Generosity and Thanksgiving

2 Corinthians 8:8-11, 16; 9:1-5, 6-15

God’s sense of timing is really quite comical – in the interest of full disclosure, I didn’t realize when I originally planned to do this sermon series on 2 Corinthians several months ago that we would hit the passage on generosity and thanksgiving on the last Sunday before our church fiscal year ends.  I assure you, I did not do that on purpose.  But it’s very appropriate, for today, Paul teaches us about his understanding of thanksgiving.

Paul in this passage very directly and sensitively urges the Corinthians to fulfill a pledge they had made to give money to help the poor in Jerusalem.  The Corinthians had evidently promised to do something to help, but a whole year had gone by, and nothing had happened – they hadn’t sent a single nickel.  And this is the biggest, richest church Paul ever established.  So Paul writes to remind them to come through and be faithful and give the offering they had promised.  As a result, we learn about Paul’s theology of thanksgiving.

Notice that Paul never takes away the Corinthians’ freedom – he’ll put a little pressure on them, but ultimately they’ve got to decide to act.  He tells them that God loves a cheerful giver.  The Greek word translated “cheerful” is literally the word hilarious (hilaria).  We’re to be hilarious givers.  In other words, we should be laughing all the way to the offering plate, having a thankful attitude in gratitude for everything God has given us. 

Are you and I hilarious givers?  If you’ve ever given really generously, you know how much fun it is.  And Paul hopes the Corinthians have that hilarious experience of giving. 

In contrast, there’s nothing worse than an angry or resentful giver.  Can you imagine someone who’s approached by the Boys or Girls Scouts for a donation who responds, “Oh, you kids again?  Here…take it!”  No, now you’ve ruined their whole day. 

Instead, what you want to say to these kids is, “Hey, I’m so excited to be able to stand with you and help you.  I’m happy to support you in scouting.  Here’s my donation…and eat those cookies yourself!”  That actually happened to a colleague – his wife told the Girl Scouts at their door as she gave them a donation to keep the cookies for themselves because they didn’t need them in their home, which made my colleague mad because he likes those Thin Mints.  I have to agree - that’s probably taking generosity too far!

The point, though, is that God wants us to be cheerful and hilarious in our giving.  Once you start giving, you discover that you can’t out-give God.  Notice v. 8: “And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.”  God has a way of filling you as you become more and more generous.

Paul then goes on to talk about thanksgiving.  We usually think of thanksgiving only as a response to receiving a gift, but it’s interesting that in v. 11, Paul notes that great generosity will also produce thanksgiving.

So what does the word thanksgiving mean?   Notice that 8:1 begins with the word grace:  “We want you to know, brothers and sisters, about the grace of God that has been granted to the churches of Macedonia.”  The Greek word for grace is charis. 

If that word sounds familiar, it might be because one of the young people in our church, Carris Clarkson, got her name from this word.   Charis comes from the root word chara – joy.  Literally, charis means a surprise gift of love.  We get the word charisma from this word, meaning special gifts. 

Now the word for thanksgiving comes by adding the prefix eu (meaning good) to the word charis – when we do, we then get the word eucharist, a good surprise gift of love.  We call the Lord’s Supper the eucharist, because it’s a thanksgiving table for God’s great gift of love.

Thanksgiving is a moment in your life when you’re given a gift and you realize how good the gift is and how much the giver loves you.  And when you realize this, you act in response to the gift.  Paul also says that the more we generously respond, the more thanksgiving is produced.  So according to Paul, thanksgiving is not just a feeling; it’s also an action. 

I’m not a big fan of commercials – I tend to mute them or switch channels.  Some day, I’ll get a Tivo to avoid commercials altogether.  But I have to admit that there was one commercial in recent months that caught my eye.  It’s a series of people who each see a stranger doing a good deed, and in response they each decide to help someone else.  There’s a sense of gratitude felt by those who see total strangers help others, which spurs those who witness these random acts of kindness to “pay it forward” and help others in response.  That’s what Paul’s talking about – thanksgiving is not just a feeling but also an action.

Paul wants the Corinthians to act on what they’ve experienced, to show their thanksgiving by their generosity.  It’s what James means when he says that faith without works is dead – he doesn’t mean works righteousness (earning our salvation through our works), he means that the fruit of our faith should be shown in our works. 

Catherine of Sienna, a medieval saint, once wrote, “I ask you to love me with the same love with which I love you, but for me you cannot do this, for I loved you without being loved.  Whatever love you have for me you owe me.  So you love me not gratuitously but out of duty, while I love you not out of duty, but gratuitously.  So you cannot give me the kind of love I ask of you.  And that is why I have put you among your neighbors, so that you can do for them what you cannot do for me.  That is, love them without any concern for thanks and without looking for any profit for yourselves.  And whatever you do for them, I will consider it done for me.” 

So thanksgiving is an active response to a good surprise gift.  The question is: when is a good time to respond?  When is the right time to be generous?  I know I fall into the trap of thinking that I need to wait until conditions are ideal and perfect to be generous.  Deb and my daughters tease me whenever I try to assure them that someday soon things will be “all set” – when “all set” really seems to be a sort of mythical state out there in fantasyland.  Life is rarely so decent or orderly as to be “all set” all at once, right?  If I’m always waiting until everything’s all set before being generous (when the house project is done, or when vacation comes, or when the kids are out of school, etc.), then I will never act. 

When’s a good time to show thanksgiving, to give money to those who have need, to give to the suffering in Jerusalem?  It may never seem like it’s a good time to give.  The secret is that we just need to start, no matter what the conditions are.

The Corinthians went a full year without giving, waiting for the right time, and when Paul saw them go a whole cycle without acting, he knew they were in trouble.  Earl Palmer says that there’s a risk in expressing thanksgiving in a concrete way, but there’s a greater risk if you don’t give.

C.S. Lewis also works on this theme.  The Screwtape Letters is his marvelous little satirical book he wrote, where each chapter deals with a different subject, and you have Screwtape, a senior devil, writing to Wormwood, a junior devil, on how to win back a so-called “patient” from God. 

In C. 13, Screwtape the senior devil is furious because the patient, who had been drifting away from God, repents and goes back to the Lord.  He says, “But it remains to be seen how we can retrieve this disaster.  The great thing is to prevent him from doing anything.  As long as he does not convert it into action, it does not matter how much he thinks about this new repentance.  Let the little brute wallow in it.  Let him, if he has any bent that way, write a book about it; that is often an excellent way of sterilizing the seeds which the Enemy (here meaning God) plants in a human soul.  Let him do anything but act.  No amount of piety in his imagination and affections will harm us (devils) if we can keep it out of his will.  As one of the humans has said, active habits are strengthened by repetition but passive habits are weakened.  The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel.”[1]

What does Lewis mean by active and passive habits?  Active habits are strengthened by repetition.  For example, when you actively exercise your body, you’ll become stronger over time.   The same is true for your mind – the more you study, the stronger your brain becomes. 

But passive habits are weakened by repetition.  For example, the first time you watch a violent movie, you may be overcome by its intensity.  You come home and have a hard time eating or sleeping because of the images in your head.  However, the more times you watch violence on the screen, the more desensitized you get, until finally it stops fazing you. 

The same with injustice - the more often you see injustice without acting, the less you’ll ever be able to act, and in the long run the less you’ll be able to feel.  So that’s the risk.

But the good news is, active habits like being thankful and generous are strengthened by repetition.  The more you give, the more grace God gives you to enable you to give more.  That’s a great argument in favor of tithing.  Deb and I set aside 10% of our income every year for God’s work through this congregation and enjoy giving as much as we can to Heifer Project, World Vision, and other outreach organizations as well, and I can tell you, it’s so much fun to give.  It truly is hilarious that we get to do these amazingly cool things with our money.  And God has blessed our giving.

I know that many people think it would be impossible to tithe, but if giving 10% seems too much for you today, the key is to start somewhere.   

Dr. Robert Boyd Munger tells a story:  After giving a sermon on tithing, someone came up to him and said, "Do you know how much money I make, Dr. Munger?  If I tithe, do you know how much money that would be?  Are you being realistic?"

And Dr. Munger said, "Oh, brother, let's pray about that."  And then he went on to give this prayer, "Oh, Lord, please reduce my friend's salary...to the point where he can afford to tithe!"

The point is that we need to cultivate the habit of generosity no matter where we are in life.

And when we are generous and grateful, we’ll discover that thanksgiving is good for our health:  Paul says “you will be enriched in every way for your great generosity.”  (v. 11).   Jesus Christ makes us healthy when we give, when we’re generous, when we’re thankful.  May God help us to be thankful for his good, surprising, joyful gift of love.  Amen.