Community Thanksgiving Service
Totuskey Baptist Church, Haynesville VA
2 Corinthians 9:6-15
The point is this: the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. 7 Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. 8 And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work. 9 As it is written,
"He scatters abroad, he gives to the poor;
his righteousness endures forever."
10 He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. 11 You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity, which will produce thanksgiving to God through us; 12 for the rendering of this ministry not only supplies the needs of the saints but also overflows with many thanksgivings to God. 13 Through the testing of this ministry you glorify God by your obedience to the confession of the gospel of Christ and by the generosity of your sharing with them and with all others, 14 while they long for you and pray for you because of the surpassing grace of God that he has given you. 15 Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!
Why are we here?
It’s Wednesday evening and normally, some of us would be in prayer meeting or Bible Study at our respective churches, but we find ourselves, gathered with friends and neighbors mostly, but perhaps some strangers here and there, for a community thanksgiving service of worship.
The last meeting of the Richmond County Ministerial Association was 18 days ago, and it was the very first meeting I’d had a chance to attend. As it worked out, we ended up meeting at Jerusalem Baptist in Emmerton, the church where I serve. I was informed that ‘the new kid on the block’ usually gets to preach, so here I am, something of a stranger among you, but welcoming of the opportunity to be here.
We moved here from Virginia Beach in June, and there, too, our church, Thalia Lynn Baptist Church, each year participated in a Community Thanksgiving Service, with the neighboring United Methodist and a Presbyterian churches.
The key word there as well as here tonight is ‘Community’. Though it is understood that there are congregations represented here that ‘do church’ differently, we are all here with a single purpose: this is a service of Thanksgiving, and we unite our voices and our hearts in thanks to the one we all call “Lord”. There may be differences in the structure of our respective church hierarchies; there may be differences in how the individual bodies govern themselves. There are differences in how we view scripture, or how we apply it to our lives, or how we sing on Sunday morning, or how we pray, but we can rest in the unity of the one who calls us to service, and obedience, and to love.
October and November are, in most churches, the time during which we focus on stewardship. It is budget setting time at Jerusalem, and we are in the (hopefully) finals steps of completing that process. As a first-time Pastor, Please understand this in the spirit in which it is said: I’m REALLY glad Jerusalem isn’t any bigger than it is. I absolutely cannot imagine dealing with the budget of a church that is any larger than we are.
In our text, Paul is dealing with giving issues as well. He’s just finished telling the folks in Corinth about the folks in Macedonia, and how generously THEY have been in their collection of offerings to send to the church in Jerusalem. Here’s the catch: the giving of the Macedonian churches was triggered by the reports of the Corinthian Church’s willingness and enthusiasm for giving, not their actual giving. He is now coming back to the Corinthians and saying “here are some of the PEOPLE who GAVE the money based on what I told them about YOU, now it’s YOUR turn. The commentary I glanced through regarding this passage says
The Corinthian enthusiasm for participating in the collection (cf. 8:10-11) served as an example worthy of emulation by the Macedonians for their own contribution (9:2). Now, however, because the Macedonians had now successfully completed what they had enthusiastically begun under the stimulus of the Corinthian example (8:1-5), their exemplary action formed a basis for Paul's appeal to the Corinthians to complete their contribution (8:6, 10-11). (Zondervan NIV Commentary on Corinthians)
Any way you look at it, Paul is playing the two churches against each other. Paul was not above using creative persuasion to elicit a desired response. Read Philemon sometime.
What is Paul saying? “Each of you must give as you have made up your mind. Not reluctantly or under compulsion.” Let’s put that into context for being here tonight.
Each of you must be here because you CHOSE to be here, hopefully not reluctantly or under compulsion. Each of you hopefully came with a thankful heart because you truly ARE thankful, not JUST because you ALWAYS come to the service, or because you “wanted to see what this new preacher has to say”.
As chapter 9 begins, Paul summarizes: ‘the point is this, you reap what you sow’. We live surrounded by farms. I don’t have to go into any further details about what that means. It is self-evident. Besides, being a city boy for the most part, I’d be afraid I’d call a ‘driller’ a ‘combine’ or something equally silly if I went too far into the illustration. Just as an aside, up until this past Sunday, I couldn’t have told you the difference between the two to save my life, though now, if I look long and hard, I THINK I could point out one or two differences, thanks to Cliff Mullin, the deacon chair at Jerusalem, for gently pointing that out to me.
The collections that were taken up in Macedonia and Corinth were to assist the church in Jerusalem continue its ministry and witness. As a church universal, we have always been about helping the poor, the needy, widows and orphans.
This past September 18th, I was introduced to what community means here on the Northern Neck. I have never experienced it as I did then, and since. I have occasionally caught glimpses of it elsewhere, and clung to those times when I HAD seen it, but the way Richmond County pulled together over the weeks following Isabel’s visit, simply overwhelmed me, in the BEST sense of the word.
Let’s go back to my original question: Why are we here? Where does our sense of community come from? Is it ONLY geography? Why were men and women willing to get out and clear trees and cut and haul and clear yards and roads? Why are we willing to donate food and clothing, why are we willing to give of our time and energy to volunteer, to help others, to serve meals, to visit?
What is each of those activities an example of? They are each a way of expressing to another person our love for them.
Love must be at the heart of everything we do. In his earlier letter to the Corinthians, Paul has something to say about that – read chapter 13 when you have a chance, but basically what Paul is saying is this: you can do all the good in the world, or even OUT of it, but if it is not fueled by love, it’s nothing.
So the question is answered: Why are we here: to give thanks to God for God’s love for US. Why do we carry on this ministry? We love, because God first loved us.
We are reaping the bounty of God’s love every day. Each breath we take, each morning we wake, each time we rest, each hug we get or give, each friend we make, each moment we are allowed to share in the breaking in of the Kingdom of God, we are celebrating the good and perfect harvest in which God has engaged us.
The offering tonight is to replenish the RCMA’s Emergency Relief Fund, please give generously.
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