Romans 12:1-8

Today we’re going to talk about one of my favorite subjects: the gift of leadership. Absolutely nothing happens without leadership. Everything rises or falls on leadership. From the very beginning, this is the way that God has always worked. I have not been here long enough for people to start calling the First Presbyterian Church of Maitland as Ron Smith’s church. I hope I’m never here long enough for people to start calling it Ron Smith’s church because it’s not my church; it’s not your church; it’s the church of Jesus Christ.

Yet, God uses human beings, and through them and His church, He accomplishes his purposes. God led the people of Israel out through a man named Moses. God used a woman named Debra to lead in combat. God used a man named David to build great people and He used his son Solomon to build a great temple. He used a woman named Priscilla to help form one of the great churches in Greece. God always works through men and women. Everything in the church will always either rise or fall based on leadership.

Not only that, but the spiritual level of the church will never, ever rise above the spiritual level of the spiritual leaders. Let me say that again; it may be one of the most important things for you to grasp today. The spiritual level of the church will never rise above the spiritual level of the spiritual leaders. There may be a blip, but it will fall. The spiritual level of the church will never really rise above the spiritual level of the spiritual leaders.

Leadership is absolutely essential and it must be done, Paul says, with diligence. If I had to define leadership for you in one word, it would be influence. You either lead by influencing people directly, or sometimes you lead through other people who have influence in a place you don’t have. But leaders are those who gather people around them, coalesce them, cast a vision, help them allocate resources, give direction, motivate and encourage in order to accomplish a task.

One of my very good friends who I have spent talking a lot about leadership with over the years likes to say that leadership is getting the herd generally headed north. That’s because leadership is a little messy. I always think about that movie “City Slickers” with Billy Crystal and I think about him bringing in the herd and getting them over the river and how messy it was. It’s not an exact science; it has some important principles. Sometimes leaders are born and sometimes leaders are made. Even if we are born, we have an obligation to refine, learn, teach and improve our skill set along the way. But nothing in the church happens without leadership.

So how do we in the church choose our leaders? Do we choose leaders because we have looked at them and respond to them in some way to reward their faithful service? Do we choose our leaders and recognize them for their abilities? Or do we choose our leaders because we realize that they have a call and willingness to work hard? Frankly, we use all of those reasons in the church. But only two of them are lifted up in the scripture. Those are recognizing the ability/skill that God has given combined with the call to hard work. Leadership, when done well, is extremely challenging. They are challenging times.

I have often said that I don’t know why anyone would want to be the president of the United States. The minute you announce that you’re going to run, they start looking at every area of your life. Then when you get there, you’ve got ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and FOX News and a whole host of other channels where everything you say and do, somebody’s trying to find something wrong with it. We don’t just do that to our presidents. We do it to our governors, mayors and all leaders. We have a way of wanting to tear people apart. It takes a tremendous amount of character and strength to be an effective leader.

Paul wants to talk to us about leadership in the church, about taking this ability and call to hard work. In Romans chapter 12 verse 8, he says “if you are called to lead and have a gift of leadership, then you are to exercise that gift with diligence.” The word he uses for lead or leader here is actually only used eight times in the entire New Testament. In six of the eight times, the emphasis of the word lead is “one who is a ruler over others.” For example, we find it in first Timothy, the third chapter. Here Paul is giving the requirements for elders and deacons in the church, those who would be overseers. It says in verses 4 and 5 that if a person is to lead in the church, they must lead or rule their own household well.

One of Jesus’ favorite metaphors for the church is the family. What Paul is driving home is that if somebody is really lousy at leading their own family, they’re going to take those lousy principles from home and bring them over and inflict them on the church. So before you have someone to lead the family of God, you better make sure they’re doing okay with the small family that they have at home.

A little later in first Timothy, the fifth chapter, verse 17, he says, “let elders who rule be counted worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in word and doctrine. To be a member of the Presbyterian church, you only have to do one thing. We ask three questions, but there’s only one requirement. You have to profess that you are a Christ follower, that Jesus Christ is your lord and savior and that you have signed on to follow Him and become more like Him.

But to become an elder or a deacon, an officer in the church, there are much higher requirements. You have to agree to be in sympathy with the doctrine, the government of the church, and submit yourself to it. There is a higher standard, or as some have said, a double standard. There should always be a higher or double standard for those who lead. The thing that is so saddening to so many of us is that whether you look at industry, government, or even at times at the church, leaders have often not had a higher standard, but a lower standard. But leading is hard work. It must be done with diligence. It requires that you take on responsibility.

I was telling the 9:30 service that I had been flipping through some papers, they were military records, and I looked at one assignment when I was a junior first lieutenant. The major of the unit assigned me 12 different tasks. There was a whole list of things, and some of them I had no clue what it was I was signing on to do. The reason that Congress commissions a person to be an officer is to fix responsibility. The reason that a person is called to lead is to fix responsibility. Does it not gall you whether it is business, military, government, church or wherever, when something goes wrong and somebody is supposed to be in charge and responsible, the people at the top say, “I don’t know, it’s not me, it’s somebody else; I don’t know what’s going on.” Excuse me, why do you think you’re getting paid all those big bucks? To know what’s going on and be able to lead, rule and manage. It’s hard work and requires diligence and vigilance. There is this idea of ruling over something.

The other two times this word is used in the New Testament, it is translated “to manage” or “to maintain.” Both of those examples are in Titus chapter 3. Verse 8 says, “those who believe in God should be careful to maintain (or lead) with their good words.” Verse 15 says, “let our people maintain good works to meet urgent needs.” So the whole idea of these concepts of leading by ruling or maintaining, they really are complimentary that in a sense, if you are leading, you have a responsibility to have oversight and see that people are provided for and protected. You have responsibility to make sure things don’t fall into a state of disarray.

This word in Latin has a combination of two words. The first one is “manu,” which is where we get our word “manual” as in manual labor. The verb that is connected with it is “to narrate,” which means “to hold.” So a leader has a responsibility to hold the people in their hands in that you care for them. One of the things that all leaders have to learn is that people really don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. A leader’s responsibility of being diligent and vigilant is wrapped up in caring.

For this gift of leadership this week, I have brought you a hard hat. This is our symbol to remind us that leading is hard work. I was looking for a sign to go with this that said,
“men at work” and we were going to modify it a little bit to say, “men and women at hard work.” I couldn’t find any of those signs to borrow this morning, but leadership is hard work. It requires sacrifice. Nothing is ever accomplished without great sacrifice. No one sacrifices more than a good leader. It calls for diligence and hard work in that process.

The spiritual gift of leadership provides multiple kinds of return because it coalesces folks around a vision. A leader assesses what resources there are and allocates them. A leader organizes teams and motivates them and moves them towards the accomplishment of what they would not be able to do otherwise.

Most of you will recognize the name Coach Tom Landry. For 25 years, he was the head football coach of the Dallas Cowboys back when they seemed to beat everybody. Having lived in Dallas, I was a Cowboys fan and back then, they always seemed to pull it out at the end of the game. Tom Landry was a great coach and a great leader. Somebody asked him what it was like to be a coach and lead. He said, “my job is to take 44 men and make them do what they do not want to do.”

Now what did they not want to do? Well, they didn’t want to be up early in the morning. They didn’t want to do two-a-days. They didn’t want to do three-a-days. They didn’t want to be out there in that hot Dallas sun running wind sprints. They didn’t want to be in the gym lifting weights for hours at a time. They didn’t want to be in the film room looking at film for hours on end, over and over again. They didn’t want to do any of that. What they wanted was the glory.

They wanted to go out on a Sunday afternoon, put on their uniforms and stretch a little bit. They wanted the guys in front of them to make a little whole for them to run through and throw through so they could score a touchdown. They wanted to throw a Hail Mary pass to score a touchdown. They wanted to win. Landry said that his job was to take these 44 men and make them do what they didn’t want to do so that they could all accomplish what they wanted to accomplish. They wanted a little ring that said, “Super Bowl Champion” on it. They wanted the money that went with that ring, too. They wanted the honor and prestige of being able to strut around for the rest of their lives as a member of the team that won the Super Bowl. But in order to get there, it takes a lot of work and preparation.

Leaders often have to cast a vision, allocate resources and motivate people to invest themselves and their gifts in a place they maybe don’t want to give so that they can accomplish what they want to achieve in the end. That’s leadership. Sometimes you give that influence directly; sometimes you do it through others. Paul says that if you have a gift of leadership, do it with diligence. Be vigilant about it. It’s hard work, so put on your hard hat, go to work and work hard at it.

Back in 1983, the University of Houston played North Carolina State University for the NCAA Basketball Championship. Unless you are a Houston fan or went to North Carolina State, you might not remember that game, so let me fill you in a little bit.

First of all, everybody expected that Houston was going to be in the Final Four. They had incredible talent on that team. Guy Lewis was the coach. He coached University of Houston for 30 years, and he had played at Houston as a collegiate player. It was Coach Lewis that kept pressing until college basketball began to utilize what’s called the dunk. Prior to Coach Lewis, it was actually illegal in college basketball to dunk the ball. He had a bunch of talent that year, and at least three from that year went to the NBA. This team was known for taking the ball up and down the court and dunking and slamming it. In fact, they were known as a fraternity: Phi Slamma Jamma.

North Carolina was coached by a fellow named Jim Valvano. I was reminded of our own Don Parsons this morning that he played his college basketball at Rutgers and that he is #27 on the scoring list. Our own Don Parsons is #26 on the scoring list. Jimmy Valvano had a wonderful personality. The very fact that North Carolina State ended up in the Final Eight, much less the Final Four and Final Two was an amazing shock to everyone. No one gave North Carolina a change to win this ball game. They didn’t have any outstanding, big name stars. They had workhorses. They were blue-collar players. They went out there and worked hard and played well together as a team. Their fraternity was known as The Cardiac Kids. Leading up to the national championship game, 7 out of the last 9 games, with one minute left in the game, North Carolina was losing. This gave Valvano and fans cardiac arrest.

Nobody gave North Carolina State a chance. It was all about Houston. One of the things that had been talked about a few days before the final game was that Houston was going to shift their game plan and slow North Carolina State down because they also ran the ball. They were going to take them out of their fast play and cause a slowdown. The game started and North Carolina State came out of the locker room all fired up and they surprised Houston, the sportscasters and everybody watching. They were leading 13-15 points at the half. Nobody expected that.

Coach Lewis went back into the locker room and I don’t know what he said, but when they came out, Houston had a 20 to 2 run and gained the lead and held it for most of the second half. With 1:58 left in the game, they had a 5-7 point lead and Houston called a timeout. After that timeout, they went into a spread offense a little bit and slowed the play down. As a result of that, North Carolina State came back and tied them. Then Houston came back and took the lead by 1 point. With 1 second left on the clock, one of the North Carolina State players went up for a jump shot. It was a bad shot; he was way off the mark. But their center was there, caught the ball in midair and dunked it as the buzzer went off. North Carolina State won the national championship.

I tell you that story for this reason. There are three ways to play a game. One way that we can play the game is by not wanting to come out of the locker room because there’s just no way that we can win. Sometimes we can do that in the church. It sounds like this in church language: “I’ve reared my children. I’ve done my time in the nursery. I’ve done Sunday school and Vacation Bible School. I’ve done my time with the youth, women and men. It’s time for the younger set to come along and do this. I’m out of the game. I’m just going to stay in the locker room. I’m going to find my pew and sit on it.”

By the way, there’s a difference between a person who has been a Christian for 30 years and has 30 years of maturity, and a person who’s got 1 year of maturity but done the same thing 30 times. It’s growth and maturity; they require being in the game. One option that each of us has is to stay in the locker room. We’re not going to go out and play the game.

The second option we have is when we’ve got a little lead and we’re doing okay with a little cushion. Everything is all right. Attendance and giving are up a little bit. Let’s play not to lose. You find out like Houston that when you go to that slowdown game, the tortoise always has a way of coming up and beating the hare.

The third option is to play to win. If you are wired as a leader, that’s the only way you know how to play is to keep at it. If you decide to play the game, you should play to win and give it everything you’ve got. That’s what I would challenge you with this morning. If you are a leader, you cannot not lead. You are wired this way. You have to lead something. You may be organizing the storage closets, but you’ve got to lead something.

If you’re a leader, you need to let us help you find a place to lead because you need to do it with diligence. It’s hard work and requires vigilance on our part. It requires holding people with care in your hand and being committed. It means playing to win. I hope if God has wired you in any way to be a leader, that you’ll play to win. It’s the only way.

Lord, we come to you today and we are grateful to you for your mercies and goodness. I pray for the men and women who are leaders in this church. I pray for the staff. Lord, help us to continue to cultivate our own spiritual walk with you, knowing that we set the mark for the church. Grant us the grace to keep growing and stay on the cutting edge and be open to what you’re doing. Lord, help us to experience what we all want: a healthy church where people are finding what they want, getting healing and finding hope in a place where Jesus Christ is lifted up, a place where you are pleased with our gathering and fellowship, a place where people are vibrant and flourishing because they’re healthy. Help us to pray with everything we’ve got, because you don’t deserve anything less. And all God’s people said amen.

20 Somethings

WNL Forms
WNL RegistrationFall 2010
WNL Adult Reg 2010

Children took part in three significant missions – one local, one regional, one national or international. They learned about the needs and history of each mission project and delivered results of at least one of the missions to the source via a field trip. Elements of art, spiritual direction, and the message of helping others were taught. There were snack and recreation breaks in addition to the work of mission project.

Someone is happy.  Click the title above for photos.

The NEW LIFE Class will begin on September 12th at 9:30 AM in Fellowship Hall. We welcome all ages to join us as we explore Creation events and the lives of our early ancestors as found in the first Biblical book of GENESIS. Come experience anew how God interacted with the likes of Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Rachael, and Joseph. The class will be led by Dena and Dave Anderton and Madge and Jerry Sutcliffe using multiple resources/commentaries.

Pastor Labert Altemose will continue a course that exploring the Gospel of Mark, the first Gospel written. The course uses the book “Mark’s Gospel from Scratch,” by Donald Griggs and Charles Myers. Come and get a fresh perspective on the life of Jesus. We meet on Tuesdays at from 10:30 a.m. to 12 noon in the Conference Room.

Beginning September 29 (Ron’s class starts on October 6) and running eight weeks until November 17, Wednesday Night Live! returns with three adult education courses each night!

At 5 p.m., Pastor Labert will lead a course titled World Religions 101 – The Basics. The course will contain discussion and conversation about four of the great world religion, namely Buddhism, Islam, Judaism and Hinduism. We will devote two sessions to obtaining a basic understanding each of these religions.

At 7 p.m., Pastor Ron Smith will lead a course titled B-I-B-L-E, Is That A Book for Me? This course will contain an overview of the entire Bible and an introduction to the beginning of the Old Testament. The material will be interesting, informative and humorous.  It is designed to help you use the Bible as a guide and as discipline for your spiritual maturity. The cost for materials will be $15. Sign up at the Welcome kiosk in the Narthex, no later than September 20^th. Please note that this course will start on October 6.

At 7 p.m., Mary Scott Singer will lead a course titled Helping Families Succeed: A Guide to the 40 Developmental Assets. This seminar is designed for adults interested in developing listening and relational skills within their families. The Developmental Assets are simply building blocks to insure that kids and youth grow resilient and strong, with barriers to at risk behavior. Schools alone cannot provide the Developmental Assets crucial to a child’s success. This course will help parents learn what they can do to help their children.

Remember, there will be an adult-appropriate meal every night at 6:15 p.m. Meeting times are coordinated with Logos and youth programs, with child care and with the Music Department rehearsal schedule.

Finally, the lively discussion on a wide range of topics will continue during Lunch with Labert on Thursdays at 12 Noon in the Conference Room.

Romans 12:1-8

Introduction

To test your memory, how many of you recognize the name Percy Ross? Raise your hand if you do. One person. Must’ve read my sermon earlier. Percy Ross died eight and a half years ago. He was the author of a column that syndicated in 800 newspapers for nearly 17 years entitled “Thanks A Million.” Mr. Ross was the immigrant of parents from Latvia and Russia. He grew up very poor and he made his wealth with plastic film and plastic bags.

In 1969, he sold his company for eight million dollars. He took the eight million dollars and divided it among his family. He gave his wife two million and each of their two sons two million and he kept two million for himself. He took his two million and invested it and out of the wealth from that, he was able to become a philanthropist. He started out in the early 1970’s through a Christmas program where he gave 1,000 bikes to the children in Minneapolis at Christmastime. That got him started with this whole idea. As a result of that, he ended up writing this newspaper column.

In September of 1999, he closed his wallet. In the final column, he expressed his gratitude to all of the people who had read his column and had responded over the years. Nancy Webber, who was his editor, said that he had received 10,000 or more letters every single week. Some of these were requests for aid. Others of them were suggestions to him on how he should handle his money, while some were notes of thanks for what he had done. Over the years, he paid for organ transplants, he built recreation centers, he gave out tens of thousands of silver dollars, and he always did this with a little bit of his own homespun wisdom.

One of the things that he wrote in his column and he wrote it on numerous occasions, he said, “when you give your money while you’re still alive, you get to see where it goes.” Somewhere north of 30 million dollars is what Percy Ross gave away to serve his fellow human beings over that period of 17 years. In that concluding article he said, “I would like to thank those of you who have participated in and responded to this column over the years. Frankly, I thought my health would give out long before my money. I finally have accomplished my goal: I’ve given it all away.”

When you decide that you’re going to give a gift, the second thing that you really have to decide is how you are going to give it. Over the years as a pastor of a church and working in several community organizations (the YMCA, the Ronald McDonald House, the Consortium for the Arts), it’s been my privilege to work with a lot of people who are donors. A couple things that I have noticed: first of all, the people I am most uncomfortable with are those that want to give you the impression that they are giving you this magnificent gift, and then you come to find out that the bottom line is that it isn’t much of a gift at all, and that it didn’t cost them hardly any time or energy or effort on their own part.

I’m almost equally uncomfortable with the individual who gives a very large gift and does it in such a nonchalant way that you almost come away wondering what it is they’re trying to communicate about the assets that they have been entrusted with over time in life.

How do you give a gift? We have been talking about spiritual gifts, gifts that God gives the church so we can build the church week by week. It’s going to look like a church when it’s all over. But God is building his church with people like you and me, and with our gifts, He gifts the church. He gives gifted people to the church. He gives gifted leaders to the church. Those gifts are given that we might build up the body of Christ, that we might build up the church. We need each other. One of those gifts is the gift of giving. In a sense, we’re all called to give and pray and be people of faith, to serve and teach in one form or another. We’re all called to give.

Here in Romans chapter 8 is a word to us from God about how to give. Let me read it to you again: “For as in one body, we have many members and not all the members have the same function. So we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members of one another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us. The giver in generosity. That word generosity that we are to give with generosity in some of your Bibles, it may be translated “to give liberally.” But even that translation can lead us down the wrong path if we’re not carefully observant.

I.  We are to give without affection.

This word, generosity or liberally, has a fuller, broader meaning and I’d like to take it apart for us just a little. One of the things that we learn about this is that when we give, we are to give without affection. What do I mean by that? Affection has a variety of definitions. If you look that up in the dictionary, but what I’m really saying is that we are to give in such a way that we give without duplicity and without making someone think we are doing more than we are doing.

My wife was elected a deacon and served two congregations over the years. In one of those congregations, a responsibility of the deacons was to receive the offering on Sunday mornings. A group of them each week counted the offering and got the deposit ready and actually went and made the deposit that afternoon. She said she learned things that she wished she didn’t know. Sometimes the people that make you think that the church is going to have to close the doors if you don’t do what you want them to do, sometimes are the people that give nothing or little to nothing. Sometimes people do actually give large gifts and put on airs about that.

The idea of giving in an unaffected manner means that we are giving in a way in which we are real, authentic and genuine. We are the real deal, if you will. We give without pretense. Romans 12:3 says that we are to have a renewed mind. When we practice holy habits, when we practice spiritual disciplines, the Holy Spirit shows up and in our reading of the Bible and meditating, prayer, fasting, writing in a journal, in our silence and service, in our celebration and worship; these are all classic disciplines that the church has practiced for 1500 years or more in an organized kind of way. When we do these things, the idea is not to be the best prayer, best Bible studier or the best journal writer. The idea is to practice these things, not to master the disciplines, but to allow the disciplines to master us.

As we are practicing these things, the Holy Spirit shows up, imagine that. The Holy Spirit is taking us and our spiritual exercises and begins to change the shape of our heart in our lives. We wake up a few months or a few years later and we realize we are a lot more like Jesus today than we were a year ago, five years ago or ten years ago. It’s called spiritual maturity. It doesn’t just happen. We don’t just wander into it. You have to train for it and practice it, and then God shows up and brings about transformation. One of the things that happens is that when we give, we give without airs. We give without pretense because we are growing in Jesus Christ.

II.  We are to give in simplicity.

This word that’s translated here for us, generosity, means that we give in simplicity. In other words, we give without any ulterior motives. There are some churches you walk into and there is a scripture verse on everything in the church. You go to the water fountain and it says, “he who drinks this water will thirst again; he who drinks the water of the Lord Jesus Christ will never thirst again.” You go to the nursery and it says, “we will all be changed.” Just checking to see if you were awake and paying attention.

Sometimes we can give in such a way that we have ulterior motives. Can we be honest here? There is no one in this room today who has completely pure motives. But having said that, there are a lot of times we do things to position ourselves for influence or a sense of gratification. All I’m saying is that when we give to the very best of our ability, we are holding these things in check; we are examining them under the microscope of the Holy Spirit. We are asking God to give us pure motives, or as pure of a motive as us human beings can have. When we do that, it makes all the difference.

Another way of looking at this is that we are to give in a way that there is a simple kindness. We want to be able to do what I think Percy Ross demonstrated for us. We want to give in a way in which the only thing we get back is the pleasure of being able to give. I don’t know how it is around your house on Christmas morning, but let me tell you the way it’s been around my house on Christmas morning. Your children get up out of bed and go running into wherever the room where the tree is, and all of these lights are shining everywhere and all these brightly packaged boxes are everywhere. If there is no supervision, every box will be unwrapped pretty quickly by the little ones.

When they’re really little, they don’t care about the presents in the boxes. They’re more interested in the box. They want to crawl in the box and play. Then when they’re a little older, they want to take the paper off of all the boxes in a big hurry and look at all of the stuff we have managed to succumb, and then they want to complain about what they didn’t get that year. Until we learn that left to ourselves and by ourselves, we will have no presents at all. Until we understand that, we will never have a heart of gratitude. Until our children learn that you had to sacrifice and give up something, maybe a trip or a new couch, so that they can have something; until they realize that, they’re not going to be grateful.

Until you and I realize that left to ourselves and of ourselves and by ourselves, we wouldn’t have any gifts at all. Until we come to grips with the fact that God Almighty, out of his mercy and grace, has given us the privilege to be born into this country and have an opportunity to get an education and do something with it and be gifted in certain ways and do something with our lives that makes a difference, we’ll never really be grateful. We might enjoy them and get pleasure from them, but we will not have a heart of gratitude.

I think that one of the great privileges in life is to be a giver. There have been times in my life where I have had money. There have been times in my life where I have not had money. When I was in seminary working my way through school, I remember when Cheryl and I got married, I inherited three closets full of clothes, women’s clothes you understand. I brought a set of boards and bricks for bookshelves in the beginning of my library. I had a fellow in a Bible Study that I had been leading and he was an accountant and he was getting a new desk so he gave me his old desk and a pole lamp and a chair.

Our living room furniture consisted of a Southwest Bell cable spool, which we proceeded to paint white and we covered it up with a cloth, and two lawn chairs that we picked up at the local K-Mart. Our apartment was decorated in what we like to refer to as early seminary. Those were great days; they were wonderful days. We didn’t have anything. We had each other and three closets full of women’s clothing.

Given the opportunity of having money and not having money, most of us would take money. But often, it’s when you don’t have money or much that you really come to a point where you appreciate the hand and provision of God in your life. When we prayed a few moments ago, “give us this day our daily bread,” it rolls kind of off our tongues and it’s in the prayer. There have been days when I prayed that prayer and needed that daily bread that day. If you have had that experience, you know what a blessing it is to get that daily bread. I assure you, it is a lot more fun to be in a place to be able to give someone bread rather than to be asking and needing bread.

The point of this word that we translate generosity or liberally means that we give in an unaffected way, in a way without airs. It means that we give in a kind of simplicity. We give with a heart that is open. We give in a way that is just simply delighted to be able to be in a position to give the gift. It’s like the gleam in a grandparent’s eyes when they give their grandchild something and they see their eyes light up. That’s all the payment you need. That’s all the joy you could ask for, is to see the little glimmer of light that comes alive in them because of the gift. In that moment, it says, “oh thank you. I’m grateful.”

Eighty-five percent of Americans do not like their work. Those are national statistics. That means 85 out of 100 of you don’t like your work on a national average. I will tell you that you are in a far better place than the person who is working right now and who wants to work and can’t find work. You know what I’m talking about? Gratitude is that gift that realizes that where we are and what we’re doing is the will of God for us. Giving with generosity, liberally, unaffected without airs, with simplicity and no ulterior motives.

III.  We are to give out of a large heart, if not out of a large purse.

Lastly, we are to give out of a large heart, not necessarily out of a large pocketbook. We give out of a large heart. Let me read you a familiar story. It was a story that we find in the 12^th chapter of Mark’s gospel. The 11^th chapter of Mark is the story of Psalm Sunday. Jesus had come into the city. It’s the last week, the beginning of the Passion Week and he goes into the temple. This chapter is a follow up to that. At the end of this chapter, after he had already been in conversation with the scribes and Pharisees, after he’s done debate, he goes and sits in the big courtyard of the temple. I want you to imagine that the sanctuary is the courtyard and every time you see one of the columns here, I want you to imagine that there would be a huge drum, barrel, or trumpet as they were called. There would be a series of these along the open courtyard.

Some people would come in, take their money, and put it into small coins. They would stand before the trumpet and they would give their coins. They would stand there thinking, “oh God, aren’t you lucky you have me to come here and give you all these coins?” They’d let everybody look at them. Jesus is sitting over on the side watching people come in and bring their offerings. Then he notes a little old lady. Let me read it to you, beginning in verse 41, Mark 12:

“He sat down opposite the treasury and he watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which together are worth a penny. Then he called his disciples and said to them, “truly I tell you this. This poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have given out of their abundance, but she gave out of her poverty and put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

In the ancient near east, there was no one who was more destitute than a little old widowed woman. There was no one in the ancient world, no woman who did not have a man to protect her and provide for her that was in worst shape. First of all, a woman in that era at that time was not allowed to inherit property. Whatever the husband’s property was went to other male individuals. There was no social security in the ancient world. There was no social safety net. There were not IRA’s or 401k’s. There was no Merrill Lynch to call and talk about family investments. There was no Merrill Lynch and no family investments. This woman was not only a widow, but apparently she was also childless. She had no children to care for her.

The smallest coin in the ancient world was a mite. The Law of Pharisee said that the smallest donation and gift that you could make in the temple were two mites. This poor woman, who had nothing, managed to get a penny, two mites. Jesus saw her approaching the treasury and he calls the disciples over to show them something. He said, “you see that old woman over there?” If he had not pointed her out, they probably would not have seen her. She probably would have just blended in with the landscape. She takes her two mites; they didn’t draw much attention, these two mites.

Jesus says, “boys, let me give you a lesson. This woman has made the biggest gift today of all the gifts that you have seen. She gave everything she had. These other folks gave out of their abundance, but they’re not going to miss it much. They could have done other things with it, but it isn’t really going to keep them from traveling or eating out or living in nice homes. But this woman here, she might not eat today because that was all she had.”

Conclusion

That’s what it means to give generously and liberally. It means to give without airs. It means to give simply, with kindness, when the only joy that you’re going to get is for the joy of being able to be in a place to be a giver. It means that we’re going to give out of a large heart, regardless of the size of the purse. So when you give, that’s the way the Bible tells us to give – without airs, without pretense, with simplicity, with just the shear joy of being to be a giver and not having to be a taker, to give out of a large heart. A large heart comes from the realization that everything we have ultimately has come from God. Let’s pray together.

Prayer

Our Father, we come to you this morning and we do thank you for the privilege that you have given us to be givers. Even those of us in our congregation who are struggling to put things together and pay bills, and some of us concerned about what we might lose, being able to make mortgage payments, being able to provide for our children, yet we are surrounded by opportunities. Maybe not the ones we think we need to have at the moment, but we are surrounded by hope. We thank you for that. As we give, may we do it without airs, but just out of a desire for the joy of the privilege of being able to give. Lord, I pray that each and every one of us, whether we give north of 30 million dollars or way south of that, that we too, like Percy Ross, one of the lessons that we might learn from his life is accomplishing the goal of giving it all away. We bless you and thank you in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Homiletic Idea:  When we give, we are to give without airs, without ulterior motives, with simple kindness, taking pleasure in having something to give.