Part 3: Generosity

The reading from Luke 3:7–14 describes John confronting the crowds who came for baptism and telling them to produce fruit consistent with repentance. To ordinary people he says that anyone with two shirts or enough food should share with someone who has none; tax collectors should collect only what is required; and soldiers should stop using their power to extort money or make false accusations. The pastor says all three instructions concern money and possessions: generosity, fair dealing, and contentment are how people prepare to recognize Jesus.

The pastor retells the story of John Wesley, whose house burned down. When someone rushed to tell him, Wesley reportedly replied, “No, the Lord’s house burned to the ground,” seeing the loss as one less responsibility because God owns everything and people are only stewards. The pastor connects that response to Advent: generosity loosens attachment to possessions and makes people more ready to recognize God. He admits he has preached about 700 sermons but only five on financial generosity, despite Jesus speaking about money more than almost anything except the kingdom of God.

The pastor explains why he has avoided the subject: the church has a history of financial corruption, including the medieval sale of indulgences, while American culture treats personal wealth as private and impolite to discuss. Yet he cites Jesus’ emphasis on money—17 of his 39 parables concern it, and roughly 25 percent of his teaching is directly about material generosity—contrasting that with his own roughly 0.5 percent. He asks listeners to lower their defenses and examine who is actually lord over their consumption, money, and possessions.

In Exodus 16, God gives Israel manna and quail and commands everyone to gather what they need: those who gather much have no excess, and those who gather little have enough. Some Israelites store food for the next day because they fear God may not provide, but it rots overnight. The pastor says the point was not merely food safety; taking more than needed meant taking what someone else needed that day. Manna freed Israel’s hearts by teaching them to trust God and treat the neighbor’s basic needs as their responsibility.

Leviticus commands landowners to leave the edges of their fields and fallen grapes for the poor and foreigners. Deuteronomy grounds the law in Israel’s own experience as slaves whom God redeemed: property, seeds, and harvests were gifts won while they were powerless, not possessions to use only for themselves. The pastor then describes Jubilee, when every 50 years land returned to its original owner without charge, preventing debt and inequality from becoming permanent. Along with tithing, these practices made generosity part of Israel’s entire economic structure.

The pastor says the biblical story does not divide life into spiritual and nonspiritual compartments; work, shopping, rest, relationships, and money all belong to one spiritual life. Jesus therefore warns in Matthew 6 that nobody can serve both God and Mammon, a term meaning wealth, property, possessions, and even things a person does not yet know they want. In Luke 12, Jesus calls a rich man foolish for building larger barns to store surplus crops and secure an easy future. The pastor defines greed as seeking security, contentment, or significance through material means under one’s own control.

Jesus tells the Pharisees in Luke 11 that generosity to the poor makes the inside of a person clean, and he criticizes them for tithing herbs while neglecting justice and love. The pastor stresses that Jesus says to practice both, not justice instead of giving. Although the New Testament does not impose a specific ten percent requirement, Jesus’ pattern is to raise Old Testament commands rather than lower them, so freedom from legal tithing should lead beyond tithing into generosity. The pastor calls tithing “training wheels” for a more comprehensive practice.

The pastor gives contemporary examples of people in the community providing housing free of charge to an immigrant family and to someone near houselessness, calling such acts previews of Jesus’ promised kingdom without poverty or need. He then confesses that he loaned a friend a substantial amount of money for a dream, was never repaid, and realized the unpaid debt was affecting his view of the friend. First Corinthians 13 exposed that he was keeping a record of wrongs, so he began praying for forgiveness, freedom from resentment, and the friend’s flourishing.

Acts 4 depicts believers sharing possessions so thoroughly that there were no needy people among them. The pastor cites a third-century letter saying the Roman church supported 1,500 widows and distressed people, along with hostile and non-Christian observers who nevertheless documented Christian care for widows, orphans, the poor, and abandoned infants. He contrasts pagan society—“stingy with its money and promiscuous with its body”—with Christians who gave their bodies carefully and their money broadly. In Acts, the trajectory moves from leaving the edges of a field for the poor to selling entire houses and distributing the proceeds.

The pastor’s closing applications are to connect repentance with questioning assumptions of ever-increasing comfort; expect spiritual power and material generosity to accompany each other; begin with giving ten percent if one is not already doing so, then consider Ron Sider’s “graduated tithe”; and make giving sacrificial rather than effortless. He says generosity both blesses and reforms desire, illustrated by gifts of $5,000 and, in his own family, $20,000 that required downsizing and receiving help from the church. Finally, generosity is justice: it could make Bridgestown a place for foster families, the formerly incarcerated, the elderly, hungry people, and those without housing.