Continuing our reflections on “greed” and “the greedy
person” in Ephesians 5:1-6:
Now I come to treacherous
waters for it is one thing to focus on one’s own desire for more, more, and
more; and it is another to address individuals through preaching, teaching, or
writing – for we can all hide among the crowd; but it is quite another to say,
“Not only am I guilty, not only may you the individual be guilty, but
unequivocally we are collectively guilty as a group, as a body, as a church.” Yet
again I am convicted.
In wrestling with my own
buy-in to the cultural ethos of more, then more, then just a little bit (or a
lot) more, I must ask, “What about my brother in need?” I must ask, “What about
the church? How should we the church
be living?” This is where the professing church that professes to view the
Bible as God’s Word tends to take out its razor blade and excise Scriptures,
this is where we pull down the blackout shades so as not to allow the light of
the Gospel to shine into our hearts – let us sleep through the day.
In 2 Corinthians Chapters 8
and 9 Paul writes about the church of Jesus Christ caring for its own. The
saints in Judea are suffering material hardship, they need money – m-o-n-e-y;
they don’t need used clothes, they don’t need canned goods, they don’t need
Bibles or tracts – they need m-o-n-e-y. Furthermore, they need (from the
Corinthian point-of-view) our money. Paul
begins Chapter 8 with:
“Now, brethren, we wish to make known to you
the grace of God which has been given in the churches of Macedonia, that in a
great ordeal of affliction their abundance of joy and their deep poverty
overflowed in the wealth of their liberality. For I testify that according to
their ability, and beyond their ability, they gave of their own accord, begging
us with much urging for the favor of participation in the support of the
saints, and this, not as we had expected, but they first gave themselves to the
Lord and to us by the will of God.”
This passage flies in the face
of the idea that we need just a little bit more before we can take care of
others. The Christians in Macedonia were not only experiencing persecution,
they were experiencing poverty, deep poverty – and yet they were joyful and
they were wealthy in liberality. They wanted
to give, they begged to give –
they wanted to join in the koinonia
(participation) of supporting the saints who needed help.
I have read studies that
indicate that the poorest populations in the United States give a greater
percentage of their income than those segments of the population who are better
off; people in the poorest states often give a greater percentage of their
income that people in the wealthiest states. I still recall, as a young man living
with mostly economically poor folks in New York City, their incredible
generosity toward one another and toward missions. Since then I have often
witnessed generosity among those who have had less than the rest of us.
The Macedonians were poor and
yet not poor; they were poor and were striving to make others rich. They were
not saying, “Once we take care of these financial needs we’ll focus on others.
Once we satisfy our wants and desires we’ll start giving to others. Once we get
just a little bit more we’ll help out.” They gave themselves to the Lord and
then to the people of God – one giving goes with the other – we cannot belong
to Christ and not belong to the people of Christ, we cannot give ourselves to
Christ and fail to give ourselves to others.
While it is unusual for
Christians to tithe, and while it can be unusual for churches to tithe to
others, tithing (when it does occur) can also lead to the attitude among
individuals and congregations that tithing is a safe harbor – let’s give 10%
and spend the rest on ourselves and get more, and more, and then just a little
bit more. This is not giving ourselves first to God and then to the people of
God, this is not the attitude of the heart that begs Paul to be able to give to
others.
In verse 9 Paul writes, “For
you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for
your sake He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich.” I
don’t pretend to know what this should look like in individual lives, but I do
know that unless there is a tension in our lives (at least most of our lives,
for I have met people who model this) that this passage probably means nothing,
that we likely relegate it to the flannel-graph theology of, “Oh isn’t that
noble of Jesus to do that.”
Jesus lived a life of giving –
are we living lives of giving?
The American Dream has taught
me that I deserve to consume, to have the best, to enjoy the good life; for my conscience’s
sake perhaps I will give to this or that charity or cause or mission; perhaps I
will even go on short-term mission trips. But the question isn’t whether I go
on short-terms trips to help others – the real question is whether my life is a
mission trip, whether I am on mission every breath of every day. We often treat
helping someone across the street as a short-term mission, or giving a hungry
person food as a short-term mission – when we treat these things as exceptions
to our lives we convict ourselves, the exceptions should be when we don’t give,
when we don’t live for others.
The American norm is greed. On
the Day when we stand before Christ, pointing to the Declaration of
Independence and “the pursuit of happiness” is not going to absolve us of our
quest for more, then more, then just a little bit more. Neither the Declaration
of Independence or the Constitution is the standard of the citizen of Heaven,
it is the Christ of the Word and the Word of Christ.
Am I living a life of giving?
Am I living a life of mission to others? Am I living for God and others?
Matthew 25:31 – 46; 2
Corinthians 5:10.
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