Newsletter

Lent is a season of repentant joy.  There is joy in repentance because in repentance, God, through His Word, turns us away from our sins — our failures of thought, word, and deed — to believe in the forgiveness and new life He has accomplished for us in the death and resurrection of His Son.   For our God is our Father, and fathers discipline their children.  He loves us enough to point out when and where we have erred, so that we are not weighed down by false belief, despair, and other great shame or vice.

Thus we do well to listen to God’s Word, His own teaching, about giving.  St. Paul exhorts: “Anyone who receives instruction in the word must share all good things with his instructor” (Gal 6:6).  This means that the local congregation is primary.  In other words, everything else that we might give to during the year — laudable and worthy charities —are to be on top of what we give to our local congregation. For the local congregation is the place that serves us with the gifts of Christ’s death and resurrection.  The local congregation is where our spiritual needs are met when Christ’s atonement is preached, when the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed, when we were baptized into the name of the Triune God, and when we partake of the body and blood of the risen and living Lamb of God.

But how much are we to give to this local congregation?  His instructions are these: to give regularly (1 Cor 6:1–2), proportionally (1 Cor 16:1–2; 2 Cor 8:12), and generously (2 Cor 8:20) of our first fruits (Gen 4:4; Prov 3:9; Lev 27:30) with a spirit of eagerness (2 Cor 9:2), earnestness (2 Cor 8:7), cheerfulness (2 Cor 9:7), and love (2 Cor 8:23).

Thus, giving to the church is not to be an afterthought, given after everything else is spent.  In this way, it is deliberate.  We give it regularly, whenever we have income.  We set it aside beforehand, before anything else is spent.  From those first fruits, we set aside a proportionate and generous amount.  Ten percent was the standard for the Israelites.  Tithing was a command for them.  St. Paul never mentions a tithe.  Since a tithe was the bare minimum for the people of Israel in the Old Testament, perhaps St. Paul had more in mind.  That aside, however, ten percent is an easy way to figure out an amount.  You simply move your weekly, bi-weekly, bi-monthly, monthly, or yearly income one decimal point to the left.  And that’s it.  That’s what you put in the Offering plate to support your local congregation so that you may continue to be a hearer of God’s Word by sharing all good things with those who teach it to you.

And how are we to give it?  We give it with eagerness and earnestness.  We give it cheerfully and with love, not out of compulsion.  For through the preaching of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments, God has made us His children, forgiven us all our sins, given us grace upon grace, promised us life everlasting with Him in His kingdom, and filled us with His own Spirit, the Holy Spirit.  This makes giving a joy.  For it is more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:35).

In repentant joy, then, do we hear God’s Word on giving, and we let that Word dwell in us richly.  We let that word wash over our ears and seep into our hearts, to turn us away from our own selfish desires and turned toward Him in faith and love.  We love the Lord and His Word.  And we desire to do it.  And when we have failed, that Word reproves and corrects, forgives and consoles.  It calls us back to Him who is our God, our Savior, our Father.

We’ve all heard that stewardship is giving to the church of our time, talents, and treasure. This alliterative trinity helps us see that giving is not just about money, but about our whole lives. For God has given us everything we have and enjoy as we confess in the meaning to the First Article of the Apostle’s Creed. And what we confess first among those is that God gives us “our body and soul, our eyes, ears, and all our members, our reason and all our senses.” Only then do we confess that he gives us material things. Thus the time, talents, and treasure trinity places before our eyes the fact that we are to give something of all of these things toward the mission of the church in thanksgiving for what God has provided. For everything we have and indeed everything we are comes from God’s fatherly divine goodness and mercy.

The problem with this alliterative trinity comes when we replace one little word with another little word—when we replace the word and with the word or. It is always written with the and, but when we read it, we read it with the or. Thus this quite helpful trinity, which extolled that everything that we have and are is a gift from God and which is to be pressed into the service of God in His church, turns into a trinity that we can pick and choose which of the trinity we use into the service of God. The giving of our time, talents, and treasure turns into the giving of our time, talents, or treasure.

Then the question arises: Can we give of our time and talents instead of our treasures? Or perhaps it is the other way round: Can we give our treasure and not of our time and our talents? But these are the wrong questions. The right question is, can we give of our time and our talents in addition to our treasure? Yes, indeed, we are called to give of all three. The things that God gives us are not to be pitted against one another. They are given to us and we are to press them all into God’s service for benefit of His church and our neighbors in need.

Thus we give all three. We give our treasure in the form of a generous, first-fruits, proportion of our income. We give of our time in generosity for the benefit of Christ’s holy church. We give of our talents in the same manner. Since God gave us all these things, we are called to give generously of all these things in faith toward Him and in fervent love to our neighbors.

For God has provided all these things to us. Out of His fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, He gives us each time, talents, AND treasures as a means to bless those around us. We serve our neighbors with these things, blessing them with the blessings in which God has blessed us. We give of our time, talents, and treasures to our families, our society, and to our church, our local congregations. And we do this because we know that we are not our own. Rather, we belong to God. We have been bought with a price—with the holy precious blood and innocent suffering and death of our Lord Jesus Christ. He gave everything—His time, His talents, and His treasure,—to have us as His own and to live under Him in His kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness. We have these things as gifts and blessings from God. Let us then press them all into service for the sake of His love—time, talents, and treasures together.