Test Driving Theology

I grew up in the Lutheran tradition…and I have served in Lutheran churches for 39 years…so I think that I am qualified to make this observation:

There is no crisis in a Lutheran congregation so large that it cannot be met by a 9×13 inch pan.

I mean, think about it:

• Somebody dies. 
• Somebody’s surgery goes sideways. 
• A family member loses a job. 
• Someone gets a bad diagnosis. 
• Someone has a flood…or a fire.

And nobody calls a meeting about it. Nobody forms a committee. Word gets out, and by that evening, a hot dish has been delivered (usually tater-tot); then another…and another; and by Thursday that family has more food in the refrigerator than they can eat, plus a freezer full. I remember when my Dad died in 1999. So much food was brought to my Mom’s house that we literally couldn’t eat it all.  

It’s like this instinctive thing. It just seems to happen. It is a reflex. It’s just what we do.

And that reflex…that reflex to be kind…to be generous… is what I want to talk about this morning.

Because this sermon series is called “Stand,” and for these six weeks, we are naming the things that are foundational for us. The things that we stand on. We stand on Grace. On the Word. The Cross. On community. This morning we add one more:  we stand on generosity.

We stand on generosity. Generosity is one of the essentials. It is in our DNA…a part of who we are, in the same way that the hot dish (or whatever comfort food works best for you) is part of who we are.

So where does that generosity reflex come from?

The apostle Paul talks about this in our first scripture reading for today.  

Paul is writing to the church in Corinth about giving…and generosity…which means he has every excuse in the world to lean on them. But he never does. He never says that they owe anyone anything. Instead, he starts talking about farming. Seeds. Planting. Harvest. And then he says the thing that reframes the whole conversation. God, he says, is the one who “supplies seed to the farmer.”

He is reminding us that we have never created anything.  That’s not what we do.  We are simply passing along something…making use of something…that was given to us as a gift.

And when Paul finally wraps up the entire appeal, he doesn’t end with duty or obligation or shame or guilt… He lands the plane by saying, “Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift…for his grace.”

You see, there is an order to grace…a sequence. God always gives first. And we give back. God gives first. We give back.  Always. It’s never the other way around.

Grace always means that God moves first. Sometimes without you even knowing it, and certainly without you doing anything to earn or to deserve it. And generosity is what grace looks like once it has gotten into a person and started moving around in our hearts.

I love this line from Martin Luther: In The Freedom of a Christian, he wrote that a person of faith “lives not in himself, but in Christ and in his neighbor.” We live in Christ through faith, Luther says, and in our neighbor through love.

You see, God’s grace comes to us…and it comes in one door, and it goes right out the other, in the form of love…and compassion…and generosity. That’s how God works! God gives gracefully. In response, we give generously.

Your generosity is a sign of God’s grace showing up in you. When you are generous with your hands, with your calendar, with your finances, and sometimes, yeah, with a 9×13 pan, that’s God’s grace working in you.

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus does something I think is slightly rude. He sits down across from the temple treasury and watches people give.

Imagine if I did that. Imagine if, when it comes time to collect the offering, I just followed the ushers around, arms folded and watched…watched everyone put their offering into the plate. That would be gross. You would call a congregational meeting. And you should. That’s essentially what Jesus was doing.

You have to understand, though, how people gave their offering during Jesus’ time. It was not a felt-lined wooden offering plate like we have, passed quietly down a row. No. In the temple court during Jesus’ day, thirteen wooden collection chests lined the walls. And each chest had a trumpet-shaped tube at the top…like a giant funnel going down into the chest. And this trumpet-shaped tube was made of brass.

So, when you dropped your coins in (and they only had coins back then), your offering clanged and rattled as the metal coins made their way down to the chest.  

So, the temple had, essentially, a sound system for generosity. A large gift did not get recorded. It got heard. When someone emptied their bag of coins into the brass trumpet-tube, it clattered down that horn like someone emptying a coffee can of change onto a tile floor, and every head in the courtyard turned to see the source of the noise.

And Jesus sits there, watching.

Then a widow steps up and drops in two of the smallest coins in circulation. They were called a “lepta.”  She dropped in two lepta. Tiny. In a trumpet that size, they would have made almost no sound. Maybe a little “tink.” Then nothing.

Jesus sees that, and he stands up: “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all the rest of them.”

Notice what he doesn’t say: He doesn’t say the wealthy givers were frauds, or that their gifts didn’t matter. Not at all. In fact, the temple needed those gifts, and they received them gratefully. But Jesus says that the widow put in more, which by every method of accounting that I’m familiar with, is flatly false.

Unless Jesus is not actually measuring the gift. Unless he is looking at the person and is measuring her faith…measuring what she is standing on.

This woman…this poor widow, walked up to that trumpet and did the most natural thing in the world for somebody who already knew that God was generous to her. The widow was just being herself.

That is the whole point. Jesus is not grading gifts. He is pointing at a woman whose foundation is showing.

I think that by holding up this widow as an example, Jesus might be reminding us that generosity isn’t an activity…a thing we do…generosity is who we are. It’s our default, factory setting. We are hardwired to be generous.

Watch a two-year-old who has not been taught anything yet. With joy and a smile, they will hand you a soggy cracker they were genuinely enjoying. Then they will give away their toy. 

And then, in our culture, we spend years training that instinct out of them: 

• Keep track. 
• Protect what is yours. 
• Make sure it is fair. 
  

Giving is the thing we were born to do. But grabbing is the thing we’ve been trained to do. 

We were made in the image of a God who gives. Read the first page of Genesis again sometime and notice that the entire story is God making more and more and more and more and more of everything and then handing all of it over. That is who we are built to resemble. Remember the phrase “created in God’s image?”

So, when you are generous, you are not straining against your nature. You are leaning into it. You are actually doing the thing you were made to do.

And when a whole congregation stands on that together, grace starts turning up all over this town.

• It looks like a seventh grader who walks into confirmation excited to see the adult volunteer who give them the gift of time…and who likes to be around them.
• It looks like a phone call to someone who’s having a bad week, from a concerned friend.
• It looks like a person slipping into the sanctuary for worship after a divorce or a diagnosis, sitting down in a back row, and realizing that as broken as they may feel…they are welcome here, exactly as they are. 
• It looks like groceries in a trunk, on their way to Community Pathways.
• Or 80 quilts, made with time and love, being delivered to the Pine Ridge reservation…to people in need.
• It looks like a community that built a new shelter space…one that quadrupled the capacity to care for those on the margins.
• It looks like a herd of 3^rd graders, all receiving their Bibles on a Sunday morning from a congregation that loves them.

That is grace…grace incarnate…grace lived out in generosity…grace lived out in human form, grace lived out in you.

So, we are a grace-filled and generous people. And yes, pledge information and a pledge form will arrive at your home in the mail on Monday or Tuesday. You knew that was coming.

And here is all I am going to say about it. That pledge form is not a bill, and it is not a test. For us, it’s a budgeting tool. But for you, well…it’s an expression of God’s grace… It is a chance for you to live out your generosity…for you to be the person you were hardwired to be. It’s a reminder that God has been generous to you. And it is a declaration that you intend to be the same. 

Pray over it. Fill it in. Send it back. And together we will be who God created us to be. Together, we will be a generous people.

That little, old woman…that widow. Two coins. Just two coins that made almost no sound at all. (Tink!)

And 2,000 years later, we are still talking about her.

This is generosity. And this is what we stand on.

Thanks be to God!   Amen.