|
Matthew
25:31-46 is one of my favorite passages of
scripture. It describes a scene at Christ’s
return. “When the Son of Man comes in his glory,
and all the angels with him, then he will sit on
the throne of his glory. All the nations will be
gathered before him, and he will separate people
one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep
from the goats..” The story then goes on to relate
how Jesus distinguished between those who will go
away into eternal punishment and those who will go
away into eternal life.
Funny,
but nowhere in this story is there a mention of
giving to the church budget. You would think that,
for all the talk in churches about giving, and
tithing, and pledging, and supporting the church
budget, church finances would receive significant
attention in this passage. Yet it doesn’t. And it
doesn’t because God does not need our money.
Think
about it. God is the creator of everything. Every
single thing you possess,
every relationship you have, even every breath
that you breathe comes from God. If he needed
money, he would create it.
In Psalm 50 verses 12 to 15, we hear God say, "If
I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world
and all that is in it is mine. Do I eat the flesh
of bulls, or drink the blood of goats? Offer to
God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and pay your vows
to the Most High. Call on me in the day of
trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify
me." Earlier, in verse 5 of Psalm 4, we are told
to, “Offer right sacrifices, and put your trust in
the LORD.”
This whole giving thing gets pretty confusing. On
the one hand, “I don’t need your sacrifices.” On
the other hand, “Give sacrifices.” Elsewhere,
throughout the Old Testament, we read specific
instructions from God regarding the construction
of altars and temples. There are even specific
instructions regarding the nature of sacrifices.
Just what is it that God wants?
Indeed, what is it that God wants
within all this talk of sacrifice, and tithing,
and building temples? It is our dedication and
faith in his goodness that he desires. A further
clue is found in Matthew 6, verses 25 and 26,
"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your
life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or
about your body, what you will wear. Is not life
more than food, and the body more than clothing?
Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor
reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly
Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than
they?”
When we make a pledge to the work of
Christ through our parish, we say “I believe” in a
most profound way. We spend most of our lives
concerning ourselves with succeeding and having.
We focus on doing well so that we can have nice
clothes, a nice home in a good neighborhood, a
nice car, a good computer, a quality television
with all the right cable channels, and so on. This
is so much the nature of our society that it is
difficult for us to keep God at the forefront of
our consciousness.
Only by our taking our first fruits
and giving them to God and his work do we remind
ourselves that Christ is at the center of our
lives, that God comes first, and that we
acknowledge and give thanks for the fact that all
we have comes from God. We show our trust, faith,
and priority by giving to God first, knowing that
he will provide whatever we need.
Pledging to support the
parish budget is a way in which we clearly remind
ourselves of what is the priority in our life. In
so doing we reorder our priorities in a very
conscious way to put our faith in the love of
Christ first. |
