Something from Nothing
By Rev. Julie Yarborough
November 9, 2008
Luke 21: 1-4, 1 Kings 17: 8-16
[ Audio
(mp3, 4.7Mb) ]
nne Twist was working as a fundraiser for the Hunger Project in the late 1970's. One day, she found herself making a presentation to the CEO of a major corporation in a penthouse suite of offices in Chicago in the morning, and another presentation to a group of women in the basement of a church in Harlem that evening. She was very nervous about making the first presentation – this could likely be the biggest potential contributor she had ever approached. She spent a lot of time working on her talk and picking out her clothes to project the right image.
Early
on the day of her first appointment she arrived at the office building and was
escorted to the top floor where she was ushered into the CEO's office. He sat behind his desk and listened
impassively as she spoke and when her 15 minutes were up, he opened his desk
drawer and handed her a check for $50,000. It was clear that he was not interested in the work of her organization.
His gift was purely a strategic move to mend the public perception of his firm,
who had an image problem. He had handed
her a check, and along with it, the guilt of the company he oversaw. Lynne felt dirty receiving the check,
although it was the largest amount of money she had ever raised for the Hunger
Project, and she knew that her colleagues at the office would be thrilled. She felt sick to her stomach, unsure of what
to do, but unsettled by it all.
She
made her way to the airport and flew to NY. Arriving in the midst of a storm,
she made her way to Harlem and was struck by
the stark difference in setting between where she had been that morning and
where she was now. The basement ceiling
was leaking, and there were buckets all around to catch the drips as they
fell. The silk dress she had picked out
to impress the CEO seemed like overkill, and she knew that the audience before
her did not have much to give, but she made her presentation and with sweaty
palms, asked for donations. There was silence in the room at first, and then a
tall proud woman got up to speak.
“
‘Girl,' she said, ‘My name is Gertrude and I like what you've said and I like
you,' she said. ‘Now, I ain't got no
checkbook and I ain't got no credit cards. To me, money is a lot like
water. For some folks it rushes through
their lives like a raging river. Money
comes through my life like a little trickle. But I want to pass it on in a way that does the most good for the most
folks. I see that as my right and my responsibility. It's also my joy. I have
fifty dollars in my purse that I earned from doing a white woman's wash and I
want to give it to you.' ”
She
walked across the room and gave fifty dollars to Lynne in ones, fives and tens,
and then she gave her a big hug. Other
people started coming up and offering their meager contributions as well. At the end of the night, Lynne had collected
maybe $500, but it felt like the biggest gift she had ever received. The money she was offered there in the church
basement was given with integrity and love.
As Lynne tells it,
Gertrude's money had come from the soul
and not from
a bank account intended to ease guilt or
buy admiration.
She set that standard for everyone in the
room that night
and I felt the money they gave was
‘blessed money'. The
precise amount of the money and how much
it would buy
was secondary to the power of the money as
it moved with
purpose, intention and soulful energy in
the act of contribution.
Gertrude taught me that the power of money
is really derived
from the intention we give it and the
integrity with which we
direct it into the world. Gertrude's gift
was great, and her clarity
helped me regain my own.
The next day,
Lynne mailed the check for $50,000 back to the CEO who had given it to her,
along with a letter suggesting that the CEO choose an organization they felt
committed to and thanking him for considering the Hunger Project. To her
relief, by mailing the check back, she also got rid of the guilt and shame that
had accompanied it.[1]
Maimonedes,
the 12th Century Jewish Philosopher that Rabbi Gershon mentioned in
his sermon a couple of weeks ago, wrote about the eight degrees or steps in
giving to charity. “The first, and lowest degree is to give, but with
reluctance or regret. This is the gift of the hand,” he said, “but not of the
heart.”
Earlier,
we heard the tales of two widows – one, like Gertrude, who lived out of
gratitude, sufficiency and faith, and gave all that she had to the glory of
God; the other who lived out of fear and scarcity, ready to give up and die
because as far as she could tell, she was about to eat her last supper. These two widows offer us models by which we
can choose to live our lives. Granted, there are not many of us here at Christ Church
who are worried about whether our next meal will be our last, but plenty of us
are worried about our finances right now.
With
the economy in flux, we worry about keeping our jobs. We worry about providing the right kinds of
educational opportunities for our children. We worry about our investments, and whether the market will go up or
down. We worry about making the house
payments or paying off debts that we've accumulated. We worry about having enough for retirement.
However,
we do have a choice in the matter. We can look at what we don't have and what
we've lost, and live from a model of scarcity and fear that we will not have
enough to sustain us in the future. Or we can “zoom out” as Chuck suggested a
few weeks ago. We can choose to be
grateful for what we do have, count all of our blessings from God, and live
from a model of abundance and generosity, in which we share what we have,
trusting that whatever we need, God will provide.
When
we approach life from a model of scarcity, we live in fear that we will not
have what we need when we need it. This anxiety
can cause us to stay in life-draining jobs, it can cause us to act in ways that
lead to hoarding and greed, it can cause pain and division in families when a
loved one dies and leaves an inheritance. Globally, it can lead to violence and war, famine and hunger, corruption
and exploitation of the earth and its natural resources.
The
model of sufficiency, or abundance, on the other hand, is a model of faith that
there is enough to go around, and that paradoxically, when we share what we
have with others, our lives will be richer. As Proverbs 11:24-25 says: “One person gives generously, yet grows even
wealthier, another is stingy, yet only grows poorer. The generous person will
flourish, and the one who refreshes others will be refreshed.” (Proverbs
11:24-25)
Five
or six years after Lynne Twist sent the check back to the CEO in Chicago, she received a
letter back from him. He had retired, and had been given a very lucrative exit
package. As he thought back over his long and fruitful career, one thing stood
out for him – the returned check and the letter stating that the Hunger Project
was looking for donors who were committed to their mission. Receiving that
letter had been a shock for him, because it was so antithetical to everything
he had learned in corporate America
about increasing profits. Thinking back
on that moment in his career, he realized that he did want to make a
difference in ending world hunger, and he wanted to make a personal
contribution to her organization. Out of
his own personal resources, and out of a need to fulfill something that had
been incomplete, he sent a check many times in excess of the original
$50,000.
Reflecting on that gift, Lynne
Twist said,
No matter how
much or how little money you have flowing through your life, when you direct
the flow with soulful purpose, you feel wealthy. You feel vibrant and alive when you use your
money in a way that represents you, not just as a response to the market economy,
but also as an expression of who you are. When you let your money move to things you care about, your life lights
up. That's really what money is for.[2]
You've
probably heard about the biblical notion of tithing, or giving ten percent of
your earnings to God. But there's
another biblical model for giving that I'd like to lift up today, called first
fruits. The idea, found in Genesis, and
expounded upon in the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 25, is that we give back to
God the first fruits of the harvest, and when we do so, we will never be
wanting. In Proverbs 3:9-10, we read,
“Honor the Lord with your substance and with the first fruits of all your
produce; then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be
bursting with wine.” Giving to God
first, before we spend money on anything else, is operating from the
perspective of sufficiency. It's
operating from the perspective of faith. It's based on the understanding that everything we have and all that we
are comes from God, and is never really ours in the first place. When we give
first to God, we will always have what we need.
When
we invest our lives - our time, our
talents, our financial resources – in that which feeds our souls, we discover
that our lives fall into balance. If we
give first to that which matters most, we will find that all the rest falls
into place.
Our
financial gifts are a reflection of who we are and what we believe, and our
intentions are important. As Chuck said in a sermon a number of years ago,
“Spiritually, your whole life actually operates on how you invest yourself,
what you invest in, and why you do it… Whatever you give, it should be
reflective of your soul investment.”[3]
So this year, as you're considering
your commitment to Christ
Church, think about it in
terms of how this place feeds your soul. Think about it in terms of all the blessings you receive by being a part
of this community of faith. Think about
it in terms of how this congregation is an expression of who you are, and
invest accordingly.
Amen.
[1] Lynne
Twist, The Soul of Money: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Life,
(New York:
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.,) 2003, pp. 97-102.
[2] Ibid,
pp. 118-119.
[3] Chuck
Rush, “Building a Sturdy Tradition,” sermon preached at Christ Church,
October 31, 2004.
© 2008
Julie Yarborough.
All rights reserved.
