Howard Schultz is chairman and chief global strategist of Starbucks. In his acceptance speech for the Columbia Business School’s Botwinick Prize in Business Ethics last September, he told this story. (I’ll use the first person.)

"When I was in Israel, I went to Me’ah She’arim, the ultra-Orthodox area within Jerusalem. Along with a group of businessmen I was with, I had the opportunity to have an audience with Rabbi Finkel, the head of a yeshiva there. I had never heard of him and didn’t know anything about him. We went into his study and waited 10 to 15 minutes for him. Finally, the doors opened. What we did not know was that Rabbi Finkel was severely afflicted with Parkinson’s disease. He sat down at the head of the table, and, naturally, our inclination was to look away. We didn’t want to embarrass him. We were all looking away, and we heard this big bang on the table:

Gentlemen, look at me, and look at me right now. Now, his speech affliction was worse than his physical shaking. It was really hard to listen to him and watch him. He said, I have only a few minutes for you because I know you’re all busy American businessmen. You know, just a little dig there. Then he asked, Who can tell me what the lesson of the Holocaust is? He called on one guy, who didn’t know what to do–it was like being called on in the fifth grade without the answer. And the guy says something benign like, We will never, ever forget. And the rabbi completely dismisses him. I felt terrible for the guy until I realized the rabbi was getting ready to call on someone else. All of us were sort of under the table, looking away–you know, please, not me. He did not call me. I was sweating. He called on another guy, who had such a fantastic answer: We will never, ever again be a victim or bystander.

"The rabbi said, You guys just don’t get it. Okay, gentlemen, let me tell you the essence of the human spirit. As you know, during the Holocaust, the people were transported in the worst possible, inhumane way by railcar. They thought they were going to a work camp. We all know they were going to a death camp. After hours and hours in this inhumane corral with no light, no bathroom, cold, they arrived at the camps. The doors were swung wide open, and they were blinded by the light. Men were separated from women, mothers from daughters, fathers from sons. They went off to the bunkers to sleep. As they went into the area to sleep, only one person was given a blanket for every six. The person who received the blanket, when he went to bed, had to decide, ‘Am I going to push the blanket to the five other people who did not get one, or am I going to pull it toward myself to stay warm?’

"And Rabbi Finkel says, It was during this defining moment that we learned the power of the human spirit, because we pushed the blanket to five others. And with that, he stood up and said, Take your blanket. Take it back to America and push it to five other people." [Chabadline.com, Oct. 25, 2001.]

Now, the truth is, very few of us have ever been faced with as dramatic a decision as that, right? One blanket, six cold people — what to do? But this goes to the heart of Paul’s argument. Our ultimate example is the one who made the ultimate sacrifice for us. The Lord Jesus, though he was rich with heaven’s glory, became poor for our sakes. As a result, we who have every reason to suffer the cold of eternal loneliness due to our sin have been wrapped in the swaddling clothes of the Savior and held close to the bosom of God. Once we were strangers of God; now we are friends.

Paul’s case moves from the most severe inequality of Christ’s riches and our poverty, from God’s generosity and our need, to smaller inequalities among ourselves that we must address if we are to prove ourselves worthy of the blanket of God’s grace we have received. Paul’s stewardship reasoning is a logic of love. You say you love other people? Fine. Prove it, he says. It’s not just the thought that counts; it’s the action.

Paul wants the Gentile church at Corinth to share its wealth with poverty-stricken Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. The Jerusalem disciples were the first out of the box with the gospel. They were Jews, all of them, and once they had swallowed the good news of Jesus Christ for themselves, they had to swallow hard to share it with Gentiles. Gentiles represented everything Jews stood against. It was no easier for them to share spiritual grace with soul-starved Gentiles than for Corinthians to share material grace with stomach-starved Jews. But those first Jewish Christians learned to let go of their spiritual privileges and welcome these pagans into the covenant. Now the tables are turned. Will the Corinthian Christians let go of their material privileges and supply the needs of their Jewish family? They have received bountiful spiritual grace; now they should offer bountiful material grace to their new brothers and sisters. It is only right.

One of the most important decisions the Bush administration has made in the war on terrorism is to address hunger and displacement occurring among Afghan refugees. If all we did was to drop bombs on the Taliban and drop propaganda leaflets on the refugees blaming the Taliban, we would fail in the end to bring peace after we bring justice.

Paul will not permit us to think of the gospel of Jesus Christ as a purely spiritual matter. If the gospel were about ideas and the way we pray and the things we think, there would have been no reason for God to come in the flesh and for Jesus to die on an old rugged cross. For any of us today to say that God is concerned with how we pray and what we believe but not with how we treat our neighbors in need or how we spend our money or what we give to help a hungry and hurting world – well, that will not wash with Paul.

And it shouldn’t wash with us, either. I do not know why God has permitted the kind of inequities we experience in the world. We all have something to do with it, rich and poor both. What we do know is that most of us have more than our fair share. We may have earned it honestly; it may be partly due to our hard work and brilliance, but nonetheless we have a spiritual responsibility to share it with those who have less.

My firstborn, Cameron, always looked after her little brother, Rhett, when they were little. She spoke for him, finished his sentences, and stood up for him against their common enemy – their parents. One day I was in one of my favorite places … the pantry, handing out cookies ... to myself. Cameron came bounding in, giving me those beggar eyes. I want some, Daddy, she said. Well, there were only a few left, so I ate one more and gave her the other two. Just then Rhett came in saying, Cookie?! I showed him the empty box and told him, as I left the room, to ask Cameron. The next thing I heard was wailing from my cookie-deprived son. His trusted sister and friend, his protector and provider in all things, had stuffed the two cookies down her throat without sharing a morsel. Turns out the girl is a chocolate chip off the old block, don’t you know?!

Now, what was the real problem? Scarcity or stinginess? There was enough for both of them, but the breakdown came in distribution. And isn’t that the real problem with us? Listen, there’s plenty of money in the world for every need; it’s just that it is concentrated in the bank accounts of too few people who won’t turn loose of it. There’s plenty of money in the church to do everything and more that God wants of us; it’s just still in the pockets of most members.

Which leads to us. We don’t have to answer to God for anyone but ourselves. God will judge each one of us on what we have done with the resources God has entrusted to us. Amazingly, God does not require of us that we sell our houses and cars and clothes and go live in Afghan caves so that we can be like Jesus. Paul says it is a matter of proportion. It is not right for us to have all we have and for others to have so little. If we are to share life, we must share our wealth, too. Because I have been given much, I too must give. Because of thy great bounty, Lord, each day I live, I will divide my gifts from thee with every brother that I see that has the need of help from me.

Jimmy Nadalini has been living in New York City this fall, training with his company. On Sunday mornings you can find him serving breakfast at a homeless shelter by 5:45 a.m. One morning he also made 100 peanut butter sandwiches for people to take with them. A few hours later he was sitting in a pew for worship, and one bench over he saw a woman, world-worn and weary. Her purse spilled over in the pew, and out popped one of the sandwiches Jimmy had made that morning. Moments later they would share the Table of the Lord. They were sister and brother in the Lord – not only because of the gift of Christ but also because of his gift. He had more than his fair share, and by giving, he struck a fairer balance between them.

Now, so far today I have been talking about the basic foundations of our giving. We give out of an overflowing love that has been given to us. We give out of overflowing resources that have been given to us. And we give in order that there might be a fair balance of resources for everyone, to go with all the luxuries of love we enjoy. Now, I could, without much arm-twisting, get most of you to give one time to the cause of hunger relief for starving Christians in Jerusalem or something similar, the way Paul is doing here. You’ve done it before. The question is whether you will make giving a matter of consistent, regular, and dependable discipleship rather than an occasional offering.

It is not a fair balance when we have to support 100% of the mission of the church on the backs of only two-thirds of the members. More than that, when about 25% give 75% of the money, we need a room full of chiropractors to make adjustments in the aching backs of the generous quarter. We can do better than that, people.

The principle of the tithe is a simple and biblical way of sharing the abundance in a fair way. If you haven’t yet learned to tithe, you are missing the blessing of God on your obedience, and you are unjustly burdening people you say you love. It’s time for a change. You can begin today. Commit to it first, then do it.

As the President said the other night after reminding us again of our new national cause. We have a mission. Let’s roll.