Grace United Methodist Church
Corpus Christi, TX
pastorwillrice@gmail.com
2 Corinthians 9:6-15
“Deep Casting, Abundant Sowing"
I spent last week in
6The point is this: the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.
I realize that as a church, we sow sparingly. I think many of us know that if we really put all of our heart and mind, more of our time and money into spreading the message of the gospel, it would have an amazing impact, but we don’t do that.
When we talk about stewardship here at Grace, throughout the year, we talk about our prayers, presence, gifts and service. But, sometimes we forget to talk about what is at the core of all this, our stewardship of our knowledge of the love of God through Jesus Christ. If we got that and thought about stewardship as our responsibility to share that message of Grace with the world, I think we would be more excited about stewardship. I think we would start to realize and be ok with the fact that sharing the message requires us to be generous with our material possessions.
I take the way the church gives personally, because I feel that when we are not giving as we ought, then perhaps I have failed to cast a vision. I know so many people who don’t give faithfully to the church who do give faithfully to the Sierra Club, the Ronald McDonald House, the Boys and Girls Club, The Republican Party, The Democratic Party, The Lions Club. I think people should give to organizations they believe in. I just take it to heart when they don’t give as faithfully to the church because I haven’t cast a vision, I haven’t given a reason to believe in the church. Yes, you can believe in God, but not believe in the church.
People believe in and therefore give financial support to The Lions Club and the Sierra Club, etc. because they have shown people how they can use their money to change lives. Just $1 a day can help save the spotted owl from extinction. Just the price of a cup of coffee a day can help a poor child in Africa get the medication she needs, your one time gift of $100 can help us get another kid off the streets and into an after school program.
Here at the church, I think we get part of it right, when we talk about our need to give to God to remind ourselves that all of life is a gift from God, but then we have trouble following through with what that generous giving can do.
I remember one year my Dad getting a phone call from the Salvation Army in
7Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.
Talk about a cheerful giver. He was happy to write that check. He probably would have written it for four times that if they had asked.
How about this, “Mr. Rice, I am calling from
I think Pastor John has done and continues to do an amazing job of helping us see why we give. We give because everything we have, every last thing, is a gift from an outrageously generous God who doesn’t owe us a thing, but lavishes gift upon gift on us. We give out of a grateful response to the generosity of God.
But his brilliant, authentic and heartfelt thoughts on the matter might not answer another question we might have. Why give to the church? We know why to give, but why give to the church? That is the question we do not answer very well. As a church, we are likely to show you a chart. We are likely to talk about fixed costs and apportionment dollars and payroll taxes. All that stuff is very important to keep the church running, but that is not the right answer.
We have all seen the television commercials for organizations like world vision or feed the children. These people know how to help us understand what they are doing. They don’t ever show pie charts or talk about operational expenditures or budget shortfalls. They say, “look at this child. She is hungry. Send us $100 and she can eat.” They say “We are in the life changing business and we need your help.”
A few months back Astria Smith from the Methodist Children’s Home in
I think what we fail to say enough at the church is that we are in the life changing business as well. Remember, I said at the beginning that at the core of our stewardship is our stewardship of our knowledge of the love of God through Jesus Christ and that is powerful, life changing stuff!
At Grace, God changes lives. And it happens in so many ways. Every Sunday, in worship, there is the opportunity for someone, for the first time to hear a message about how the creator of the universe wants nothing more than to be in relationship with them. Every Sunday, in worship, there is the opportunity for someone has heard that their whole lives finally go “Aha!” to finally really feel in their heart that God does love them, God does forgive them, God does accept them.
At Grace, God changes lives. Every Sunday, in Sunday school, patient and loving teachers begin to build the foundation of faith in our children, passing on the stories of scripture and beginning to help children see the love of God that surrounds them. Their lives are being changed even as they being formed as they are given an alternative to the world which tells them that their value is based on how they look or where they go to school or how much money they make. They have a place that tells them that their value is based solely on the fact that they are God’s children.
At Grace, God changes lives. Every Sunday, in Sunday school, the lives of our youth are touched as they have a place to come and be surrounded by love and support and scriptural teaching that can help them face the really trying, life changing decisions that they have to face every day that will affect every aspect of their future.
Every Sunday, in Sunday school, adult lives are changed as well, as adults have the opportunity to encounter God through scripture and through the lives and stories of each other.
Every weekday, Grace’s facilities become a place of safety and learning for children through the Early Childhood Development program, giving children a loving and nurturing environment that reflects the love of God that begins to teach them of their value and giving parents piece of mind that their children are in good hands so that they can concentrate on their jobs in a world where it is sometimes impossible for one parent to stay home with the children.
During the week, during the day and the evening, Grace’s facilities and staff are put to use teaching and leading, opening up the words of scripture to adults, children and youth.
I have told the stories in another sermon of Disciple Bible Study, where people start out in the fall, sometimes with no knowledge of the Bible and come out in the spring as different people, changed by the encounter with God through scripture.
At Grace, God changes lives. Every Wednesday evening, this church bursts at the seams with confirmation which teaches about our faith so that young adults can make the commitment to profess their faith for themselves plus Bible studies for younger and older youth, plus Bible studies for older children.
And the rest of the building is full with our mentoring program where children from our community have a chance to have a one on one relationship with an adult mentor who can give them love and support and a role model. Talking about God changing lives – some of these kids have no real stability in their lives, maybe no role model or someone who really has time to pay attention to them. Ask any of our mentors, you can see a change in these kids from the time they first come to mentoring and the end of the school year. This isn’t just a program, or a budget line, or a church thing, this is a way of spreading the love of God by positively affecting the lives of children in our community.
At Grace, God changes lives. We don’t always see it, but the changes that take place within the walls of the church affect the world outside the church. Children, youth and adults that are nurtured within the community of faith begin to sense God’s call on their lives and live that out in the world. Let me give you an example. Val Borhauer, a member of this congregation had her life changed by the grace of God and has taken that out into the world to Laverne, California where she serves as a United Methodist Missionary, using her education to teach girls who have been removed from their homes due to abuse and neglect.
At Grace, God changes lives. Val is just one example. There are a number of people who throughout the year, either in organized groups, or are their own head off to Mexico, Mississippi, downtown Corpus Christi and use their skills and their hands to listen to the call of God on their lives to share the Gospel by bringing some amount of comfort to people who need their home repaired, replaced, or even built for the first time. If you don’t think the church changes lives, you haven’t seen the look on the face who roof has just been repaired by a bunch of kids and volunteer adults in the middle of summer for no other reason than they just wanted to help.
At Grace, God changes lives. Sometimes in ways that we don’t even think much about. The monies that we give to the district and the conference and the national church, both through planned giving and special offerings change lives in ways we will never truly know, building churches in Russia, responding to worldwide disasters through The United Methodist Committee of Relief, try to give at risk children a shot at life through Methodist Children’s home, starting new churches here in the Southwest Texas Conference so that more lives may be changed through the Grace of God.
I think we have trouble sometimes because maybe sometimes we can’t see the change.
I think we have trouble sometimes because we don’t sit down and quantify things. Perhaps if I figured out how much it cost to change one life. I was adding up my conversion the other day, financed by committed Christians who sowed abundantly. How long did I go to church before I ever put something in an offering plate? How much did that cost the church in electricity and mortgage and interest and salary and benefits for pastors and staff? What was the expense that others undertook that there was a sanctuary and bibles and beautiful music and a thought-provoking sermon. What was the cost of that cup of coffee I was offered while I waited around? What was the cost of the classroom space where I started going to Sunday school?
6The point is this: the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.
It cost a pretty good chunk of change to take me from a place of not knowing God to a place to understanding God’s grace and claim on my life and committing my heart and life to God’s service. I don’t know how much it cost. But I know that most people who know me and know the change in my life that occurred through a relationship with God, if I could figure out the cost and duplicate it on someone else, would gladly write that check.
And that is what we do. We help God change lives. We are in the life changing business. When we think of ourselves as being in the church business we think about cutting costs. Is there a way to do this cheaper? When we are in the life-changing business, we just want to know how we can do more!
7Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. 8And 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.
A survey published this month in Time Magazine reports that 61% of American Christians believe that God wants them to be financially prosperous.[1] So, I am officially again in the minority. I believe that God wants us to be just and compassionate. I don’t think God wants us to be rich if it is at the expense of the rest of the world, including many other Christians who are living in poverty.
But, let’s face it, on a global scale, just be being Americans, we are rich. Even the poorest among us have electricity and microwave ovens and plenty to eat. Whether or not God has willed us to be rich, the fact of the matter is we are. And we have a chance to do some kingdom building with that wealth.
the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.
We can sow bountifully with our prayer, our presence, our service, and our financial gifts. John has challenged us this year to take the 1% challenge, upping our giving to the church by 1%. The more I have thought about this over the last few weeks, the more excited I got about it.
If every household in the church did that, if those who already give just added 1% and those who haven’t made that commitment to give just started at 1%, I cannot even begin to imagine what God could do with that. I get excited because I do begin to imagine the number of lives that could be changed in this church, in this community and eventually around the world. Instead of spending the year thinking, “How can we get by, how can we keep these great programs going.” We could ask, “what else can we do to spread the Grace and love of God to the world?”
10He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. 11You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity, which will produce thanksgiving to God through us; 12for the rendering of this ministry not only supplies the needs of the saints but also overflows with many thanksgivings to God.
Back to my fishing story. It was nice sitting on the beach with my fishing pole secured in its holder in the sand. I could sit and watch the waves and my pole swaying in the wind all day. But, to catch fish, I had to go deeper. I had to risk getting wet, falling down.
We have a gift. We know about something that can change lives, can change with world. We watch it every day in our children, youth and adults. We see lives changing. We see people changed in such a way that they go out to change the world.
We should be wading out into the deep water, casting far out, we should be sowing bountifully, that the harvest, those touched and moved and changed by the grace of God, may be bountiful.
