November 17, Proper 27, Stepping Up in Prayer

Haggai 1:15b-2:9, Psalm 145:1-5, 17-21, 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17, Luke 20:27-38

Next Sunday is Consecration Sunday. Our guest preacher next week will be our new missionary in Oman, in the Persian Gulf. I think you will enjoy him very much. And on this Sunday beforehand, it’s always my job to preach a sermon about tithing. So let’s dig into it.

Tithing in the strict sense is taking the first ten percent of your income and giving that back to God, before you spend a penny on anything else. In the broader sense the size of the percentage is less important, as long as it’s off the top and not the bottom. Tithing is both mathematical and spiritual, both economical and ethical. It is a financial expression of a spiritual reality.

Tithing in the broadest sense is the Christian discipline of money. It’s the Christian practice that helps you deal with all of your money in general. Tithing is good for you in general, it gives you an attitude toward all your money which benefits you in the totality of your economic life. Yes, tithing helps you give the proper value to your money in general, tithing helps to free you from the power of money by helping to give you power over your money. Tithing is one way to sanctify the whole of your economic life. You set aside the top percent to sanctify the rest of it. The many benefits of tithing, however, are not immediate, while the cost of tithing is immediate, so the practice of tithing has to be an exercise of faith.

It means testing God. Sort of like in the gospel lesson, where the Sadducees tested Jesus. He did not spurn the test, he accepted their testing him, and he passed the test beyond their expectation. You can test God. And God will test you back. Tithing is a mutual testing of God and you.

The goal of tithing is the top ten percent. This amount comes from the Torah, from the Law of Moses. But if you are new to tithing, better to start with two percent or three percent, as long as it’s the top two or three percent. You might find even that to be a challenge. It’s meant to be a challenge. If it’s easy, it isn’t tithing yet. It’s a discipline. It means you have to push yourself to do it. It means you’re touching the limit of what you can afford, it means you’re at the boundary of risk, and if you’re not risking, it isn’t tithing yet. But to do so does empower you, financially and spiritually.

Tithing is about your need to give. Not the need of the church to receive. God doesn’t need the money. How much do you need your money? How much of a hold does your money have on you? How free are you of the money that you have? How free are you with your money? Can you be both free and responsible? Usually, you exercise your freedom with your money by spending it on your pleasures. Eating out, seeing a show, buying an extravagance. That’s fine, go ahead. But even greater is the freedom and empowerment that comes from giving it away, and giving it to the service of God? It is paradoxical. The service of God is freedom and empowerment.

So where are you right now? From one percent to ten percent? The challenge is the same, to take a step, one step up, one step more challenging, one step more risky Now if you are suddenly unemployed, or you’ve lost your empowerment, maybe you need to go two steps down, and even that is still risky. But what about the rest of us? Are you tithing at two percent? Well, this year try to make it three. Are you tithing at five percent? Step up one to six. Are you already tithing at ten percent? Then come to me and offer an hour a week to pray for every member of the church, or offer to me administer the Sunday School. Wherever you are, one step up. It is the staircase of risk and challenge and commitment, and the climb is freedom and service and empowerment.

If you’re going to do it, do it in prayer. Prayer is the bridge between faith and action. You cannot go directly from faith to action or from action to faith. In either case you will be disappointed. Your Christians actions themselves will never be as wonderful as you had hoped. Your Christian actions will never accomplish your ideals. Your Christian actions, in themselves, will always disappoint. Christian action is never enough, and it will never satisfy. In the time of the prophet Haggai, after the remnant had returned from exile to Jerusalem, they rebuilt the temple, but how sorry and shoddy it looked compared to the glory of the prior one. How disappointed they were, and they were tempted to give up their labors. So Haggai calls them to faith, faith in the future of the promise, faith that what humble actions they were doing now would have a future benefit, a benefit beyond what they could see, their actions had value only by their faith.

You have to connect the two by prayer. You do your Christian actions in an attitude of prayer. That means the benefits of your actions are not up to you. You leave the benefits of your actions up to God. You don’t have to see the fruit of what you do, you might not see any benefit from what you’ve done, but you do it as a prayer. You say to God, "Here God, I give it to you what I have done, I trust you with the fruit of it, I trust you with the difference it might make in the world, I give my work to you, I’m just thankful I could do it." If you pray this, you are free. Your prayer is your connection between your actions and your faith.

Now yes, there is a clear and immediate benefit to your tithing. You get to have this church. You get to have our Sunday School. You get to have our children’s choirs. You get to have our organ music and our hymn-singing. You get to have my preaching and my pastoring and my support of you. You get to be part of a congregation that is committed to our community, you get to offer hospitality to community groups and to the arts, you get to offer sanctuary to anyone seeking spirituality and hope, you get to keep vibrant one of the oldest churches in America, you get to praise God every week, you get to pray for each other every week, you get to take communion every week, you get many immediate benefits from your tithing, and it’s the duty of this church’s leadership to make this congregation always worthy of your tithes.

But even if this church were not here, you still should tithe. As a Christian action, as an act of faith, and as an act of prayer. As a Christian action, putting your money where your soul is. As an act of faith, investing in whatever use that God may make of it. Investing in the proclamation of the gospel in this neighborhood, investing in the teaching the traditions to the next generation, investing in holding fast to goodness and joy no matter how much shaking the world is going through, investing in the promise of the resurrection, when we shall be changed and our social relationships will no longer be having power over each other, but we will be completely free, your tithing is an act of faith in all of that.

It has to be an act of prayer. Because of the risk you know it means for you. Because of the commitment you know it will cost you. It takes prayer to tithe. Use your praying to convey your tithe. "O God, I am praying with my money now. I am offering my money as a gift to you, I am praying with my money now." And use your tithing ignite your prayer. "I’m going to need your help with this, O God. I’m going to need you to hold me up, and make me able to do this. I’m going to trust you God, be good to me and bless me." My testimony to you is that God does.

Copyright © 2010, by Daniel James Meeter, all rights reserved.