By Reverend Laurie DeMott

And every minister agrees that money is the last thing any of us want to talk about! Money is a taboo subject in modern America – the quickest way I could make you all squirm would be to ask you to turn to your neighbor and tell each other how much you make each year. Americans are more apt to share the fact that they are in therapy or discuss the intimate details of their latest doctor’s report than they are to tell another person their yearly salary. Think about how weird that is – you’d rather have someone know what’s going on inside of your intestines or your head than what’s going on in your checkbook. But the fact is that money is a forbidden subject in polite society and so the only time we preachers have the courage to bring it up from the pulpit are on Sundays like this one when we feel obligated to mention it because it is time to vote on the annual budget. Unfortunately, of all of the times of the year when a preacher could preach on the issue of money, this is frankly the worst time we could choose. Stewardship sermons where preachers try to pry pledges out of their parishioners are the most uncomfortable kinds of sermons to preach and undoubtedly one of the most uncomfortable kinds of sermons to hear. Instead of looking honestly at Jesus’ teaching about our relationship to money, stewardship sermons end up feeling more like a shake-down because the preacher has a not-so-hidden agenda: at the end of the day, the preacher is frankly less interested in the state of your soul than in the state of the church budget and in whether or not there will be enough money next year to pay the minister’s salary so that he or she can eat.

When I get up to talk about your need to pledge I'm always a little worried that your reaction will be like that of the little girl who was asked by her Sunday School teacher why the clergyman passed by on the other side of the road in the story of the Good Samaritan. She replied, “Because the man lying by the roadside had already been robbed.”

So today, I’ve decided that I am not going to talk to you about giving to the church. I'm going to assume that you have already filled out your pledge cards and that you have been as generous as you can in making that pledge and that whatever this congregation has been able to give will, with the grace of God, get us started on a new year of ministry together. I want to talk today instead about that central assumption of the gospel that generosity is a good thing. Why was Jesus constantly harping on our need to give our money away? Whether it be to the church or to the Nature Conservancy or to school children in Haiti or to the American Cancer society or to the local community chest or to the homeless man on the street, Jesus commends and encourages the giving of our money to others over and over again and says that those who don’t or won’t give, will never enter God’s kingdom. So let me ask you today what may seem like an obvious question? What’s so good about giving?

Now, before we discuss the value of generosity, let’s make sure we are clear about Jesus’ teaching on generosity. When we read Jesus’ parables and listen to his conversations with the rich men he encountered, we tend to hear them as warnings against making too much money which of course makes those teachings easier to bear because none of us feels like we make too much money! I just read a survey that found that people making as little as $20,000 a year to people making as much as $100,000 a year all classified themselves as “middle class” which means that none of us wants to think of ourselves as poor but neither do we want anyone else thinking of us as rich. And, of course, if we are all middle class, then we can comfort ourselves with believing that Jesus’ warnings to the rich don’t apply to us at all but only to those mythical creatures named Bill Gates or Warren Buffet Jr.

But if you read Jesus’ teachings carefully, you will discover that they are not so easy to wiggle out of. Jesus’s emphasis isn’t on the income side of the equation – it is on the expenditure side of the equation. I don’t think Jesus cares how much you make, as long as you come by it honestly; what Jesus was really interested in was what you do with what you have. The most important thing, Jesus says, is that our attitude toward money is one is which we are constantly asking, “To whom can I give my money today?”

Or, as the very pragmatic John Wesley summarized it, “Earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can.”

Why did Jesus spend so much time on the subject of giving? Why is generosity good for our souls?

To answer that question, let’s take a break from the uncomfortable topic of money and talk about a subject we Americans are much more at ease discussing. Let's talk for a minute about sex!

In the past few years, neurologists have been investigating the effects of a hormone called oxytocin [ox-si-TOE-sin] on human behavior. Oxytocin is released by the body during sexual intercourse and also, in a woman, during childbirth, and what scientists have discovered is that the production of this hormone increases our sense of connection with others. Oxytocin [ox-si-TOE-sin] strengthens the bonds between couples and helps form the bonds between a new mother and her child and so researchers postulated that this ancient hormone was crucial to the evolution of human community. It increased people’s ability to form strong family units, to trust others, and to empathize with those around them. Oxytocin forged a community’s sense of identity by encouraging the brain to see others as “the we of me”.

Recently, Dr. Paul J. Zak of Claremont Graduate University pursued the effects of oxytocin [ox-si-TOE-sin] a little further. He gathered participants for a study and divided them into two groups -- one group received doses of oxytocin and the other group received doses of a placebo. Zak then gave money to all of the participants and asked them to split that money with a stranger. The results were overwhelming: those who had been given oxytocin before the experiment were 80% more generous with their money than those who had been given a placebo.

One conclusion, of course, we could make from this study is that when we send out our stewardship packet next year, we should include tea bags heavily laced with oxytocin. Paul Zak, however, comes to a less practical conclusion. Based on the results of this and other experiments, he has concluded that generosity and empathy for others are inextricably linked. The bonds that keep us together in community, that give us each a sense of identity and well-being, are directly linked to our willingness to give generously to others. “Oxytocin,” he explains, “specifically and powerfully affected generosity using real money when participants had to think about another's feelings.” Zak makes the case that the ancient hormone flowing in our bodies causes a shift in brain chemistry that is evolutionarily important – the more we trust one another and cooperate, the more we all benefit together.

The biblical writers didn't have the advantage of neuroscience to tell them why generosity was so important but they knew it intuitively. The writer of II Timothy lumps “love of wealth” in with a host of other behaviors that are all signs of the breakdown of community and relationship. Listen to his description: “People will be in love with themselves,” he says. “They will love money, be abusive, and disobey their parents. They will be unable to love others, unable to forgive, and will be brutal toward those around them. They will parade their godliness with no real understanding of the power of God in their lives.” In other words, those who love money, II Timothy warns, are the same people who are incapable of forming healthy relationships or of understanding anything about the nature of real human love or about their connection to the most powerful love in the universe – the love of God. Love of money isn’t the cause of poor relationships; it is one of the results of poor relationships. St. John Chrysostom said, “Wealth by its very nature is .... meant to go out from you, like a light that dispels darkness. Once it is locked up within the walls of your own spirit, it becomes evil.”

We are not called by Christ to be generous with our money because our generosity will somehow make us spiritually more virtuous. We are called by Christ first to care about others and to strengthen our bonds to our fellow men and women, and when we do that – when we learn to empathize with others and work on improving those ties that bind us to our family, neighbor, and world, then our generosity will be the natural outcome of our sense of connectedness. We don’t care because we give – we give because we care. The person who cannot make strong bonds with others is not going to share what they have with others because they are alone in their own little universe. They will always be taking and never giving. They will always be shoring up their future for their own security because they are unable to feel any sympathy for the future well-being of those beyond the periphery of their own limited existence. And that inability to give to the welfare of others will be reflected in the many others ways in which their relationships are damaged, limited, and weakened by the isolations of their hearts.

Jesus values generosity in his followers because a demonstration of generosity toward others indicates that we get it. Our generosity proves that our hearts have been inextricably linked to the hearts of the wider community. Our impulse to give of what we have shows that we understand that to enter the Kingdom of God is to recognize that every person is loved by God and that the suffering of one is the suffering of all, and the joy of one is the joy of all.

We don’t care for others because we give to others – we give to others because we care for others. And caring for others is what Jesus was all about. Teaching us to care is what Jesus lived for, and what he died for. “This is how much I care for you,” he said, and then he stretched out his arms and gave everything he had for our sake.

We give not so that we may learn to love but because we have learned to love, we give.