Sun Kwak, “Grace and Generosity”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3S0BKQKDYzI

TEXT: 2 Corinthians 8:1-15

[1] We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia, [2] for in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. [3] For they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own accord, [4] begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints—[5] and this, not as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us. [6] Accordingly, we urged Titus that as he had started, so he should complete among you this act of grace. [7] But as you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in all earnestness, and in our love for you—see that you excel in this act of grace also.

[8] I say this not as a command, but to prove by the earnestness of others that your love also is genuine. [9] For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich. [10] And in this matter I give my judgment: this benefits you, who a year ago started not only to do this work but also to desire to do it. [11] So now finish doing it as well, so that your readiness in desiring it may be matched by your completing it out of what you have. [12] For if the readiness is there, it is acceptable according to what a person has, not according to what he does not have. [13] For I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened, but that as a matter of fairness [14] your abundance at the present time should supply their need, so that their abundance may supply your need, that there may be fairness. [15] As it is written, “Whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack.”

SERMON: “Grace and Generosity”

In the early 1950’s there was an issue in the state of Mississippi with state legislature, and it was about the legalization of whiskey. There was a state legislator in the House of Representatives, a guy by the name of Noah Sweat, who went by the nickname Soggy. It was a nickname that he was said to have had since his childhood, and nicknames like those usually stick. Well, Soggy Sweat served as a state legislator from 1947-1952, after which he served as a judge, a law professor, and a district attorney for the remainder of his career. So, he left quite a mark in that realm. And in this particular moment on Friday, April 4, 1952, Soggy Sweat stood up to speak at the ripe age of 28 on the topic of the legalization of whiskey in the state of Mississippi. And the specific question on the table was — Do you approve or disapprove of the legalization of sales of whiskey in the state of Mississippi? And the way he answered has since been famously captured as the If by Whisky Speech. And here’s a part of what he said. And try to picture this with a thick southern accent. “If when you say whiskey you mean the Devil’s brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster, that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean that evil drink that topples the Christian man and woman from the pinnacle of righteous, gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation, and despair, and shame and helplessness, and hopelessness, then certainly I am against it. … But, if you when you say whiskey you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and laughter on their lips, and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer; if you mean the stimulating drink that puts the spring in the old gentleman’s step on a frosty, crispy morning; if you mean the drink which enables a man to magnify his joy, and his happiness, and to forget, if only for a little while, life’s great tragedies, and heartaches, and sorrows; if you mean that drink, the sale of which pours into our treasures untold millions of dollars, which are used to provide tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitiful aged and infirm; to build highways and hospitals and schools, then certainly I am for it. … This is my stand. I will not retreat from it. I will not compromise.” This speech became so well-known that he was said to have given it numerous times throughout his career, most notably at a Young Democrats dinner where Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kennedy was in attendance. It captured what’s come to be known as political double-speak. If By Whiskey.

Now, there’s a certain way that Christians today like to dance around certain topics, especially we who live in the comforts of suburban America. And it’s not that we’re shy or have a careful temperament. But as the Barna Reportgathers, the two most avoided topics in Christian circles have to do with food and money. And we’re tackling the second of those today, as we look at what it looks like to do life together as a community that shares in our finances. And for the record, this was something that you as the congregation wanted me to preach on — so, this one’s not on me, it’s on you. The timing of it being on Mother’s Day — that one’s on me. But here we are — and it’s an important topic. Because when the topic of money comes up, it does something kind of funny to us, because it lives in the inner sanctum of our hearts. Because we’re somehow very tight-fisted, in general, when it comes to our tithes and offeringsand when helping those in need. But our Amazon account order history might tell us that we are free spenders. We make all kinds of justifications for how we give, spend, or preserve. So, in some kind of Soggy Sweat kind of way, we avoid a hard stance on the issue — whether it’s about our giving, our spending, or our saving. And because this topic of money often lives in the inner sanctum of our lives, what we want to do confront it with the story of the gospel. Because this is the story that lives at the center of true Christian living. Now, you consider our passage today and who the apostle Paul is writing to. The Corinthians were a people from a happening city. These were people with means and resources. This is not an impoverished church that’s unable to give, because they don’t have the means. They have plenty to give — they just don’t have the habits, the reflexes. And that’s a little bit of what the apostle Paul is seeking to develop and to show these Corinthians. That they’re able to give and give habitually by looking into a story that develops these reflexes of grace. And what he does is lead us toward a parallel story involving a sister congregation — the Macedonians. And they ultimately lead to the ultimate story — the gospel story, where the Prince of Heaven left all his riches to come to be amongst a spiritually impoverished people. And that’s what we’re going to be looking into today, as we investigate how money plays into how we do life together here at Christ Our Redeemer. How the gospel confronts our distorted attachment to money.

Now, these Macedonians are described here, and a legitimate question to ask is what they’re doing here in this passage. And there are layers to this. Because their inclusion here involves a third church, and that’s the church in Jerusalem — the epicenter of the early Judeo-Christian movement. This is kind of like the mother ship of the early church. We find out later in ch9v12 that they’ve been hit by a famine. And for some time, what the apostle Paul did was go around collecting funds to aid this church. If you look over towards the end of Acts 2, the apostle Peter preaches this incredible sermon, and people are converted by the thousands, and so, the church starts multiplying. And one of the ways this church is described is in Acts 2:45: “And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.” This was the church that first modeled  this otherworldly generosity early on. And this is now the church that’s needing help because of a famine that’s hit them. And the apostle Paul is collecting funds to bring to them. And one of the things this did was remove this church in Jerusalem from the center of Christianity. That while it was the mother ship of sorts, it was not the source of power for this early movement. That up to this point, it was kind of perceived as such. But just as Israel was first organized where the twelve tribes were organized three in each direction — North, South, East, and West, with the Tabernacle in the center. Meaning Godat the very center of it all. Here, with the de-centering of the Jerusalem church, the apostle Paul is showing Christ at the very center of it all.

And so, the apostle Paul draws from these Macedonians as an example. We’re told here that they have an abundance of joy, with limited means — extreme poverty is what the apostle Paul says. So, here’s this poor congregation. And yet, they not only give, but give beyond their means. And verse 4 tells us that they were begging the apostle Paul that they might give more. And one of the reasons the apostle Paul says he refrains from receiving their gift was to give these Corinthians an opportunity to give likewise. And so, the apostle Paul brings up this congregation to reveal the counterculture of Christian giving that might compel these Corinthians to also give of their resources. There’s a sociologist who conducted a study to investigate an observation about giving and socioeconomics. And he did it in two parts. First, he observed that the primary cause toward giving and generosity was empathy. And then, that those who were in lower income brackets gave more percentage wise than those in higher income brackets. And so, in one of the followup studies conducted was gathering people of diverse socioeconomic backgrounds to watch a common videoregarding the struggles of third world countries. And if the statistical level of giving was an indicator, the poorer peoplewould have been expected to have a higher natural level of empathy. But the conclusion was that the reaction to the video was the same across the board and the level of empathy for these suffering in third world countries was also the same. And so, it wasn’t that those poorer were naturally more empathetic. But the conclusion was that because of their regular exposure to those living under the poverty lines, it was the regularity of their proximity to poverty that generated more inclinations to give.

Because what the apostle Paul was showing through this church in Macedonia was a church that was highly empathetic — so much so that they were begging to give more, even when they didn’t have much. It’s as if they had holes in their hands. Whatever they had and could grasp, they didn’t hold onto, because they were so willing to give to others and empty of themselves. Because they had drawn near. But ultimately because they knew of another who himself had holes in his hands who drew near to them. And these were generous hands of the giver of life. And in the most radical generosity, they saw the Father give up his Son and the Son give up his life and relinquish his rights so that he might empty his assets onto those who had nothing to offer. And this radically changed the Macedonians. Because what Jesus did was not just regularly visit the spiritual poverty of his people. But he entered into it. He didn’t just visit the neighborhood, he moved in. He not only visited us in our poverty, but he became poor. We read in verse 9— For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich. And what we note here is not that he became less rich. It’s that he became poor. From rich to poor — we call that a status change. And this important, because it’s at the heart of the gospel. Because this for your sake we read here in verse 9 reminds us of something he’s already said in ch5v21, where we read — For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. This great exchange of the sinless King dying for wretched servants. This swapping of the perfect Son who comes to trade places with estranged children due to our rebellion. The story of the gospel has everything to do with how we give and how we share. It sits at the center of our giving and generosity. That when we come to be proximate to the Son of God who was impoverished, it moves us and compels us to give, because he first drew near to us. Because note what the apostle Paul says here in verse 8 — this is not a command but a plea for love. A love not just for one another but a love that is deeply generated by our love of God that first comes through his love of us. Because at the heart of a generous heart is not the question of how much we love others. But at the heart of it, the fundamental question to ask is how much we love our God and how important the story of the gospel is to us.

And here’s how we’ll begin closing our time. A word that’s often associated with money today is the word risk. The risk involved when investing in something or spending overtly or even sharing or giving. Now, I don’t know if you knew this. But the word risk doesn’t actually appear in the English language until the sixteenth or seventeenth century. It’s a modern word, and it came about in Europe, with France and Italy around the time of the Enlightenment. And the original usage of the word had to do with charging onto the battlefield. It was to put yourself in danger, as a voluntary act similar to how we might describe courage in our context. But as we just spelled out, this word has morphed over the years and into modernity, especially with how we use the word in today’s day and age. And it evolved with these strong ties to the rise of capitalism. It’s become something related no longer with how we put our bodies but our finances and our assets and our investments forward, with the uncertainty of whether or not you’ll get back a return. And if you think about what’s happened here, we’ve made analogous our money with how people once spoke about their very own lives. In our modern expressive individualism, we’ve made something that was once about corporate glory to being about personal security. That in pre-modern times, risk had more to do with what you did in life or death situations for a greater cause, like charging the battlefield or fighting for your country. Because you think about what’s diametrically contrasted from risk, it’s comfort and security. And with comfort and security, these are things that not only have existential ties for the common person but for Christians, these also have salvific ties. And do you see what’s happened here? We’ve habited our hearts and our minds to attach money with things that have eternal and salvific ties, with the regular and everyday thoughts of risk. And in essence, we’ve functionally replaced God with the comfort and security that money provides as the ultimate anchor in our hearts and our souls. And the only way we can effectively reverse that is to show regularly to each other that there is a true salvation. And there is a true risk that we all peer into. That Jesus didn’t just charge the battlefield in going to the cross at the risk of his life but at the certain cost of it. And every Sunday, we come to this story that charges toward us — to confront our idols, to confront our false comforts, to confront our distorted views of our money. And it’s as we regularly visit this story that I believe we give and do life together here as a community. We not only owe it one another, we owe it to the gospel — to the story that saved us. And so, as we habit ourselves to give, may we first habit ourselves to visit this story. That the King of kings laid down his lifein order that we might have everlasting inheritance in his name.