Excellence in Generosity (2 Corinthians 8: 1-7)

When the rules of the game are to get and keep as much as you can, everyone realizes there isn’t enough for this to happen.  If everyone’s goal is to get and keep as much money as possible, well, there isn’t enough money for everyone to do that.  If everyone’s goal is to get and keep as much real estate as possible, as much stock as possible, as much food as possible… people will realize that there is a limited amount of these things, and so the focus will be on scarcity.  When everyone tries to get and keep as much as they can, there will be a scarcity of resources.

People who live in a scarcity mindset become afraid.  And that can be dangerous.  When is a wild animal most dangerous?  When it is afraid. 

It’s the same with people.

Thousands of years ago, Pharaoh was afraid.  Pharaoh, Pharaoh, oh, baby! 

Pharaoh was afraid, because it seemed to him that there weren’t enough good things to go around.  And since there weren’t enough good things to go around, he was going to use his power and his might to get all the good things for himself.

Soon Pharaoh owned all the land.  Soon Pharaoh owned all the food, and the people had to rely on Pharaoh’s distribution of the food in order to live.  Pharaoh owned a good many of the people as well, having made them his slaves. 

But still, Pharaoh was afraid.  He still had that scarcity mindset.  He became mean, brutal, and ugly.  The people suffered.

Until Moses and Aaron led them out of Egypt and out of slavery.

But leaving Egypt meant leaving behind all that wealth.  The wealth may have belonged to Pharaoh, but at least with Pharaoh, there was a steady supply of food:  a steady supply of bread. And even though they were oppressed, the people weren’t sure they wanted to leave Pharaoh and all that wealth.  Pharaoh’s rules on how to play the game was so ingrained in them, that they weren’t sure they could live without them.

So God decided to teach the people new rules to a new game.  Every day, in the wilderness, God sent to them this bread-like substance that they could eat. 

It was different, this bread-stuff.  The people didn’t have a name for it.  They only said, “What is it?” a phrase which, in Hebrew, is “manna.”  That’s what they called this bread stuff; they called it, “what-is-it.”

And every day, this “what-is-it” appeared, and every day they could gather enough “what-is-it” for that day, and that day only.  Each person could gather just what was needed. 

Sometimes someone would worry that, perhaps, there wouldn’t be enough.  Sometimes someone would become afraid – like Pharaoh – that there wasn’t enough to go around.  And that someone would try to gather more of the “what-is-it” for himself. 

But the extra amount always spoiled. 

In this way the people learned new rules to a new game.  Instead of a game of scarcity, it was a game of abundance.  Instead of trying to horde it all for oneself, the people learned to gather only what they needed; and that if they gathered only what they needed, then there was plenty to go around.  If they shared, and made sure everyone had what they needed, there would always be enough.

And so, the people learned to move from a mindset of scarcity to a mindset of abundance.  They learned that when it came to food and money, there would always be enough if their economics was characterized by love and sharing.  But if their economics was characterized by selfishness and hording, everything would spoil and go rotten.

It’s not easy to learn new rules to a new game.  In fact, after leaving Egypt, it took the people an entire generation to stop playing by the old rules, and start playing by the new rules.  God led them through the wilderness for forty years.  That’s how long it took.  Because change is never easy.

Isn’t the same true for us?  I mean, are we any different?  We still haven’t got used to the new rules of the new game; we find it so hard to live by the rules of abundance and sharing…

In Jesus’s time, people were back to playing by the old rules.  Old habits die hard.  Now, instead of Pharaoh, it was Herod who was in control, Herod who lived in fear, Herod who felt he never had enough, Herod who worked to control all of the assets, Herod who distributed bread to the people. 

And it was Herod who dictated the rules.

Then came Jesus.  Jesus knew that God’s rules were different. 

One day, something happened out there in the wilderness.  Note the symbolism of the location: the wilderness is where the people of Israel wandered in the wilderness, receiving manna.  This is not a coincidence.

Out there in the wilderness, Jesus was teaching a huge crowd of people when, suddenly, it was mealtime and there was no food to be had … except, as far as anyone could tell, five loaves of bread and a couple of fish.

The disciples started panicking.  “What are we going to do?  There’s not enough!  We’ll have a riot on our hands!”

These are thoughts of fear, thoughts based on the old rules and the old game, the game of scarcity, the game of Herod and Pharaoh, the game in which there is never enough.

But Jesus took the bread.  He blessed it, giving thanks to God for God’s abundance.  Certainly the disciples and anyone else playing by the old rules wondered, “what abundance?”

Then Jesus broke the bread and told the disciples to give it to the people. 

It didn’t look like there would be enough.  Certainly the temptation for anyone who recognized this scarcity would have been to horde what little there was for oneself.  But Jesus understood that God’s economics were different.  It was a different game, with different rules, rules that said you should love and share, always.

And when the disciples shared the bread with the crowd, lo and behold, there was enough.  There was an abundance.

What an important lesson they learned, that day, out there in the wilderness.

On another occasion Jesus told a story about a man who hadn’t learned this lesson, and who still lived by the old rules.  This man was rich.  He owned a lot of land that produced an abundance of crops.  In fact, he ran out of room to store all crops. 

He said, “What should I do?”  Did he decide to share his wealth?  No!  Even with all his wealth, his mind was focused on scarcity, and he thought that it still might not be enough. 

So he said:  “I know what I’ll do!  I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger barns!”  For this man, life was all about accumulating more and more for himself.

But God said to the man, “You fool!  Tonight, this very night, your life will end.  And your barnful of wealth: who gets it?  You’re living by the old rules to the old game.  You’re relying on your stockpile of wealth to save you, rather than God’s day-to-day providence.”

In his 2^nd letter to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul wrote about the churches in Macedonia.  Paul was so excited to tell the news of these churches, because they had learned to live by the new rules of God’s economics. 

The churches in Macedonia had experienced a very difficult trial, an ordeal that pushed them to the very limit.  It’s not clear what these difficulties were, exactly, but the churches did face great opposition in their communities, and they were exceedingly poor.  “Dirt poor,” I think, is how Paul describes it in Hebrew. 

It was no doubt a stressful time, a time of uncertainty.

In circumstances like that, it would certainly have been tempting for the churches in Macedonia to want to hold on to what little money they had, for their own ministry, their own members, their own needs. 

But having learned the new rules of God’s economics, they begged Paul for the privilege of making a generous contribution to the needs of other churches in other regions.  They truly believed that only if they could show love to others by sharing generously what they had, would they be able to experience the abundance of God themselves.  Their true colors showed through even in their time of trial, for even then, they refused to live by the old rules, and instead embraced the new rules of God’s economics.

And because they believed so strongly in the new rules of God’s economics and the new kingdom these rules represented, it was vitally important for them to invest in it.  It was essential that they not just speak of this new kingdom, this new way of living, this new game with its new rules, but that they “put their wallet where their mouth is,” so to speak.

Their actions were a sign of trust in God.  If they had believed that their future depended on their ability to hold on to what little they had, that would be a demonstration of a very weak faith. 

Instead, they trusted in the God who provided for God’s people time and time again in the desolate, barren wilderness, a place symbolizing scarcity and lack of resources, a place that, through God’s grace, became a place of abundance.  They trusted in the God who provided manna in the wilderness.  They trusted in the God who provided abundant loaves of bread and fish in the wilderness.  This same God, they believed, would provide for them, and so they insisted on being a part of that; they insisted on living by the rules of abundance, rather than the rules of scarcity; they insisted on sharing and loving, even though they had so little.

The gift they made impressed the apostle Paul, who was so overjoyed at their generosity that he told the story of their generous sharing to churches in other regions, to inspire them, and encourage them to also live by the new rules and new economy of God’s kingdom. 

Then Paul said to these other churches:  “You have excelled in so many things.  You have excelled in faith; you have excelled in speech; you have excelled in knowledge; you have excelled in enthusiasm; and you have excelled in love. 

“Now, excel in living by the new rules of God’s economy.  Excel in generosity, excel in giving, excel in sharing.”

This, of course, is the challenge for us.  In our modern society, the old rules are drilled into our minds in a way that far surpasses even the efforts of Pharaoh and Herod.  Mostly, this takes place through advertising, nearly all of which tells us we should be living by the old rules, the rules of scarcity, the rules of “too much is never enough.” 

And it’s impossible to avoid all these ads.  A recent New York Times article mentioned that “Supermarket eggs have been stamped with the names of CBS television shows. Subway turnstiles bear messages from Geico auto insurance. Chinese food cartons promote Continental Airways. US Airways is selling ads on motion sickness bags. And the trays used in airport security lines have been hawking Rolodexes.”  A person living in the city sees over 5,000 ads a day… and nearly all of them, in some way, reinforce the old rules.

In the face of this onslaught, what chance do a couple of stories from the Bible have?  How can we ever hope to find people in the world who excel in generosity, who live with a mindset of abundance and faith in God’s goodness?  How can we ever hope to find people in the world who are willing to live by the new rules of sharing and loving?

I don’t know if we ever will find such people “in the world.”  But I do know that we find them in God’s church.