Sunday
11/17/19 - Sidney UMC
Sermon Title: “All Will Be Thrown Down”
Old Testament
Scripture: Isaiah 12
New Testament
Scripture: 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13
Gospel Lesson: Luke
21:5-19
Welcome again my
brothers and sisters, on this the Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost. Twenty-Three
Sundays after the Christian Church was born on the day of Pentecost nearly
two-thousand years ago in Jerusalem. On that day the Holy Spirit moved in a
mighty way, giving birth to the church, and nearly two-thousand years later we
are gathered here as part of that great cloud of witnesses.
With this said, every year I am asked during pledge season,
to give a special sermon on Consecration Sunday. This is the Sunday in life of
the church that I am asked to talk about giving. In general, I don’t like
talking about giving, and I like to call this sermon every year, “The Sermon on
the Amount”. No not “The Sermon on the Mount,” but “The Sermon on the Amount”.
A sermon about giving. As I said, I don’t like preaching on giving.
Yet, and this amazes me, for the last two-thousand years,
most Christian Churches have existed because of faith and giving. Some
countries have historically funded their churches through taxes, but most
countries fund their churches through personal giving. The Sidney United
Methodist Church exists, because we have faith, we preach the gospel of Jesus
Christ, and we serve and love the community. This congregation decided many
years ago, that we have faith in Christ, we want to worship God, to love each
other, and to serve the community and the world.
Since we made these decisions together, we built this
church, we work through this church for God, and we give to God through this
church. We are not giving to a building, we are giving to support the work of
Jesus Christ that happens in and through us in and out of this building. We are
hopefully giving because we believe in what we are giving to.
Melissa and I don’t talk about our own personal finances
much, but we do very much enjoy giving to the organization, Compassion
International. Every month, we give $38 dollars to Compassion International.
Through this organization, we sponsor a girl in the country of Bolivia named Arianne.
Arianne sends us letters and we send her letters. Her family has very little,
and Lord willing she will now be able to finish school one day and have a
brighter future.
We sponsored another girl before Arianne, and she was the
first one in her family to complete high school, and her life has been changed.
She has faith, hope, and a bright future ahead of her.
Melissa and I also give to this church, and we have given
to every church that we have ever served or attended. We don’t give to this
church because it is required to do so in my annual contract to be your pastor.
We don’t give to impress anyone or to look good, we give because the scripture
says in 2 Corinthians 9:7 that:
“Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not
reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver” (2
Cor. 9:7, NRSV).
Many of us know and have heard sermons
about the Bible telling us to give 10% of our income, and some of us have heard
many many many sermons to this effect. The church should not be funded through
coercion, or through a pastor guilting, shaming, or almost using extortion to
get you to give to the church.
Instead, as the Apostle Paul says in
his Second Epistle or letter to the Corinthians once again:
“Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not
reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver” (2
Cor. 9:7, NRSV).
Melissa and I give out this spirit. When I was a lay
person, Melissa and I gave. We have also given at all five of the churches that
I have served at, this one included. We give because we believe that the gospel
of Jesus Christ is alive, active, in the hope of the world, and is being
preached and lived out here. We give because we love and believe in you all, we
believe in the people of the Sidney United Methodist Church, and we believe in
Sidney. We give, “not reluctantly or under compulsion,” because we believe in
what we are giving to. We give to Compassion International, because we believe
in that organization.
Some of us have the ability to give more than others. Some
of us can give a lot financially, and some can’t. Some of us can give time,
work, help, or leadership. There are indeed many ways to give to and to serve
God through the church. All of these forms of service matter and are valuable
to God, to me, to this church, to this community, and to this world.
Yet it falls to me one Sunday of every year to give this
sermon that I hate to give that I jokingly call “The Sermon on the Amount”. The
church, even though at its core, is a mission that lives and breathes to bring
people to Christ for the transformation of the world, the church has to be
funded. My jaw dropped when I saw our heating estimate for the church and the
parsonage that is about $16,000 dollars. Giving is a challenging thing, but
Melissa and I give because we believe in what we are giving to.
I have never told a church publicly what Melissa and I
give, but I decided to this morning. Melissa and I faithfully give to this
church $175 dollars a week. We also give extra on special giving Sundays and on
Easter and Christmas. We happily donate in many other ways, as well.
Even though I didn’t ask for it, this church offered me a
2% raise for 2020. I went home and told Melissa, and then when I went to speak,
she jokingly said, “I know Paul, we need to increase our giving for next year”.
We decided that in 2020 we are going to give $180 a week to the church, because
as the church gives me more, I give more to God through the church.
God has blessed my wife and me richly, and because of this,
we give because we believe in what God is doing in this place called the Sidney
United Methodist Church. We give, because we believe that God honors our
giving, we give so that the church can continue to do the great ministries it
has always done, and we give because we love and believe in you, this church,
and this community. We also give, because you can’t out give God.
I hope and pray to be your pastor well into the future.
This year, 2019, we are also running a sizable budget deficit, and while we
have a church endowment fund, eventually that fund will run out of money. This
is not likely to happen anytime soon, but my vision for this church is this. If
we can raise our giving, then we can meet all of our bills, and we can then
also add to our endowment, not take away from it. If we can do this, we can
secure this church, and what God is doing in us and through this church for
many many years to come.
When our giving goes up, this doesn’t mean that Pastor Paul
gets rich, or gets some massive raise, and even if I did get a raise I would
likely give most it right back to this church. I joked with a member of this
church recently that if I won the lottery, I would continue to pastor this
church with no salary. This person said that they have known a lot of pastors,
but that they actually believed me when I said this.
Melissa and I are here and are committed to gospel of Jesus
Christ in this church, though, you, and through this community. We are here for
the right reasons, and we hope our giving increases for the right reason.
I don’t know about you, but I deeply saddened when churches
close, but this isn’t and won’t be our story. Our story will be one where the
church continues to grow and continues to flourish.
Friends,
brothers and sisters, I’m asking you to believe in your pastor, to believe in
your church, and to believe in the people of this community. When you decide
what you want to give to this church for next year, I pray that is it because
of what you believe and not giving “reluctantly or under compulsion”.
The Christian Church has existed for nearly two-thousand
years, and it is almost always funded through the faith, generosity, and the love
of the people. The church of Jesus Christ will never parish, but some of our individual
churches in the coming years might. Do believe in what God is doing in and
through us in the Sidney UMC? Melissa and I do, and were all in, and we’re committed.
Now that I have finished my “Sermon on the Amount” for this
morning, the Apostle Paul once again reminds us in 2 Thessalonians 3 to not be
idle, to labor for the Lord, and this reading ends once again with 3:13 that
says:
“Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing
what is right” (2
Thess. 3:13, NRSV)
This
leads me to my actual sermon title from our gospel of Luke reading for this
morning called, “All Will Be Thrown Down”. In this gospel lesson once again,
Jesus predicts the destruction of the great temple in Jerusalem. This temple is
then in fact destroyed about 40-years after Jesus’ prediction. Today, in the
Holy City of Jerusalem, all that stands where the great temple once was, is the
Western or Wailing Wall. Heads of state and world leaders have gone to the
Western Wall to pray or to put a prayer note in the wall.
So
the whole temple was destroyed, as Jesus predicted that it would be this
morning. Jesus said of the temple that “All Will Be Thrown Down”. This temple,
Jesus said, will be destroyed, and it was by the Romans around 70 AD. Well what
does this have to with our pledge drive, our Consecration Sunday, or “The
Sermon on the Amount”?
The
answer is this, Jesus is telling his disciples and us, not to worship this
building, but to worship God. We already have this building, and I hope and
pray that we can keep it for many years, but Melissa and I don’t give to a
building. We give to God because we believe in what is happening here. We give
to God, to love our church family, our community, and to support the lifesaving
work of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We love this building, but we don’t worship
it. We don’t give so that this building will always be here, we give so that
this congregation can continue to do the work of the Lord for many years to
come, building or not.
Let’s
look once again at what our gospel of Luke reading says for this morning. Once again
it says of the great Temple in Jerusalem:
“When
some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones
and gifts dedicated to God, he said, “As for these things that you see, the
days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown
down” (Lk. 21:5-6, NRSV).
Jesus is saying that the great Temple
of Jerusalem that housed the 10-Commandments, the Ark of Covenant, will be
destroyed. It’s not about the fancy building, it’s about God and what He is
doing through us. We give, hopefully, because we believe in what we are giving
to. We don’t worship a building, we worship God. We give because we believe in
what the church is doing in the world through us. There is still no great
temple in Jerusalem nearly two-thousand years later, and the Western Wall is
all that remains even today.
Being curious and inquisitive however,
the disciples then ask Jesus how will they know when the temple is to be
destroyed? The gospel lesson then concludes by saying:
“They asked him, “Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the
sign that this is about to take place?” And he said, “Beware that you are not
led astray; for many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and,
‘The time is near!’ Do not go after them. “When
you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must
take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.” Then he said to
them, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will
be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will
be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven. “But
before all this occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand
you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and
governors because of my name. This will give you an opportunity to testify. So
make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; for I will give you
words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to
withstand or contradict. You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by
relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. You will be
hated by all because of my name. But not a hair of your head will perish. By
your endurance you will gain your souls” (Lk. 21:7-19, NRSV).
Jesus
says, trust him and serve him, and trust that God will take care of the rest.
When we give, whatever we give, or
how we give, may we give because we believe in the mission of what we are
giving to. May we give so that people might be saved by Jesus Christ, and equipped
to transform the world. May we prayerfully decide to give to God through this
church, because we believe in our pastor, our people, our community, and
because of what God is doing in and through us. For as the Apostle Paul said
once again in 2 Corinthians 9:7:
“Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly
or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver” (2
Cor. 9:7, NRSV).
And this
brothers and sisters, is my annual “Sermon on the Amount”. Amen.
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