“Generosity Is Something We Want For You”

This summer our congregation has been slogging through the semi-continuous Old Testament stories in the lectionary each Sunday.  We’ve been reminded frequently and often by the Genesis narratives that God’s promises promise that the story’s characters—and by extension, we believers—are “blessed to be a blessing” for the whole world. 

Therefore, I shouldn’t be surprised that when I returned last week from a nearly three-week vacation, there was a letter waiting for me in my inbox:

“[Dear] Church.” 

Not Dear Pastor, Dear Reverend, Dear David. But: Church, Dear CHURCH.  I know why it landed in MY mailbox (I’m the pastor, all that kind of mail comes to me), but it could have at least acknowledged First Presbyterian or El Dorado or something more identifiable in its greeting. 

“Dear Church, in 2013 you blessed me with a pair of tennis shoes.  …I’m still wearing the shoes you purchased me, the soles are peeling off, I’m asking you, the church, if you’ll bless

me again with a new pair?  They are the same price, $39.87 that’s with taxes.  I’m sorry to ask you for help again, but I’ve no family out there to help me, my mother has passed in 2002, she was divorced she was a Christian as I am.” 

I don’t know why I was hung up on “Dear Church.”

It was a request from the Cummins Unit of the Arkansas Department of Corrections—the same place where a couple of months ago death row inmates were being hurriedly executed.  But this wasn’t from a death row inmate, and I immediately wanted our church to be found holding out the light and life of God in a world of brokenness, shrouded by death.  I believe desperately in a gospel of new life, changed lives, forgiveness, and hope. 

I asked around, but no one around our church remembered the previous “blessing” we supposedly offered this man.  And, “…dear Church,” as I shared this with other staff members and others about the request, I got quizzical, puzzled looks, and a lot of doubts.  Frankly, I know well the request could be dubious—there are a bunch of ways such a gift could be used for no good, or nefarious things. 

It was only $39.87—with taxes.  He had guts enough to ask.  And my first response was that I could answer for the Church of Jesus Christ, First Presbyterian, and myself as a Christian.  The traditional knock on helping people in need is that they take your money and use it to buy booze.  I’m pretty sure the ADC doesn’t let inmates buy alcohol.  I thought; here’s a chance to “be a blessing!  Again!” 

David Loeling, who’s heading up a new initiative for the Presbyterian Foundation for effective financial church leadership for local congregations, began a recent blogpost by noting, “Generosity is something we want for you, not from you.”  He then goes on to ask how our churches can form generous disciples in an age when we prefer technical fixes and best practices—where we grasp after new programs to produce results counted in participants and budget figures. 

What’s going to grow our capacity for “blessing others,” isn’t some program by which we can count how much we give and feel good about our pre-determined choices; but rather, the risks and chances we’re willing to take with the love of Jesus.  Like Jesus, our heart is what tells us the right things to do.  Not the program.  Not the conventional wisdom.  Not the carefully crafted ways of giving that seek to protect us from misuse or abuse.  Just the giving. 

A few years ago I was standing in line at the grocery store—my cart full.  There was an elderly lady being checked out, and ahead of me was a middle-aged man, with a quarter-filled cart, obviously pained by having to wait.  The woman came to the point of paying, tried a gift card, but then had to get out cash.  She first waded through her purse, going through several pockets and envelopes and finally, as if in slow-motion, picked the one with her cash in it.  She had to take out several bills, laboring over each and every one, individually, as if saying goodbye to old friends, until she had done enough to cover the tab.  All of this seemed to highly irritate this man who just wanted to be on his way.  I suddenly had this burning desire to pay this man’s grocery bill, just so he could walk away with a blessing rather than his irritation—albeit a spiteful blessing on my part.  And were it not for the fact that I couldn’t figure out how to explain to my wife how I’d just given away a quarter of our grocery budget to a man who didn’t “deserve it” for financial reasons—I might have been bold enough to have done it. 

It’s the same sort of way I felt last week on vacation, waiting with an empty grocery cart to buy some ice for my vacation cooler, waiting behind the young couple buying everything in their cart “on the cheap.”  I’ve learned how to spot the “hard times” stash of frozen pizzas, along with every item in the cart coming from the most generic of generic brands on store shelves.  If you look, you can see the poverty and hunger around us!  The couple had carefully “guessed” the bill, and had just enough cash, emptying their wallets—the last of the money. 

There were a host of reasons not to slide my credit card through the machine before they could exchange the bills with the cashier.  They were kind, polite, good-hearted with each other and with me, while I tried not to pay so close attention to their plight. 

We become generous people when we say “yes” to being a blessing.  Sometimes when we’re asked—but often, especially when we aren’t. 

For me, it’s a work in progress.  And I’m determined to get there. 

© Rev. David Stipp-Bethune; Minister of Word and Sacrament,  Pastor, The First Presbyterian Church of El Dorado, Arkansas