“The Generous Church: The Generous Church” Mark 8:35 Mathew 25: 34-36 Matthew 28: 19-20

Have you ever just been to a place that does hospitality well? This year, annual conference was held at the Hershey Lodge, and they are a place that is known for doing hospitality well. When you check in there are multiple people to point you in the right direction. When you check in, complimentary tickets and chocolate are waiting for you. And each evening when you return to your room, Hershey kisses are on your night stand. But more important that things, the people at the Hershey Lodge do hospitality well - having people to answer questions, give directions, and help you at ever turn. They are a generous place, because hospitality and generosity go hand in hand. 

Just as there are generous place, there are also generous people. I have several friends like this - people who think about others. I have a friend that ever time I have moved, she has sent me a small gift of encouragement shortly after. She also has an adorable son, who will send me his art projects “just because he was thinking about Ms. Michelle”. When you visit her home, it really becomes your home. Making sure that your favorite foods are there for you, and thinking through everything from the perspective of her guests. 

Friends, it is my hope that as a body of Christ, we are a generous place of worship and a generous people. For the next several weeks, we are going to be talking about what it means to be a generous church. I know for many of you, what comes to mind is finances - financial generosity, but brothers and sisters, being generous is so much more than that. 

I have been blessed to visit many churches over the years, both for worship on Sunday mornings, whenever I’m on vacation, and for trainings. I want you to think back to a time when you visited a church. How did that experience feel? Maybe a little nerve racking if you didn’t know anyone or where anything was located. Maybe a bit more comfortable if you were familiar with them, and had visited before. Have you ever had the experience of having someone turn to you and genuinely say, “I’m so glad you’re here.” How did that make you feel? 

My family and I had the experience a few years ago of going to a Monday evening worship service while we were staying at the beach. The music was good. The sermon was excellent. But what mattered the most was someone turning to us and saying “I’m so glad you’re here tonight. Would you like to stay for ice cream after the service?” Not an announcement made, but a personal invitation. 

We often don’t think about this type of radical hospitality as being a mark of generosity, but it truly is. Because we are to be a generous church with a lot more than our money. A generous church sees people and wants to deeply connect with them, all for the sake of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. A generous church lavishes its time, compassion, attention, talent, and money. 

In the Gospel of Mark today we find this statement, that whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for the sake of Jesus, for the sake of the Gospel, will save it. We think that applies to those who are martyred for the faith - and that is true, but friends it is so much more than that. Think of the familiar words to the hymn “I Surrender All”, “All to Jesus, I surrender. All to him I freely give.” When we freely give all we have and all we are to Christ for the sake of the Kingdom, that is an act of laying our lives aside for the sake of the Gospel. Its handing our lives over to God and saying, not my will, but thine will be done. May I be lifted high for thee, or laid aside for thee - in the words of the Covenant Prayer written by John Wesley. The problem comes when we still try to hold tightly on to our lives. It is very difficult to be generous with that which you are clutching with a tight fist. 

In contrast, a generous person, a generous congregation, has an open hand, because they want to share the Gospel with all they have and all they are, and are willing to do whatever it takes to make that happen. In the words of Rev. Tom Berlin, “When the church is focused on sharing the gospel message so that others will receive salvation, the giving that once felt like a hardship becomes a joy.”

Who are the folks that come to your mind when you think of a generous person? One of the folks that comes to my mind is a wonderful woman at my first church. She and her husband had been displaced by Hurricane Katrina, losing almost everything. Yet, she was still generous to everyone she met. She was usually one fo the first people to volunteer to bring something or serve. She was someone who would pull you aside just to give you a kind word. Her entire demeanor exuded what it meant to be generous to others. Why? Because her Lord and Savior had been so generous to her. For her serving others was a mandate of the Gospel that she wanted to do, because the love of Jesus Christ was central to her life.

Do we live like that? When we look at the Gospel passage from Matthew this morning, do we see it as optional? Or selective? Do we get to pick and choose who we serve in Jesus’s name and if so, is that a mark of generosity? 

Now, I fully realize that we cannot serve everyone. But my fear is that we have used that as an excuse to not serve anyone. Or to serve just a few people, so we can place a giant check mark next to Matthew 25 -saying that we’ve done that so now we can move on to the next thing, when really Matthew 25 is inviting us into a new way of living - a way of living marked by generosity. Because the truth about generosity is that it is both a root - something that is what we are about as the people of God, because God has been so generous to us, but also a fruit - as we grow closer to Christ we desire to be more and more generous because we want other people to know about the love of a Savior. The Christian life is a generous life - generous in love, compassion, mercy, faith. The list goes on and on. 

Which leads me to ask - how as a church are we generous in these marks of a Christian life? How are we sowing and harvesting compassion, mercy, love, faith, kindness, and healing. I actually think that folks are looking to the church to be generous friends. And that sometimes people become frustrated with us when we are not generous enough, especially when we claim that we are generous and that our God is generous. The problem creeps in when we make these beautiful and bold statements about generosity, but mean something else - we mean that we are really only generous to each other. That we are friendly with one another. When that is what we mean and we narrow our definition that far, are we truly living into the great commandment as expressed in Matthew 28? 

The truth is that generosity is a discipleship issue and that is why we are going to spend the next few weeks talking about it deeply. It speaks to each of us personally, but it also helps us examine our focus and heart as a church. A mark of generosity is being outward focused - are we an outward focused church? Do we have a mindset of abundance or scarcity? Are we seeking after God’s vision for us, and do we trust that with the vision, the resources will follow? May we be both generous people and a generous Church all for the sake of the Kingdom of God. Amen.