2 responses

1. 

   Housing the homeless

   16 August 2011

   Powerful sermon on the Grace of Giving I found online:

   A Sermon on
   Giving

   (St. Paul’s
   Cathedral 7/2/99)

   If you look at
   the Order of Service, you will see that this sermon will be followed by a hymn,
   during which the collection will be taken. I want to consider the question, why
   do we have a collection in the service? I would add immediately, it is not my purpose
   to incite you to give more; I am, rather, interested in the significance of the
   fact. We might put the problem like this: it is curious that collections occur
   in almost every church service, and yet it is not the case that all aspects of
   the management and mechanics of running a church and a congregation are
   represented in the liturgy. So why does money feature?

   This cathedral
   represents one end of a spectrum. My job is in a Cambridge college chapel, at
   the opposite end of the spectrum in vastness of responsibility, and the
   collection there is taken discretely, generally only mentioned obliquely, and
   distributed in its entirety to a number of charities, chosen for their
   worthwhileness. The chapel is wonderfully independent of financial burdens; we
   do not have to worry directly about raising money for restoration, maintenance
   and so forth, and the discretion as to money is perhaps the counter-point to
   that. But in the majority of places of worship, in most churches, where finance
   has to be a constant theme, collections are focused upon, and a whole theology
   of giving and covenanting, stewardship and tithes enunciated. Both positions,
   discrete or prominent, reflect the needs and demands of the situation, and I’m
   not sure either gets to the bottom of why we have collections, why money
   obtrudes into the service.

   The basic
   discussion of such matters in the New Testament occurs in Paul’s Second Letter
   to the Corinthians, where he raised the question of a collection for the Church
   in Jerusalem. We tend to think of this collection as honouring the founding
   congregation, paying one’s dues, as it were. But, if you pause to think for a
   moment, it is even rather odd that the source and origin of the faith should
   show an apparent lack of vigour and need money. One might expect the Church in
   Jerusalem to be a missionary church, in the jargon (it was, of course),
   providing funds and people to spread the Gospel, and correspondingly energetic
   and well-ordered in its own life. But it wasn’t quite like that. Because of the
   Temple, and the associated custom of giving alms, Jerusalem had, apparently,
   the biggest population of people who lived by begging in the ancient world.
   Religious sites have this effect: they attract beggars – in large part, because
   the people who go on pilgrimage are more likely to give away money. At home,
   they are sober citizens who know the value of money, but in these religious
   places, obligations to charity are writ large, and there are gathered objects
   of charity to exploit this. Giving to charity, alms-giving, we might note, is a
   thoroughly ambiguous business. And the problem that confronted the first
   Christian congregation, in Jerusalem, was that too many of its members came
   from the begging classes, and rapidly needed support. Hence, once the congregation
   took on the task of supporting their poor and needy members, the Church as a
   whole took on a beggarly aspect: it too looked pretty unrespectable and needing
   help.

   It is worth
   pausing further upon the ambiguities of charity. Considered from the human
   angle, alms-giving of any kind, including giving to collections, is a
   thoroughly messy business, shot through with what one might call ‘bad faith’.
   Not only do the recipients frequently seem undeserving, but also, as we have
   seen with the Church in Jerusalem, by associating with them one may become
   similarly tarnished. What is worse, one’s motives for giving are frequently
   murky: does one do it in order to reward oneself – with good feelings, with the
   recognition of others, with the sense of duty done, or of good achieved? And
   does one ever give more than one could afford? What would that mean, especially
   if salvation were involved?

   Now, we try to
   get round these problems by certain institutional techniques – so, while we may
   shamefacedly give to the odd beggar (usually because they remind us of our
   sons), in general we covenant to registered charities, who are accredited by
   the Charity Commissioners as being well-run and deserving. But the underlying
   ambiguities are not, by that, done away with. And the reason why they are not
   done away with is that all our reasonings, arguments and so forth, our attempts
   to balance motivations, needs, outcomes and so on, are all attempts at
   calculation, at balancing the books. Hence we give as much as we can afford,
   reckon the good we do, estimate the feelings mobilised, the ends achieved, even
   the salvation gained.

   Now, how does
   Paul argue for his collection for the Church in Jerusalem? He does not offer
   any moral pleading, that one should give, that it is a good cause and so forth;
   in brief, he does not calculate. Rather he says, God gave everything for a
   set of no-hopers and chancers without any good reason – other than his
   character, or who he is – and giving is how you join in with his character and
   action and purposes for the world.  I love
   this bit!

   Money is of
   course ambiguous: it is one of the principle sources of our earthly desires, it
   moves us, and it shares in our profound ambiguity, whether as donors or
   recipients. But, by grace, it may also be the means of grace, by which our
   collective lives are transformed into the life of Christ, by which the New Adam
   is born out of the Old. This new life erupts in the material of the old, so
   that giving generously, rather than calculating the odds, becomes a human
   possibility. God has acted in Christ, so it is possible for us to give
   generously.

   One should note
   that giving will be painful, just as God works through Christ crucified. For it
   is not natural to give away money: money is in some respects the life-blood of
   the Old Adam. That is its significance, but that is also why it can be a source
   of joy. Listen how Paul describes to the Corinthians the charity of the
   Macedonian Christians:

   ‘We want you to
   know, brethren, about the grace of God which has been shown in the Churches in
   Macedonia, for in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their
   extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of liberality on their part. For
   they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means,
   of their own free will, begging us earnestly for the favour of taking part in
   the relief of the saints [in Jerusalem] – and this, not as we [Paul and Titus]
   expected, but first they gave themselves to the Lord and to us by the will of
   God’
   (2 Cor. 8:1-5)

   The Macedonians
   have seen giving money as a means of participation in grace. Paul expands the
   theme in these well-known words:

   ‘For you know
   the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake
   he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich’
   (2 Cor. 8:9)

   We should note
   that this giving of money is not simply the dissemination of money, its
   dispersal. Wealthy men in the Ancient World drew attention to their honour by
   having servants throw money to the crowds of paupers. Here there is a
   reciprocity of recognition. But for Paul, the giving of money contributes to
   the building of the unity of the body of Christ, and the praise that the
   recipients give God is part of that unity, from which we all benefit. Because
   we are transformed by grace, we give; others experience our gift as
   transforming, and themselves offer up praise, which in turn is experienced as
   grace for us. As Paul says:

   ‘I do not mean
   that others should be eased and you burdened, but that as a matter of equality
   your abundance at the present time should supply their want, so that their
   abundance may supply your want, that there may be equality’
   (2 Cor. 8:13f.)

   This is not a
   balancing of contribution and cost, an economy of calculation, but a matter of
   generosity, an economy of gift, whereby participation is a blessing for all,
   and recipients may benefit no less than givers. Indeed, it is hard to sort out
   who gives and who receives in Christ, once the pattern is begun.

   Two comments,
   and then a brief concluding remark. First, this notion of participation in
   grace contributing to the unity of the body of Christ actually explains
   something of how we decide where the money collected goes, the uses to which it
   is put. If the recipients – however dubious, in human terms – praise God (that
   is, it helps them to flourish), the givers – however shifty – share in that
   blessing. Second, this gives some way of grasping what underlies the debates
   about the remission of world debt and the Jubilee. It is not simply a matter of
   calculation: the prime fact is the life of the New Adam is a new sociability, a
   solidarity founded upon generosity, or grace.

   So, to return to
   the simple question with which I began, why do we have collections in the
   course of worship, it is not primarily for good works, nor for supporting
   worthwhile projects, nor even for the building up of the unity of Christian
   believers (although the latter is very close to the mark); it is so that we
   have a mundane means of participating in grace, of imitating Christ, and of joining
   in the life of Christ, the new sociability, founded upon generosity, not
   calculation.

   Through the
   grace of Christ all of life, including money – with all its power and
   associated compulsions and dubious motivations – may be transformed and put to
   work for salvation: brought to share in the blessing of God – to whom, Father,
   Son and Holy Spirit, be all honour, glory, thanksgiving and praise, this day
   and for ever, Amen.

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2. 

   Housing the homeless

   16 August 2011

   Sorry about the length, but so much better to give this a context.

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