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In what
(I think) was meant as a compliment, one of you recently said
to me: "How come the Bible is always so dull when I read
it and so interesting when you read it?" For which I
have no answer. Unless it consists in the fact that, in addition
to reading the Bible as a very holy book, I also read it as
a very human book. Meaning that when I read (or retell) one
of its stories, I try to bring out every thing that is there,
and every one who is there ... letting them be who they are
... and letting them live among you as they lived once (with
all of their agony and ecstasy, humor and pathos, warts and
halos). I never short-circuit the plot on the way to the point.
Neither do I airbrush the humanity on the way to the divinity.
I sometimes
tell people (who claim to find the Bible "dull")
to read the Book of Acts. For those who like adventure, it's
got stonings, floggings, riots and prison breaks. It's got
storms, shipwrecks, beatings and blindings. It's got soothsayers,
snake oil salesmen, silver barons, along with a sufficient
number of church fights to keep a mediator in business for
a lifetime. And if that isn't enough to curdle your cocoa,
it's got a guy who fell asleep during the sermon, tumbled
from the windowsill on which he was sitting, and all but died
from his fall to the ground, three stories below.
But you
ain't heard nothin' yet. Virtually everybody agrees that the
most dramatic story that circulated through the early church
was this little story I just read ... concerning the unhappy
and unholy demise of a man named Ananias and his wife, Sapphira.
I preached this story years ago. But, if you'll take my word
for it, I didn't go back to find what I said then (or reread
what I wrote then). I wanted to come to it "clean,"
the better to serve it up "fresh." Not many sermons
defrost well. If they did, I could move tomorrow and coast
the rest of the way on a succession of "golden oldies."
Enough
of that, however. Back to our story. It is early in the first
century A.D. It is after Jesus ... but before Paul. It is
after Pentecost ... but before the mission to the Mediterranean.
It is a story growing out of the house church movement of
"Jesus people" in Jerusalem. It concerns a church
that was very small in number, and very poor of pocket. So
how did they pay the bills?
For a
brief period, they practiced a simple form of communism. Not
Russian communism. Not Chinese communism. Not Iron Curtain,
McCarthy hearings, or "Big Red Menace" communism.
Just a simple form of "collectivism," wherein they
pooled their possessions and mutually ministered to each other's
needs. One feature of this program involved the sale of real
estate. Once a field (or house) was sold, fresh money was
contributed to the pool ... provided the seller followed through
with the promise of being a donor. Which was true of a certain
Cypriot named Joseph ... who the apostles renamed Barnabas
(meaning Son of Encouragement or Son of Exhortation). To this
day, Barnabas is the only saint ... beyond the 12 apostles
and Paul ... who is honored with his own red-letter day in
the Anglican Church.
And why
was Barnabas such a big deal? Because he sold a field in the
very earliest days of the movement and laid it at the apostles'
feet. Not the field, mind you. The money. Barnabas showed
them the money. All of the money. As to the agent's commission,
the Bible says nothing. But if you see Kathy Dalton afterward,
she'll probably know how the agent made out at the end of
the day. Good realtors have a network by which they track
such things.
Very few
people know this, but Neil Ferguson told me (just before the
service) that several of our members who have property on
Walloon Lake have recently taken this text to heart. Which
means that, any day now, there should be a ton of new listings
in the Petoskey Times Herald, and an infusion of fresh
cash into the coffers of First Church.
So much
for background. As to how long this practice persisted, we
cannot say. There is no evidence that it lasted to the end
of the century. The repeated appeals of Paul to the churches
of Greece and Asia Minor to send generous offerings to "support
the saints of Jerusalem," would tend to suggest that
either the "saints of Jerusalem" ran out of people
with Walloon Lake property, or that the Mother Church came
to feel that the "mother lode" was in its rich daughter
churches, more than in its cash-depleted members. Darned if
I know. And the Bible doesn't say.
What it
does say is that shortly after this "encouraging"
act of Barnabas, two other people peddled some real estate
and held back part of the price. Which was not sinful, in
and of itself. They were under no obligation to give it to
the church. For while such donations were a commended practice,
not everybody made them. The issue was that they "said"
they were going to give the proceeds to the church ... all
of the proceeds ... from the first dollar to the last dollar.
For all we know, they probably made a "big deal"
of their projected gift. But they didn't follow through on
it. In short, they lied.
They,
being Ananias and Sapphira. The word "Ananias" means
"God is gracious." The word "Sapphira"
means "beautiful" (or better yet, "lovely").
At any rate, they sold the land and then held back on the
pledge. Which Peter figured out ... either by himself, or
with the help of Joan Benner in the Finance office. So Peter
called Ananias on the carpet, saying (in effect): "What
got into you ... or who got into you ... so as to lead you
to lie about what you sold ... about what you got for what
you sold ... about what you gave out of what you got for what
you sold ... and about what you pocketed for yourself out
of what you got for what you sold?"
I know
that there are very good reasons as to why people don't always
follow through on what they say they are going to do. Sickness
comes. Unemployment comes. Expenses rise. Market dies. Car
fails. Plumbing goes. Everybody makes allowances for that.
But such
is not the case, here. The biblical implication is that Ananias
conspires (with the help of his wife) to make things "look"
one way, while having them "turn out" a very different
way. I'll never forget the guy in Dearborn (over 30 years
ago) who had it figured out to the "T." He knew
that the counting team always prepared the bank deposit (following
the 11:00 service) in a hard-to-find locked room in the basement.
So every Sunday he would appear about 12:45, knock on the
door, and offer up another version of the same story.
He was
a member who owned a retail store, meaning that he regularly
made change. Which left him in need of both coins and small
bills. So he would offer to buy all the silver and all the
singles, writing a check for the total. Which would lighten
the load of the deposit bag, while simplifying the work of
the counters. And there was no reason not to trust him. I
mean, they knew him. They knew his wife. They knew his kids.
Besides, his check was always good. Always cleared. Never
bounced. Because, you see, he wasn't cheating the church.
He was cheating the government. How, you ask? On his taxes,
that's how. At the end of every year, he totaled those checks
written to First Church and declared them as charitable deductions.
They weren't, of course. But the government had no way of
knowing that. If he hadn't gotten greedy, he'd have never
been audited. And the IRS would have never called the church.
And the church treasurer would have never blown the whistle
... on a very clever scam ... by a very nice man ... at a
very trusting church. Stick around long enough and you'll
see it all.
But back
to Ananias. Peter puts it to him. And, upon hearing Peter's
words, Ananias falls down and dies. Whereupon, the text says,
"great awe came over everybody." Several young men
got up ... wrapped him up ... bore him up ... carried him
out ... and laid him down. Down under. Six feet under. What
do you call those men? "Pallbearers." That's what
you call those men.
Three
hours go by ... (why does everything in the Bible take either
three hours or forty days?). And what happens after three
hours go by? The lovely Sapphira drops by the church, no doubt
wondering why Ananias hasn't come home for lunch (or to rake
the leaves). So Peter questions her. "Did you have a
field?" "Did you sell it for such and such a price?"
"Did your gift to the church equal your stated intentions?"
"And, if not, were you in on this little scheme with
your husband?"
Whereupon
Peter suddenly changes the subject, saying to her: "You
see those young men coming through the door with shovels in
their hands and mud on their boots? Bet you can't guess where
they've been." So Peter tells her where they've been.
They've been out burying the body of her hubby. Leading her
to fall on the floor in a faint ... just as fast ... just
as dead. So the young men buried her, too. Right beside him.
And it was said, once more, "that great awe fell upon
the church, and all who heard these things."
So who
killed them? Well, nobody did. Peter didn't. The pallbearers
didn't. The power of God didn't. Assuming they died (and who
would make up a story like this, let alone perpetuate it,
were it grounded in a falsehood), they died from something
inside rather than from something outside. You figure out
what it was. You're a bright congregation. Most of you have
taken an introductory course in psychology. I've got to believe
you'll come up with something over lunch. And I expect your
explanation will be every bit as good as mine.
The question
that interests me more is this. "If you cheat the church,
are you gonna die?" I don't know. Maybe. Maybe not. But,
if you do, it'll be an inside job again. I mean, God's not
gonna kill you. Religion needs to lay to rest all that "striking
people dead" language. You hear it all the time. "Better
watch out, God's gonna strike you dead." "Better
not sit too close to Carl in case God decides to strike him
dead." That's hogwash. And it's long past time for someone
to say: "That's hogwash."
But generous
people do live longer, don't you know. Better, too. There
is a demonstrable medical correlation between open hands and
strong hearts. And there is a sense that if you live with
internal integrity ... so that all of the parts of your life
are working as one ... you are going to fare far better than
if all the parts of your body are working as two (or three,
or four). I have always known this. But I haven't always talked
about this. Especially as concerns the issue of giving. Or,
more to the point, tithing.
As is
usually the case when a preacher doesn't talk about something,
the silence is usually rooted in the subconscious of one's
own embarrassment. More simply put, one is unlikely to preach
what one hasn't been inclined to practice. And if that were
the case, I could understand it. But that wasn't the case
then. And it isn't the case now. For virtually all my ministry,
I have believed in tithing. And for virtually all my ministry,
I have practiced tithing. In other words, my "soft sell"
from the pulpit was a betrayal of my own philosophy and practice.
As I analyze it now, that betrayal was rooted in the feeling
that I needed to protect and coddle you. I suppose that in
protecting you, I figured that I was protecting myself. But
the terrible fact of the matter is that I didn't protect you
at all. I cheated you. I cheated you out of a marvelous discipline
that could have made all the difference in your lives.
You see,
tithing is not some nifty little scheme the Jews thought up
in order to balance the budget of the Temple. Instead, tithing
is a God-given principle that enables people to order their
lives so that everything runs more smoothly. So, if your life
isn't running all that smoothly ... and if finances are one
of the reasons ... this may be the most important word I will
say to you all season.
Tithing
can straighten out your financial life more effectively than
any money-management seminar you could attend or any budget-building
book you could read. I am serious. Hear me out. My colleague,
David Church, writes:
I used
to be mystified by the fact that when persons began to tithe,
they inevitably discovered that the remaining 90 percent
of their income seemed to go farther than did the 100 percent
when they kept it for themselves. This has been the universal
experience of everyone I have known who has started to tithe.
Tithers are happier. Tithers are more fulfilled. And tithers
have more of the things they want and need, than those who
keep all of their income for themselves. It's a fact. Check
it out.
Right
on, David. I agree. What's more, I know why. It has nothing
to do with God smiling on tithers and tipping the storehouse
of heaven's goodies so that good fortune rains more frequently
on those who tithe than on those who don't. No, things work
out for tithers because the very act of tithing puts God at
the center of their decision making. Which means that God
becomes a part of the process of figuring out what to do,
not only with the 10 percent that is given to the church,
but with the 90 percent that is kept. And when people become
intentional about the way they spend all of their money, they
inevitably get more joy out of what they do with it, while
avoiding the problems that arise from a spending plan that
has no focus or purpose. The absolute genius of tithing consists
in the fact that tithers say: "This is where I start."
And when you start from the right place, things tend to fall
in the right order.
Lots of
things fall in the right order. Including your health. It's
a spiritual law. You can look it up. But save that for later.
For now, simply hang onto your hat. Because we're going to
Tulsa. Which is where my friend Bob Pierson preaches ... in
a Methodist church ... a big Methodist church ... where they
collect lots and lots of money, each and every Sunday morning.
Whereupon they stuff it in a safe until Monday ... when they
count it, total it and bank it.
Oh, don't
worry. It's a big safe. And a safe safe. Nobody's every cracked
it. Or lifted it. I mean, you'd have to take half of the floor
with it. Which is exactly what someone did. Or several someones
did. It happened a few weeks back ... on a Sunday night ...
when the safe was full. Bob said he got a call from the alarm
company along about 2:00 in the morning ("Gee, Rev ...
we don't want to bother you ... but we've detected a slight
variance on our motion detector."). "A slight variance?"
cried Bob. "These guys had to have used a backhoe to
get that safe out of there."
Well,
they wrote everybody a letter. First thing. Told `em what
happened. Got everybody to tell the church ... Scout's honor
... what they'd given that day. And when the shock died down,
people seemed to be taking it pretty well. And the leadership,
from Bob on down, was working pretty hard.
Until
several days later, when Bob was called out of a meeting by
his secretary to speak to a fellow who had come to the office
and wouldn't go away. So Bob went out to help him go away.
Whereupon the fellow said: "Reverend, I think you recently
lost something. And I might ... just might ... be able to
help you find it. Can we talk?"
Well,
as it turned out, the young man (by his own admission) wasn't
always a very nice man. But he had gotten his life straightened
out. Now he was trying to help others get their lives straightened
out. Which was how he happened to learn about the safe ...
whose it was ... where it was ... and what was in it. Then
he said:
Reverend,
that ain't right. I know that. I've always known that. So
I've told the people who have your safe that what they've
got is the Lord's money ... from the Lord's house ... for
the Lord's work. And when I found out where that money belonged,
I knew that if I didn't come to see you, I wouldn't be able
to live with myself. I'd rather not tell you my name. But
if you trust me, I'll call you and let you know where you
can get your safe. And, I guarantee you, that even though
it will have been opened, there won't be one dollar (or
one dime) missing from its contents.
Whereupon
he did. They did. And there wasn't.
True story?
Yeah.
Good story?
Yeah.
Straight
story? You tell me.
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* * * *
The Lord's
money!
Some
people hold it back.
Some
people bring it back.
It's
all in a day's work ... right?
Wrong!
Some days, it's a matter of life and death.
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