The Reward of Giving

The morning lesson today comes from Mark’s Gospel and just before the text I am about to read there is the story about the rich, young man who came to Jesus and asked the Lord how to inherit eternal life. (Mark 10.17-22) We’re told that Jesus loved the man and told him what he needed to do: sell all he had and give the money to the poor, then follow Jesus. Hearing that, the man became dejected and went away because he was very rich.

So with that story as background, in today’s text Jesus tries to teach the disciples who were with him about money. Jesus said, “It’s harder for the rich to be saved than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.” That idea totally flummoxed the disciples.

Now some Bible interpreters have attempted to soften their perplexity by suggesting that Jesus didn’t mean to be taken literally. They say there was a gate in ancient Jerusalem named “Needle Gate” and it was very small, so small that a camel could only get through it if it crawled on its knees and camels don’t like to do that! But even if there was a small gate named Needle, that misses the whole point. Jesus meant to say that getting saved was impossible for rich people. Even the wealth of Bill Gates doesn’t get one pinkie into the kingdom of heaven. In fact, salvation is impossible for everybody, rich or poor, because salvation is only possible for God and we can’t do one thing to help it. We can only accept what God has already done.

When we accept what God has done and how much God has given to us and when we ourselves learn to give, then we experience a wonderful reward. That’s what I want to talk about this morning. So let’s read it in Mark 10.

Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” They were greatly astounded and said to one another, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”

As we get ready to turn in our Estimate of Giving cards for next year, I want to talk about money, the subject about which Jesus spoke more than any other, and I want you to use your imaginations. Imagine that one day a limousine pulls up to your house and out steps a uniformed man. He comes to the door and when you answer it he gives you a hand-engraved envelope. It is addressed to you by name and says:

Please join us for dinner next Saturday evening. Bring your Bible. We are three wealthy individuals who desperately want to know what God thinks about our money. You’ll find us to be very receptive to whatever insights you can provide.

And it is personally signed by Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and Paul Allen. After reading the note, you check the envelope just to make sure it is meant for you. It is.

Imagine that. These three men, among the richest in the world, with a combined net worth of $125 billion, give or take a buck or two, are inviting you to dinner so you can explain to them how God feels about money. Would you do it?

Of course, it can be a little intimidating to be around such incredible wealth, but pretend that you overcame your anxiety and planned to attend the dinner. I think you could actually teach those really rich men some true wisdom about how God views money. Among the many things you could say, let me suggest two ideas.

The first thing you could say to Bill and Warren and Paul is that having enough money will never make you happy. That sounds like a cliché but it is the truest thing about money. Having enough of it will never make us happy and we need to hear that no matter how much or how little money we have.

Some of you will remember this. Several years ago when Mark McGwire signed a three-year, $28.5 million contract with the St. Louis Cardinals, he pledged $1 million per year over the length of the contract to begin a foundation for abused children. As he made this announcement, the star player broke down and cried for more than 30 seconds. He later explained to ESPN magazine, “the money we make in baseball is so ridiculous, how can you not do something like that?”[1]

In fact, many people, even very rich people, don’t do that because they wrongly believe that having enough money will make them happy. The problem is that the target for “enough” keeps moving. A financial guru named Ken Roberts said that when he first began building his fortune, he thought that $1 million was the magic number that would make him happy and eliminate all his worries. When he became a millionaire, he realized that he needed $5 million to be happy and at peace. When he accumulated a net worth of $5 million, the target changed to $10 million. He finally realized that no amount would ever be enough. His peace of mind would have to come from something other than his bank account.

We can see this in so many ways. I read some time ago that Orange County, California is now the most affluent county in the nation. According to Money magazine, the median income in Orange County is 80% above the rest of the country. Yet when Orange County residents were surveyed, the overwhelming response from the majority of them was, “I need a little bit more.”[2] Here are thousands of the richest people in the world, and yet instead of enjoying their wealth, instead of being grateful for all they do have, they are convinced they need more.

Of course, the secret here is being content with what we have. We may not have Bill’s or Warren’s or Paul’s or even Orange County’s wealth but we all enjoy abundance and God would have us learn to be content in it. To the extent that we do learn that, we would actually have something worthwhile to teach our really rich friends. Learn to enjoy what you have because having enough money will never make you happy.

The second thing you could say to the very rich is the obverse of the first point: giving will make you happy. Having enough money will never make you happy but giving will make you happy. And here’s a true story I read awhile back.

The story was told by a Quaker theologian and philosopher named Parker Palmer. One day Palmer was a passenger on a plane that pulled away from the gate, taxied to a remote corner of the field, and stopped. I’ve had that feeling; perhaps you have too. The plane stops and you look out the window and see that you’re not on the runway and the engines wind down and your heart sinks. The pilot came on the intercom and said, “I have some bad news and some really bad news. The bad news is there’s a storm front in the west, Denver is socked in and shut down. We’ve looked at the alternatives and there is none. So we’ll be staying here for a few hours. That’s the bad news. The really bad news is that we have no food and it’s lunch time.”

Everybody groaned. Some passengers started to complain, some became angry. But then, Palmer said, one of the flight attendants did something truly amazing.

She came on the intercom and said, “We’re really sorry folks. We didn’t plan it this way and we really can’t do much about it. And I know for some of you this is a big deal. Some of you are really hungry and were looking forward to a nice lunch. Some of you may have a medical condition and really need lunch. Some of you may not care one way or the other and some of you need to skip lunch. So I’ll tell you what we’re going to do.

“I have a couple of breadbaskets up here and we’re going to pass them around and I’m asking everybody to put something in the basket. Some of you brought a little snack along — something to tide you over — just in case something like this happened, some peanut butter crackers, candy bars. And some of you have a few LifeSavers or chewing gum or Rolaids. And if you don’t have anything edible, you have a picture of your children or spouse or girlfriend or boyfriend or a bookmark or a business card. Everybody put something in and then we’ll reverse the process. We’ll pass the baskets around again and everybody can take out what he or she needs.

“Well,” Palmer said, “what happened next was amazing. The griping stopped. People started to root around in pockets and handbags. Some got up and opened their suitcases stored in the overhead luggage racks and got out boxes of candy, a salami, a bottle of wine. People were laughing and talking. The flight attendant had transformed a group of people who were focused on need and deprivation into a community of sharing and celebration. She had transformed scarcity into a kind of abundance.”

A couple of hours later the flight did eventually proceed. Having reached their destination, Parker Palmer stopped while deplaning and spoke to the flight attendant. “Do you know there’s a story in the Bible about what you did back there? It’s about Jesus feeding a lot of people with very little food.”

So tell Bill and Warren and Paul, and tell yourselves too, that we learn this by learning to give and learning to give is the reward of giving, a reward we can enjoy now and forever. The principle is illustrated in a book called The Writing Life by well-known author, Annie Dillard. She writes about writing but she is really writing about living.

“One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later time in the book or for another book: Give it, give it all, give it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water.… Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.”[4]

God’s blessings fill us like well water and if we try to keep everything for ourselves it just turns to ash. But because God is the Giver of life, what we give away in God’s name we will have forever, and the happiness it brings will be a great and lasting reward.

[2] From a sermon by Steve May, “Living In a Material World,” online, www.sermons.com, 1998, © Alderson Press Corporation.

[3] This story of Palmer’s was retold in a sermon by John M. Buchanan, “Abundance,” online, http://www.fourthchurch.org/, Internet, 26 March 2000.

[4] Annie Dillard, The Writing Life (New York: Harper & Row, 1989) 78.