The Giving Tree

Sermon as Preached at Evington UMC on 9/14/14 and at Lambs UMC on 9/28/14

Read 1 Chronicles 29:10-19

This morning we are going to talk about what is probably most people’s least favorite thing to talk about in church, giving. I don’t know how many people I’ve heard who complain about their pastor talking too much about money or giving, when the truth is that most people just don’t want to hear about it. People question, isn’t there something better to talk about than giving, but in reality a majority of Jesus’s teachings centered around not sex or war but on money. It is an important issue to talk about in the life of the church as well as in our lives in general. I think the reason that most people hate hearing about in church is because our understanding of giving is all wrong.

            So let me shape our discussion this morning around one of my favorite children’s books. “The Giving Tree” by Shel Silverstein. Many of you may know and love this book too, in fact this year it celebrates 50 years of publication.  The book is about a tree and a boy. The boy climbs the tree and swings from its branches and plays all over the tree. The tree loves the boy and the boy loves the tree. As the boy grows up however he starts to grow distant from the tree. One day he returns to the tree saying he needs money to make him happy. The tree says she cannot give money, but tells him to take her apples and sell them in the city. The boy leaves for a while again and when he comes back again he tells the tree that he wants a wife and kids and a house to make him happy. The tree tells the boy to cut off all of her limbs to go make a house for his family. The boy is gone for a while again, and when he comes back the boy is depressed and says he just wants a boat to sail away in. The tree offers her trunk, and the boy cuts her down to make a boat. In his old age the boy return to the tree which now is only a stump. The tree explains that she has nothing left to give, but the old man says all he needs is a place to rest, and tree says, “well an old stump, is good for sitting and resting.” And the boy and the tree were happy.

How many of us feel like the tree in this story?  Especially in this economic time it feels as though we are picked apart until there is nothing left to give, we have so many demands. There are grocery bills, light bills, phone bills, we have to put gas in our cars and we all know how expensive that it. Those with children have clothes and school supplies and everything else under the sun to provide. Many of us have doctor’s bills, hospital bills, and medication to buy. And then there is the surprise we didn’t expect; the flat tire, the sick dog, the wisdom teeth that need to be taken out. On top of all of this good ole’ Uncle Sam takes his fair share of our money as well. So when we come to church and we are expected to give to the church it almost like
“you too? I have nothing left to give.”

            The problem is that we are not the giving tree, we are the boy in the story and the tree is God.  We like the boy love God, most of us remember the very moment in which we first experienced God.  We can reminisce about the experience and how it made us feel, the time we spent with the Lord. And we still love the Lord, but life got in the way. The pursuit of our own happiness, our own pleasure got in the way. We started to crave money and lo and behold god has given us the gifts in order to obtain it. As time goes on we form a family whether biological or a family of friends, and God helped us in our needs. As we got older we just wanted rest and in different ways God has provided. While we have gone through life seeking our own needs and satisfactions, we have lost sight of the fact that all we have is indeed because of the Lord. We forget that God is the own very existence, is from God. And yet knowing this we often take the mindset of the boy and only return to God when there is something that we need.  We begin to view money as ours, as something that we worked to earn, and forget that it all comes from God. Because it’s not like the boy didn’t have to work. He had to pick the apples to sell them in the city. He had to cut the branches and build a house. He had to cut down the tree and make a boat out of it, and yet he never stopped to give thanks. How often do we cut down the tree that God offers us and never stop to even give God thanks?

            The key to understand Church giving is to understand that we are not giving from what we have, but from what God has given us. King David certainly understood this in our passage for today. He says, “Riches and honor come from you, and you rule over all. In your hand are power and might; and it is in your hand to make great and to give strength to all. ¹³ And now, our God, we give thanks to you and praise your glorious name.” David understood that all we have comes from God and that all we give is giving back to God. 

            He also understood another crucial element about giving, that it is done out of the goodness of our hearts, not because we are forced to do it. David cries out to God, “But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to make this freewill offering? For all things come from you, and of your own have we given you. ¹⁵ For we are aliens and transients before you, as were all our ancestors; our days on the earth are like a shadow, and there is no hope. ¹⁶ O Lord our God, all this abundance that we have provided for building you a house for your holy name comes from your hand and is all your own. ¹⁷ I know, my God, that you search the heart, and take pleasure in uprightness; in the uprightness of my heart I have freely offered all these things, and now I have seen your people, who are present here, offering freely and joyously to you.”  Why is David giving so much of what he has to the Lord? Is it because he is forced to? Is it because the Lord demands it from him? Is it because if he doesn’t he will go to hell? No, David gives to the Lord because he recognizes that all that he has is from the Lord. He gives to the Lord as a way of praise and thanksgiving.  David is not coerced into giving, he gives joyfully, and the people of Israel follow his example and give joyfully as well. We as Christians are called to offer our gifts not out of force or habit, but we are called to give with joyful hearts. Many of you may have heard the term collection or collection plate used before when discussing giving, but this is not a term we should use. Our gifts are not membership dues, our gifts don’t buy us salvation, our gifts should be given with joyful hearts. That is why we use the term offering, because we or offering back to God what God has given. At the same time we are offering them not as a way to try and control what happens, but rather trusting our gifts in the hands of the Lord.

            One may ask then, what is the purpose of our gifts if they are not a requirement or if they don’t help us get saved?  Our gifts help us to serve the Lord.  In our chapter for today from 1 Chronicles David is trying to raise money in order to build the Temple for God.  We should not confuse this Temple for just some shrine or homage to God, but this Temple is to be a place in which God resided. Throughout the Torah, God had given instructions for how to set up a tabernacle in the wilderness, a place in which prayers and offerings would be given. It may sound strange to us now, but in simplest terms it was a tent for God, where God dwelt among them. Now under David, the Kingdom of Israel was at its height. No more wandering around in the wilderness, the nation was now established, and the land was theirs.  Still, David recognized the importance of keeping the tabernacle, a place for God to dwell, but now that they were no longer nomadic, the Israelites could build a permanent tabernacle; the Temple. The Temple was going to be the focal point of the city. Trade and commerce would happen just outside; people from all around would come to deliver their offerings up to God and to seek atonement for their sins. In others words the Temple would become the most important building in the city.

            But there was one problem, the people have never had a Temple before. God had always been with them in the tabernacle as they traveled from one place to another. They had no idea what a Temple would even be like or what it could do, and then of course there is the little issue of raising money for this massive project. Building the Temple for God was not a cheap endeavor, and David was in charge of the fund raising efforts.  David’s success in fund raising the necessary funds was because of two actions: He gave a vision for what the Temple would be, and he led by example.

            As I said earlier, the Israelites had no idea what the Temple would be, so David starts his fundraising actually in the chapter before ours this morning by laying out blueprints for the Temple. He first starts with the fact that the Temple will be holy, and since David had shed so much blood in battle, it would not be he, but his son Solomon who actually builds the Temple. He then gives a vision for the Temple. It would be a resting place for the Ark of the Covenant, it would be a place for God to dwell in the city; it will be a fulfilling of the promise that as long as the people of Israel honor the Lord, the Lord will establish the kingdom forever. And then after this David laid out step by step blueprints for how this would be accomplished. He listed the different rooms in the Temple and how they would be used, so that after the people heard what David had to say, they knew the purpose of the Temple and how it would be accomplished.

            I think that sometimes giving in churches across the country is low, is because we forget exactly why we are giving and what we are giving to. We lose a vision of what the church is and what it can do. Like the giving tree sometimes we need to be reminded that the apples can be sold, the limbs can be used for lumber, and the trunk can make a boat. So often we forget the ways the church is already being used. Your gifts allow us to reach out to members of our community when they are struggling with food or keeping their lights on. Your gifts allowed us to help in the relief efforts of hurricanes, fires, mudslides and tornados all around our country and around the world. Your gifts have helped to give scholarships to students with financial struggles so that they may be able to go to college. Your gifts have helped to establish a college in Africa where students from all different countries have come to study. Yes your gifts do also pay for church maintenance and for my salary, but think of how that has been used for worship, for Bible studies, for baptizing new members and powerful times of comfort and healing such as funerals. Your gifts already do such much, and yet think of what else we could do. We could provide hearing assistance devices during worship, we could renovate the church creating a kitchenette upstairs to make a kitchen more accessible, we could help make sure that the shelves of DAWN are always stocked, and we can save the lives of countless children dying of malaria overseas. Through your gifts we could do so much.

            And yet the second aspect of David success is that he led by example. Before asking anything of anyone else David brought his own gold and silver and gave it to the Lord. Seeing this action, the other members of the community brought whatever surplus it was that they had to give as well.  I bring this up because I want you to know that I do not ask of you anything that I do not first ask of myself. I do tithe, and I don’t say this to brag or as a form of judgment, because there were times in my life were in fact I gave very little. But I tithe because I believe in this church, I believe in what Holy Spirit can do with the gifts that we offer. I believe that through God all of those dreams and aspirations that we have for this place are possible. I give because the Lord has already given me everything. No I am not rich, yes I still struggle paycheck to paycheck to pay my bills, but yet still everything I have is because of God. In fact the very breath that we all take is from the God. I no longer want to be like the boy in the giving tree who keeps taking and taking without any real gratitude, no I want to be the tree. I want to be the tree that gives and gives, serves and serves and yet is happy in all that she gives. Don’t you want to be a giving tree? Don’t you want to freely give with a joyful heart. Don’t you want to see the beautiful visions God has for this church come to fruition? I want to give with a joyful heart because I have already received from the greatest giving tree the world has ever know, the tree on which Jesus gave us all.