
Our text of today alludes to a similar economic situation in the first century A.D. Because of a famine and other adverse economic circumstances, Jewish Christians in Judea were suffering badly. Perhaps some of their suffering was also due to their earlier experiment in communal living where they sold all their property and pooled all their resources.
When the Lord's Second Coming was delayed, and thus the end of history, their resources ran out. Add to that the drought and famine and we see their plight. Even if they still had their land, they would not be able to grow food. It was for those Judean Jewish Christians a time not unlike our Great Depression.
Consequently, Paul and Titus set out to collect money to help the famished, poverty-stricken Judeans. And guess where they go for help? They go to another area of the world which at that time, as far as Christians were concerned, was also poverty-stricken. They went to Macedonia, home territory of Alexander the Great. They went to the churches in Berea, Thessalonica, and Philippi -- to Philippi, named after Alexander's father, Philip; to Philippi, a great retirement center for Roman nobility and military personnel.
But this was also the Philippi where, due to the efforts of Paul, Christianity first started in Europe; Philippi where Christianity was born in the home of Paul's jailor; Philippi, the mustard seed beginning of the faith that was to sprout and bear fruit in cathedrals, churches, universities, hospitals, missionaries, musicians, scholars, literature, and millions upon millions of lives made new. This was Philippi, a city church with a generous heart from the beginning, one of the few churches from which Paul received financial support for his work.
Perhaps for that reason -- their reputation for generosity -- Paul and Titus ask them again for financial contribution, not for themselves, but for the poor Christians in Judea, hundreds of Roman miles away. And here is the beautiful thing; Paul notes that even though they were "down and out poor" in Philippi, the Philippian Christians even begged for the chance to help out the suffering brothers and sisters in Judea.
The Romans probably were partly responsible for their poverty, because they had stripped the land of much of its timber, minerals, and salt, and may have left many Christians unemployed. Added to that hardship had been some kind of persecution of the Christians. Yet, as Paul says, "in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of liberality on their part" (2 Corinthians 8:2).
It is a strange anomaly, but often the poor are better givers than the rich. Sometimes poverty breeds more generosity than wealth. The poor often are remarkably kind to neighbors in trouble, in part because they know what it is to suffer, and in part perhaps because their sympathies are not deadened by abundance.
The poor tend to out give the rich on the larger scale also, at least as far as churches go. It is a known fact that the typically poorer American denominations give more to their churches per capita than the typically rich, sometimes three or four times as much.
But, back to the Depression generation -- whose nature it was to give and give generously even in times of relative poverty during the Great Depression! My friend tells the story of his father who was ushering in church one Sunday when they had a guest preacher. In that time, it was the custom to take a collection to pay the expenses and honorarium of the guest preacher. After the offering plates had passed through the entire congregation his dad and a fellow usher discovered they were completely empty. So his dad pulled out his last five dollars and put it in so the preacher could buy gas to get home.
Like the Philippian Christians of Macedonia long ago, his dad was a giver -- even out of his poverty. How about you in your poverty? Are you a taker or giver?
II
Let's move away from poverty and affliction to affluence and abundance. Are we, in times of affluence, takers or givers?
Affluence can do strange things to people. If my friend's parents' generation assumed the reality of poverty and the fear of the Great Depression just around the corner, our children's generation assumes the reality of affluence, and the next economic boom just around the corner. Any recession is seen only as a temporary blip on the ever-ascending graph of higher and higher expectations. In every day in every way they expect to become more prosperous. But, will they become more generous? Will they take more and more or will they give more and more?
It is a strange irony, that the more we make, the less percentage of it we share for worthy causes like the work of the church. J.C. Penney, the founder of the Penney Department Stores, knew something of the temptation of that strange phenomenon.
Mr. Penney, from his earliest years, had practiced tithing -- that is, he gave ten percent of his earnings to the church. When his stores grew and grew and he began to make really big money, the question was raised whether he would continue to tithe. After all, ten percent of $25,000 is only $2,500, but ten percent of $2,500,000 is another matter. $250,000 to the church, he asked himself? That's a lot of money and I could do a lot with it. But, so could the Lord, came the answer, and so J.C. Penney, multi-millionaire many times over, continued to tithe, to give ten percent out of his affluence as well as out of his earlier relative poverty.
Charles Wesley, founder of the United Methodist church, used to lament the growing affluence of the members of his denomination. When church members are relatively poor, they tend to depend more on the Lord and upon one another, said Wesley, and they tend to be generous with the church. But when they become well-to-do, they tend to shift their affections from the Lord to money. Fairly well off and financially comfortable, they tend, said Wesley, to forsake the church, to trust in the pleasures and comforts, the clubs and vacations and social associations money can buy.
Perhaps he was reflecting what Jesus observed centuries ago, that it is difficult for many to handle money well, to keep it in perspective, to use it for good, to possess it rather than have it possess you. How hard it is for a rich man to enter heaven, said Jesus. It's easier for a camel to squeeze through that narrow needle-eye gate to the city than for a rich man to enter heaven.
Why? Because in a strange irony, affluence, wealth, and abundance often produce a compulsive greed for more rather than a generous heart for sharing. It's a strange truth that the poor widows of the world often give a greater percentage of their wealth to the work of the church than do the rich widows and the rich business and professional people and celebrities. In your relative affluence and abundance, are you a taker or giver?
We return now to the children of affluence who were the focus of our attention at the beginning. Why to the children? Because the life of taking is typical of the childish life. The childish life is one that starts sucking at the breast and then never stops sucking at the resources of society and the economy without ever giving back.
The childish life is insistent, demanding, highly expectant, self-centered, greedy, ready always to take and take and take with no sense of responsibility to give and give and give. The childish life wants everything and everybody to revolve around its needs and desires and demands. Typically, the childish person is always a taker, never a giver.
The Christians of Corinth, Greece, to whom our text is addressed, had now moved beyond their earlier childish behavior Paul had addressed in his first letter to them. Now, they are, to his great relief, excelling in everything -- in faith, in utterance, in knowledge and earnestness, and especially in their love for Paul and Titus and the church.
It seems that unlike the Macedonians, the Corinthians were also excelling financially. So out of their abundance he urges generosity. Give liberally to help your fellow Christians in Judea as God has given liberally to you, he urges them, and they do! Out of their affluence, they move beyond the childishness of taking, taking, taking to the maturity of giving and giving and giving. And when they did, they had no lack.
My friend used to joke with his children that he would know when they had become adults, because they would then take him out to dinner and pick up the check, rather than vice versa. Thankfully, he said, that has happened with all the children. Regularly, they pick up the check. And what a treat it is. It is now their nature to give, to be adult, to be responsible.
Are you a taker or a giver? Perhaps now it is time for you, either out of poverty or affluence, to step up to the challenge, to "pick up the check" for the work of the church in this place and in the world.
____________
1. Lucinda Franks, "Little Big People," New York Times magazine, 10/10/93.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
The picture shows a yuppie- dressed eight- or nine-year-old boy, stylish, cool with his own cellular phone in hand. In the center is a modishly over-dressed twelve- or thirteen-year-old girl, stylish, sexy, and eating high priced Chinese take-out food. On the right is a blas?, cool ten-year-old boy, attired in the latest pseudo-athletic styles, holding his tiny personal portable television beside his baseball cap. These are the children who have had it all, says Lucinda Franks in her cover article.
Herself a mother of a nine-year-old, Franks says her generation of parents has tended to give their children everything. They wanted their own children to have the childhood they never had -- empowering them with all the rights and honesty of feelings and independence they never had. But then she asks, "Will our independent children thank us for making them the center of the universe, or have we robbed them of a childhood they never can regain?"1
Franks describes third graders discussing suing the teacher because of her disciplinary action. She relates the story of a seven-year-old boy who told his female classmate she was "so yucky you must have sex with Nazis." Franks tells about upper west side Manhattan sexually precocious fourth graders who had a dating party to which their parents delivered them, no questions asked, as the little girls bounced in with their halter tops and bicycle shorts.
Members of my generation, says author Franks, have given new meaning to the cult of child worship. We have given them so much with their lives crammed full of gymnastics and tennis and French lessons. Instead of playing creative games of fantasy, today's little child may be playing a substitute game on his Nintendo screen. "He is," says Franks, "a computer whiz, a little philosopher, and a tiny lawyer, bursting with opinions on the president, on the best museums, the best vacation spots, and the college he thinks he will attend."2 But you will note there is nothing about religious beliefs or spiritual values or the idea of sharing with those in need.
A social psychologist, speaking recently to a church group, spoke of the fantastic materialistic over-indulgence of children today. She related the story of her own child's friend's birthday party. No simple balloons, soda, and ice cream like the old days. Now it's a trip to the favorite restaurant with a group of 25, then on to the movies or beach or game room with presents galore, or even an excursion to Disney World. Each parent then tries to outdo the other in the lavishness of the child's party, so that by the time the child is 25, he will need something like Malcolm Forbes' several-million-dollar birthday bash in Morocco to make him think he had been to a party.
If there has been extraordinary materialistic indulgence, there has also been an indulgence of authority. Some parents, says Franks, are always asking their children if it's "okay," asking their permission. A ten-year-old boy told the author, "Trust me, I know some kids who are guilty of parent abuse." He continues, "They feel like they own their parents and that they could just take all their parents' money out of the their bank account and run away if they wanted." One family therapist commented, "Sometimes I think I'm too old-fashioned to practice in today's world. Half the time the children act like adults and the adults behave like children."3
Are we getting the picture? It starts at birth -- cared-for, coddled, diapers-changed, sucking at the breast for as much and as long as we want, continuing to suck, to demand, to exploit, to expect, and to insist we get what we want when we want it well into childhood, then into adolescence and into early, even late adulthood. So many of us become professionals at taking and taking and taking; but did we ever, do we ever, really give? Who are you? A giver or a taker?
I
Let's think about our times of poverty. Are we a giver or taker in poverty, in times when we have little?
A friend of mine remembered a little of the Great Depression. But he remembered its effects and the tremendous impact it had on his parents and those of their generation. They recounted story after story of how difficult were the times, of how there was little money for anything. Fortunately, they were living on the farm at that time, and could grow most of their food and butcher their own meat. Nevertheless, difficult as the times were, there always seemed to be enough, for social gatherings and church suppers. There always seemed to be enough, because even in their extreme poverty, people shared.
Our text of today alludes to a similar economic situation in the first century A.D. Because of a famine and other adverse economic circumstances, Jewish Christians in Judea were suffering badly. Perhaps some of their suffering was also due to their earlier experiment in communal living where they sold all their property and pooled all their resources.
When the Lord's Second Coming was delayed, and thus the end of history, their resources ran out. Add to that the drought and famine and we see their plight. Even if they still had their land, they would not be able to grow food. It was for those Judean Jewish Christians a time not unlike our Great Depression.
Consequently, Paul and Titus set out to collect money to help the famished, poverty-stricken Judeans. And guess where they go for help? They go to another area of the world which at that time, as far as Christians were concerned, was also poverty-stricken. They went to Macedonia, home territory of Alexander the Great. They went to the churches in Berea, Thessalonica, and Philippi -- to Philippi, named after Alexander's father, Philip; to Philippi, a great retirement center for Roman nobility and military personnel.
But this was also the Philippi where, due to the efforts of Paul, Christianity first started in Europe; Philippi where Christianity was born in the home of Paul's jailor; Philippi, the mustard seed beginning of the faith that was to sprout and bear fruit in cathedrals, churches, universities, hospitals, missionaries, musicians, scholars, literature, and millions upon millions of lives made new. This was Philippi, a city church with a generous heart from the beginning, one of the few churches from which Paul received financial support for his work.
Perhaps for that reason -- their reputation for generosity -- Paul and Titus ask them again for financial contribution, not for themselves, but for the poor Christians in Judea, hundreds of Roman miles away. And here is the beautiful thing; Paul notes that even though they were "down and out poor" in Philippi, the Philippian Christians even begged for the chance to help out the suffering brothers and sisters in Judea.
The Romans probably were partly responsible for their poverty, because they had stripped the land of much of its timber, minerals, and salt, and may have left many Christians unemployed. Added to that hardship had been some kind of persecution of the Christians. Yet, as Paul says, "in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of liberality on their part" (2 Corinthians 8:2).
It is a strange anomaly, but often the poor are better givers than the rich. Sometimes poverty breeds more generosity than wealth. The poor often are remarkably kind to neighbors in trouble, in part because they know what it is to suffer, and in part perhaps because their sympathies are not deadened by abundance.
The poor tend to out give the rich on the larger scale also, at least as far as churches go. It is a known fact that the typically poorer American denominations give more to their churches per capita than the typically rich, sometimes three or four times as much.
But, back to the Depression generation -- whose nature it was to give and give generously even in times of relative poverty during the Great Depression! My friend tells the story of his father who was ushering in church one Sunday when they had a guest preacher. In that time, it was the custom to take a collection to pay the expenses and honorarium of the guest preacher. After the offering plates had passed through the entire congregation his dad and a fellow usher discovered they were completely empty. So his dad pulled out his last five dollars and put it in so the preacher could buy gas to get home.
Like the Philippian Christians of Macedonia long ago, his dad was a giver -- even out of his poverty. How about you in your poverty? Are you a taker or giver?
II
Let's move away from poverty and affliction to affluence and abundance. Are we, in times of affluence, takers or givers?
Affluence can do strange things to people. If my friend's parents' generation assumed the reality of poverty and the fear of the Great Depression just around the corner, our children's generation assumes the reality of affluence, and the next economic boom just around the corner. Any recession is seen only as a temporary blip on the ever-ascending graph of higher and higher expectations. In every day in every way they expect to become more prosperous. But, will they become more generous? Will they take more and more or will they give more and more?
It is a strange irony, that the more we make, the less percentage of it we share for worthy causes like the work of the church. J.C. Penney, the founder of the Penney Department Stores, knew something of the temptation of that strange phenomenon.
Mr. Penney, from his earliest years, had practiced tithing -- that is, he gave ten percent of his earnings to the church. When his stores grew and grew and he began to make really big money, the question was raised whether he would continue to tithe. After all, ten percent of $25,000 is only $2,500, but ten percent of $2,500,000 is another matter. $250,000 to the church, he asked himself? That's a lot of money and I could do a lot with it. But, so could the Lord, came the answer, and so J.C. Penney, multi-millionaire many times over, continued to tithe, to give ten percent out of his affluence as well as out of his earlier relative poverty.
Charles Wesley, founder of the United Methodist church, used to lament the growing affluence of the members of his denomination. When church members are relatively poor, they tend to depend more on the Lord and upon one another, said Wesley, and they tend to be generous with the church. But when they become well-to-do, they tend to shift their affections from the Lord to money. Fairly well off and financially comfortable, they tend, said Wesley, to forsake the church, to trust in the pleasures and comforts, the clubs and vacations and social associations money can buy.
Perhaps he was reflecting what Jesus observed centuries ago, that it is difficult for many to handle money well, to keep it in perspective, to use it for good, to possess it rather than have it possess you. How hard it is for a rich man to enter heaven, said Jesus. It's easier for a camel to squeeze through that narrow needle-eye gate to the city than for a rich man to enter heaven.
Why? Because in a strange irony, affluence, wealth, and abundance often produce a compulsive greed for more rather than a generous heart for sharing. It's a strange truth that the poor widows of the world often give a greater percentage of their wealth to the work of the church than do the rich widows and the rich business and professional people and celebrities. In your relative affluence and abundance, are you a taker or giver?
We return now to the children of affluence who were the focus of our attention at the beginning. Why to the children? Because the life of taking is typical of the childish life. The childish life is one that starts sucking at the breast and then never stops sucking at the resources of society and the economy without ever giving back.
The childish life is insistent, demanding, highly expectant, self-centered, greedy, ready always to take and take and take with no sense of responsibility to give and give and give. The childish life wants everything and everybody to revolve around its needs and desires and demands. Typically, the childish person is always a taker, never a giver.
The Christians of Corinth, Greece, to whom our text is addressed, had now moved beyond their earlier childish behavior Paul had addressed in his first letter to them. Now, they are, to his great relief, excelling in everything -- in faith, in utterance, in knowledge and earnestness, and especially in their love for Paul and Titus and the church.
It seems that unlike the Macedonians, the Corinthians were also excelling financially. So out of their abundance he urges generosity. Give liberally to help your fellow Christians in Judea as God has given liberally to you, he urges them, and they do! Out of their affluence, they move beyond the childishness of taking, taking, taking to the maturity of giving and giving and giving. And when they did, they had no lack.
My friend used to joke with his children that he would know when they had become adults, because they would then take him out to dinner and pick up the check, rather than vice versa. Thankfully, he said, that has happened with all the children. Regularly, they pick up the check. And what a treat it is. It is now their nature to give, to be adult, to be responsible.
Are you a taker or a giver? Perhaps now it is time for you, either out of poverty or affluence, to step up to the challenge, to "pick up the check" for the work of the church in this place and in the world.
____________
1. Lucinda Franks, "Little Big People," New York Times magazine, 10/10/93.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
