Radical Generosity

2 Corinthians 9:6-15

Introduction

If I was to ask you to preach a sermon in church, how would you go about doing it? Hopefully you would start with a Bible passage. A sermon is more than just a speech on a religious or oral topic. So you pick your Bible passage, now what? You probably would want to understand what the author originally meant in that passage. You might read the sections before and after and then consult some books to better understand the background. What next? You probably would want to look at our particular context and try to see where the intersection is between what the original author was trying to say and the modern situation in which we find ourselves. That would be a very good place to start.

But there is another aspect about the passage that we may have to address. There is the history in the text of what the author originally meant and there is our history with the text. Let me give you an example. What if you were going to preach on “Wives submit to your husbands” and you grew up in a context that enforced strict limitation on what women were allowed to do. Even if you no longer hold those views, you still have to wrestle with that being your past and that you may have friends and family that still hold that view.

I find myself in such a position with our current text. In my early twenties, I came back to faith after a time as an atheist. I found myself attending a Pentecostal church. That experience was mostly positive, but I also found in that, an intersection with a form of the charismatic church that embraced the prosperity gospel. And the passage that we are looking at was one of the most popular texts that was shared. There was a very basic interpretation to this verse. It started with the assumption that we all want to get rich. And most of us are familiar with the concept of investing create wealth. While the stock market was uncertain, investing with God was a sure thing. That investing in God just happened to be the same things as giving to the church or the guest speaker or whoever was asking for the money. The claim that was made was that we should give our money over, not because it was the generous thing to do, but because God would be obligated to provide a financial return. If you want to get rich, put a lot of money in that plate and watch your bank account grow.

On a surface level, you can see where they get this. “The one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.” A farmer who wants an abundant harvest cannot just hope for it, they need to invest by planting a lot of seed. If money is the seed, then even more money is the harvest. It all makes sense.

Except that is not what Paul meant at all in this passage and if we went back in time and shared this interpretation, he would shake his head.

But it is not enough to reject a bad interpretation, we need to understand what this actually means.

Sharing With Others

So Paul in this passage is asking the Corinthian church to get prepared to give money. But what for? Today, when there is a high pressure call to give, it is often for super expensive buildings, or for the expensive toys of popular televangelists. However, none of that was the case in the early church. When people in the early church were asked to give it was always for people in need. Most often it was for the poor people in the community or in another community, or possibly to help a travelling missionary. By far, the focus of Paul’s talk about giving in his letters was for an ongoing collection he was doing to support Jewish Christians in Jerusalem during a famine and that is the case here. Paul would go from church to church to collect money to send to those in need in Jerusalem. This is interesting because also from reading Paul’s letters, it was Jewish Christians from Jerusalem that were often causing trouble for him. And yet Paul responded not by withholding help but by promoting generosity among the churches he had influence over.

Ironically, this passage has been used to pressure people to give beyond what they are able, even though it specifically says that giving is not under compulsion. Instead they add a new layer of guilt, “God loves a cheerful giver,” which they suggest means that you can’t just be generous, you have to be cheerful about being generous, or else you are sinning. That is not what Paul is saying. Paul literally means that it should be without compulsion and we should be suspicious when people use high pressure tactics.

But doesn’t Paul say that God will provide if we give? Is this not close to the investment strategy used by prosperity gospel people? It is true that God provides. But how God provides is not something that we can fit nice and tidy into a box. God can bless people financially but it is not a promise as if it was an integral part of following Jesus. What Paul is saying is that when we consider being generous, it is not a matter of pure logic that we can look at what seems right and that is the full story. There is a place for faith, not that God will use this generosity to make you rich, but that God will take care of you as you help take care of others.

Today’s Generosity

Now our contexts have changed somewhat over the past two thousand years. Governments have changed in that they are now more involved in social supports for those in need and churches have changed in that we now have buildings and salaries to pay for. I would not suggest that we need to return to the exact model of the first century, but we should be informed by it.

I do not think that we need to sell off all of our church buildings or fire all the pastoral staff. However, I do think the church in general should consider where its money goes. Buildings are useful for ministry and they can be used to really make a difference in the community. However, there are megachurches that need to collect millions of dollars to pay the bill before even one minute of ministry can be funded. This is why I strongly believe in small, established churches. While we have costs that have to be covered, we do not have a massive mortgage to pay for a huge building. I do not think paying for utilities and other expenses is a waste, but ultimately we should focus on how we can be generous to others.

We have an offering plate and people are welcome to put money in it. We have special offerings and people are welcome to give to those. We are raising money for a new roof, which is also worth giving to. But our purpose is not to ask for money just for the sake of asking for money. Even something like the roof is so that we can continue to do ministry in this building.

I will not tell you that if you are generous with these causes that God will bless you financially and that if you cannot give that you are missing out on God’s blessing. 

The seed that Paul talks about may be your time, talent, or treasure. But the harvest is not your personal wealth. The harvest is the building of the kingdom of God. It is about helping real people. It is about building relationships. It is about equipping us for ministry. It is about sharing the truth and love of Jesus. 

Conclusion

The purpose of this sermon is not to pressure you into digging deeper into your wallets. While we put out the needs that we have, such as the roof, we will not push people into giving. The vision for the church is that of radical generosity, however that may look like. For some people it is baking brown bread. For other people, it is writing a large check. Others are generous with their time in helping those in need. True generosity is not an investment in order to gain a larger reward. Generosity is an investment into the kingdom of God that brings blessings to others. When Paul asked the Corinthians to give to the poor in Jerusalem, there would be no direct benefit to them. They did not even get a charitable receipt. They gave as they were able because it was what they wanted to do. What I see in our congregation is a generous church. Whether we are giving to the food bank or Camp Pagweak or the benevolent fund or the costs of running the church and even replacing the roof, people give. Beyond money, people are generous in numerous other ways. You are sowing bountifully and will reap bountifully. The harvest will be the changed lives, the sharing of the gospel, and the ministry that blesses our community.