In 390 BCE, the Gauls, an ancient Celtic
people, sent an army to take the city of Rome.
The Gauls tried to sneak into the city early one morning. Near the
sanctuary dedicated to the goddess Juno, on the Capitoline Hill, lived a flock
of geese, kept in a courtyard. As the
Gauls approached the geese were startled and began to honk loudly. The captain of the guard, sleeping near the
courtyard, heard their ruckus and woke up.
He spread word about the impending invasion, brought in more troops, and
saved the city. Juno, the wife of
Jupiter, was considered the queen of the gods and the most powerful
goddess. She was originally the goddess
of marriage and childbirth, the protectress of women, patroness of female
virtue, and the patron goddess of Rome.
The Roman General Marcus Furius Camillus built a temple on the hill in
gratitude for protecting the city. She
was known as Juno Moneta, from moneo,
which means “to warn.” Geese soon became
symbols of Moneta, the goddess of warning—from which we get the English word money.
Around 290 BCE, the first Roman mint was built adjacent to the temple to
Juno Moneta and the coins, struck with the head of Juno Moneta, were called moneta.
She became known as the protector of money and the guardian of finances.
Money and mint both evolved out of
this ancient temple and mythos. The myth
taps into or reflects the way money is viewed as a god. The myth also reminds us there’s something
about money that is inherently alarming.
“Ever since the invention of Money, people have had to guard and defend
it. Now there was something worth
stealing and an alarm to be sounded that we all must heed.”[1]
We remain enthralled to this myth,
even if we don’t believe in the gods. We
do. Money is a god. It’s worshipped and praised by many. If we’re not worshiping money or wealth, we
certainly know the anxiety we feel around money, and alarm that it brings. We’re anxious about having enough, about where
it’s going to come from, and we worry about it being taken away or stolen. Sometimes people who have more than they need
and are at little risk of losing it are the most anxious. People who have little or nothing have a
different kind of anxiety, anxiety and fear that are justified and real. Fear and anxiety over money can be
devastating and dehumanizing and producing a lot of shame.
Our two texts this morning, from
Deuteronomy and 2 Corinthians, are two of many in the Bible that offers a very
different attitude toward money and wealth and giving. They form the foundation for a theology of
stewardship that calls into question our views of money and wealth that trade
in anxiety; these texts offer a different way, a way that is liberating and
life-giving.
We begin, not with money, but with
God. God is always the starting point.
We started with the great Shema, “Hear, O Israel, The LORD is our God, and the
LORD alone. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all
your soul, and with all your might” (Deut. 6:4-5). Write this on your
heart. Inscribe it on your forehead.
Mark it over the lintel of the door.
Don’t forget. Remember.
What should we remember? “Remember what the LORD—Yahweh—has done for
you, remember the promise he swore to your ancestors to Abraham and Sarah,
Isaac and Rebecca, and Jacob and Rachel and Leah. When you enter into the land of promise,
which did not belong to you, which was given to you as gift, and live in large
cities, which you did not build, houses filled with all sorts of goods that you
did not fill, hewn cisterns that you did not hew, vineyards and olive groves
that you did not plant—and when you have eaten your fill, take care that you do
not forget the LORD, who brought you out of the place of slavery. The LORD you
shall fear, the LORD you shall serve, the LORD and the LORD alone is owed your
loyalty (Deut. 6:10-13).
This text, and others like it, reminds us of
the givenness of things, of all that
we have but didn’t earn, is, like grace, a gift. We are reminded of the prevenience of grace,
the fact that grace is always prior, it always come first. The gift, that which
has been given to us, is always first.
We don’t create the world, we are born into a world that is already here.
When you consider the world, the gift of human existence, the gift of your
life, the gift of God’s grace which has saved you and continues to save you and
redeem you and make you whole, when you consider all that has been given to
you—do not forget the Adonai. Then let
your worship, your life, your service be in response to the prevenient grace,
to what has already been given to us. Give of yourself.
“The one who sows sparingly will also reap
sparingly,” Paul said, “and the one who sows bountifully will also reap
bountifully.” Put in a little, then
expect little. Invest generously, expect
a generous yield. How you give, what you
give is between you and God, whatever you decide, whatever your conscience
dictates. What matters most is that we
give not reluctantly or under compulsion, not because it’s what’s expected of
us, not because we have to, but because we want to. This might not sound all that radical, but it
was. Because what you need to know is
that in Roman society, which was extremely patriarchal and hierarchical,
generosity and gratitude were often forced.
People were expected to express their gratitude to the emperor for what
the emperor provides. In this patron-client
system, a patron provided protection, money, access to power in exchange for
the client’s loyalty, allegiance, and thanksgiving. Giving was not free. It had conditions. Protection, money, and access were given only
when you promised loyalty and gratitude.[2] It was an even exchange. The amount given was
proportional to the response received.
However, what
Paul is suggesting here about giving undercuts, even undermines the
patron-client system. We don’t give
reluctantly, not because we must to be safe and secure. That’s not motivating us. We give because we
want to, because giving should be a matter of the heart.
Where’s
your heart? Is your heart in it? God want us to give—whatever we give—from
love. God wants us to give because we want to, because it brings us joy knowing
that through what we give we are bringing joy to the world. “God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Cor. 9:7). The Greek is actually hilaritas. In the
Greco-Roman world, the goddess Hilaritas was the personification of
cheerfulness, rejoicing, and mirth. She’s often seen holding a cornucopia, a
horn of plenty, signifying abundance.
This is the root of the English word hilarity. A better translation would be, “God loves a
hilarious giver.” God wants your hilarity. You know what’s it’s like to be
around someone who is hilarious, she causes you to laugh and laugh, and when
you’re laughing with joy, it just flows and flows from a deep place; it’s there
in abundance.
That’s
what giving is like in the Christian life.
The apostle Paul is often described as the theologian of grace because
he knew, first-hand, the transforming power of God’s grace, made real for him
in the face of Jesus Christ. When Paul
experienced the enormous generosity of God’s love and grace toward him, it
released something enormously generous and generative in him. When we encounter this grace, when we
experience it, when we’re pursued by grace, we discover that we are free to be
generous because there’s more than enough to go around, there’s never any risk
of losing what we have, because, technically-speaking, we don’t have anything
that really belongs to us. We’re
drinking from cisterns that we haven’t hewn. So we are free to share. “And God is able,” said Paul, “to provide you
with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of
everything, you may share abundantly in every good work” (2 Cor. 9:8).
Grace and
gratitude.[3] These two words pretty
much sum up the Christian life. The more we experience God's generous grace
toward us, the more our hearts are moved to respond with gratitude. Just as
grace is experienced in a variety of ways in our lives, so, too, is gratitude.
But
sometimes there’s a “gratitude gap.”
That’s what contemporary religion scholar Diana Butler Bass describes in
her recently released book Grateful: The
Transformative Power of Giving Thanks. This past week The Presbyterian
Foundation hosted a stewardship conference in St. Louis where Bass was one of
the keynote speakers. I wish I could
have been there, but I followed online.
Back in 2015, she came across a disturbing statistic in a study
conducted by the Pew Forum. The survey
indicated that 78 percent of Americans said they had experienced gratitude
within the past week. “Seventy-eight
percent is an extraordinarily high number,” she said. “I sat for a moment with that and thought,
‘Wow that’s really wonderful that eight out of 10 Americans say they’ve felt
strongly grateful in the last seven days.” She said, “Wow,” but then asked, “Am
I one of the 78 or one of the 22?”[4] This began her
exploration of gratitude; she wanted to be more grateful in her life.
There are
two important aspects of gratitude that she unearthed in her research. First, she found that American men are
uncomfortable with the concept of gratitude. Why? “Being strongly indoctrinated
in the importance of being ‘self-made,’ men find it an insult to be told they
didn’t accomplish their feats alone. “No one gives me anything.” “I do it
myself.” “I earned it myself.” “I don’t
owe anyone anything.” This is the prize
narrative in our culture and has influenced American men. This attitude has
shaped how we view gratitude. But, remember, we live in cities that we didn’t
build, drink from cisterns that we did not hew, enjoy the fruit of vines which
we did not plant.
For all of
us, Bass believes, there is within American society a “gratitude gap.” Most of us
know that gratitude is good. Being grateful is actually good for us. Still, there is a gap between our desire to
be grateful and our ability to behave gratefully. We might feel personally
grateful, but we fail to convey our gratitude in a public way, and this is
adversely affecting our personal and public lives. Bass has found that, “Being grateful does not
appear to make much difference in our larger common life.” This has enormous implications for society and
institutions, including the church. How do we move from private gratitude to
public gratitude?
In
Marilynne Robinson's novel Gilead, the ailing
Congregationalist minister John Ames tells his son, “There is more beauty than
our eyes can bear, precious things have been put into our hands and to do
nothing to honor them is to do great harm.”[5] I love this sentence. I love Gilead,
it’s one of my favorite novels. I love
Marilynn Robinson’s writings, she’s a person of deep faith and searing insight
and a great lover of John Calvin (1509-1564)—she understands Calvin better than
most. Calvinist or Reformed theology is
imbued throughout her works, including Gilead,
especially this one sentence.
This sentence beautifully sums up the Reformed claim that grace and gratitude are at the heart of the Christian life. And Calvin wrote quite a lot about beauty.[6] Beauty is all around us, more than our eyes can bear, beauty not of our own making, prevenient beauty. Given to us. Indeed, much—so much—has been given to us. Precious things have been put into our hands, entrusted to us, and to do nothing to honor them, to fail to acknowledge them, to use them, to share them, even to give them away, is to do great harm. This is a profound insight—and it haunts me, actually. To withhold our gratitude, to not be generous with what has been placed into our hands, into our lives, into our bank accounts, especially when we have the capacity to be more grateful and generous, is to do great harm. We cut, we sever the grace-gratitude connection, and our souls suffer as a result.
This sentence beautifully sums up the Reformed claim that grace and gratitude are at the heart of the Christian life. And Calvin wrote quite a lot about beauty.[6] Beauty is all around us, more than our eyes can bear, beauty not of our own making, prevenient beauty. Given to us. Indeed, much—so much—has been given to us. Precious things have been put into our hands, entrusted to us, and to do nothing to honor them, to fail to acknowledge them, to use them, to share them, even to give them away, is to do great harm. This is a profound insight—and it haunts me, actually. To withhold our gratitude, to not be generous with what has been placed into our hands, into our lives, into our bank accounts, especially when we have the capacity to be more grateful and generous, is to do great harm. We cut, we sever the grace-gratitude connection, and our souls suffer as a result.
“Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, and the
LORD alone. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all
your soul, and with all your might” (Deut. 6:4-5). All. Not some.
Not a little. Not enough. All.
With
gratitude, we are call to be good stewards of our time, talent, and
treasure. Being a good steward is to
honor what has been given to us. It
means not holding back. We are free to be
hilariously generous with our time, talent, and treasure. But woe to us when we
prefer to be too cautious, when we hold back, when we withhold, when anxiety
and fear take control of our lives.
Where in our lives are we holding back our time, our talents, and our treasure? Where can we be more generous with our time? Not because we have to, but because we want to? Where does the heart want to be more generous? How can we be more generous with our gifts—to really use them and not hide them under a bushel? Where can we be more generous with our financial resources to do more good in the world? What harm are we doing, often unintentionally, by holding back or withholding our time, our talents, our gifts, our love?
Where in our lives are we holding back our time, our talents, and our treasure? Where can we be more generous with our time? Not because we have to, but because we want to? Where does the heart want to be more generous? How can we be more generous with our gifts—to really use them and not hide them under a bushel? Where can we be more generous with our financial resources to do more good in the world? What harm are we doing, often unintentionally, by holding back or withholding our time, our talents, our gifts, our love?
Gratitude takes many forms. What
matters most is that we respond to the gift of grace, and not hold back.
[1] Aaron R.
Kipnis, The Midas Complex: How Money
Drives Us Crazy and What We Can Do about It (2013).
[2] Diana Butler
Bass, Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving (HarperOne, 2018).
[3] See Brian
Gerrish’s brilliant text Grace and
Gratitude: The Eucharistic Theology of John Calvin
[4] Presbyterian
Foundation, Stewardship Kaleidoscope, September 25, 2018.
[5] Marilynne
Robinson, Gilead (Picador Books,
2006), 290
[6] On beauty in
the Reformed tradition see Belden C. Lane, Ravished
by Beauty: The Surprising Legacy of Reformed Spirituality (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2011).
