Take It from the Top

Last summer my wife and I spent a few weeks in a rented cottage in Pennsylvania. When you rent a cottage, you never know what you’re going to get. The Internet helps because you can see a picture of the place, but it’s amazing how the truth can be stretched with a photograph. One night we stayed in a motel north of the Soo which looked absolutely charming on the website. Well, guess what? Good thing we stayed in that dump for only one night.

Anyway, we arrived at this cottage in central Pennsylvania. And it was quite nice. Clean, pleasant décor, plenty of pots and pans in the kitchen; and, there was coffee! We had to bring our own tea, which was just as well because any tea bought in the States tastes like it was fished out of Boston Harbour back in 1773, but sitting on that counter just waiting for me was a jar of coffee that a previous renter had left behind. It didn’t last the three weeks. When we bought some more, I decided to set some aside for the next renter. I figured that I’d received a gift when we arrived at that cottage; the least that I could do would be to leave a similar gift for the next guy as a way of showing my gratitude. So before I made any more coffee for myself, I scooped out the amount that I’d used, and put it in the jar. I knew that if I didn’t do it right away, there wouldn’t be any left over by the end of our stay.

I took it from the top. It was an offering of gratitude that I took right off the top of that fresh can of coffee. And the remaining coffee was just enough to get me through the rest of the time at that cottage.

Take it from the top. It’s kind of like the biblical concept of first-fruits giving. God has given us so much: fresh air and blue sky, the mountains and prairies, fertile ground that produces more than enough for us to live, natural resources all around us and the spiritual gifts within us to transform those resources into the building blocks for a comfortable and prosperous and just society. God has given us so much; and it’s all a gift. Just like that coffee at the cottage, it’s a gift. We didn’t do anything to create it or earn it or deserve it; all of the beauty and resources of Creation were in place long before any one of us set foot upon this earth. So when we do something with these resources - when we work hard and transform a small portion of them into money and other forms of material abundance - the least that we can do is say, “Thank you.” We can show our gratitude to God by taking something right off the top, and setting it aside for God to use, and for God to give to others, and for others to use in the name of God.

It’s called first fruits giving. It goes back to Old Testament times, when the people of God would offer to God the first and the best of their crops or their livestock or whatever their labour had produced that year. They took it from the top. Not the leftovers, but the first fruits. They figured that God deserved the first and the best.

God has given us the beauty and the abundance of the earth as a gift. It’s kind of like an inheritance; a gift that you receive not because of your own labour; no, an inheritance is something that you receive out of the generosity of a parent or a grandparent or an aunt or uncle. That inheritance may reflect their hard work, but it comes to you as a gift. Like the inheritance that a lot of people in my generation thought they were going to receive from our parents’ generation. You know all those cries of anguish that you’ve been hearing every time the stock markets have gone south? It’s not so much the people who are losing their own life’s savings, but all those baby boomers who were looking forward to receiving someone else’s life savings. The people in their ’70’s and ’80’s who’ve lived through depression and war and beginning their families in the lean years when the post-war economic boom was just getting started, they’ve lived through worse. They know that one way or another they’re going to get through their remaining years. It’s maybe those of us who’ve never known tough times, who’ve never gotten into the habit of saving, who’ve been living the good life while piling up mountains of debt, and were counting on that inheritance. That’s maybe where the loudest cries are coming from.

But there’s nothing wrong with the notion of inheritance in and of itself. If someone has worked hard and produced well and wants to leave generous gifts for family and charities and church and community, that’s a blessing! Well, God has worked hard. For 4 billion years God has worked hard to create the heavens and the earth and all that is in the earth (see Psalm 24:1-2). All that we have is an inheritance from God. It is a portion of what the author of Ephesians calls, “the riches of God’s glorious inheritance among the saints” (Ephesians 1:18). Of course, what the Bible is talking about here is the fullness of the fruits of God’s kingdom and God’s power, when God will rule over all the Universe. And that fruit won’t be fully realized until the end of history. But already we see the first fruits of God’s kingdom in the generosity and the abundance and the beauty of Creation. God has given us the first fruits of God’s kingdom as an inheritance. Like any inheritance, it wasn’t ours to begin with, so why should we horde it? Give some of it back to God. Take it from the top. It’s a way of saying, “Thank you.”

The first thing that we need to know about the gifts of God, about the inheritance of God, is that we need to give away a portion of it, the first fruits, in gratitude for all that God has given us. If you do that in the form of a financial commitment to the church and to other charities, and then you make good on that commitment with a gift to God on the first day of the week or the first day of the month, it’s often the case that there’s just enough left at the end of the month, including something that you’ve set aside during that month for savings. But if you don’t give that gift right off the top, guess what? There’s still just barely enough left at the end of the month. That’s how it works in our home, anyway. If you don’t take God’s portion from the top, then it’s often not there. If you do take it from the top, then what you really need is there anyway.

So, first of all, you need to set aside God‘s portion before you spend money on anything else. Secondly, you need to keep it flowing. Money has energy not when it’s stagnant, not when it’s being horded, but when you keep it flowing. Like a mighty river, it has to flow in order to generate the energy which creates fertile valleys and carves glorious canyons and produces electricity. Giving it away is one way to keep it flowing. Spending it on the things you really need is another way to keep it flowing. Investing it with those who will use it to create jobs and build homes and develop alternative sources of energy and thus generate more money for investing or spending or giving away; that’s another way to keep it flowing. When money stops flowing, there’s no energy. Things grind to a halt. Part of the financial crises a month ago was created when the banks stopped lending money to each other. The money was no longer flowing. The energy was no longer being generated. It was close to grid lock on both Bay Street and Main Street. That’s not good. In banking, in industry, in the Church, the money has to flow, it has to create energy, it has to provide a conduit through which the energy of the Spirit can flow. That’s part of the dynamic of Creation.

So we give away our money, right off the top, as a way of saying, “Thank you.” And we spend our money, and wisely invest our money, as a way of generating energy and helping the Spirit to flow through the world.

But you know what? God doesn’t want just your money. And God doesn’t want just the energy of your money. God wants you. All of you. Every bit of your energy and every breath of your resting and every moment of your day - each day - throughout your entire life.

It’s like the woman who looked out her window one morning and saw a homeless man. He was walking into town with all of his possessions slung over his shoulder in a sack. He held a sign that said, “I will work for food.” With a reluctant sense that she should do something to help him, she headed out at lunchtime and half-heartedly looked for the man. She found him sitting on the church steps.

“Looking for the minister,” she asked?

“No, just resting,” he said.

The woman offered to take him to lunch. She said that she didn’t have any work to give him, but she’d be happy to buy him a meal. So they went to her favourite restaurant and ordered their food, and then they got to talking.

The woman asked, “How long have you been walking?”

The man thought for a moment. “14 years.”

Seems that 14 years ago the man had heard a powerful sermon, and he’d turned his life over to Jesus. And he got this sense that what Jesus wanted him to do was to give away Bibles. So he used what money he had to buy a bunch of Bibles, and he put them in a sack, and he started walking. That’s what he had over his shoulder; a sack of Bibles. He worked for food, and for money to buy Bibles. And he’d walked and hitchhiked from coast to coast to coast, giving them away.

As they left the restaurant he said, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you…for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me” (see Matthew 25:34-35).

They stopped by her church and she offered him a Bible for his sack. She wrote in it a passage from Jeremiah:

“‘I know the plans that I have for you,’ says the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you; plans to give you a future and a hope’” (Jeremiah 29:11).

The blessing that this woman felt as she spoke with the man left her with the sense that she was standing on holy ground.

“How long has it been since you had a hug,” she asked?

“Oh, it’s been a while,” he answered.

So they embraced, and she wished him well. He slung the sack over his shoulder, and he was on his way.

To give yourself to God is a blessing. To give something of yourself to others is a blessing. It really is more blessed to give than to receive. Which really means that there is greater happiness in giving than receiving; it is more fun to give than to receive. God wants all of you. God wants you to experience the joy of giving your entire self to God. The least that we can do - for God, for neighbour, for self - the least that we can do is to offer a token of ourselves to God; to entrust at least a small portion of our lives to God. Which is exactly what I invite each and every one of you to do this morning. We all now have the opportunity to take something from the top; to make a financial commitment to God and keep the energy flowing; to give a token of ourselves to God, trusting that God will continue to give us all that we need. Some of you have brought your financial commitment cards with you. If you need one, please raise your hand and an usher will be pleased to give you one. Take a moment to think, to pray, and to offer what you can. Ross will play for a few minutes while we fill out our commitment cards. Think of the generosity of God. Think of the needs of this congregation, and the needs in our community and around the world. Remember that when you care for others through your acts of generosity, you are caring for the Christ. Amen.


Text: Matthew 25:34-35
Preached by Bruce D. Ervin
23 November 2008