Lenten Disciplines - Almsgiving (4)

Finally we need to give alms because doing so, cheerfully ( as God does ), dethrones Money from it's exalted position in our hearts and lives. Just giving it away - Giving the poor their rights, as we are required by Scripture to do - puts an axe to the idolatrous tree of money. Refusing to try and control it, knowing that any attempt to control an idol is naive at best, simply getting rid of it. Just throwing it away.

And if we think for a moment that money hasn't got a hook on our hearts, then meditate for a while on literally throwing money away - listen to the voice saying 'Don't do that!! Put it to good use!! Spend it on the poor!!' and remember who it was that first counseled against such Wastefulness saying that the money should have been spent on the poor . . .

More than ever in the history of the world, with world wide instant communication, never before has economic chaos had so many in fear. We are terrified of what will happen if The Economy collapses - because we believe that it is The Economy that preserves us and keeps us and if we play our part in the Economy, It will look after us. Never before has there been such anger at politicians and bankers - never before - as Pensions look increasingly vulnerable and national economies tremble on the brink. Of course there are those who counsel to take cover - by investing in precious metals :) In other words take cover from Money, by  . . .   :)
The Economy is such a huge idol, we cannot see anything else, and talk of trusting in God INSTEAD OF Money (as opposed to as well as - which is of course an oxymoron) is seen as hopelessly naive.

This is the hook it has on us.

Jesus had no money in the wilderness, indeed we are given to understand he wouldn't even touch the stuff. He had little time for some of the purity laws, and understood that money contaminated you in a  way that hanging around with prostitutes and tax collectors never could. The Pharisees however wouldn't be seen dead in that sort of company, but were well versed in handling money.

I return to a post I made earlier in this respect - the TV evangelist - the point is that I was flabbergasted at his saying he had no idea Jesus said so much about money, and yet given the power of it, I shouldn't have been. It grips us. the one thing it cries out for us not to do, is cut its power off at the root by taking no concern for the morrow and getting rid of it.

Lenten Almsgiving can be our teacher if we will

Lenten disciplines - Almsgiving (3)

So we left Almsgiving thinking about the Prodigality of God - who freely lavishes Love and Goodness on this world he has created. Jesus Knows (or does he?) that only one of the ten lepers will return to give thanks - but does that mean he concentrates his healing on the one who responds - indeed we know Very little, about whether Jesus' healing miracles were responded to in faith. We may perhaps presume that because in a few cases such a response is noted by the evangelists, that it was actually a rare occurrence. But then we may well ask ourselves How frequently do I give thanks? Indeed given All that He lavishes on us if we were to give thanks we would Never stop. For every moment, every breath, every view, every human encounter is Gift, and even the most devout of His followers pay little attention to most of it.

Instead of course our lives ought to be healthily focussed not on the gifts but on the giver.

But this matter of Alms can easily find us out.
As I noted yesterday our 'Giving' is all too often self observant, self judged and self referential - far far more Care Full than the 'secret' giving Jesus enjoins on us. And this Care Fullness is not only individual, but corporate.

In one of my former churches there was hanging upon the South Wall a large wooden plaque, listing many benefactors of the parish. Well of course their giving, even post mortem, was not done in secret, but was different to much of ours in that they gave Alms. They gave to the Poor. Bequests for the benefit of the poor of the parish. How much of our Giving nowadays is to the Church? It might be sobering to discover how high a percentage of Christian giving is effectively to ourselves, making sure We have a minister, or We have a building, or We have . . . well we get the point.

There is a lack of thought about the Almsgiving that Jesus enjoins on us that takes us away from our own pre-occupation with ourselves. For to give alms is to give to the poor

Is indeed part of the reason for the decline of the church is that our wealth, vast as it is, for it is our combined wealth, we keep in the family.

The manna was given daily - it wasn't meant to be hoarded, or indeed invested in bricks and mortar. When it was hoarded it went bad. Are we in the church actually hoarding that which was freely given to us? How many sermons exhort us in giving to Give More to the Church? How many exhort us, as Jesus does, to give it all to the poor?

Jesus always promised to build his church - to tend and care for it. Perhaps if we took him at his word, something quite amazing might happen amongst us  - or perhaps we have drunk to deeply of the myth of Scarcity . . . of which more anon.

In the Lenten disciplines we follow Jesus into the wilderness, to live in dependence on the abundance of God. In the matter of giving we are most certainly unmasked in many different ways.

Lenten Disciplines - Almsgiving (2)

 Give Alms!
Like this 

‘So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.' 

Matthew Chapter 6, Verses 2-4.

Yesterday I suggested that when considering the Lenten disciplines of Fasting, Prayer and Almsgiving, we may well  suppose the last of these three to be the easiest. After all - all we now need do is log on and give our credit card details to someone and the job's done.We are used to 'managing money' and whether we find it easy or difficult it is in our society a Good Thing to be able to do.Whereas fasting and Prayer seem to require more of us. Fasting makes us hungry and Praying takes time out of busy days. They more directly challenge our way of looking at the world. But is this so?

LIsten to Jesus' requirements re giving Alms? It has little to do with a way of giving that is immersed in managing Money. "Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing" - there is little here of a careful and discriminating use of Money. An unconscious Act is hardly a good way to go around managing Money.

Think for a moment, not about giving Alms, but about how we do it. Is it dare we say, thoughtless? Careless? Unthinking? Impulsive? Or do we imagine ourselves as Stewarding our money? Do we pray carefully about what we give? Do we take time to research perhaps a charity and make sure its aims are good? Do we give to the homeless on the street, or do we fear what they will do with it? 

[Listen to how wise this all sounds to our ears] 

BUT, put like this, how much is there of not letting our left hand know what our right hand is doing in Our approach to giving Alms? Is not this approach as self referential as that of the 'hypocrites', in that we like to be able to tell ourselves that we have done a Good Thing by our giving??

We might be aghast at the idea of giving freely to whoever asks, to all and sundry, to those we judge as deserving AND those we judge as undeserving - but why? Does not God do the same? 

The parable of the sower is one of many illustrations of this - he sows without any careful plan or strategy - he does not seem to care where the seed falls. In our modern and 'oh so wise' ways he is a Lousy farmer, inefficient - indeed a Poor Steward of his riches. His ways are not our ways.

He is the Prodigal Father. Unlike his Prodigal Son he does not spend on his own fallen desires, rather he Spends himself on the World, without any careful calculation. In our approach to giving Alms are we like the Prodigal Father, or the careful elder son?

Perhaps this whole business of giving Alms is not so easy after all??

(to be continued)

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'