generosity – The Raynville Rambler

Stick with Love: giving

Sermon for Bramley St Peter, 3 December 2022

Readings: 1 Corinthians 1:3-9 ; Luke 14:12-14

The congregation were first of all asked some questions, which set the scene for the rest of the talk…

What do the following have in common: the City of Aberdeen, the Royal School of Church Music, the Duchy of Lorraine, and the Greek Navy? Their patron saint is St Nicholas.
When is the feast day of St Nicholas? 6 December.
Who visited this church last weekend and has recently written a book that features St Nicholas? Bishop Arun. His book is titled “Stick with Love”
Here’s the last question, which may seem unrelated but isn’t, as we’ll see shortly. I read something recently about a woman who was criticised on social media for (quote) ‘only’ spending a hundred pounds on each of her children at Christmas. We don’t have children ourselves, and I’m a bit out of touch with these things. So, I looked online to find out the average amount that British parents do spend on each child? According to a recent survey, is it (a) £35, (b) £70, (c) £100 or (d) £190? Answer either (c) or (d): Median £100, Mean £190. In other words,the woman in the story was being criticised for being average, and that’s what commercial pressure does to us – it pushes up expectations.

Let’s draw those threads together. Arun’s book takes us through the season of Advent, which starts today, looking at a famous Christian each day to see what we can learn from them. Some are historical saints; others have become famous in our own time. Saint Nicholas appears of course on 6^th December. He was a real person, a Christian bishop in what is now Turkey about three hundred years after the time of Christ. Historically he was one of the most widely celebrated Christian saints of all time.

What he was most known for was his generosity to the poor. One famous story about him is that there was a man who had lost all of his money. The man could not afford proper dowries, that is wedding gifts, for his three daughters. This meant that they would remain single, unemployed, and living in poverty. Hearing of the girls’ problems, Nicholas decided to help them, but, bearing in mind Jesus’ advice to do good deeds in secret, he went to their house under the cover of darkness and threw a purse filled with gold coins through the window (windows didn’t have glass in them, in those days). The father could then afford for his daughters to be married. It was only later he found out where the money came from. (So now you know where we get the idea of hanging bags of gold coins on the Christmas tree!)

I think Nicholas may also have been motivated by what Jesus taught in today’s reading about being generous to those who can’t repay us, rather than giving only to those who we expect to give us a present in return. That’s something to bear in mind this Christmas. How do we decide who we give presents to, or what particular present to give?

Think particularly about gifts for children. Our motivation might be their pleasure – what are their hobbies and interests? It might be education – what books, toys or games will help them develop useful skills? It might be to develop talent, if they are into sports, arts or music. But there’s nothing wrong with adding something just for celebration – sweets or other food as a treat, for example.

This year, as the environmental crisis looms ever larger, more people are thinking not only of how their gifts might help the person who receives them, but also the human and environmental impact: where was that present made and who made it, how long will it last, and can the materials and packaging be recycled? Now’s not the time to go into this in detail, but you may want to look up A Rocha’s ‘twelve tips for a greener Christmas’ – the suggestions include cooking or buying a meal for that person who has everything, or a gift of your time.

But going back to the season of Advent, what we are really doing in this season is not just decorating our homes and wrapping presents to celebrate Christmas with our families, important though that is. Advent is about preparing our hearts to receive God’s greatest gift. Another question (clue in the title of the book!)

Final question: What is God’s greatest gift to us? His love!

God’s greatest gift to us is not measured in pounds (or if you must, it was about seven pounds, give or take). And like Nicholas’s gift of a wedding dowry, it was given at night, to a family in a poor home. God’s greatest gift is his welcoming, forgiving love, shown most clearly in coming among us as Jesus Christ: baby and man, teacher, healer, prophet, and through his death our Saviour and Lord. Look again at that reading from the letter to the Corinthians: six times in those seven verses Paul mentions Christ. Four of those times he is given his full title: Our Lord Jesus Christ. It was so important to Paul that his Christian hearers understood this. In calling Jesus ‘Christ’ we recognise that he is God as well as man, and in calling him ‘Lord’ we recognise that he has a claim on our lives.

St Nicholas understood this. Leaving aside the legends, we do know that he attended an international conference of bishops in his day that agreed the words of the Creed. Nicholas stood up strongly against those who said Jesus was only a man, and also those who said that being a Christian was just about being good. Nicholas knew that Jesus was also God in human flesh – as we sing in a well-known Christmas carol, “Very God, begotten, not created” – and that it is through his goodness, not our own, that we are saved.

Which brings us, at last, to the question of baptism. Mary and Jimmy have brought their children to be baptised, or christened, in recognition that Quin and Joy are indeed God’s gifts to their family. Unique gifts, each to be treasured for how they are, as God made them. They are christened in recognition that God gave his own son, Jesus, as his greatest gift to each one of us. Together as a family they pledge themselves to come to Christ, to turn to Christ for his guidance, and to follow Christ as part of his family, so that as the children grow, they can receive and grow the spiritual gifts that the Holy Spirit wants to give them.

What about the rest of us? Well, this Christmas, the best presents we can give to our children, or indeed anyone we care for, are our love and faith. As the Bishop titled his book, let’s ‘stick with love’. That is the most precious and lasting gift of all. If we offer presents as well, let’s choose those that reflect our love for God and family, and our care for the world he has given us. Thoughtful gifts that don’t cost the earth, or break the bank, or expect anything in return. But don’t forget the treats!

And finally, this Advent we’re hanging decorations on our tree each week as we mark the themes of the season. Today we have this one representing ‘GIVING’, with an icon of St Nicholas on the back.

The Gifts and the Giver

A sermon for Epiphany, 8 January 2022 at St Peter’s, Bramley

Text: Matthew 2:1-12 (The gifts of the magi)

What did you get for Christmas? People often ask us that at this time of year. The gifts that our family and friends give us vary so much, don’t they? Let’s see what I was given this year:

Penguin cycling shirt railway book dates

Starting with the trivial – this little penguin Christmas tree decoration. Scott, I’ve called him: Scott of the Antarctic. Then there are the useful presents: a thick, close-fitting cycling top for the cold weather. The specialist hobby things: a book with the technical details of all the trains in Britain. And the tasty treats: for the last few years one of my sisters has given us a home-made hamper of gluten-free goodies to share.

Does your family have a tradition of how and when gifts are given, perhaps in what order? When my sisters and I were children, the rule was that the youngest started giving their presents out first, followed by the next youngest, and parents or grandparents last of all. That was a useful life lesson: the emphasis was on giving rather than receiving: as Jesus said, “it is more blessed to give than to receive”. We can’t expect to receive gifts unless we are also prepared to give them. I’ll come back to that idea later.

One of the origins of this tradition of giving Christmas gifts is the Epiphany story of the magi from the east and their gifts. What were the three things they gave? (call out!) I don’t think I would have known about frankincense or myrrh without this story, would you? Let’s look at what their gifts to Jesus might say about what we can give to him now.

Gold has the same meaning now as always: something valuable, something worth keeping, something special. If someone is ‘worth their weight in gold’ it means their friendship is too valuable to measure. But in the days before banks, it was also a practical way of keeping your treasure with you when you travelled. The magi gave away something very costly, and Mary and Joseph may well have needed to spend the gold during their years of exile in Egypt.

So, if you or I have possessions, can we offer them to Jesus? I’m not just talking about giving money to the church: it might be supporting a Christian charity, opening our homes for church meetings, using a car to offer a lift, lending tools to a neighbour, and so on. That is your gift to the Church’s resources.

The second gift was incense. It had a very practical use as an early form of air freshener – can you imagine how smelly life was in those days, when taking a bath was rare, deodorants and toilets unknown and houses were shared with animals? But incense was also used in the Temple, as it still is in some churches today. The smoke from the incense symbolises prayer rising to God. More than that, the gift of incense to Jesus was a symbol of him becoming our high priest, praying to God the Father for us in heaven.

So, I suggest that we might think of it representing our ministry in the church. That might be helping to lead worship, but there is so much more to Christian service than that. It might equally well be helping with our church’s activity groups, being on the tea rota, doing odd jobs to help the Churchwardens look after the building, offering fundraising skills, or helping with any work we do in the community. It might be praying – for some people, praying for the Church’s work is their unseen but important gift to the Church’s ministry.

And then there was myrrh, the oddest gift of all. It was a spice used in embalming a body after death. Given by the Magi it was a symbol in particular of Jesus’ death on the cross in which he sacrificed his own life to reconcile us to God. His sacrifice was unrepeatable, but the myrrh reminds us that Jesus calls us all to live a selfless life.

We might therefore see it as the gift of ourselves in putting others’ needs before our own. Again, there are many ways of doing that. It might be a pastoral ministry within the church, volunteering with one of the local community groups, welcoming a refugee, or helping with the care of children or elderly people within your own extended family.

It may be that you think you haven’t got money to spare, or a particular talent to use within the church, or spare time to offer as a volunteer. If so, just remember that the Shepherds had already come to Jesus with nothing at all to give him. What mattered most was that they, and the magi after them, came to kneel at the manger and worship Jesus.

I’ll come back to that point I made earlier about it being more blessed to give than to receive. There’s one exception to that: when God is the giver and we are the recipients. God, let us not forget, is the greatest giver. It’s in God’s very nature to give. He is the giver of life itself. The giver of his living word made flesh to reconcile us to himself, and the giver of the Holy Spirit, who himself gives us the gifts that we need to serve him in the world. A verse from the Old Testament often used in church worship is this: “all things come from you [O Lord], and of your own have we given you.”

So, at the start of this new year when we are still thankful for the Christmas presents we received, we can think about what we bring as a gift to Jesus. Starting with our worship, for when we come to worship, we open ourselves to the greatest gift of all. As Jesus also said, “give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”

Then we will be able to ask what we can give to Jesus in return for all that he has given us. What can I spare of my money for the work of the church? How can I use the things that I have for the benefit of others? What talents and skills do I have that will be of use in the ministry of the Church? And how can I best give my time to help others?

I will finish with that lovely verse of a well known carol: ‘What can I give him, poor as I am? If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb. If I were a wise man, I would do my part, yet what I can I give him – give my heart’.

wooden heart

Another of the gifts that I got at Christmas, a ‘little something extra’ from Linda. It’s this heart, hand carved from olive wood grown in Bethlehem. It now sits on the windowsill of my study as a symbol of her love for me, but also a symbol of the love that Jesus, the Babe of Bethlehem, has for all of us. May his love, and his gifts, be with you always. Amen.

O radix Jesse: Long ago you taught your people

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is ‘Long ago you taught your people’ by Martin Leckebusch, to the Welsh hymn tune Hyfrydol.

There’s no obvious direct connection, in fact, with the third of the ‘O Antiphons’ which is ‘O radix Jesse’ (radix – root, descendant). We think today of Jesus in his human descent from Jesse the father of King David, whereas the theme of the hymn is that of generosity. But read on…

Our Diocese of Leeds had a ‘generosity week’ not long ago, in which local churches were encouraged to consider how they could be more welcoming, more inclusive and more generous with their time and money. The words of the hymn take a similar line, contrasting the Old Testament practice of tithing crops and animals with the New Testament approach to generosity which is not defined numerically but encouraged as part of our stewardship of all the resources available to us.

Jesus is described in the second verse as ‘never snared by earthly treasure’ but as giving ‘riches of the deepest kind’. Generosity includes, but is more than, giving money. It can be giving time to listen or help people with practical tasks, volunteering, opening our homes to visitors, lending tools to neighbours, and so on. As the last verse reminds us, all this is ‘not a barren legal due but an overflow of worship’.

But going back to the daily theme of Jesus’ ancestors, in our church this morning we finished our series of sermons on the book of Ruth, in which she becomes the mother of Obed, the father of Jesse. So taking this ‘root of Jesse’ three generations further back to Ruth’s second husband Boaz, he was generous in taking this dependent immigrant as his wife, not imagining the implications that would have for the world forty-five generations later with the birth of the Saviour (according to the genealogy in Luke’s gospel). We can never know what effect a bit of generosity will have.

The Apocrypha in Lent – 12 March

If this is your first visit, please see my introduction to these Lenten readings.

12 March. Ecclesiasticus chapters 12-14

The section I am choosing to look at from today’s chapters is 14:5-19, which begins “If a man is mean to himself, to whom will he be good? He does not even enjoy what is his own.” And in verse 11, “My son, treat yourself as well as you can afford, and bring worthy offerings to the Lord”. The basis of this philosophy, like much in the Wisdom literature, is the reality of death, for “will you not have to leave your fortune to another, and the fruit of your labour to be divided by lot?” (v.15). This, of course, is the wisdom of Scrooge’s Christmas ghosts – what’s the point in being a miser, making life uncomfortable for yourself, just to amass money in the bank? The person with children and grandchildren has a reason to pass on a large inheritance, but for those of us who don’t (myself included) there is no such incentive.

It might be thought, by people who know a little about Christianity and the Bible, that they both encourage, or even expect, believers to live in poverty, for there is much teaching about the blessings that God gives to the poor and humble. But any idea that we should deliberately make life uncomfortable for ourselves derives from the ascetic tradition seen in the “desert fathers” and in medieval monasticism (at least in its pure form – by the time of the Reformation the monks were living very well on their profits!). Ascetics have their place, but they have never represented mainstream Christianity, or for that matter Judaism. When Jesus said “I have come that people may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10) he was not saying something opposed to traditional Jewish religion, but rather rescuing it from the religious “authorities” whose rules and regulations were restricting the proper practice of religion, which is to live lovingly, joyfully and generously with other people. And that starts with ourselves. To repeat the opening phrase of this passage, “If a man is mean to himself, to whom will he be good?”

In the days of Nehemiah, when the Jewish people were rebuilding their towns after years of exile, life was difficult. And when people heard all the religious laws read out to them, they wept, for it must have seemed that to keep these laws would be the end of any enjoyment. But Ezra the wise priest told them, “Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” (Neh. 8:10-11). Joy is found, not in denying ourselves, but in being generous both to ourselves and to others.

The Bible in a Year – 24 September

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

24 September. 1 Chronicles chapters 28-29

David, we are told at the end of chapter 29, had reigned as king for forty years. Unlike many monarchs who reign until their death (as our own Queen Elizabeth has indicated she intends to do), David decided to stage a deliberate handover to his son Solomon while he was still in good health. Partly this was for practical reasons – having many sons, and remembering the previous revolt by his son Absalom, there could have been a civil war between then after his death if he had not nominated a successor. But also, as we read yesterday, God had told David that Solomon was the one in whose reign the Temple should be built. This was David’s grand project, so the sooner Solomon was on the throne, the sooner building could begin. We are told that Solomon was still “young and inexperienced” (29:1): we are not told what age he was, but it requires more than a degree of maturity to oversee such a large project.

Israelite society at this time seems not to have had money as we know it today: metals such as gold and silver were used as common currency, along with animals and agricultural produce. So in order to provide for the Temple large amounts of these were given, by David personally, from the treasury (presumably representing the tithes of common people), and from members of the establishment (tribal leaders, military commanders and officials). Some of the gold and silver would have been used directly for the sacred vessels and decoration of the Temple; but much would have been used in payment for other materials and labour. David set an example by giving freely of his own riches, to encourage others to do so.

This principle of the ‘freewill offering’ or ‘sacrificial giving’ is often quoted by Church leaders when money is needed for some building project or missionary endeavour. Part of the prayer that follows is still used in church services today as a response to the weekly offering: “Yours, O Lord, are the greatness, the power, the glory, the victory, and the majesty; for all that is in the heavens and on the earth is yours … all things come from you, and of your own have we given you.” (29:11-14).

The following verse in Chronicles reminds us also that we can keep nothing earthly: “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.” In other words, earthly riches mean nothing to God. The divine being cannot use money or gold, although they are given in his name for work that is carried out in his name, but then neither are money and possessions any use to us when we die. The only things we can do with them in our will are leave them to our children or friends, or give them to what we believe to be some other good cause. So as long as we have enough to live on, any extra may as well be given away sooner or later.

The Bible in a Year – 11 May

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

11 May. Isaiah chapters 54-58

Once again we are presented with a full five chapters of Isaiah, when even a few verses from almost anywhere in them would be enough material for a reflection.

The broad brush approach is that in these chapters God promises to the small number of Israelites who would return to Jerusalem that although they may have felt like widows or childless women (i.e. lacking support and with no hope for the future), in fact in the fulness of time God would provide them with many descendants – not just in the literal sense, but as God’s promises of mercy and redemption would be extended from Israel to the rest of humanity. The covenant first made with Noah (one family) and that with Abraham (likewise) would be renewed with this small band of people. Every time God brings judgement, he leaves room for a small number of faithful people to be the seeds of new life, both physically and spiritually. It was only with the death and resurrection of Jesus that the promise could be fulfilled, but like so much of Isaiah there is a message both for the people of his own time and for future generations.

In and among these great promises, though, are some passages condemning the leaders of Israel for their idolatry and other sins. Isaiah saw that even with God’s promise of starting with a clean slate and the offer of forgiveness, it would not be long before people started to live in a selfish, greedy and godless way. Such is fallen human nature. The true remnant were those who returned in humility, willing to live by the law of love and not just the ritual law.

Such is the overall message. But I also want to pick out one of the many sub-themes running through these chapters. “everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” (55:1). “Is not this the fast that I choose: … to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house?” (58:6,7) “If you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness” (58:10).

We don’t need to interpret those verses as a parable or metaphor. They are a clear command: generosity, hospitality and sharing are at the heart of God’s kingdom. It is no coincidence that one of the clearest signs of revival in a church today is when its members get involved in local food banks, “junk food” projects, or soup kitchens; or in the Fairtrade movement which seeks to ensure that people across the world who produce the food an other goods we consume are fairly treated, well paid and enabled to build up their own communities. For food and hospitality are at the heart of what it is to be human, and what it is to belong to God. Be generous to those in need, and he will be generous to you.