Lenten Disciplines - Almsgiving (1)

 Give Alms!
(A Lengthy Preamble)

The three disciplines which the church enjoins for Lent are Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving. The latter two are those in many regards most counter to the Western culture of which I am part. But while fasting is Obviously Hard for us - [who has not read about fasting and also read a note to go and talk to your Doctor first before doing it?] - Almsgiving seems very straightforward. Indeed given that it requires no time of us, or very little, it may well be thought to be the simplest.

(You may like to ask yourself at this point 

whether Almsgiving feels the easiest of the disciplines to you)

Such thinking about Simplicity betrays us immediately, for where the disciplines are concerned, nothing is simple, and it is no less so with regard to Money (at least for us). It was plain enough for Jesus, but not in a way we might perhaps ascribe to. We talk too glibly of 'money management'. We feel we are Experts perhaps, in personal finance, or conversely, we know we are incapable of keeping track of Money - but the very fact we even think that we ought to be able to 'manage money', shows how far we are from knowing Jesus' counsel in our hearts which, after all, is where it matters.

A few years ago I attended a three day conference on "Christians in the Work Place". As such major conferences often are nowadays, the evening session was 'something different' by way of relaxation from the arduous seminar attending, book buying, 'Worship', and Networking that took place.
            This 'something different' was an interview with someone who had got into trouble with money, so much so, that he had been imprisoned. The person, a well known 'famous TV evangelist', had been convicted of fraud, (which is of course nowadays always a matter of Money - we can be fraudulent in many areas of life, but only fraudulence regarding Money seems to warrant a gaol term), and he was now recounting his story as I suppose a salutary warning. (The more I think about that evening the more I question what was really going on . . .).
           But he said one thing which completely blew my fuses, something I just couldn't believe. He said that prison had given him a Long Time to think, and that he had committed himself to reading the Gospels afresh, and what struck him was 'how much Jesus talks about Money! I had never noticed it!'.

(I was and indeed am tempted to say 'Wise up! It's as plain on the nose on your face!!', but the fact that this man who in all probability had read the Scriptures more than I could miss Jesus' teaching, ought to suggest a degree of humility in this area in myself. After what is the difference between someone who is confident in handling Money, and someone who thinks he has a handle on Jesus' teaching about Money . . . and thus is 'safe to handle Money'??)

The song says, "Money makes the world go round" - we say we don't believe it, but we deceive ourselves, or rather we are deceived by Money. If someone who had no prior knowledge of Money was to examine us individually or indeed as a global entity, and I think say without a shadow of doubt that Money is a Dominant power. And this is as true of the Church as it is of the World.

Recently a former Diocese of my acquaintance passed a lengthy response to a discussion on its boundaries. Hidden away in the amendments was a phrase that caught my eye


'[Synod] requests the Preparation Group to prepare fully costed proposals about how the Area system proposed will benefit mission' 

Costed? Mission? Why? What does the (presumably financial) cost have to do with Mission?? Why can't we think about Mission without thinking about Money? (And Yes, the fact that I automatically read 'costed' in terms of Money Does reveal how much I too am prey to this :) )

All of the Disciplines unmask us - if we think that they are simple and straightforward we are either Saints - or we are deceiving ourselves, or rather in this case we are deceived (just like my fellow struggler with Money, the TV evangelist)

In the next three days we will take time to consider Jesus brief teaching about 'Giving Alms' - about how it is utterly radical and goes against most if not all our embedded ways of managing money - and about how the Church itself has fallen prey to 'the deceitfulness of wealth'

Life through the Disciplines

Here at St John's we are exploring the theme of Christian Practices, through Lent. Practices I have come to define as The Life of God (as with many of the things I teach and talk about, what it is only becomes clear to me long after I've started the preparation!).

Practices such as Blessing, Sabbath, Generosity, Hospitality, Truthfulness, Forgiveness - Ways of being that embody what God in the Risen Christ is doing in the world. Of course we tend rather to think about the Disciplines of the Christian life in Lent - Fasting, Prayer and Almsgiving being the three chief ones, taking our lead from the Ash Wednesday Gospel reading, in Matthew chapter 6. Lent is a time for disciplined self examination, that opening up of the Heart of the matter as we seek to follow Christ more closely, and the disciplines are helpful in that regard. But how do they relate to the Practice of the life of God? To many in this age they seem quite antithetical - they seem negative, the path of Self denial - how can they bring forth Life. Shouldn't we just get on with Living the life of God?

But that is precisely it, for as soon as we try to 'Live the Life of God' we realise that we cannot. We fall flat on our faces. It is as if we have seen a beautiful painting, or eaten a Cordon Bleu meal, or watched a sportsman perform as the height of his game and said, I'm going to do that!! And go buy some paints or food, or go out on the Sports field and, either metaphorically or literally, fall flat on our faces. For the truth is that the artist or the chef or the sportsman has been training for years and years and we have not. And of course we know this so if we really want to master these things we set about the discipline of doing it and getting it wrong and so learning and repeating over and over again, til it comes right

Yet somehow we think that this matter of Living the Christian Life, the Life of God should be easy - until we try to do it. And then we get discouraged and give up. Or we hear from others on the way that it is hard and so don't even bother to try. Forgiveness is a good case in point here. We see it and we say "I could never do that!" Except the truth is you could, we all can - we are made to, it is part of our human nature made as we are in the Image of God.

this is where the disciplines come in. Before Jesus steps a foot into the ministry of public arena, he goes through a fierce discipline and testing - before the Father will let him loose on the world, the Spirit drives him into the wilderness, to learn through the discipline of fasting.

So what is the role of the disciplines with regard to the life of God? Isn't it enough to keep on trying and failing until we get better? Well the Wisdom of the ages tells us that that generally isn't the way, that if Christ had to fast that he might Love the world as his Father does, then so do we. As Dallas Willard  points out, we can't expect to imitate the life of Jesus if we ignore the dimension of disciplining ourselves.

Let us imagine for a moment that learning to Live the Life of God is a little like learning to drive a car. When I learnt, my first teacher was my dad. It wasn't a great experience. Of course like most drivers he had loads of bad habits and so he passed them on. It was only when I sat with a qualified instructor for some focused tuition, that these became apparent. The disciplines are like those sessions with the Expert. They are times when the Only thing in focus is Living the Life. By fasting, or prayer, or almsgiving, we strip away anything that is Not to do with God and His Life, and we are subjected to scrutiny. Through which we learn something of what is getting in the way, blocking this Life of God.

 (Another helpful discipline in this regard is having a good Spiritual Director - someone who is well versed in the Life of God and its ways and who can help us scrutinise the latest blockage on our path. this is never easy but, in our age subjecting our lives to the Scrutiny of another is perhaps even ore difficult and thus all the more necessary!)

The Disciplines uncover the heart and reveal what is hidden there - they reveal what is getting in the way of the Life of God as we seek to grow in faith and holiness. The Disciplines are like the tilling of the ground each season that it might bring forth more fruit. If the practices are the flourishing garden of the Life of God, the disciplines are the pruning shears and weeders that every gardener knows are Necessary.

Each of these three disciplines has an important role to play and so through the next three weeks we shall explore each one further. Beginning tomorrow with the discipline of giving alms.