Givers Get

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God has to have a sense of humor.  Have you read the Bible?  It’s not stand-up material, but some of it is funny.  Like Samson and Deliliah.  Samson is this massive man with supernatural strength.  Delilah is his conniving wife who is willing to betray him for the right price.  But she has to figure out how to overcome his power.  So she snuggles up next to him, bats her eyelashes and asks, “Sweetie, tell me the secret of  your great strength…You know, honey, just in case someone would want to capture you and kill you, how would they do that?”  Um…if you get married and your wife is just curious about the best way to kill you, that’s a red flag. 

Or Nicodemus.  He’s the guy who talks to Jesus one night about going to heaven.  Jesus tells him, “No one can see the kingdom of God unless he’s born again.”  Meaning, God has to give you new life, spiritual life.  And old Nicodemus scratches his curly Jewish beard and wonders, “A man can’t enter a second time into his mother’s womb, can he?”  Listen, Nick, it was hard enough when you were 8 lbs.  I don’t think mommy is going to appreciate a 200 lb. bun in her oven. 

And then there’s this passage about giving.  In the New Testament, we meet these Christians who were extremely broke, but radically generous.  And there’s this verse that always cracks me up.  Here’s what is says:  “Entirely on their own, they urgently pleaded with us for the privilege of sharing.”  “Urgently pleaded for the privilege of sharing”!?  Parents, has that ever, ever happened in your home?  “Mommy, can I please, please share my candy with my sister?”  I have seen a lot of stuff as a pastor, but never that.  No one has ever stood up during the sermon and said, “Pastor, I can’t take it.  Please pass the offering plates now.  Please let me give this money.  I’m begging you!  Do me a favor and take this money from me!”  Yeah…that doesn’t happen.

I think I know why that passage cracks us up.  Because, logically, giving means I’ll have less.  Sharing this with you means I can’t use it on me.  If I give more, I’m going to have less.  I’m going to miss out on stuff I enjoy.  I like the cabin.  I like ESPN in HD.  I like takeout Chinese.  I like 4G.  I love unlimited texting.  I like a house that’s 71 degrees in January.  I love golfing 18 with a cart.  I like Badger games.  I like buying shoes.  And if I give generously, I won’t be able to enjoy that stuff.”  Logically, our joy is a result of not being generous.  After all, if we keep more, we’ll have more and spend more on the stuff that makes us happy.

Maybe all that logical thinking is what makes our Scripture for today laughable.  Read what God says in Proverbs 11—“One man gives freely, yet gains even more; another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty.”  Wait.  A guy gives and gains?  If you give, don’t you have less?  Another guy keeps money and goes broke?  If you keep it, don’t you have more?

Not always.  Just ask a farmer.  A little boy once went out to the field with his father.  Dad hooked up the seed driller and poured bags of seed into the hopper.  With wide-eyes the boy watched as the device roared into action, breaking up the soil and dropping seeds in perfect rows.  As his father made laps around the field, the boy realized the hopper was almost empty.  “Dad,” he pleaded, “we’re losing our seed!”  His father laughed.  “Losing?  No, son, not losing.  Just wait until October.”

Every farmer knows giving seed is not a loss, but a gain.  The one who gives it freely to his field will gain even more.  The one who withholds will come to poverty.  And isn’t God teaching us the same thing about money?  In another lesson we read today, he says, “Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly; whoever sows generously will also reap generously.”  In other words, givers get more.  Generous people don’t miss out.  Only those who keep it miss out.  Is that why those Christians urgently pleaded for the privilege of giving?  Because they believed, in God’s economy, giving is the best investment you could ever make.

So what exactly is God promising?  If we give, what will we gain?  If we sow these offerings generously, what generous harvest will we reap?  Here’s what it’s not:  A biblical get-rich-quick scheme.  This isn’t a supernatural guarantee:  if you give $100, God will give $1,000.  God is not a piñata and your offering is not a stick.  You can’t beat financial blessings out of God like candy at a birthday party.  Can God give you more money as you give generously?  Sure.  Does he often do that?  Yes. 

God played that joke on my family last year.  After deciding on this generosity vision, my wife and I decided to give more than we had ever given.  We have not always been generous, so that wasn’t natural for us.  And it was a little scary because I am a budget hawk.  I love crunching numbers.  I track every dollar and every half cent.  I’ve kept every receipt for every expense since the day we got married eight years ago.  So when we gave more, I knew what that meant.  We had to cut more.  Less McDonald’s.  Fewer nights out.  No ordering dessert.  Logically, we were going to live with less.  But what I didn’t know was that God isn’t bound to my budget.  A few weeks after increasing our giving, a check came in the mail.  “What’s this?” I wondered.  It was a gift from a friend.  Unexpected.  Three days later, a second letter arrived.  “What’s this?” I wondered.  It was a gift from a ministry I helped last year.  Unexpected.  Two days later, a third letter arrived.  “What’s this?” I wondered.  A refund from the City of Sun Prairie.  Some tax error.  Unexpected.  For six weeks, letter after letter arrived.  By the fourth one, we laughed as we opened the mail.  “You’re funny, God.  Where’s the money going to come from this time?”  In six weeks, we received over $3,000 in unexpected income! 

Coincidence?  Maybe.  A lesson from above?  Probably.  God has resources Quicken knows nothing about.  That’s what changes us from fearful givers into cheerful givers.  God can move your boss’s heart to give you a Christmas bonus.  He can make your roof or your car last longer.  He can bless you with a five-figure inheritance.  He can give you a generous friend who picks up the check.  He can present a job offer in the midst of this economy.  If you give, you might gain because God often gives givers gifts.  (Read that again!) He’s seen they have been good managers of a little, so he lets them manage even more. 

Does God always work like that?  Not exactly.  Sometimes his gifts are even better than cash.  Sometimes checks don’t appear, but other kinds of blessings do.  Look at the rest of our Bible text—“A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed.”  Sometimes being generous leaves you with less in the bank, but so much more in blessing. 

Donald Rauer was not a generous man.  As a middle manager of a manufacturing company, he knew the value of earning a paycheck.  Maybe it was that work ethic that kept his money in a tight grip.  But one phone call changed all that.  Donald was told his only surviving relative, his Uncle Mike, had lost a long battle with emphysema.  Mike had left a large sum of money in a foundation and named Donald as the trustee.  But the seven figures are not what changed him.  The money had a string attached:  Uncle Mike requested that Donald give away every dollar, all million of them, to worthy causes over the next twelve years.

Rauer reluctantly agreed, but he wouldn’t just throw the money away.  He ruthlessly scrutinized non-profit after non-profit until he found a few that met his standards.  He gave small amounts to each one.  As the organizations received the gifts, they began to send back reports on what the money was used for.  Children with bloated bellies were being fed.  Orphaned babies were finding homes.  Impoverished communities were learning skills for a brighter future.  Bit by bit, the stories cracked Rauer’s tough shell.  As the months passed, he became interested, then intrigued, then captivated by the work.  Rauer slowly began to give his own time to help these organizations, even taking a summer off to volunteer.  Four years ahead of schedule, Uncle Mike’s foundation was empty.  But Donald Rauer’s heart was not.  He began transferring his own savings to the foundation and donated most of his salary and pension to relief work.  At age 71, he retired as a middle-manager, but not as a giver.  He spent the next 15 years giving to the causes that had gripped his heart.  When he died at age 86, his life was completely devoted to this generous lifestyle.  The most astonishing thing about Donald Rauer’s story was not the impact he made through his gifts, but the impact the gifts made on him.

“A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed.”  Donald Rauer learned what our logic says shouldn’t be true.  Givers get.  It’s true for us, too.  Those of you who have embraced God’s design for giving—you repeatedly give a generous proportion of your income before anything else—you’ve experienced that refreshment.  Maybe you listened to the kindergarteners sing, “I am Jesus’ little lamb”, the little students you supported with your offerings, and you thought, “What will I buy that means more than this?”  Maybe at our Every Member Visits you saw the story of the guy drifting through life until he heard God’s Word here, from the church you support, and you thought, “He’s was going to hell.  Now he’s going to heaven.  That is the best investment I’ve ever made.”  Maybe you gave to a family in need and the look on their faces was worth more than anything you could have bought.  In so many non-financial ways—relationally, spiritually, emotionally—generous people prosper.  Givers get. 

The selfish part of us doesn’t want to believe that.  It wants to convince us we’ll have less prosperity, less refreshment if we give.  And sometimes we believe it.  We trust our logic instead of our Lord.  We hold on to money and only give the scraps that are left, if there are any.  But all that “saving” is not gaining.  Keeping all that seed is not wise.  What we end up with is regret.  Regret when the harvest comes and we have nothing to show for it.  Regret as we think about how much we’ve earned and how little change we’ve made in this world. What seemed so logical was actually a lie.

But Jesus steps in with promises that go beyond our logic.  Jesus gave freely.  He gave his own life on the cross in our place for our sins.  But did he end up with less?  Did you hear what he promised in our Gospel lesson?  “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.  I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed.  But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”  He means, “The time has come for me to die for you, but I won’t regret it.  Unless I die, you can’t be saved.  Unless I give my perfect life for you, you can’t get forgiveness.  But if I am generous, if I give freely, if I sow generously, if I plant the seed of my body in the ground, there will be a great harvest.”  Jesus Christ gave it all away, but he did not lose!  He gained.  He gained us, a forgiven people.  A people made holy.  A people God chose and made perfect and pure.  Us?!  Coming out of mother a second time would be more logical than us being sinless in God’s sight!  But that’s exactly what happened for me, for you, for us all.  Jesus gave.  And he gained even more.

What we truly need, a giving God, we have.  “He did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all.”  And what our hearts truly want, prosperity, joy, peace, contentment, God bundles up in one simple action:  giving.  When you take that step and give, you will get so much, so much of what you actually wanted in the first place.  We should really introduce the offering in a different way.  Maybe we should say, “Now is the time when we pass the plates and you all get something.”  

If you’re here for the first time today and think this is just what you suspected, a ploy for the church to get more money, it’s not.  God wants you to support your church, but if it’s not this church, I don’t care.  God bless you if you let the plate pass today, but you give generously to someone else.  This isn’t about Eastside.  It’s about you and God and the gifts he wants you to get as you give.

So here’s your homework for this week:  Put God to the test and give generously to someone.  Sit down with your budget and try giving 8 or 10 or 20% to your church.  Buy $100 in Copps gift cards for your neighbor who just lost his job.  Give to tuition assistance and then spend 15 minutes in the classroom where those little ears will hear about Jesus and the cross and the grace of God, maybe the first time.  Give freely and see if you don’t gain more.  Sow in massive amounts and see if you don’t reap massive blessings.  Be generous and see if you don’t prosper.  If you give like that, Delilah and Nicodemus might crack you up, but the church who was begging for the privilege to give…they’ll just make you say,  “I get it…because givers get.”  Amen.