2 Corinthians 8:1-15
5th Sunday
after Pentecost/ 28th June 2015
Preaching from Paul’s letters is
always a bit of a challenge. That’s because
reading his epistles is like reading someone else’s mail. The letters have a specific audience in mind,
addressing issues or crises that were relevant to a particular congregation. Paul knew his audience; they knew him. Paul wrote as pastor, theologian, friend; he
wrote as judge and healer, evangelist and prophet. Paul never wrote his letters with the thought
that they would be read by other churches, centuries, millennia after him. They were never written with us in mind. He
would be stunned to know that Presbyterians in Catonsville are reading and
hearing his words today. Reading the
epistles is like reading someone else’s mail.
That’s the challenge. How do we discern what applies to both Paul’s
church and ours—and what doesn’t? Paul’s
understanding of the Church is in many ways alien and far removed from how we
view and “do” church today, with denominations and institutions and
hierarchies, professional ministers, multi-staffed congregations, choirs, congregations
with enormous buildings and budgets.
Yes, reading someone else’s mail.
However, this is also part of the “fun”—if
I can use that word—of reading Paul. His
letters, written (approximately) between 50 and 60 AD, are actually older than
the gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Reading Paul means we are actually closer to
the historical Jesus, closer to Jesus than the gospel narratives, which were
written to look and sound like histories (although they’re really not,
technically, histories).
When we read Paul, we are given a
window into was life what like in the early Church. We discover how churches are birthed and then
nurtured. We see how churches struggle
and fight and get themselves into trouble.
We see how Christians wrestle with their identities, wrestle with who
they are vis-à-vis a broader, alien culture/society that doesn’t understand or
value its message and ministry. We see
how Christians slowly come to reflect theologically on grace and salvation,
reconciliation and service. And here, in
particular, in this eighth chapter of 2 Corinthians we discover a lot about
what the first followers of Jesus and their worshipping communities were like.
So, what were they like? Generous. They were generous because they knew
something of God’s grace. Grace and generosity always go together,
hand-in-hand. Paul’s not demanding that
the Corinthian Christians need to become generous. He’s not commanding them. It’s something else, as we will see.
Paul wants them to know what has
been occurring in other churches, in other communities of Christ. “We want you to know, brothers and sisters,
about the grace of God that has been granted to the churches of Macedonia; for
during a severe ordeal of affliction, their abundant joy and their extreme
poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part” (2 Cor.
8:1-2).
While it’s not exactly clear what the “severe ordeal of affliction” was, the generosity that Paul is referring to here is the way they responded to the giving campaign he organized, which provided support for Christians in Jerusalem. This is what’s known as the Jerusalem Collection, “the contribution for the poor among the saints in Jerusalem” (Romans 15:26).
Paul
spent close to ten years soliciting funds for the collection, “a collection he
took up among the Gentile churches to help Judean believers who were facing
harder than usual economic times as a result of a famine during the mid to late
40s. Paul and Barnabas made an initial famine-relief visit to Jerusalem in A.D.
46 and delivered a monetary gift from the church at Antioch (Acts 11:29-30). At
that time the Jerusalem church expressed the hope that the believers associated
with Paul would continue to remember the Judean believers, which Paul was more
than eager to do (Gal 2:10).”[1] The collection effort was
successfully completed in A.D. 57. Paul
and a group of delegates chosen by the contributing Gentile churches delivered
the funds.
Raising
funds of this kind required enormous investments of time and energy. Why did
Paul do it? Three possible reasons. First, “the need was genuine. The Jerusalem
collection was first and foremost an act of charity. Famine on top of
persistent food shortages, double taxation [levied by the Roman Empire] and
overpopulation crippled an already precarious Palestinian economy. The
situation was undoubtedly aggravated by a voluntary pooling of assets in the
early years of the church's existence (Acts 2:44-46; 4:32-37) and the constant
need for the mother church to support the itinerant activities of its members
and extend hospitality to visitors from other churches. Then, too, it was common,
as it is today, for diaspora Jews to settle in and around the ‘holy city’ at
retirement; the result was a steady increase of widows and elderly in need of
assistance.”
Second,
“the relief fund served as an important, visible expression of the interdependence
of believers worldwide.” Finally, the collection was a tangible representation of
the heart of the gospel—that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither
slave nor free, not male and female (Gal 3:28). In particular, Paul may have
had high hopes that the relief fund would allay any lingering fears and
concerns Jewish Christians had regarding [his] Gentile mission.[2] "Their hearts will
go out to you," he says, "because of the surpassing grace God has
given you" (2 Cor. 9:14).
We could be crass and say that Paul
was effectively being a fundraiser here, enticing the Corinthians to support
the campaign. It’s true; Paul wants the
Corinthians to give more because he knows how wealthy they are. He knows there’s money in that community. And since in Christ we are part of a larger,
ecclesial family, engaged in a ministry beyond the confines of a particular
church, the body of Christ has an obligation to care for its sisters and
brothers who are in need. It’s a
“question,” Paul says, “of a fair balance between your present abundance and
their need, so that their abundance may be for your need, in order that there
may be a fair balance” (2 Cor. 8:14).
That’s what Paul hopes for, a sharing of resources, but that’s not where
he begins his appeal to the Corinthians.
Instead, he tells them about the
Macedonia churches and what he saw at work in them. He begins with a reference to God’s grace—the unsurpassable, unearned,
benevolence of God, which we have come to know most profoundly in the life and
witness of Jesus Christ. What is grace? The novelist Marilynne Robinson
describes it as “that reservoir of goodness, beyond, and of another kind, that
we are able to do each other in the ordinary cause of things.” I wish to thank President Barack Obama for
providing the Robinson quote. He referred
to her definition of grace in his eulogy/sermon preached at the funeral for the
Rev. Clementa Pinckney, on Friday in Charleston, SC. Thank you, Mr.
President. I, too, am a huge Marilynne Robinson fan.
“A reservoir of goodness, beyond,
and of another kind.” Grace is not what we expect. It’s never logical. It’s the unexpected, surprising outcome that
can’t be deduced or explained from the evidence or description of present
circumstances. It would be logical,
rational for Paul to say to the Corinthians: “Look, you have more than you
need, be generous to others in need.”
But that’s not the story he tells.
Instead, he says of the Macedonian church: “for during a severe ordeal
of affliction, their abundant joy and their extreme poverty overflowed in a
wealth of generosity on their part.”
It doesn’t make any sense. Joy found
in affliction. Abundant joy found in “severe ordeals of affliction.” Not despair in affliction. Not sorrow in affliction. Not worry, anxiety, or fear in
affliction. Joy. Lots of it!
And poverty. Poverty, suggesting, rationally, logically,
that they have nothing left to share. Poverty
that should cause them, we assume, to be stingy and selfish, to save and horde
their resources. But, no.
Joy in
affliction mixed with extreme poverty overflowed in a wealth of generosity.
This is a really
good description of what grace looks like and feels like. For,
“as I can testify,” Paul writes, “they voluntarily gave according to their
means, and even beyond their means,
begging us earnestly for the privilege of sharing in this ministry to the
saints—and this, not merely as we expected; they gave themselves first to the
Lord and, by the will of God, to us,” …so that we might “complete this generous
understanding…” (2 Cor. 8:3-7). It’s
not logical. It doesn’t make sense. But that’s what grace does.
And that’s why Paul doesn’t demand
that they be generous. Generosity
doesn’t work that way. He can’t force
them to give more. He can’t make a
command out of grace. He doesn’t want to
test them or force them. He could have
said, “Look, here’s our need. There are
100 people in this church, let’s divide it up evenly.” That’s too rational. That’s too logical.
But, in a way, there is a test
involved. He is testing them—or asking them to test themselves around one
issue: “the genuineness of [your] love.”
Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also”
(Matthew 6:21). Paul is basically asking them: Where’s your heart? Where’s your treasure? Where is the
love? Where is your love for God, for
what God has done for you and shown you in Jesus Christ? Where is the love of Christ overflowing in
your lives? Where is the grace?
Grace itself, when it’s understood
or apprehended, when it’s experienced, is always generous, and abundantly so. The
experience of grace yields generosity.
That’s the result. Grace is a bottomless reservoir of goodness. When we
know this—and know it again and again—when we discover or rediscover this grace
throughout our lives—or, better, when grace discovers us—generosity begins to
flow like an ever-flowing stream.
That’s how we become generous.
It’s
been said that Christians are generous people because we serve a generous God.
We’re not the only generous people around, of course. But there’s something
within our experience of God’s love in Christ that allows us to be remarkably
giving. It’s a generosity that stunned the ancient world—and still amazes the
world today. Early Christians cared for
their own members, within the church.
And then they did something radically new and different—they began to
care for those in the wider community!
They cared for people who weren’t in their immediate family or household
or clan or tribe (which was the norm in Roman society), but fellow followers of
“The Way,” former strangers now friends in the body of Christ. And then the
body of Christ cared for strangers and saw within the face of the other the face
of God. Fast forward several years and we will see the origins of the monastic
movement, communities that cared for the needs of wayfarers and strangers. Christians could do all of these things
because their hearts were changed and transformed. The pagan Roman Emperor
Julian the Apostate (361-363) once said of early Christians, “The godless
Galileans feed not only their poor but ours.”[3] The Romans considered Christians (and Jews)
godless because they didn’t believe in the gods. The Romans also considered Christians “unethical,”
by the standards of their day, because Christians cared for their neighbors,
they cared for strangers.[4]
Paul
invites, he doesn’t command, us to “excel” in generosity, in caring for the
needs of the saints. We have no excuse, knowing how generous God has been
toward us. Paul extends an
invitation. He invites us to examine the
“genuineness of [our] love” (2 Cor. 8:8) for God and what God means to us, and
what we mean to God, both individually and collectively as a church. And then in gratitude—deep gratitude—with
full and overflowing and open hearts he invites us to to be:
generous
(or more generous) with our financial resources;
generous
with our time;
generous
with our gifts and skills and talents;
generous
with grace;
generous
with our love;
generous
with our hearts.
All of this was true for Christ’s
people in Paul’s day and—as we all know—it’s still true in ours.
[2] For more on the Jerusalem Collection, see.
[3] Cited in Dan Clendenin, “This Grace of Giving.” See also “Julian the Apostate: Jewish Law and
Christian Truth,” in Robert L. Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984),
164ff.
[4] See also Wayne A. Meeks, The Origins of Christian Morality: The First Two Centuries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993).
