St. Paul reminds us of this truth today, “he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly.” He speaks of sowing rather than giving so that we can think of the start we have made with the Lord, the life we have only with Him, as a spiritual ‘investment’ whose growth is vital to the health of our soul and our salvation. Just as a farmer must plant abundantly to reap the fruits of a great harvest, so we are reminded that the same holds true for us with regard to our spiritual sowing.
The truth is, that while many of us worry about our finances and our provision for the future, we often neglect to exercise as much concern about our eternal souls. We forget the opportunities we have each day to make use of the tools of healing, salvation, and eternal life imparted to us y Christ through His holy Church.
A contrary impulse is often at work in us, which goes like this: the more I focus on myself, the more I serve myself, the more treasure I store up for myself, the more secure I’ll be in the world. How easy it is to be inordinately focused on material well-being, storing up treasure here, rather than focused on our life in Jesus Christ, our salvation, our treasure in heaven.
One of the greatest temptations we face is the lust of money and the presumption that our material well-being buys us security. The tighter the hold onto our worldly possessions, the more difficult it is to give to others, to be generous—not only with our money, but also with our time, our gifts and our talents. In such a case, our money and possessions cease to be our servant, and rather become our possessor. Christ warns us, that we cannot serve two masters. We cannot serve God and mammon (money) (Matt. 6:24).
Because this peril so easily threatens our spiritual growth and healing, our very souls and salvation, Jesus talked more about money and its place in our lives, than about anything else beside theKingdomofGoditself. Money, power, lust for it, can be among the greatest stumbling blocks to us in our walk with God. And so for us, money, its hold on us, our attitude toward it, and what we do with it, pertain directly to our relationship with God and our salvation.
Now money, possessions, wealth are not evils in themselves. Rather, it’s the hold we let them have on us that makes them so. It doesn’t matter how much or how little we have: the pursuit of mammon, Christ says, can divide us from the abundant life in Him, from seeing Christ as our God, the only Life-giver. It’s God ultimately who provides for us and those we love.
As a remedy to combat this temptation and trust God more, not just with our material provision, but also with our spiritual provision, God calls on us to give back to Him and the work of His Church. The extent that we return a portion from that which He has entrusted to us, determines how much we reap spiritually in our own lives and how well the church through which God feeds us is able to grow to minister to our needs and those of others.
A popular Romanian folktale relates the story of a stingy farmer who’s visited by an angel. The angel asks Him, “What would you give back to God? Give Him something and He will give you something in return.” The farmer had with him a basket full of choice fruits—huge melons, apples, squash, and a few tiny nuts. The man, forgetting that ultimately it’s God who enabled him to harvest such a bounty in the first place, looked into his basket, reluctantly reached in, and pulled out the tiniest of nuts and gave it to the angel. Instantly, the small nut was transformed into solid gold—the size of the tiny nut he gave. Then the angel disappeared.
Our sowing isn’t about how much any one individual gives to the Church, but the heart which gives it and the generosity in which it is given and entrusted to God and His work. We remember what Christ said when He saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury, 2 and He saw also a certain poor widow putting in two mites. 3 So He said, “Truly I say to you that this poor widow has put in more than all. For all these out of their abundance have put in offerings for God,[a] but she out of her poverty put in all the livelihood that she had ” (Lk. 21:1-4).
Integral to our healing, our growth, our salvation in Christ, is our coming outside ourselves to serve God by loving and serving our fellow man, first through the Church and building it up so it can minister to the needs of the people of God, and then, being thus equipped, we are called to go forth to minister to our neighbor, to the world around us in Christ’s name, drawing others as well to the knowledge and love of Christ through His holy Church.
And so, as we think about our own sowing, our own spiritual ‘investment’ in Christ and His work through us, it’s helpful to think of it in terms of offering the first-fruits not only of our treasure, but also of our time and our gifts and talents as well. All that we have is ultimately a gift and grace from God. We give, in return, with a spirit of thanksgiving for all His bounty to us. Tithing, the biblical model, means giving 10 percent of our income back to God; it’s the most ancient precedent for giving in the Church. By tithing, God reminds us of whose money it actually is, where it came from and what it’s for—to serve us, not to master us, to serve to build His Church, so that we and many others can enjoy the spiritual treasures of theKingdomofGod.
The Church gives us the model of a priest serving full-time to build up and equip the family of God in the local church—to minister the Sacraments, pastor, encourage, extort, positively challenge the faithful to repentance, and teach the faith. It’s his responsibility to invest spiritually in the lives of all his parishioners and love them as a spiritual father. The priest, in turn, is supported by the tithes and offerings of the faithful. In this way, the whole Body of Christ is built up: the priest is enabled to care for the faithful and model family life. He helps his spiritual children grow in faith and service to one another; the faithful, in turn, give back to the Church in thanksgiving to God so that the Church can continue to grow, both in spirit and in numbers.
And so, as you see, there’s a sacramental aspect to this sowing, this offering. God uses to His glory whatever we give Him—even the tiniest seed (or nut) of faith, and He transforms it and uses it to His glory. God takes the smallest of our prayer efforts and He works through them. He blesses us each time we make it to church to worship, or to receive the Sacraments, every time we serve or sing, He is at work, furthering us on our spiritual journey. And so it is with the time, talents, and treasure we entrust to Him as well.
But it’s also true, that the more we give back to God in terms of our time, our talents, and our treasure, the more He will take them, use them, and give them back to us as growth and blessing, and He’ll keep us safe from the love of money. This is where the investment part comes in. For here is the other truth imparted to us today, “he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.”
What would have happened to our farmer if he had presented God with the melon instead of the tiniest nut? The more we’re willing to give back to God, to give up to God, the more we receive back from Him. The more we’re willing to entrust our possessions, our time, our treasures and gifts to God, the more He transforms them into ‘spiritual gold’ in our own lives.
I’ve announced to you all that I have a great surprise to share with you all this Sunday. Are you ready? Holy Archangels has been chosen as one of two missions in all of North America to receive the OCA’s Mission Grant. This is a matching-grant program designed to grow missions by enabling the priest to be compensated so he can minister full time to equip the faithful, and so that the faithful in their growth can help grow the church by bringing others to Christ as well.
Besides being a humbling honor and blessing for us, the Mission Grant is an exciting opportunity for all of us to be engaged in striving to live out our faith together, both so that we can heal and grow in Christ ourselves, but also so that others may come to share Christ in His Church too.
The more we’re willing to struggle to entrust those things to God—our time, our finances—the more God grows us in faith and uses us. He returns spiritual blessings to us, as St. Paul says, “that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, have an abundance for every good work.”
I encourage you to take another, bigger step of faith this year. Maybe last year was the first year you ever gave of yourself, your time, your treasurer to Christ and His Church on any consistent basis. Think about the ways God has blessed you this past year through Holy Archangels. Pray about increasing your participation and your pledge offerings. Help us grow, be a sharer in the spiritual increase God will certainly bring. What would this church look like, how much outreach could we do, how many people, families and children would come to Christ and His Church, if we each gave 10 percent of our time, talents, and treasure back to God? Some of you may not be ready to give 10 percent, so how about 5 percent. Or, if you gave 1 percent last year, how about increasing it to 2 or 3 percent this year?
God is so good to us: He returns to us so much more than what we give and entrust to Him. This is as true with our prayers and our meek steps of faith, as it is with our time, talents, and treasure. I ask you to take this month to pray about your spiritual investment in Holy Archangels. Then, on Sunday, October 28 we’ll take whatever pledges we’ve received in the offering box and present them to God at the altar that He may bless our heart’s intentions, our spiritual investment.
What are you willing to sow, knowing that God will multiply your efforts? This much we know is true: He always gives to us so much more in return: “He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.” And so, as St. Paul further admonishes, “…let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver.”
Fr. Robert Miclean
Holy Archangels Orthodox Church
Sunday, 7 October 2012
Epistle: II Cor. 9:6-11
Gospel: Luke 7:11-16
