Thankful, Joyous Giving                                                        11/18/45

 

Scripture:  II Corinthians 9

 

Text:  II Corinthians 9: 7;  “Every Man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity;   for God loveth a cheerful giver.”

 

Our day of national thanksgiving will mean much to us this year.  Our hearts are full of gratitude and deep joy that the dreadful business of war is over.  A growing number of those who went from our fellowship into the wartime service of the nation’s cause are returning to us - not blithely to “live happily ever after,” but to take their place among all of us in the problems and privileges of peaceful living.  We remember with affection those who must serve a while longer; and with knowledge of our everlasting indebtedness those who have suffered the wounds of warfare or who have bought freedom with their lives.

 

There is serenity and fortitude in the thanksgiving of thoughtful people this week.  This is too great a time for shallowness.  We cannot forget the misery, the homelessness, the hunger, the illness, the despair that crowd full the lives of countless human beings to whom our present comfort and privileges would look almost like a breath of heaven in the morning.

 

The season this year calls, more than usually, for “thanks with giving.”  “What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits?  I will take the cup of salvation,” said the psalmist, “and call upon the name of the Lord here in the presence of all his people.”  [Psalm 116: 12-13].  And how can we take a cup in the presence of gaunt folk without sharing it?  Do you remember that, when Jesus was about to make the most sacrificial gift known to mankind, he sat at table with his friends, and the record says “he took the cup and gave thanks.”

 

For the blessed return of peace; for health, and homes, and bounties of nature, and full harvest; for the love of dear ones, for the mercy of God - for all of these things surely we are grateful beyond adequate expression.

 

But our thanksgiving can extend to the more solemn and tragic side of life’s present drama, particularly if we are willing to do something about it - to give.  There is no better channel for the giving of our selves, in time and effort and substance, than through the church.  Dr. Hugh Elmer Brown has remarked that “The world at its worst needs the church at its best.”  Right now it is the time to consider one of the practical means of keeping our own church at its best.

 

This afternoon, a group of nearly fifty people in our parish will get the material and instructions they need in order to approach us intelligently with the opportunity to underwrite the budget of our fine church.  Sometime during the next two weeks, they will be calling in our homes, presenting the needs of our local and world-wide work, giving us a chance to think it over carefully.  And at the end of that time, on December 2nd, two weeks from today, we will bring our pledge cards to the church service, offering with them our devotion to God.

 

Let me begin a brief discussion of our proposed giving by calling your attention to a verse in this morning’s Scripture lesson.  It was Paul, writing a second time to the Christians at Corinth and saying:  “Every man, according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loveth a cheerful giver.”

 

Paul was doing a delicate job.  He was engineering a collection for the poor saints in Jerusalem, and he used a great deal of tact.  He himself would take the money to Jerusalem.  It is important how people feel who get the help.  He wanted it presented in such fashion as to safeguard the feelings of those whom he sought to help.

 

And it was important how the people felt who gave the money.  Paul did not want their gifts to come under any feeling of duress - no giving with grumbling!  “Well, I suppose I have to, so here you are.”  Paul wanted to see the money given in the same glad spirit of Christian fellowship which he wanted the Jerusalem Christians to feel as they received it.  He was concerned with the spirit of the gift.  “Every man -- as he purposes in his heart - not grudgingly - not of necessity -- God loveth a cheerful giver.”

 

We are confronted now with a big job.  We must underwrite a budget of nearly $200.00 a week for the year 1946, which means a definite increase in our pledging over last year.  We all want to succeed.  Work that we must be doing would suffer if we did not raise the total $10,160.00 proposed as our regular budget for local expenses and benevolences for next year.  And if we should oversubscribe it, there are certain very definite things, already apparent, that we must do, which are not put before us until this budget is assured.

 

And yet, as anxious as the officers and committees and canvassers of our church are to raise this goodly sum, we are more anxious that each giver should give cheerfully; that you should give because you want to.  Let every one of us give, not because somebody “put the bee on him” and so he couldn’t gracefully avoid it; but let us give gladly, positively, eagerly, cheerfully, because we believe in this church and its work.

 

We believe in the opportunity for public worship; the preaching of the word; the reading of the Scripture; the silent and the guided meditation of prayer; the spiritual joy of sacred music; the gathering of the household of faith.  We believe in the Christian training of our children; the Christian fellowship of our youth; the Christian service of our adults.

 

We take for granted the necessity of maintaining and improving our house of worship, and its equipment, so that its facilities may be increasingly useful.  We take pride in doing our fair, full share of the benevolent, missionary outreach of the Congregational churches.  This we are stressing this year.

 

Every since the depression years, our churches have been trying to bring up their benevolence giving to a level that will do effectively the job that Congregational Christians ought to be doing in their field of responsibility at home and abroad.  Each year, our State Conference has suggested to each church an “apportionment,” that is a fair estimate of the church’s share in the total amount of missionary gifts needed.  We have not quite met that suggested goal in any year, though we have given a great deal of it, especially in the past two years.

 

This year’s benevolence apportionment for our church is $1,572.00.  We budgeted only $1,250.00 by our vote of adoption at the annual meeting last January.  Our officers believe that our finances are now in such shape that we can pay at least $1,500 by the end of the year.  This, with certain special offerings of the Sunday School, Sunday Evening Club, and Women’s Association, would meet our full share of budgeted missionary giving for the first time in years.  Let’s do it!

 

In addition to this, a number of our members have been giving, as a sacrificial extra, through our denomination’s Committee for War Victims and Services, an amount that should reach a total of about $400.00 this year.  This extra war emergency, sacrificial giving has gone on for three years in our church.  And we started a year behind the other churches who first responded.

 

I have spoken of the achievements of this year, accomplished, or easily-to-be accomplished.

 

Now what of next year?  1946?  The world war has ended, leaving devastation in vast areas and maladjustment everywhere.  Millions have been uprooted and many of them face destitution, hunger and cold.  Great numbers of people will certainly die yet, as a result of war’s devastation.  Among them are thousands of Christians of our own faith and household.

 

Scores and scores of churches, schools, hospitals, missionary residences, and other mission properties have been damaged or destroyed.  Many missionaries have been sent home or interred during the war.

 

Hundreds of thousands of people who are our spiritual kin are going to have to have help.  They must have “bread” and they must have the “bread of life,” in every practical way it can be supplied.  Churches, schools, and hospitals must be repaired and rebuilt.  And the great, necessary, proven, practical work of Christian missions must go on!  Every thoughtful Christian must know it!  Hundreds of soldiers, sailors and marines on the spot have said it.  Men from our own congregation have written their appreciation of the value of missions to their own lives.  The Army chief of chaplains, chaplain Brig. Gen. Luther D. Miller, tells of a soldier, eloquently expressing the idea in a letter home.  Writing to his father from a Pacific outpost, the soldier asked the question: “Father, can’t you people back home in America do something for these people over here?”

 

Not only is this rebuilding of destroyed and damaged life and equipment necessary.  But during the years of warfare, mission property in countries not under fire, and on home mission fields deteriorated.  Delayed repairs have to be made.

 

During the war, we have been concerned that our more-than-four-hundred Congregational Christian chaplains should have the supplies they needed to minister effectively among the men and women in service.  Some of that work must continue through the whole demobilization period, and for longer than that in military and veteran’s hospitals.

 

More urgent is the need to put good leadership and equipment in spots where the veterans will congregate in great numbers, following their war service.  Thousands upon thousands of them will be in colleges and universities for a while.  On the larger campuses there must be a special ministry available for them.  Our Negro colleges and schools of the south can’t hope to handle, without help, the veterans who will come to them - with no other place to go if they fail to get in there -- because of continuing racial barriers.

 

Critical tensions arise in many areas where there is no established ministry of Christian experience.  There must be effective, practical work in building understanding and good will right in our own country.

 

Our denominational leaders have gone over all of these needs with fine-tooth comb and ruthless scissors.  Proposed budgets for every such area of need have been cut to an effective minimum.  But the final figure, as I told you in September, that our leaders know we Congregational Christians must raise in three years - as an extra, beyond our regular, steady giving - is four and one-half million dollars.

 

That sounds big only as a total.  It is a perfectly reasonable, and possible goal.  It is about the average, per capita, of the post-war goals of 16 Protestant denominations with 26 million members, seeking 112 million dollars for such temporary needs.

 

The Methodists have already raised, or subscribed, their 25 million.  We - half their size in numbers, - are asked for four and one-half million.  Among the Congregational churches, this Post- War Emergency Fund is to be raised in two ways.

 

(1)  The work of strengthening our churches at home and abroad, of making delayed repairs to foreign mission property, of building understanding and good will in critical tension areas is to be done through a substantial and courageous increase in apportionment giving.  That is why the single item of benevolences on our proposed budget is increased by $500 for next year, to $2,000, where it probably should remain for some years.  My friends, that isn’t hard.  It is ridiculously easy in the face of the terrific need in our world!  If every one will increase his budget pledge by 10%, or if more of us who haven’t yet pledged regular, systematic giving, will do so no matter how modest the beginning, we shall subscribe this budget with ease.

 

(2)  The second appeal in raising this Post-War Emergency Fund is to be met in our sacrificial giving through the Committee on War Victims and Reconstruction.  This plan here has been, and still is, to try and get at least 10% of the membership to give an average of 25 cents per week through this channel.  Some will do more, some may do less.  But more - many more - are needed.  If our church is to do its fair share of this work of mercy and strategy, our giving should be at least doubled, bringing the total such gifts we are to bring in 1946 to at least $800.00.

 

This is the fund that will be used to increase relief to War victims, to rehabilitate many of the uprooted peoples, to minister to returned service men in colleges and universities, to replace property losses on foreign mission fields.  In September I gave you more detailed information on those needs.

 

When our canvassers come to you, they will explain the needs of Christ’s work and our opportunity to meet those needs; they will leave a pledge card for the regular budget which is the regular, and by far the largest, call on our giving; they will leave a larger pledge card which is our call for extra sacrificial giving.

 

During the time between the canvasser’s call and December 2nd, will you consider with care (1) your increased subscription to the regular budget; your regular, proportionate giving of your substance to the kingdom of God; then (2)  will you think of those things which you can give up at small sacrifice (or greater sacrifice if you choose) - a trip, a movie a month, a dessert once a week - you settle what it may be in order to make your sacrificial gift in Christian spirit and service to a stricken world.

 

Then bring those cards with joy and thanksgiving to our service on December 2nd, two weeks from now.  Surely our sinews will be strengthened for the work that must be increased in our own church and parish, by our determination to do gladly what a Christian neighbor can do.

 

The “mute, uncomplaining, unexpectant” eyes of starved little children look to us.  The courageous, battered eyes of those who have suffered unbelievably for faith and cause look to us.  The record of those who have poured strength and health and life into a victorious struggle is spread before us.  Let us “in His name and for their sakes” give thanks and lend a hand.

 

Elizabeth Cheney tells the story of a chapel fully equipped except for lamps.  The builder explained the omission of lamps as follows: “Each one will carry his own light.  I have provided lamps for every person in the village up to the number the church will hold.  Some corner of God’s house will be dark and lonely if all his sons and daughters do not come to worship him at the appointed time.”  The little church is nearly always filled, for every family wants its corner lighted and lovely.

 

In deep thankfulness, this year, therefore “Every man, according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly or of necessity,” but for the joy of it!  “For the Lord loveth a cheerful giver!”

 

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, November 18, 1945.