Our Gifts and Our Selves                                                     11/30/41

 

Scripture:  I Peter 4: 8-19

 

Text:  I Peter 4: 10    “As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.”

 

We now come to that season of the year when we give our attention directly to the financial support of our Church.  It is our custom, as it is with many other churches, to concentrate our attention on this matter once a year rather than resort to intermittent appeals throughout the year.

 

As we consider our gifts to the service of God through this church, let us think about how effective this sharing of ourselves may be.

 

Last night, I sent a telegram to a relative in Chicago.  It only cost a few cents.  But the payment of that fee brought many services to my aid.  A station agent took the message.  An operator transmitted it over established channels with ease, to another operator in Chicago.  But without those channels, or others similar to them, my message could scarcely have been delivered the same night at any cost.  And then someone delivered the message to the door in Chicago.  My few cents operating through the services of, I know not how many people and how much complicated equipment, sent a part of me to a loved one 250 miles away, within the hour.

 

Our contribution to the church commands a great variety of services at similar low cost.  Let us think of some of them.  Our support provides for the preaching of the Gospel in this church, the administration of the Sacraments and the pastoral care of the parish.  It provides for sacred music at our services; for our care and comfort in the House of Worship; for the business affairs of our fellowship, for the protection of our property by insurance and repairing; for some of the cost of Christian education.  It provides for our help to the work of our fellowship as carried on in this State - fraternal service, educational work and hhome missionary aid.  That portion of our gifts which go, through the benevolence channel, to the Home Mission work of our nation and to the 14 Foreign Mission fields of our churches all over the world does a multitude of things.  It sends ministers, teachers, doctors, agricultural experts, nurses, engineers and advisors to search out and help students, farmers, those who have no other chance to hear the gospel, those who are hungry, or ill or even leprous; even to advise and admonish good governments.

 

It would cost you and me, working as individuals, a tremendous amount in time, energy and resources, to search out and bring Christian joy to so many peoples and enterprises.  But our gifts help to keep all of these peoples and movements at work.  Like the telegraph service, the channels of church activity put a tremendous range of powerful possibility within the reach of each one of us, at a cost that we can handle.

 

Some years ago, Dr. Jay T. Stocking, then Moderator of the National Council of Churches of our faith and order, wrote an inspiring pamphlet on “Immortal Money.”  He insisted that we ought to regard money highly.  For money is life; whatever value it has, is due to the amount of life that it stands for.  It represents the stored up, or saved, efforts of someone’s life.  Because it has such a value it may be exchanged for more life.  It represents so much toil, skill, character, conscience, intelligence.

 

“Money,” says Dr. Stocking, “is life done up into convenient form for storage and use.”  When invested in immortal lives, it becomes thereby immortal.

 

There is more truth than poetry in the riddle of Old Man Honest in Pilgrim’s Progress.

 

            “A man there was, though some did count him mad,

                        The more he cast away, the more he had.”

 

Do you remember Dr. Hudson in Lloyd Douglass’ book “Magnificent Obsession?”  How, when he gave money to the needy Greek man to set him up with a lunch counter business, he said that he couldn’t possibly be repaid in coin because he had “used it up already” in the giving of it?  His money became immortal in the life of another fellow.

 

Mr. Joseph H. Choate, in addressing Harvard Alumni, urged them to make a generous gift to the support of their alma mater as a farsighted and permanent investment.  “If you want to enjoy your own immortality,” he said, “do it tomorrow while you are alive.”  No one gets so much value out of his money as he who translates it into somebody’s happiness, somebody’s hope, somebody’s reborn soul!

 

The sick in many lands, the handicapped, the ignorant and the poverty-stricken; the unregenerate everywhere; those without ideals, wait for that which money can give.  Money can be translated into health, opportunity, knowledge and ability, into regeneration and idealism for flesh-and-blood people.

 

To every man who has some money to spend as he will, Jesus says, as he said to Peter, “I give unto thee the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven.”  With that money one may loose bonds and open gates to souls who are seeking life.

 

Someone has gloomily remarked that only about one third of the Protestant membership of the land supports its churches in one way or another.  I hope the percentage is higher here.  For those who give -  give generously according to their ability, give of themselves - know something of this sense of immortality about which Dr. Stocking speaks.  “Rise up, O Men of God;  the Church for you doth wait.  Her strength unequal to her task, rise up and make her great!”

 

Now how much shall we give, and how shall we give it?  After all, there are such things as shoes, coal, meat, and educational bills to be paid.  And there are some other considerations that should be weighted when considering our pledge of support for our Church.

 

Well, as usual when we consider any matter of importance to our living, the Bible has something to say.  Roscoe Graham calls attention to the fact that the word “give” appears with astonishing frequency in the Christian scriptures.  One of the best summaries of this matter of giving was made by Paul in

I Corinthians 16: 2.  “Upon the first day of the week, let each one of you lay by him in store as he may prosper.”  There is a scriptural basis for our giving, with a four-part program.

 

1)  “Upon the first day of the week,”  or regularly.  An elderly member of a certain church had usually given $10.00 a year to the work of his church.  When the Church changed from the old annual subscription basis to the weekly pledge basis of financing, a canvasser called on the old gentleman and asked his cooperation.  “Now Uncle John, you’ve been giving the church $10.00 a year.  Do you think you could afford to give 50 cents a week this year?”  “I reckon I could.”  “Could you do it gladly?”  “Yes, I’d be glad to do that.”  “Well, of course you know, Uncle John, that is more than $10.00 a year; that is $26.00 a year.  Can you afford that, week by week, and do it gladly?”  “Yes, week-by-week I can, and I’ll do it gladly.”

 

There is the record of what regularity did to one man’s giving.  It can be duplicated scores and hundreds of times.

 

2)  “Let each one of you” -  individually.   The church work prospered considerably in days when the head of the family drew an annual check for the church contribution.  It can prosper even more when each member of the family gives his own weekly contribution.  An increasing number of boys and girls, when they unite with the church, make pledges which they pay from week to week from their allowances.  It is a good way to begin their church membership.  It is a wholesome family that works together on the “each-one-of-you” basis.

 

3)  “Lay by him in store” - providently.    Some years ago I talked with a man who, together with his wife, gave most liberally to their church and to the many excellent service and philanthropic enterprises of their community.  The husband said, “You might be surprised if you knew just how much real fun my wife has been having lately with her giving.  Recently she has taken the method of setting aside a definite proportion of her income as she receives it.”  (And she was a member of a well-to-do family)  “She even puts it in a separate bank account.  Then she draws on that fund for her church pledge, her gifts to the community chest, to the Red Cross, to her college, and so on.  To the various worthy appeals for her gifts, she can say a joyous ‘yes’ and then fit the amount of the gift to the status of her fund which she has thus ‘laid by in store.’”

 

4)  “As he may prosper” - proportionately.   This means that we will deliberately estimate and balance what we will spend on ourselves and what we will give of ourselves in the light of what we expect to have to use.

 

It is because, with some of us, the balance is so much in favor of giving that the church has been able to be what it is and to do what it does through the years.

 

It will be good for both ourselves and our church if we give with regard to Paul’s message:  “Upon the first day of the week (regularly) let each one of you (individually) lay by him in store (providently) as he may prosper (proportionately).”

 

Give joyously, without regard for the other fellow’s doings!

 

May God bless us with joy and fruitfulness in our pledging of gifts to His service through this church.

 

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Dates and places delivered:

 

            Wisconsin Rapids, November 30, 1941