You Reap What You Sow

Sermon as Preached 9/9 at Evington UMC and 9/16 at Lambs UMC

Scripture: 2 Corinthians 9:6-15

A little over a year ago I was not in a very good place weight wise, Not to say that I am now, but I was very unhealthy, so much so that when I went to the doctors for a physical, he told me that my weight was becoming a problem. From then on I tried to lose weight, but I had a very difficult time putting the energy that I should into my health. I tried to make little concessions such as switching from regular soda to diet soda, or switching from 80% lean beef to 90% lean beef. I told myself that I didn’t have time for exercise, and I continued to live my life in very much the same way that I had, with now a few minor concessions. The changes in my diet were indeed important changes to make, but they were very small steps compared to what I needed to be doing. Yet every week I would still get on the scale expecting the pounds to have just dropped off, and was stunned and saddened when I realized I had lost very little weight if any weight at all! I then made the decision to put more effort into my health. I continued to use those helpful concessions that I had already made, but I also made my diet more drastic. I started to not only watch what I ate, but how much I ate, and became very deliberate about eating only the amount that I needed. I also forced myself to go to the gym three times a week. I increased my daily water intake. In essence I became much more serious about taking care of my body, and I had put much more effort into my overall health. And after putting this effort in, when I got on the scale each week, to my amazement weight had dropped off. Even in times where weight had remained steady, I could actually see improvement in my muscles, which told me that I had lost fat and gained weight. In fact, after making the decision to put an emphasis on my health, I have lost over 40 pounds in a little over a year.

            I tell this story not as a personal testimony for weight loss; no this is not a Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers commercial, but I tell this story because it teaches us a crucial lesson for our topic for today. With this type of story, one would expect that the sermon today would be on taking care of our bodies, but if you have been paying attention to our sermon series, then you know that today’s topic is about gifts and giving. You may be wondering now, how does this relate to giving? Let’s look at our scripture for today, and maybe we can start to see how.

            In this passage from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, Paul is talking about giving. More accurately, Paul is encouraging the church in Corinth to consider giving to a new collection that Paul is taking up, one that would allow the Corinthians to join in with other Christian churches around the world (or the world as they knew it) to help spread the Gospel and to also mend fences between the Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians. Paul knows that this will be an unfavorable request, especially since Paul had a bit of a falling out with the Corinthians between his first and second letter. For this reason Paul does not try to pull any rank or prestige, he doesn’t remind the Corinthians that he helped to form and sustain them so now they need to give, because in the eyes of Paul, giving that is forced or coerced is not true giving. Instead, Paul takes time in this passage to the Corinthians to explain why we give.

            He starts his explanation by saying, “⁶The point is this: the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully” You reap what you sow. This is Paul’s advice for the church about giving. You reap what you sow. We have heard this phrase we know what it means. The more you put into something the more you get out. Literally the phrase is saying the more seeds you plant, the more you will have when harvest time comes around. And this is Paul’s advice to the Corinthians about how and why they should give. At first this may seem like strange advice, but when we really think about Paul’s advice in this passage, we quickly see that it is very sound advice.

            How many times have we put very little into the church, maybe given whatever was in our pockets that day, maybe seeing in our wallet a five and one and we pull out the one and put it in the plate, and then later we hear about the how the church is not participating in a project that we think would be a great way to spread the Gospel, or we do not help someone who may be in need of help, and we ask why isn’t the church doing more. So often we have a completely forget that as a church, we reap what we sow.

            I believe that this is because there is a complete disconnect between our giving and seeing the fruits of our giving. How often do we give money to the offering simply because we see it as some sort of membership due that we are required to pay? When we do happen to think about what our money is going towards, we only tend to see our offering as paying for the pastor’s salary and the maintenance and upkeep of the church. While our offering does goes towards maintenance and salary, we forget about how our offering is used by God to change this church, the community, and the world. Sometimes we need to be reminded how our offering to God is being used to spread the Gospel and build up the Kingdom of God.  Through your offering this year our church has been able to bring in wonderful speakers and musical guests who have inspired us through their gifts for ministry. Our offering has been used to help countless families and people in our communities who are down on their luck, and needed our help. Our offerings have helped places like Heart Havens serve members of our community with disabilities, and places like DAWN provide food to our community. Our offerings have help to educate kids in Brazil and give them a safe after school place that keeps them off the street and teaches them about the love of Jesus Christ. Our offerings have helped to establish new churches in Virginia, across the US, and overseas, including Cambodia which is now seeing a great boom in Methodist churches. Our offerings have helped to provide scholarship to future pastors both in America as well as in Africa where we support Africa University which serves students from over 21 different countries. All of this is made possible through our offering to God. Paul is telling us if we want to continue to serve the Lord in these great ways, in fact if we want to spread the Gospel even further, we must sow more seeds because we can only reap what we sow.

            Paul tells us something else that is very important though. Paul says, “Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.⁸And 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.” In this passage Paul is telling us two crucial things about giving. First, he is telling us that giving must be voluntary. We should only give because we are happy to give, not because we are forced to give or coerced to give. So often offerings feel like a burden, like something we have to do, we rarely give with a joyful heart, we are so rarely “cheerful givers” as Paul calls it. This is why Paul is reminding us we reap what we sow. It’s not to make us feel guilty about our giving tendency, it is not to try and coerce us into giving; Paul tells us that we reap what we sow, so that we may once again experience the joy in giving. He reminds us about all the ways in which are giving impacts the church and the world around us. He reminds us that what we give really does matter, that it really does help the Kingdom of God. Not only this, but Paul is giving us hope and faith that through a little bit more sowing, through the grace of God, we can help change the world!

            Even after hearing this, it is still difficult to give cheerfully. We take this you reap what you sow to heart in our own personal lives, and we see all the hard work that we put into to earn our money, and then are broken hearted when we feel like we should give some of it away instead of seeing how we could reap what we sow in our own lives. But Paul warns us against this type of thinking, that is why he says, “⁸And 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.” This is the second great lesson that Paul is teaching us, and that is that all we have is only possible because God provided it for us. Did we work hard to earn it ourselves? Of course we did, but everything that we have, that we are able to do, all the doors that have been opened for us, is only possible through our Lord Jesus Christ. After all it is God who created us and this world in the first place. Paul reminds us that what God has given us is sufficient, and the excess that we earn we earn so that we share it. That God may work through us to provide sufficiency to a fellow brother or sister of God’s creation. You see our founder of Methodism John Wesley had a popular phrase that has been used through the centuries that goes like this, “Gain all you can, save all you can, give all you can.” Now this phrase has been often used as a sort of motto for the Protestant work ethic, that we should work hard and earn all we can and that we should save it. This leads to a looking  out for numero uno mentality, but this leaves off the last part of his quote, which is the most important. The reason that we earn all we can, and the reason that we save all we can, is so that we are able to support ourselves and then give all that we can to help others. Wesley’s motto is not an example of financial  stinginess, but is really an example of great giving.

            This sort of giving, and this joy in giving can only really take place when we realize that what we are giving, is only possible because of what God has given to us. When we started this Stewardship sermon series, I talked about how the word stewardship was unfamiliar to us. That often when we heard the word stewardship, all we thought about was the church asking us for money, but what does stewardship really mean? Well in the medieval times, people operated under the feudal system, which means that there were different lords of area who owned the landed and usually a castle. The lord controlled that land and all of his servants usually worked and lived on his land. Usually the lord would have a servant called the steward. The steward was a person that the lord trusted, because the steward’s responsibility was to take care of the household and it’s management. In essence, the lord was the owner, and the steward was the manager. The steward did not own any of the things that he had control over, but did often have the privilege of its use and benefits.

            When we talk about stewardship in the church, we are talking about very similar things. We have one Lord, who has given us everything; not for us own, but to use and take advantage of. With that, we also have the responsibility of taking care of all of what the Lord owns. When we are able to view what we have less as our own ownership, and more as God’s gift given for us to use, then it becomes easier to give with a cheerful heart. We want to give to God’s church, we want to help those in need, because by doing so, we are able to show our thanks to God who has given us so much.  When we remember that everything belongs to God, then we want to sow more seeds because what we reap is one of the greatest thanks that we could ever give to God. But like my weight loss story suggests, minor concessions only produce minor results. To truly see this church, this community, and this world transformed, we have to become committed to our sowing.