Excel in Everything

Sunday, June 28th, 2009

Pentecost 4B

Text: 2 Corinthians 8:7-15

Theme: Giving as a mark of being a Christian

7 Now as you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in utmost eagerness, and in our love for you—so we want you to excel also in this generous undertaking. 8 I do not say this as a command, but I am testing the genuineness of your love against the earnestness of others. 9 For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich. 10 And in this matter I am giving my advice: it is appropriate for you who began last year not only to do something but even to desire to do something— 11 now finish doing it, so that your eagerness may be matched by completing it according to your means. 12 For if the eagerness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has—not according to what one does not have. 13 I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you, but it is a question of a fair balance between 14 your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may be for your need, in order that there may be a fair balance. 15 As it is written, “The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little.”

What makes us Christ followers?

What makes us Christian?

At what point do we count ourselves as members of the body of Christ on earth? Or does that happen before we ourselves can count?

As baptists, we believe that, in order to become a Christian, one must make a conscious choice - an intentional decision to surrender to the Lordship of Jesus Christ - and that cannot happen until one is able to reason out - on whatever level one is capable of - the consequences of sin and the place of Christ in our lives. And if that place is to be Lord of our lives, we generally choose to follow Christ’s example and are baptized by immersion. But where does that belief come from? Where does that specific understanding of the way faith comes about and is expressed come from?

Over the next few weeks I’d like to take us on a journey of discovery ... or maybe re-covery into what it is that marks baptists as distinct from other denominations and traditions. I want to make clear that, while I AM firmly a baptist, and proud of my heritage and have come in some ways BACK to that heritage from a point of being ready to leave it, I am not going to wave the baptist banner and tell everyone that would care to listen that the CLOSEST thing to the New Testament Church are these baptists sitting at the corner of Mulberry Road and History Land Highway in Warsaw, Virginia. We are all flawed human beings; you, me, our baptist forbearers, the current and former leadership of our convention and agencies, as well as all the professors in our seminaries - past AND present. So to state unequivocally that we are the only ones that have it right is arrogance that borders on sinful pride. This approach will be one of simply putting forth what marks us and how we are different. Paul calls us to convince and win each other over by speaking clearly and passionately about Jesus, not by coercion or intimidation - I would add, not by fear mongering or belittling other faith traditions as less than they are.

I live and practice my faith through the baptist tradition because my identity in Christ has best and most fully been informed by my upbringing as a baptist. I will freely admit that there are things about our denomination that I struggle with, even disagree with on a pretty fundamental level, but one of the things that I love - REALLY love about being a baptist is knowing that I don’t have to agree lock stock and barrel with ... ANYONE or anyTHING in order to be a baptist, because that happens to be one of the hallmarks of baptist identity; we are neither a hierarchical nor a creedal denomination. We don’t have to agree to a specific understanding of a given series of issues in order to call each other brother and sister, and we answer only to God for those beliefs and those understandings. As a member of a local congregation, there is an element of accountability that enters into how we choose to join in fellowship, but that is a separate issue from our foundational, or core beliefs.

Over the last few years I’ve heard on a fairly regular basis “it’s all the same, we’re all serving the same God.” Let me say at the outset that ... I agree. On some level, all our traditions that have come to be known as denominations within the Christian faith ARE the same in that they are attempts by well-meaning humans to understand and interpret, or put into action how they understand the coming of God in Christ to the world. And we DO all serve the same God. If you are talking about denominational traditions within - or under - the larger umbrella of the Christian faith -- in other words, any given group of people who believe That God was in Christ reconciling the world to God’s self, then we DO all serve the same God.

I will also point out at the outset that how we understand God varies considerably - even within the Christian faith, from Roman Catholic to Eastern Orthodox to United Church of Christ to 40-Gallon Baptists, though we speak of the same God, the very reason we ARE in different denominations is precisely BECAUSE of how differently we view and understand God.

Now, here’s the kicker: that understanding even varies within the various denominations ... and I would venture to say, even within this local congregation. I EVEN feel comfortable saying that our understanding of God varies within each of us as individuals, depending on where we are in life.

Yesterday at Brittany and Trevor’s wedding I read 1st Corinthians 13. If you are familiar with that chapter, you know that towards the end of it, Paul writes, “when I was a child, I talked like a child, thought like a child, reasoned like a child, but when I grew up, I put away childish things.” It is that way with how we each come to understand God - as we grow in our faith as well as chronologically.

So we are going to work through those things that make us baptist in light of what the lectionary gives us each week.

In our text this morning, Paul is writing to the folks at Corinth. It is a young congregation and relatively well-off congregation, due primarily to the fact that it is located in the then-booming metropolis of Corinth.

Paul is making his missionary journeys for many reasons. Primarily, of course, to spread the gospel, but also, he is reconnecting with folks that he has met in previous journeys, as well as collecting contributions to bring back to the folks at the church in Jerusalem, to provide for the needs of the poor in their community as well as those in need in the church.

He’s gotten into some hot water with some people thinking that he was profiting from these collections, so he is trying to respond to that accusation as well as to reiterate his appeal - it comes out most clearly at the end of the section we’re reading this morning - in his appeal to fairness - that starts in verse 13 - he speaks of fairness and balance - that crystalizes in his quote in verse 15: that the one who has much does not have too much, nor the one who has little has too little.

The immediate issue has to do not with the amounts collected or not from either the Macedonian congregations or from the Corinthian one, but it has to do with a generosity of spirit.

Paul is not, here, arguing that God has done so much for us and we ought therefore to show our gratitude by our financial gifts ('and they ought to be big!!'). He is not waving the big stick of God's right to be worshipped with money. There is nothing about paying back God's generosity nor about secret rewards for divine investments such as our own personal prosperity in this life or the life beyond.

On the contrary Paul creates problems for translators by using some of his major theological terms, such as grace and fellowship, to describe his undertaking of fundraising. 8:7, for instance, urges the Corinthians to abound 'in grace' (eg. NRSV: 'in this generous undertaking'). For Paul the same grace (divine generosity) which embraces us in our failure and sin also generates action as we become companions of this grace. In other contexts he talks about love as the fruit of the Spirit. Generous financial giving does not belong to another department. It is part of the outworking of compassion, the fruit of the Spirit. The stewardship invitation is not about moral obligations to pay God back or even to express gratitude, but to engage with God in love in the world. That includes acts of love with our whole being (including our financial resources) for others. Elsewhere Paul talks of his collection for the poor among the saints in Judea. It is outwardly focused.

For Paul stewardship is not about cranking up gratitude to God (with lots of moral pressure and shaming), but about living a Christ-shaped life. Notice how he relates his appeal to the very heart of Christian faith: Christ's life (8:9). As those incorporated into the body of Christ, baptised into the river of his influence, we are, of course (it comes so naturally to Paul to think this way!), to see ourselves as living out the life of God we saw in Christ. Christian stewardship is an appeal to love - to join God's loving (William Loader: First thoughts on Year B Epistle Passages from the Lectionary)

So what does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church? We can see the cooperative nature of our associations - with other churches in our area, in our commonwealth, in our country, and across the world as an outgrowth of this push on Paul and Titus’s part to travel and bring from any and all churches - not just the big and wealthy ones - an expression of THEIR love for those people that they most likely did not even know, and were unlikely to EVER get to know face to face on this earth ... does that ring a bell for us?

We give because God gave first to us.

Let’s pray.