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Worship on November,1, 2009 – All Saint's Day

   Rev. Shannon Johnson Kershner
 

Exodus 35:4-36:7

I imagine this passage from Exodus rarely gets preached.  It is never included in the lectionary Scripture readings for each year.  And when I glanced through several Bible studies on the book of Exodus, I noticed that many of them end the study with Chapter 34 and the renewing of the covenant between God and Israel. None of the Bible Studies that I found even address this particular chapter, 35.  Maybe it is because it is a long Scripture selection.  Perhaps it has too many details and folks get lost in the telling of the story.  Of course, it could be that ministers have little desire to preach about the first-ever capital campaign in a faith community.  Your guess is as good as mine.  I don’t know why this chapter gets left out.  

But when I first heard it twelve years ago in worship at North Decatur Presbyterian Church in Decatur, GA, I knew I would have to preach it for myself one day.  I know that I would have to preach it on some future Sunday in my ministry when I was specifically focusing on the spiritual discipline of stewardship.  And today is the day, sisters and brothers.  So together, let us listen for its wisdom.

Many of you know the story of the Exodus, but let us remind ourselves.  The Israelites were slaves in the foreign land of Egypt.  Their taskmasters were treating them harsher each day.  The weight of their oppression began break their backs and their spirits.  In desperation, they cried out to God to help them.  And Scripture tells us God heard the sounds of their suffering and delivered them, bringing them from slavery into freedom, from desperation into hope, from Egypt into the wilderness on their way to the promised land.  And instead of allowing them to wander aimlessly in that unfamiliar wilderness, God guided them with a pillar of cloud by day and a fire by night.  

And when the people began to grumble because they were tired and hungry, God sent down manna for them to eat and be satisfied.  When the people began to complain because they were thirsty, God instructed Moses to strike a rock and water flowed freely and quenched their thirst.  When the people needed order and instruction, God sent them the Ten Commandments.[i]  When the people turned their backs and radically disobeyed their Creator, God called them back, forgave them, loved them still, and renewed their relationship.  As God and the Israelites traveled together, God’s generosity towards them became the blood flowing through their veins.  God’s generosity literally gave and preserved their lives.  If it were not for God’s constant love and help, well, we can only imagine what might have happened to them.

But we also know from all these stories that the Israelites were far from perfect.  We have many, many pictures of their humanness.  They grumbled.  They murmured.  They complained.  They disobeyed.  They tried to tell God what God should do, when God should do it and how God should do it.  At the height of their fear, they even went as far as to create their own god.  The Israelites messed up again and again, earning the well-deserved reputation of being a stiff-necked people.  They were far from perfect.  
But today, in this strangely detailed text, we are given another portrait of our ancestors in the faith.  It appears that at this particular moment in their collective life, the Israelites are genuinely aware of all that God has done for them.  Maybe after the golden calf incident, they could not have imagined that God would give them another chance.  They knew they had messed up again and again.  

If they were God, they would have washed their hands of the whole Exodus mess and left them to fend for themselves.  And yet, they discovered God did not wash God’s hands of them.  Instead, the God who set them free renewed their covenant.  Once again, God promised to be their God and to make them God’s chosen people.  Once again, the God who had been so generous in liberation and in covenant-making, overflowed with a profound generosity of forgiveness.  

And in our text today, we see that Israel responded to God’s overflowing generosity.  Moses did not even have to give an annual stewardship sermon.  He simply let them know what was needed in order to build the Tabernacle.  And then he said, “Let whoever is of a generous heart bring the Lord’s offering.”  As Agnes Norfleet, my former pastor in Atlanta, stated, “Nothing was mandated, nothing required; no sermon about tithing; Moses didn’t lay on guilt or lift up slick stewardship slogans.  Moses simply appealed to their deep awareness of the abundant and undeserved goodness of God, and offered a simple invitation.”

Can you imagine it?  All Moses said was “Let whoever is of a generous heart bring the Lord’s offering,” and the congregation went wild.  The women and men went back to the tents, collected their gold, their bronze, and their silver, and brought it all to Moses.  Those who had the gift of weaving wove rich tapestries of blue, purple and crimson fabrics.  Those who had the gift of woodworking began construction.  The people came, and they came, and they came; morning, noon and night; offering their treasures, their gifts, their talents, their very selves in response to God’s faithfulness to them.  According to this Scripture, they did not give to be recognized, or because the current church programming was meeting their needs, or because they hoped to bribe God into blessing them more.  

No, none of those motivations was behind their staggeringly generous stewardship.  At least for that particular moment in the congregation’s life, their entire motivation was that they recognized that life itself is a gift from God.  So the only fitting way to live is with generous gratitude.  So the people gave, and gave, and gave.  And do you know what happened?  Moses actually had to ask them to stop giving.  Can you imagine it?  

Bezalel and Oholiab, the people chosen by God to lead the artisans, told Moses they had received way too much.  They asked Moses to restrain the people from giving anymore.  My goodness.  May there be a day where I get to preach that kind of stewardship sermon here with you. “Please, please.  You have given too much.  You have already brought more than enough.  Your giving is getting totally out of control.”  The Israelites were so caught up in responding to God’s generosity, that they did not even bother to calculate a pledge, or figure out their tithe, or weigh their needs against the needs of the church.  Somehow, they reached down into their spiritual depths and remembered.  They remembered God’s generous posture towards them.  They remembered how God continued to give them second chances.  They remembered how God continually saved and preserved their lives.  And they found themselves overwhelmed with gratitude, wanting to give back to the one who had given them so much.

As I mentioned at our Stewardship dinner last Sunday night, those of us in church leadership are feeling a bit of the pressure with this year’s Stewardship campaign.  We know that we must see increases from our total 2009 budgeted pledges in order to live into some of our vision for ministry and mission for 2010.  I have known about BMPC’s fiscal stress since before I moved here to be your pastor.  And so, part of what I did to prepare was to do some more research about other churches and stewardship.   And in that time of preparation, I made some interesting and some rather disheartening discoveries.  

I found that gratitude does not rank very high on the list of motivations for giving.  According to the Alban institute, if you really want to have a “successful” campaign, you need to show people how their gifts will get them the kind of programming they want.  That is called “reciprocity giving.” Or, you need to publicly recognize the big givers so as to encourage folks to follow in their footsteps.  Or, you need to emphasize that God will bless them if they bless the church, a kind of prosperity gospel--that is what you hear a lot with televangelists.  The research I found states clearly that people just don’t give simply because they are grateful for what God has given to them.  

And I have pondered all of that information.  But you know what I have decided?  I really don’t care if cultivating gratitude for God’s generosity is a successful financial strategy or not.  You know why?  Because it is faithful and biblical.  We are not about fundraising for a budget. Rather, we are about being good and generous stewards, like our ancestors in the faith.  They gave generously because they had seen God’s goodness in their lives.  They had felt God’s generosity.  They knew that God’s generosity was what flowed through their veins, giving and preserving their lives. And they were so overwhelmed by God’s goodness, they could not restrain themselves from giving, and giving, and giving.  They were generous because they knew God is generous.

But this morning, we take it another step.  For as Christians, we know that the story of God’s overflowing generosity did not stop with the Exodus narrative.  As you heard in our Mark reading, in the Upper Room that evening, God decided to empty God’s self completely.  Jesus took the bread and told his disciples “Take, this is my body.”  And he took the cup saying, “This is my blood of the covenant poured out for many.”  Can you imagine it?  God keeps on giving again and again, going so far as to give up the Son for us so that we might have life.  

At the Table, we see God’s overwhelming generosity graphically displayed.  Because, let’s be honest, we’ve been a stiff-necked people.  We’ve grumbled.  We’ve murmured.  We’ve complained.  We’ve tried to dictate to God what God needed to do. We’ve let other things take God’s place for our devotion and love.  And yet, just as God did with the Israelites, God keeps calling us back, loving us still, forgiving us again, and renewing our relationship through the cradle, the cross and the empty tomb.  God’s generosity flows through our bodies like the blood flows through our veins.  It literally gives and preserves our lives.  

So whether it is a popular strategy or not, I challenge all of us to remember.  Let us all remember God’s overwhelming generosity. Let us all remember what belongs to God.

And then, let whoever is of a generous heart bring the Lord’s offering.  Who knows?  Maybe next Sunday, on Commitment Sunday, as we bring forward our pledges of time, talent, and treasure, we might have to be restrained.  “No, no.  You have given too much.  Your generosity is overwhelming the church.” 

Wouldn’t that be something.