giving to God

Sermon Notes, Proper 24, Oct. 18, 2020 And thereby put me to the test, says the LORD of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need. Mal.3:10 "Mom, do you love me?" Every mother loves to hear their 6-year old ask that question. Because it gives them the chance to answer "Yes" in some way that expresses the love in their heart for their child. Does 6-year old Susie doubt that her mother loves her? Probably not. But it is as important for her to hear it from Mom as it is for Mom to say it. We all need the reassurance that we are loved. Yahweh's words to his people come after a litany of examples where they have shown how much they do not love him. The Lord warns them in Malachi 3: They've wearied the Lord by distrusting his justice. They have broken the vow of holiness he demands of those who would approach his altar. They've oppressed the poor and widows and laborers and aliens. And lastly, they've withheld the tithe they promised him. They have tested his patience with them. They are in deep need of hearing, "I love you." They have not earned it. But that's the thing about "I love you." It can't be earned. If Susie broke every dish in the sink, Mom would still say, "I love you" to her. Because love is not conditional. It can't be earned. Love defies every attempt to call it something else; just rewards, or accrued assets, or due measure. Love, as Paul says, "is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs." 1 Cor. 13:4,5. Love just is, like the air we breathe. Only benevolent as well as necessary. But it has to be claimed. Love unclaimed is love not realized. If Mom doesn't respond to Susie, Mon's love doesn't reach Susie. Yahweh is pleading with his people to claim his love. There is a very special way they can do that. By trusting him to provide what he has promised. They cannot receive what he has in store for them unless they return to him the tithe on what he has already given them. Th gifts they have already received, the full measure of his benevolence, is but a down payment on what else he holds in trust for them. "Test me," he says. See "if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need." That 10% which they promised to give him but then didn't, is a key to a whole vault of treasure waiting for them. Unfortunately, this passage has often been used to justify a quid pro quo act of giving on order to receive. Such is the practice of espousers of the prosperity gospe, where we are taught to give in order to get. That's never been how God gives, or how Jesus taught us to give. That's not giving to God, but rather giving to ourselves by way of God. If you haven't figured it out yet, , this sermon is about giving to God. I want to be clear about that. It's not about giving to the church, or St. Brendan's. It's about giving to God. Because only God can make the claim he makes in Malachi. St. Brendan's cannot promise you that if you give us 10% you will be blessed beyond measure. Neither can the ACNA. But God says test me on that. Those blessings belong to Him and he will do what he says. God invites his people to test him. In our Gospel reading from Matthew it's the other way around. Here, the Pharisees test Jesus and try to lure him into saying something that will entrap him and possibly be condemned by his own words. They enlist the help of the Herodians, sympathetic to Rome, who could be counted on to tattle to Pilate if Jesus said something incendiary about Caesar. So they pose this question: "Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?" If Jesus says no it is not lawful, off go the Herodians to Pilate. If he says yes, then the Pharisees have ammunition to spread among the people about Jesus' affiliation with their oppressors. Jesus answers their question with one of his own. "Why put me to the test, you hypocrites?" Testing God is a serious matter. When Satan tested Jesus in the wilderness, Jesus rebuked him with an admonition from Deuteronomy 6:16. "Do not test the Lord your God, as you did at Massah." Satan recognizes the authority Jesus speaks from and leaves him. So when Jesus says these same words to the Pharisees, they know whose side they are on and it is not God's. Testing God is an act of defiance, of idolatry, of challenging God's place as One, Holy and alone worthy of worship. One does not test God, unless God invites us to test him. Then it is to demonstrate his truth and goodness. To tell us he loves us when we need to hear it. But that's hardly the disposition of the Pharisees. Jesus' enigmatic example of the coin inscribed to Caesar and its inference, "Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's," sent them away humbled and crushed. By their questioning, the Pharisees demonstrated they did not understand about giving to God. To them, giving was an act of compliance and they were quite right in suggesting to Jesus that compliance could not be split between God and Caesar. Jesus himself said you cannot serve two masters. They erred when they demanded that Jesus make a choice between the two, as if one could replace the other. Jesus answer to them is that Caesar and God are in two different worlds. They are not competing for the same coin. Caesar's world is a world of tax and duty. God's world is of love and generosity. You do not give up God's world by complying with Caesar's. Nor should living in God's world exempt you from the rules of Caesar's. Jesus is saying again he is in the world but not of the world. And those who would be his followers must have the same regard for worldly and heavenly distinctions as he does. What has all this to do with giving to God? Simply this, if giving for us is a choice between giving to the world and giving to God, we're in the camp of the Pharisees. We are meting out our obligations: this to God, this to Caesar (or the world). By contrast, giving to God is giving as God gives to us: not counting the cost, not calculating the return; but out of love so love can flourish. God tells us how much he loves us by all the gifts he gives us. The greatest gift being the life of his Son Jesus Christ who gave his life for ours. We reply, "I love you too," by the gifts we give to him. Give to Caesar what you must. We're not free of that obligation. Give to God of God's gifts to you. Generosity, hospitality, friendship. And financially. He invites us to put him to the test, give to Him and see if he doesn't open the doors of heaven for us and pour down blessings upon us. Amen.