’Twas the night before the Texas-OU game at the Cotton Bowl. Burnt Orange-man Mike Furney figured to do something special for wife Nancy’s birthday. So he invited some of their good friends, who were also in town for the game, to join them for dinner at a fancy steak place in North Dallas. They had a big time. The general manager even came over to make sure they were well cared for. They ate well and shared communion liberally with one another in a non-Baptist way. Mike paid the substantial bill, and all went their way to rest their voices for the game the next day. So good, so far. But when Mike rose from bed the next morning, his head cleared from a night of peaceful sleep, a feeling of dread fell over him. He realized what he had done. In his haste to pay the bill, he had badly miscalculated the tip and shortchanged the wait staff. So after the game, Mike made his way back to the restaurant to make things right. When he walked in the door, the general manager saw him and approached: Oh, the 5 percent guy. What are you doing here? Mike explained himself and left a compensatory tip, setting things more than right, but still not making up for his embarrassment.

On a day when we are considering our intentions for giving to the church for the next year, it might be well to use this story as a prompt for us to consider the relations between tipping and tithing. At first blush it may seem far-fetched, but fetching far is what I do best, don’t you know?!

Tipping and tithing—different as they are—are both gratuities of a sort. Gratuity means free gift, donation, something given without obligation. From time to time I hear people say we must not make giving seem like an obligation. After all, Paul says it should be voluntary, not compulsory, right? Else it wouldn’t be a gift given; it would be a debt paid. God loves a cheerful giver. So, why don’t we feel that way about tipping? If it is a gratuity, after all, then those waitpersons ought not beef about our not tipping. But how many of us want to make that case? We may quibble over what percentage to tip, but do any of us think that being expected to tip is wrong? I actually think this is one of the best little gestures we can perform for the sake of students and single mothers and struggling artists that make up the lion’s share of wait staffs. I mean, what would it hurt any of us to get a little wild and tip a breakfast waitress at the IHOP about $5 more than necessary? How much would it cost you over the course of a year of eating out to round up over 20% of your bill instead of sitting there with your pencil doing longhand division on your napkin to make sure you don’t violate the sacred 15% mark? No, most waitpersons make very little, and we can help a whole lot by turning a meager expectation into a grace-filled gesture.

Now tithing. Yes, God expects it, and even considers it robbery not to do it. You heard the prophet Malachi’s words: You are robbing me, says the Lord, in your tithes and offerings. God expects our tithes and offerings. Why? Two reasons, I think.

First, because this is God’s primary means of relieving the burdens of the poor, extending the witness of God to the world, and tending to the operations of the religious community. Temple worship and ministry were performed by the priests, and tithing paid for them and their families to live as full members of the community while others had jobs of farming and shepherding and other trades. When tithes and offering dry up, the whole religious life of the community is imperiled, including widows and orphans and the families of clergy. If that sounds like a self-serving argument for getting you to pay my salary, well, okay. We can have church without paid Christians like me. We don’t need beautiful buildings or beds for newborns or curriculum for Sunday school. But is that what God has in mind for this church? If it isn’t, then let me ask you: what are you doing about it?

So far this year, though many have given generously, there are some alarming statistics to report. I wish I could say it was an aberration due to a bad economy, but it isn’t. Out of 2,050 active individual members in our church, 976 have given nothing— zero—to the ministry of God in this church so far this year. That’s a staggering 48%. Collective gasp? Of those who have given, many have given at a level that would offend any waitress, let alone God. Fully one-third of those who have given, have given less than $1,000. How can we expect God to say any less than, You are robbing me? God must be thinking, How am I supposed to get my will done on earth as it is in heaven, when this is the level of commitment I find from the very people that keep praying that over and over again? It’s one thing to be prayed up; it’s another to be paid up.

If that sounds harsh, consider the following syllogisms. If you say (a) that you love your family, and (b) that providing for them is a way of showing that you love them, but then (c) you spend the baby’s milk money at the racetrack, do you really love your family? If you say (a) that you want to make your business go, and (b) you know it will take real investment in it to make it go, but (c) you would rather play bridge in the men’s card room at the country club every afternoon, then do you really want your business to go? So here we go: if you say (a) that you believe the church is the body of Christ commissioned to do the will of God in the world, and (b) that God has provided all the resources to the church for the church to do whatever God wills, but (c) those resources stay in your pocket, then do you really want the will of God for your church?

Our associate pastor, Preston Bright, is a Baylor graduate. A church member asked him one time when he would start making contributions to Baylor. He replied, When we stop having to have capital campaigns in our church that make me give more than a tithe because other people are not doing their part. Exactly. Do you realize that we would never have to worry about special campaigns for expanding or upgrading facilities or parking if everyone did what the Bible says to do and tithed? We would have the resources to transform the lives of many people in this community through our missions work if we all did our part. Instead, we move happily along, satisfied with far less than God has in mind for us. The chief thing in the way of our mission being dramatically effective is that we are robbing God of the resources God has first given to us so that we may voluntarily share them.

When I was a kid, every Saturday night my dad would put out the offering envelopes on a table next to his Bible. Before any of us three kids made any money, he would put dimes or quarters on top of the envelope. It was our job to take what he had given us, put it in the envelope, and turn it in as our contribution. It was always a thrill to feel like I was putting an envelope in the plate that looked on the outside exactly like my dad’s. Listen, God has given us all that we have, and God is asking for our gratuity. God is asking for us to show our gratitude by giving back from what God has given us.

But when you are seven years old, you don’t get mail or phone calls at dinner asking for you to contribute to someone’s worthy cause. You don’t have to wrestle with how to divide your gifts between the church and other enterprises that seem also to be part of God’s kingdom work. Today we are asking you to turn in statements of intention for your giving to Wilshire for next year. We suggest you follow the biblical standard and give 10% of your estimated gross income to the ministry budget, and give an offering if you can to capital improvements also. We have not included space for gifts to the Wilkinson Center or Habitat for Humanity or Mi Escuelita or Interfaith Housing or any number of worthy organizations. One reason is that, while many of them are worthy and deserve support, when you give to the ministry budget, we already include in it contributions to those ministries. More than 20% of our budget leaves the premises, helping the community or world missions.

Malachi says, Bring the full tithe into the storehouse. Now, the storehouse was the temple-managed distribution center, analogous to the church today. But in fairness, they didn’t have other agencies spawned by the church the way we do today that do similar work of missions and ministry. So it’s up to you in your relationship with God to figure how you will divide your tithe. I would only ask you first to consider the work of the waitress at your table, so to speak—the one that works constantly in your favor to care for you and your family. I know people who spend much of their tithe on good causes and little on the primary institution that feeds their soul, cares for their children and pays the light bill for their spiritual enlightenment and the salary for the youth minister that keeps their teenagers grounded. Is that fair?

There’s something all the more important to consider in all of this. And this is the second reason God wants us to tithe. If the first reason has to do with getting God’s work done in the world—whether tipping waitresses well or tithing for kingdom purposes—the second reason is about the joy that happens between you and God when you do.

A few years ago Mike and Mary Howe were vacationing in Acapulco, Mexico. They strolled through the marketplace, entering the land of trinkets and bargaining. They bargained down for a key chain or two and then came upon a booth manned by a shirtless boy of about 10. He showed off a table full of woven bracelets. Did you make these? Mike asked. Si, senor. Mike feigned amazement and asked him to take one apart and remake it for him to prove his craft. The boy grinned and took a hot pink one with the word Acapulco woven in black thread. He undid it and redid it with ease and grace. Mike was impressed. How much? he asked. $2, said the boy. Ai yi yi! Too little! Mike answered. Give me dollar, the boy responded in broken English. Suddenly some of the children around there started giggling and conferred with the boy, explaining that the man wanted to pay him more for the bracelet, not less. Too little, Mike said again. Give me $3, said the boy, getting the hang of it now. Ai yi yi, too little still, said Mike. Give me $4, the boy said as the crowd grew. How about $5? Mike said. The boy smiled brightly, and for the rest of their time in the market, about two-dozen Hershey kiss-eyed children followed them around.

Now let me ask you, do you think you can ever out give God? God says 10%: can you imagine bargaining upward from there? Do you want to get the best deal or the biggest smile? When you walk back into he presence of God and God recognizes you right off, do you want to hear, Oh, the 5% guy: What percentage would you like to hear God shout out when you get to heaven? Just a thought.