HOW TO MAKE STEALING OR SHARING
POSSIBLE.
Ephesians
4:25-5:2:
In today's reading from Paul's
letter to the church at Ephesus in Asia Minor, the
apostle gives a list of instructions on how to
communicate honestly, openly, effectively in the church.
This litany of Christian virtues is familiar. What
surprises me is verse 28 where the apostle states: THOSE
WHO ARE STEALING SHOULD GIVE UP STEALING. As this letter
and today's text is written specifically to Christians,
not to the general population, the conclusion must be
drawn that there was thievery in the church at Ephesus.
Let's hear the entire passage:
SO THEN, PUTTING AWAY FALSEHOOD,
LET ALL OF US SPEAK THE TRUTH TO OUR NEIGHBORS, FOR WE
ARE MEMBERS OF ONE ANOTHER. BE ANGRY BUT DO NOT SIN; DO
NOT LET THE SUN GO DOWN ON YOUR ANGER, AND DO NOT MAKE
ROOM FOR THE DEVIL. THIEVES MUST GIVE UP STEALING; RATHER
LET THEM LABOR AND WORK HONESTLY WITH THEIR OWN HANDS SO
AS TO HAVE SOMETHING TO SHARE WITH THE NEEDY. LET NO EVIL
TALK COME OUT OF YOUR MOUTHS, BUT ONLY WHAT IS USEFUL FOR
BUILDING UP, AS THERE IS NEED, SO THAT YOUR WORDS MAY
GIVE GRACE TO THOSE WHO HEAR. AND DO NOT GRIEVE THE HOLY
SPIRIT OF GOD, WITH WHICH YOU WERE MARKED WITH A SEAL FOR
THE DAY OF REDEMPTION. PUT AWAY FROM YOU ALL BITTERNESS
AND WRATH AND ANGER AND WRANGLING AND SLANDER, TOGETHER
WITH ALL MALICE, AND BE KIND TO ONE ANOTHER,
TENDERHEARTED, FORGIVING ONE ANOTHER, AS GOD IN CHRIST
HAS FORGIVEN YOU. THEREFORE, BE IMITATORS OF GOD, AS
BELOVED CHILDREN, AND LIVE IN LOVE, AS CHRIST LOVED US
AND GAVE HIMSELF UP FOR US, A FRAGRANT OFFERING AND
SACRIFICE TO GOD.
The church is the last place we
would expect thievery to be practiced although the
openness of catholic churches night and day, until recent
times, traditionally placed religious alms boxes at the
mercy of the ramdom thief. Churches nowadays increasingly
close down except at services to reduce this random
thievery as well as the stealing of church
art.
What Paul probably had in mind
was the fact that many of the earliest Christian
converts were slaves and thievery among slaves was
commonly accepted. Though slaves became new persons in
Christ, their baptism did not automatically convey a
better moral code and lifestyle. Paul was aware of the
danger that slaves could, if not counseled strongly, go
right on with their thieving. Of course, the same
applies to all the commandments and converts may go right
on breaking, if not the eighth commandment against
stealing, then one of the others read this
morning.
The church is vulnerable to
stealing for another very important reason which is
mentioned by Paul at verse 245: FOR WE ARE MEMBERS OF ONE
ANOTHER. In the church its members voluntarily share
their faith, their energy in working together, and their
money in supporting the church. All is held in common for
the good of the church and the cause of Christ. In
church work, including its finances, there is no room for
the "This is mine" philosophy outside the church. All is
held in common. The church is "ours." And in an
environment which stressse sharing rather than claiming,
the temptation exists to take selfishly and its corollary
to coast along on the giving and efforts of
others.
In the church we trust one
another and it's a shock on those, thankfully rare
occasion, when it is revealed that a highly trusted
figure has misued church money. It does happen: One of
the recent and notorious instances of this was the
indictment of the Rev. Dr. Lyons, long time president of
the largest black Baptist denomination in America. He is
now serving some years in federal prison for having
misappropriated millions of dollars of church funds to
maintain his mistress and her mansion.
Commonsense financial checks and
balances do not in any way undermine trust and confidence
in the church. Our congregation should always have two
witnesses, preferably three, to the counting of the
Sunday collection; two signatures necessary for all
checks and money transfers of the church; the public
reporting through the NEWSLETTER of income and
expenditures; and both internal auditing of church
finances by the church council in its monthly review of
the treasurer's report and the annual professional
outside auditing.
**********
Paul also points us, especially
those with an inclination toward thievery, to the helpful
alternative: develop the charitable instinct by honest
work and generosity, especially toward the
poor.
In the first century, Paul must
have had in mind by "honest labor" manual labor and
artisan work. Nowadays, the work bench has been replaced
by the computer console for most of us; his counsel to
honest work still pertains to us as does his exhortation
to be generous.
Let's be honest about church
finances for these few minutes. The main reason for a
stewardship push at any time of the year should be to
encourage awareness within the congregation of what is
required to run the church of our choice. This occasional
look at fiscal reality is necessary because most of the
time the church operates without public accountability
with bills getting paid, and nobody much worries about
who is giving what. As I just noted, the worldly approach
of "This is mine" simply doesn't track in church
finances. Everyone assumes that everyone is giving
proportionately to their ability to give.
However, that assumes a lot
because naivete and ignorance in church finances is a
hundred times more common than any possible
misappropriation of funds. Consider this simple example.
Since I am usually the first in the Executive Club on
Sundays and among the last to leave, I sometimes check
this little basket which is normally on the coffee bar
for four hours each Sunday. It's there in the hope that
we who take refreshments will, at least on occasion, feed
the basket with a donation.
Most Sundays the basket is
either empty or has a few coins in it. I doubt this is
becausse anyone is thieving coins and paper from the
basket. Rather I believe it's because almost nobody is
putting anything into the basket. The disinclination to
give one's fair share is a form of inadvertent
thievery.
This is a minor illustration but
it does seem to forecast what is going on in our Sunday
offering here. The basket is more often empty, too, or
nearly so. The fact is that coffee and nice biscuits are
not free in life; good worship is neither free though the
low freewill giving suggests that many of us think
so.
For a congregation composed
mainly of persons in business and professional jobs which
require exact financial calculations I am surprised at
how casual and ignorant we choose to be about the real
costs of running our church.
Our regular worshipers are
surely aware of the many blessings we have as our church
has commenced its fourth year of existence. We have a
fairly stable core of worshipers; we enjoy one of the
better worship hours in Hong Kong and in a unique place
of beauty and inspiration; we run a small but efficient
church office nearby and are able to mount some good and
sometimes fantastic programs during the week.
The arithmetic of our financial
situation for doing what we do is pretty clear since it's
all on the public record: it costs about HK$l,600,000 per
year to run our church. Divide that by 52 Sundays and
it's plain that about HK$30,000 is needed in weekly
financial support to keep the church solvent. Our Sunday
offerings the last 52 Sundays has averaged $8,000, not
$30,000; there are the exceptional Sundays, like the
Signal 8 Sunday last autumn, when there was no Sunday
worship and no Sunday collection. And the next Sunday
there was no increase in giving. There are quite a few
Sundays when the collection is as low as $4,000 which
barely pays for the incidental expenses of mounting the
service &endash; things like the housekeepers, the
professional music, the bulletins, and the SCMP
advertisement &endash; with absolutely nothing for the
main costs of the church &endash; me, my apartment, and
our office.
You also probably don't need to
pull out a calculator to figure that the average Sunday
gift, if there's about l00 adults present for an average
collection of $8,000 is $80 per person. But if we need
$30,000 a week from the same l00 persons we need an
average of $300. IN summary, our offering each Sunday
produces only 25% of what we need; our per capita Sunday
offering is only 25% of what we spend.
From this little excursion into
church finances, some practical questions ought to arise:
How do we keep the church going if only 25% of our need
is met in the Sunday offering? What other method do we
use to bridge the difference? The stewardship campaign is
precisely to address those questions and I hope you will
pay close attention to what Myron and others are telling
us. I can tell you that we need a radical approach to
our stewardship. The Roman Catholic Cathedral in Madrid
took a radical approach to its stewardship last year. The
church has installed electronic machines at every
entrance that take VISA, MC and American Express. Though
intriguing a bank of credit card machines as we enter and
leave the elevators of Central Plaza is not practical.
What is to discipline and express our commitment to
support the church budget as best each one of us can is a
pledged amount payable weekly or monthly or quarterly
and, preferably, by bank electronic transfer.
********
How can we go about changing our
modest stewardship inclination with a genuine charitable
habit: why do some people find it natural to give
regularly and generously while for others every Sunday
offering presents a financial crisis toward their
conscience.
This morning, arriving here by
taxi, and seeing the meter read HK$44, I gave the taxi
driver a $50 bill and expected my change. But no change
was forthcoming; the driver sat motionless looking
straight ahead. So finally I said a bit impatiently:
"Change, please." The taxi driver turned toward me and
said: "Father, change must come from within."
The charitable instinct does
come from within. It can be helped along by disciples
such as awareness of the real cost of running a church in
Hong Kong, by reliance upon weekly or monthly use of
pledge envelopes or electronic transfers, and by the
occasional review of one's good fortune in order to
evaluate whether giving is proportional or getting out
of whack with reality. But the charitable instinct must
come from within, reflecting our conviction that we
experience our lives with thanksgiving.
We are able to be generous only
so far as we have a generous impulse within our
hearts.
Paul concludes today's text with
this: LIVE IN LOVE AS CHRIST LOVED US AND GAVE HIMSELF UP
FOR US, A FRAGRANT OFFERING AND SACRIFICE TO GOD. To be a
fragrant offering and sacrifice to God, we need the
charitable instinct.
Sharing is the lifestyle of
Christians drawn together out of awareness, appreciation
and inspiration that God is giving to us. There is
little usage and sense of "my" and "yours" in church
relationships and stewardship because the church is
"ours" and what is "ours" is really God's. Christians
know that whatever we identify as "my" or "ours" is a
temporary phenomenon. Everything belongs to
God.
Paul earlier in this letter at
l:3 reminds: BLESSED BE THE GOD AND FATHER OF OUR LORD
JESUS CHRIST, WHO HAS BLESSED US WITH EVERY SPIRITUAL
BLESSING. Our charitable instinct is prompted,
strengthened, and manifested just as we are aware who's
we are and what God has done and is going to do for
us.
The Christian charitable
instinct allows us to laugh at the seduction of the world
which wants us to have a uniquely "me first" and "me now"
sense of ourselves.
How amusing to read last week of
the financial difficulties that Prince Jeffry, the
younger brother of the Sultan of Brunei, is experiencing.
He can't survive on $300,000 monthly to support his "me
first" lifestyle and is petitioning the court to up his
pocket money. Prince Jefri is also in court defending
himself against the charge that he has embezzled up to
three billion US dollars from the public treasury in
order to maintain over the past decade his lifestyle of
multiple homes, yatchs, wives, children.
When you live on the "God first"
principle you will have more than enough.
This is not to say that the
charitable instinct which originates in faith is a
guarantee of material success. Many churches teach that
and that's just another form of spiritual thievery.
Two old friends met one day
after many years. One attended college, and now was very
successful. The other had never studied, never worked
hard, lacked ambition but boasted to his long absent
buddy that he had done brilliantly well in
finances.
"How" asked his disciplined but
only moderately successful ex classmate. Well, one day I
opened the Bible at random, and dropped my; finger on a
word and it was "oil." So, I invested in oil, and, wow,
did the oil wells gush. Then another day I dropped my
finger on another word and it was "gold." So, I invested
in gold and those mines really produced. Now, I'm nearly
as rich as Bill Gates."
The other man was so impressed
that he rushed to his hotel, grabbed a Gideon Bible,
flipped it open, closed his eyes, and dropped his finger
on a page. When he looked his finger rested on the
heading "Chapter Eleven."
Wrong if we operate, not from a
charitable instinct, but only upon a charitable strategy,
in order to enhance our personal gain. The promises of
God which issue from faith in God are uttered a thousand
times over as in Ephesians l and Philippians 4:l9 MY GOD
SHALL SUPPLY ALL YOUR NEED ACCORDING TO HIS RICHES IN
GLORY BY CHRIST JESUS. These scriptural promises are not
guarantees of tenfold return for giving, not a promise
that the Holy Spirit manages a jackpot for the faithful.
Such presumption is alien to biblical faith.
The texts which encourage us to
give in response to God's care of us initiate us into
understanding who's we are, what we have, what we can
hold to and what we shall release. The blessings of
Christian and scriptural stewardship line us up in ledger
columns headed perspective, balance and commonsense.
Faith makes a lifestyle possible for Christians in which
the generous instinct unfolds naturally.
Pastor Gene
Preston
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