“Generosity” 2 Cor 8: 1-15

When I was in college, most of the group of friends that I hung out with were MK’s - missionary kids. I had friends that lived all over the globe, many of whom left their families in other places to travel back to the United States for college. Some of those friends are now serving as missionaries themselves. 

There is so much that inspired me about the service and call of these families. They often went years without seeing family members besides those who lived with them. Many were in dangerous situations. And all were dependent upon the generosity of individuals and churches who would never see their ministry in person, but believed the work of God was being done. 

The apostle Paul has had some difficulties with the Corinthians. If you read 1 Corinthians you know that they struggled in Paul’s absence to live into what it meant to be the body of Christ. They were treating each other poorly. Excluding folks from the agape meal dinner table based on their status. They were trying to one-up one another when it came to spiritual gifts. They were a mess.

Now Paul is coming to them in 2 Corinthians and talking to them about how being the body of Christ expands well beyond the folks you see week after week. Being the body of Christ means helping out other brothers and sisters who you may never be able to meet. 

Paul talks about other churches - like that in Macedonia - who struggled with poverty but gave what they could, and often above their means, so that other churches could continue to spread the Good News. The question is are the Corinthians willing to be generous as well?

I think generosity is a word that scares us. The first thing lots of folks think when there is a call to be generous is about how they can’t do that. There simply isn’t enough. Or that was back in Bible times, but today we have bills to pay. And I get it. It is hard to be generous. And that word can carry a lot of baggage. 

And yet, on the other hand, I think of my friends who are missionaries, and without people being generous there is no way that they could live into their call from God.

Paul is asking the Corinthians to be generous in order to help the poor through the church in Jerusalem. While Paul traveled around the region on three missionary journeys and would end up back in Jerusalem from time to time, the people in the church in Corinth may never meet those in the church in Jerusalem. Remember that the Corinthians were gentiles, so they weren’t traveling in and out of Jerusalem for religious ceremonies the same way that Jewish believers would have been. They simply had to trust Paul that there was a need. And trust what it means to be the body of Christ. 

And maybe that’s our biggest struggle with generosity. It is a complete and utter act of trust. It’s trusting God to provide. It’s trusting that we are better together when we pull our resources for a cause. It’s trusting that the resources we give sacrafically will be used to bring honor and glory to God. 

Paul knows that generosity, because it is an act of trust, cannot be commanded or compelled. Have you ever tried to make someone trust you? It generally does not work by demanding it. In fact, that often can have the opposite result. Instead, trust is built over time, and it is only within that foundation that people can give of their very selves. 

Just as generosity cannot be compelled, neither can gratitude. One of the traps that we can fall into is thinking that if we give, that other’s must be enthusiastic about our gift. In other words, we want to regulate another person’s response and gratitude, in order to make our gift worth giving. 

But as Paul reminds us, we don’t give in order to get praise from other people. We give because of what Christ has first given us. And because of the love of Christ that we have in our hearts, we have a desire to be generous. 

For Paul, the specific call that he is issuing is to be the body of Christ. To actually be the One Church. Whenever we get together and pray for the catholic, small c, church in the apostles creed, that is what we are praying for. The universal church, all together under the lordship of Jesus. It doesn’t matter what denomination you are, we are the church together. It doesn’t matter where you are located - here or half way around the world, we are the church together. And we are called to support one another any way that we can, trusting that we have been a call in our specific location in order to be witnesses to the Gospel. 

One of the things that I deeply appreciate about being the United Methodist Church is that we try to live this out. It’s part of what it means when we say that we are connectional. When we give, we help support the education of pastors. We support African University and the black college fund. We help Neighborhood Center and the United Methodist Home for Children. We help set up new places of worship for new people, and so much more. What we give, we give together to people we may never meet, all so that the Good News can be shared far and wide.

Why do we give? Because God has been generous to us. Why do we give? To be an example throughout the body of Christ. 

But here’s the thing about generosity - it has to be genuine. It has to be between you and God. This isn’t about anyone else telling you what to give. Paul writes that there should be a fair balance in giving - its not about each person giving the exact same dollar amount. It’s about giving in proportion to what you have received. But its also not just about giving a little something extra either - its about giving knowing that we all give together because we are in this work of God together. 

When we are generous church, its not just about being generous with our money - even if that is directly what Paul is addressing in this particular passage. It’s about being generous with our very selves - our time, our talent, our treasure. It’s about truly being the body of Christ that cares for one another and cares for the world. 

When we start to think about generosity as more than a discussion of scarcity and abundance, and open it up to being a discussion about what it means to be the body of Christ, we start to see that what we give is about hearts and lives being changed. It’s about making disciples and transforming the world. Even parts of the world that we may never see. So why do we give, why are we generous? We give because in the words of Jesus, my friends, the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Amen.