Maybe you saw the reports this week of the major gifts that made the front page. Software mogul Bill Gates and computer magnate Michael Dell have pledged $55 million between them from their charitable foundations toward the total $135 million that will try to improve secondary education is Texas. More high schools will be built, especially in low-income areas. Smaller class sizes and more school funding are touted as keys to success. And then an anonymous donor has given the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center $50 million to improve clinical research and operations at the research hospital. Next to Raymond Nasher’s $70 million gift of the Nasher Sculpture Center to the city, it is the largest gift of its kind in Dallas history.

Wow! Wouldn’t you love to have the resources to do something like that? Wouldn’t it be great to be a true philanthropist and be able to make a real difference with your wealth?

Well, how much to you need to get started? I mean, is giving something only the rich do? Do you need to wait to give until you accumulate hundreds of millions of dollars first? Of course not. So how much, then? Tens of millions? A few million? Really, you can’t do anything significant with your giving unless you have at least a million in the bank, right? But even then, a million dollars doesn’t go as far as it used to, does it? You want to make sure your children and grandchildren are taken care of first with trust funds. Then there are capital preservation strategies to make sure you don’t lose it, because you can’t give what you haven’t saved, right? And there are a few things you’ve always wanted. A vacation house … or two; a luxury import … or two; a face-lift … or two; a golf trip to Scotland … or two: these are all things you worked hard for and ought to be able to enjoy with your money. So when do you get ’round to being a philanthropist? When do you put money into action for the welfare of others and the kingdom of God?

If you are like most wealthy people, you don’t ever get ’round to it, at least not in a big way. The more you have, the more you become preoccupied with keeping what you have. So the amount that you have to give is not the issue, is it?

A priest said to a poor farmer, If you had a horse, would you give it to the Lord? “Yes,” the man said. And if you had a cow? “Absolutely.” And a goat? “Sure.” What about a pig? “Now, that’s not fair,” protested the farmer. “You know I have a pig!”

That’s the problem, isn’t it? We are all willing to give money or things to the Lord that we don’t have. But we aren’t willing to give what we do have. Well, here’s the open secret of giving: You can only give what you have. Go ahead, call me a genius! I can take it, don’t you know?! But that simple truth is really the starting point for Christian stewardship. Stewardship, after all, assumes that God has given us something to be stewards of. No matter how much we have — a lot or a little — God only asks us to be good stewards of that.

Look at our text in 2 Corinthians. Paul is urging the relatively wealthy church at Corinth to give an offering to help relieve the suffering of fellow Christians in Jerusalem who are enduring desperate conditions due to famine. He mentions the poor church in Macedonia that gave generously out of their poverty. Paul thinks if the poor can be generous, the rich should be all the more generous.

I mentioned last Sunday that only those who have modest means in our church tend to talk to me about their spiritual concerns over giving. I am happy to say that I have had one conversation this week with someone of means who asked for prayer to learn to do the right thing. And if we are to reach our campaign goal of $2.6 million, we are going to need people with accumulated wealth to give generously, not just those of us who give out of our income.

But I was also blessed and awed by a woman who asked my opinion on how to divide her gifts. She lives on a monthly Social Security check of $841 per month. Since her expenses are relatively low, she has for years been double tithing — yes, you heard me right. She gives 20 percent, not 10 percent, and all to the ministry fund of her church. Her point is that she doesn’t need 90 percent to live on, and so she gives more and trusts God to take care of her. She also gives a monthly gift to the clergy apprenticeship program, and other gifts now and then to special missions offerings. She wants to participate in our capital campaign now; and she was asking some guidance about priorities for her gifts beyond her double tithe! I just want to scream sometimes, Thanks be to God! May your tribe increase! She understands something even deeper than my brilliant statement earlier that you can only give from what you have. When Christians are thinking straight about stewardship, they will not ask, How much ought I give to God from what I have? They will ask, How much, of all that God has given me, ought I keep for myself? [William Willimon, Pulpit Resource (Oct.-Dec. 2003): 27.]
So how do we all get to that kind of stewardship? This is what we are trying to help each other with. We don’t need your money to have church, only to have the kind of church we believe God wants from us. We could have church in a hundred living rooms and still be a vital congregation. The point is that we all know in our hearts that what we do with the resources God has given us is a spiritual matter that we all struggle with. Money matters and money talks, but unless we talk about money and break the conspiracy of silence over it, money will chain us up instead of set us free.

So let’s be practical today, okay? Let’s start where you are and ask how to take some steps of faith in your giving. The image I have in mind is one you can see any day at the Baylor Rehabilitation Hospital on Gaston. People who have had strokes, injuries, or joint replacements need to relearn how to walk. Physical and occupational therapists help them take steps — one at a time, with some handholding at first, with a walker maybe to lean on, until they develop strength and confidence and can walk on their own without fear. For some of you, the thought of faithful and committed steps of stewardship is frightening — you are scared you will fall into poverty. But we have to help you break through that fear until you get to the thrill on the other side that comes from the leaps and bounds you can take when you really get it.

STEP 1: Become a tither. The biblical minimum for a Christian is tithing. It is a threshold to cross, not a finish line. It is God’s monetary method for redressing injustices and inequities. It is God’s plan for funding the ministries of the church and its mission to the world with the good news of Christ.

Now. some of you were wishing I would have said, Set some goals that will eventually allow you to reach a tithe. You would like me to suggest a gradual growth in giving. And growth is good: that would certainly help. But I believe that to be concession to consumerism, to where our spending still has priority over us and our giving is really charity rather than a basic Christian duty.

I remember being about 10 or so with my parents in a pub near the docks in Hoboken or Yonkers one Friday night. We had picked him up from a job — he was a ship pilot in New York Harbor. Dad was hungry, and that was all we could find open at the late hour. I had a corned beef sandwich on rye. Ask me how I remember that place, the smell of it and the sounds. First time in a pub. The place was full of longshoremen, drinking up their weekly paychecks, as my father told us. My father knew. He grew up with a father who captained a tugboat until he was fired for drinking on the job. He remembered the pain of seeing a mother welcome home her drunken husband without the money in his pocket she needed to feed her family. So I’m wondering about gradualism here: Should we say that men like that ought to set a goal to consume less alcohol until they can bring home just enough of their paycheck to feed their children? I don’t think so, and neither do you.

If tithing is God’s way of getting us to realize our bonds with each other and to share our love for the benefit of each other, then we ought to work on how we spend the other 90 percent instead of how we grow to giving 10 percent. The best advice I can give you is to make the first check you write when paying bills to be your tithe. You will never be an effective tither if you wait until all bills are paid and then figure 10 percent of your gross income to give. You don’t need to pray about this; just do it. Then you can pray about how to live on the remainder.

Step 2: Make offerings. Our text today is talking about offerings, not tithes. This is what we do over and above our tithes that involves some sacrifice of what we have that we could use on ourselves but raise up instead for the higher purposes of God in the world. This is a kind of giving you ought to feel. As Mother Teresa said, If you give what you do not need, it isn’t giving. When God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, as John 3:16 says, God did not sacrifice a spare son but the only begotten Son. When we sacrifice in our giving, it should affect us in a way that reminds us that we give up some things — in the sense of doing without them — in order to give them up to God — in the sense of God doing something with them.

Paul wanted a hunger offering to relieve suffering. And from time to time we give to crisis relief in emotional ways that give us a share in lifting the burden of others. We are not in crisis right now, but we are trying to raise our church to a new level. We don’t need a new organ to have church; we can just use a piano. We don’t need more space; we can let people go to other churches and just try hold on to who’s here now. But if we think God is calling us to do more than that, then we must give.

Paul counsels thoughtfulness in this giving. Apparently they had already pledged to give, and now Paul asks them to fulfill their intentions. We ask you to make intentions known about your share in the capital project of the church. We ask you to make up your mind freely, without coercion, without manipulation, as Paul puts it. Give generously and joyfully, knowing that nothing you give will put you in danger of disaster. You cannot outgive God, who promises to see to your every need. And just to make that plain for you: if you commit to tithe and to give beyond, you can be assured that if you are ever in financial distress, your church family will help you.

Someone has observed that there are three kinds of givers — the flint, the sponge, and the honeycomb. To get anything out of the flint, you have to hammer it. And then you get only chips and sparks. To get water out of a sponge, you must squeeze it. The more pressure applied, the more it gives up. But the honeycomb overflows with its own sweetness. Which kind of giver are you? Which kind do you want to be?