“Joy and Poverty”

June 29, 2003

2 Corinthians 8:1-9,13-15

Imagine that you are one of six children at the dinner table, and it’s time for dessert.   Mom brings out a beautiful rhubarb pie and begins to slice shares.  You are watching very carefully to be sure that the slices are even and right down the middle.  Then to your horror you discover that mom has cut some pieces very large and others just tiny, and that you are about to be given one of the smallest.  This isn’t fair!  Never mind that you hate rhubarb pie and will only eat two bites in any case – you grasp intuitively that the absolute size of the slice is less significant than it’s relative size in comparison to, say, your big sister’s piece.  To give one child a greater proportion than another child would imply that one child was valued more than another – that Mom loved your sister better!

We learn the lesson of the pie – the concept of relative proportions – very early in life, and this skill proves useful in a number of applications.  It carries through particularly in the analytical tool known as the pie chart.  A pie chart in, say, a financial report could show you at a glance the relative proportion of total expenditures made for various purposes.  For example, I see a lot of pie charts in parish financial reports.  Whether the parishes are large or small, rich or poor, the pie charts often look the same.  A very large proportion of expenditure will be given to clergy compensation; another large proportion will be given to property and maintenance; other smaller slices will be given to Christian education, outreach, and so on.  Often parish vestries will look at pie charts to ask whether expenditures are congruent with the expressed values and priorities of the congregation.  They may work, for example, to enlarge the proportion given outside the parish as compared to what is spent within – and so on.

The same sort of analysis can be done for our personal finances.  At the end of the year I can get my personal accounting software to make a pie chart for me so that I can see what proportion of our household’s income gets spent on housing, on education, on entertainment, or on charitable giving.  

For centuries now Christian and Jews have used this approach of proportionate giving as a guideline for making decisions about giving.  The idea is that we should give in proportion to our means.  A typical guideline has been the tithe or tenth-part.  Elisabeth and I use this method, ourselves, as I’m sure many of you do, and we find it very satisfying.  We give a tenth of our annual income to the church and to other charitable organizations, and that feels good.  We find that we can easily pay for everything we really need and a lot of what we want with the other ninety percent. 

Now, this is no hardship for us, because our income is ample, and, naturally, it’s easier to give when you have plenty.  It makes perfect sense that people with higher incomes would happily give away larger proportions or their income – except that that is not what happens.

Study after study has shown that, in the United States, lower income households give higher proportions of their income for charitable purposes than higher income households.  Why is that?  Why should the poor be more generous?

I have one small clue and one large clue to offer.  The small clue is this:  when it comes to charitable giving, we tend to look at the absolute amount instead of the relative amount.  For example, a young couple entering their first professional positions may take home, say, $40,000 a year.  Of this they may give even as little as $2000 to their church and feel pretty good about that – as well they should!  Years pass, however, and the couple may be making twice or three times or ten times what they were making before – but the $2000 pledge still looks about right to them – as if they were paying rather than giving.

The bigger clue is not mine but Paul’s.  In the epistle reading we heard this morning, Paul is doing the same thinge pastorally with the church in Corinth as I am doing with you;  he is shaming – I mena, inspiring them to greater generosity by holding up for them the example of poorer folk.

The situation is this:  Paul has gone out from the ‘Mother Church’ in Jerusalem – after engaging ion some conflict with the leaders there regarding his mission to the Gentiles – and he has traveled from town to town starting new churches.  Meanwhile, back in Jerusalem, the Jewish Christians are suffering along with the other Jews of the city due to the Romans’ violent suppression of local rebel groups.  The ‘Mother Church’ is in need, and Paul has a vision:  The divisions in the church can be bridged in a unified act of charity.  He will raise offerings from among the Gentile converts; he and his companions will travel from church to church and gather the offerings to present back at Jerusalem as a fulfillment of the words of the prophet Isaiah.  And so Paul sends a letter in advance of his coming to the church in Corinth, and he encourages their generosity by telling them the story of the church Macedonia.

The Macedonians, it seems, have fallen on hard times, and yet God has given them the grace to give with exceeding generosity:  “during a severe ordeal of affliction, their abundant joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part.”  Now, that is an extraordinary sentence.  In the midst of “affliction,” there is “joy,” and “poverty” has “overflowed in a wealth of generosity.”  How can this be?

The answer lies in the very nature of God as revealed in Jesus Christ.  Keep in the back of your mind the familiar words, probably from an early Christian hymn, which Paul quotes in his letter to the Philippians:  that “Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself” – poured himself out – “taking the form of a slave,” humbling himself even to the point of death on the cross, “and therefore God has highly exalted him….”  Keep that image in the back of your mind as now we hear Paul speak to the Corinthians of Jesus Christ, who, “though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty [we] might become rich.” 

Christ reveals the very nature of God to us when he pours himself out, pours out his life for us.  God’s life is love, and the nature of love is to give itself.  God is God by being God given for us – and when we give of ourselves in love for others, we participate in God’s life. 

We all know that joy that comes from giving love genuinely from our hearts.  We know the joy that comes from giving of our lives by caring for others.  So, too, we can, like the Macedonians, overflow in joy through giving of our substance, our treasure, our wealth, for the sake of those in need.

Last week in my sermon I posed the question --  “What are you worth?” -- and I suggested that we find our true worth as persons, not by measuring ourselves according the world’s standards of  wealth, power and status, but by looking at our lives through Christ’s eyes, finding Christ’s image within ourselves.  I suggested that our true worth is measured according to who and how we love. 

This week I suggest that wealth is measured, not by how much we have or hold or possess, but rather by how we let go of:  in a sense, our wealth is measured by our poverty.  We are most rich in Christ when we give – and when that giving comes as an overflow of joy, in the spirit of Christ’s own self-offering.  Indeed, our lives in Christ are metered out in joy.

The Rev. Steven Bonsey

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