Jesus said:‘Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.’ - Mark 10:21
Friends, it’s so great to be back at St George's today, but a little bit awkward too, because today I’m tasked with talking to you about a passage of the bible all about giving. And, as most of us are British, we’re deeply allergic to talking about giving and asking for money but I would be a terrible priest if I did not talk to you about this today so strap yourselves in.First of all, I think that actually, in years gone by, we’ve got this issue all wrong in church, across the country. Churches in the past have often been rubbish at spending money meaningfully on things that matter, and has often squirrelled money away, leading to this idea that the church is loaded… this isn’t as true in the North of England, I’m afraid, we are not loaded and a lot of local churches only really exist because we’re subsided massively by wealthier parts of the country. And also on money, the church has sometimes been bad at treating people with lots money as more important than those without money… In fact, there was once a story about two men who were marooned on an island. One man paced back and forth, worried and scared, while the other man sat back and enjoyed the sun. The first man asked the second man, "Aren’t you afraid we're about to die?" "No," said the second man, "I make $100,000 a week and give the recommended 10% faithfully to my church every week, so my church treasurer will be coming over that horizon at any moment." And sometimes I think churches globally have been guilty of pandering to rich people and seeing them as more important, as well as hoarding money. So let me start today by condemning those two things as wrong. Everyone is equal before God and let me tell you we’ve got some exciting things going on for God’s kingdom that giving to church will help to enable. But, actually, what I’m going to talk to you about today is the thing that I think Jesus is trying to get to in our Gospel reading. I’m going to talk to you about generosity. Because, there is no other way around it. A part of being a disciple of Jesus is that we should be becoming more generous. This guy in our Gospel reading comes to Jesus and asks him what he should do to go to heaven, basically. And Jesus says “you already know the ten commandments.” To which the man replies, “I’ve kept them all, I’ve followed the rules.” Then Jesus says to this man, that he has just one thing wrong, “Go, sell everything you have and give it to the poor.” And this guy can’t do it. Then you have this famous line, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” Which some people will tell you something about the Eye of the Needle being a big gate in Jerusalem, but that’s not true at all actually, there’s no evidence for that, so Jesus is talking about the actual eye of a needle. But what he’s saying is this, these people had obeyed the law, which probably meant they were actually giving a percentage of what they earned to the temple… However, they were giving out of a sense of legalism, without a single ounce of generosity in their giving. At another point in the New Testament Jesus asks through a parable, if someone has a thousand pounds and gives a hundred, but someone else has ten pounds and gives is all, who is more generous? And if you think about it in your day to day lives, being truly generous happens only when somebody gives up something that matters to them, not just by paying their taxes and obeying the law. I suspect that that’s Jesus’ point here. It’s not enough to obey the law with a hard heart, you need to be generous with the things that matter to you. So, Jesus points out that you cannot get into the kingdom of heaven unless you have a generous heart.
Now, we can say a bit more than that. For this man, the thing that showed he was not generous in his heart was that he had loads of money and didn’t want to give it away, he was very protective of that money, that was his pitfall. But there are other ways that we can be generous beside money. This church has lots of amazing teams, whether that’s refreshments teams, buildings teams, finance teams, choirs, servers, pastoral teams, I could go on all day and still miss someone out. They come, they serve generously and they go home. In fact, just last week, Carol Pearson was commissioned as an Authorised Lay minister in this parish. She has this amazing sense of call and gift that she feels called to share with the church, generously and often probably at cost to herself. Could you be called to serve God in an official capacity like that? No matter, there are loads of people who give generously in their skills, to church. So what I want you to take away from this morning is quite simple, really. I want you to go off and think about how, as disciples of Jesus, you could become more generous today. Maybe you could give your time up to join a team here at church, maybe you’d like to give towards the beauty of worship here at St George’s but, actually, if the result of this sermon is that you all go off and think about the way that you give, and you decide to stop giving as much to church, and to give more to a charity, but you become more generous disciples of Jesus as a result, then I will consider this sermon a success. This sermon is not an appeal for money at St George’s; yes, we do need money, but the point of this sermon is that you, as disciples of Jesus need to be becoming more generous.
There’s just one further challenge I’d like to put to you, I remember a famous story about a man and his family as they drove home after church, he was complaining about everything. He said, “I didn’t know any of the hymns, the choir were off. The sermon was too long and the Vicar didn’t speak to me on the way out. The church notices were unclear. The building was too cold. The people were unfriendly.” He went on and on, complaining about virtually everything. Finally, his observant son said, “Dad, you’ve got to admit it wasn’t a bad show for just a quid.” And that’s kind of the attitude I’d like to challenge to those of you who do want to give to church. Do not give to us as though you’re paying for a ticket for a show, give because you love us. Because we’re your family in God, give out of generosity, not out of obligation. I remember seeing two toddler-aged children at an event in All Saints’ recently and one was crying, so another came up and offered the first their cuddly toy and a hug. Financially, a worthless gesture, but that was real and meaningful generosity, simply because it was given out of love. So there, I’ve come up with three points for you. First, Jesus calls us, as his disciples, to give generously. Second, that is not just financial, you can give in other ways and be generous to people outside of the church. Third, if you do give to the church, do it out of love, not obligation So take seriously now this questions, in what ways are you generous and how could you be more generous? Not out of obligation to what I’m saying here, but out of love for God and your neighbour. I’ll let you think on that in a moments’ silence… how can you be more generous this week?.Lord, help us to live this out in our lives, each and every day… Amen. (from Fr Jordan).