Lenten Almsgivings - Almsgiving (5)

Well I had intended to end this series on Almsgiving with my last post, but a chance comment from a dear friend triggered a further thought, with regard to the secrecy of Almsgiving - 'do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing'.

I have already expressed this in terms of the Reckless Love of God, and Abundance and Light that we flee from, such careful and fearful lives do we lead - seeing perhaps what the World does to those who dare to Live in the Light, rather than the shadow of fear.

However another way to express this Giving, is that of Authenticity. Lent is meant to be a time of paring back to the Essence. What was the Wilderness, for Israel, for Christ, but to 'let go of everything that hinders', that which some nowadays call 'the false self'. Jesus in the Wilderness fasted forty days and was left with nothing, but his Essence - there was nothing but his Pure Life, nothing to sustain him, save who he Was.

Sin, or to put it another way, the Avoidance of God, is like an accretion. Slowly we build a life for ourselves, hiding from God, denying the Life that we have been given. Lent is a time to take hold of the disciplines of the church, and thus, in letting go of those things which we use to build our own life, to discover within ourselves how far that process has taken us away from a Life which is Gift.

With regard to our Human Nature, we in the West tend to fall into one of two errors. Those who are, for want of a better word 'Conservative' (particularly those who take their lead from Calvin), in an effort to magnify the Grace of God (which needs not be done - God needs no advocates :) ), speak of the Depravity of the human heart. As if our Essential nature is Evil, by virtue of Adam's Sin.
Those of a Liberal bent, in part reacting against this, use the phrase 'Image of God' to Justify our sinfulness - that we are by and large Good. Neither I believe is correct, or indeed is ultimately of any use in our journey into God.

Here, Orthodox (Eastern) theology comes to our rescue with its Insistence on the Goodness of our Essence - that we are Created Good and that Nothing can undo that, but at the same time that Who we Are can be Readily buried under our 'false self', our determination to say No! to God, to say No! to who we Are, by our determination to sin.

In Lent, in going into the desert, in prayer and fasting and almsgving, we allow God to remove the layers of filthy rags, our hopeless efforts to be ourselves rather than Be OurSelves - Goodness Created In Love, Through Love and For Love.

When we are stripped away to our bare Essence, we lose our Sense of self - for that is something we have created. Rather we become that which we were always meant to be Pure Act. Nothing now is self conscious, all there is is the Conscious Self, fully Alive - giving no heed to living  - just Alive. No longer living in the realm of careful and fearful calculation, rather set Free through forgiveness and healing to Be. Such that the left hand has no idea what the right is about, and what's more sees no point in caring about it.

This sense of who we truly Are is expressed all around us in the rest of Creation, which waits with eager longing for us to join in and Be children of God.

This is given no better expression than in the life of Christ, who is unSelfconscious, who only does what he sees the Father doing. And this is beautifully spoken of in this wonderful poem of Authenticity written by the Jesuit, Gerard Manley Hopkins. that as the rest of Creation cannot help but be Authentic - Christ in Us sets Free Authentic Life. What I Do is Me, for that I came.

AS kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.
I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—
Christ—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

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'

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.

At the start of Lent

The Western Church traditionally observes the Sunday before Lent by remembering the Transfiguration of Christ, as recorded in Matthew's gospel, chapter 17. There is much Wisdom in this.
As we enter a time where it is all too easy to focus out thoughts on ourselves as we apply ourselves to the disciplines of the season - traditionally fasting, prayer and Almsgiving, and more and more in the modern idiom, taking up some 'Good Work' -  it is easy to lose sight of Jesus and get caught up in all the 'virtuous' things we are doing, being at home with ourselves, rather than allowing Jesus to take us on pilgrimage  through the Wilderness, the only place where God's people learn faith.

There is a sense that the apostles felt this on the Mount of Transfiguration - "it is good for us to be here" - they are all too ready to pitch tent and stay there, but the 'lights' go out and suddenly
"they saw no one except Jesus himself alone."

No bright lights, no voice from Heaven - just Jesus. Lent is a time which asks us "Is He Enough?"

Matthew records that as soon as they come down from the mountain, the disciples find themselves floundering in the thick of the battle

When they came to the crowd, a man came to him, knelt before him, and said, ‘Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and he suffers terribly; he often falls into the fire and often into the water. And I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him.’ Jesus answered, ‘You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him here to me.’ And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and the boy was cured instantly. Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, ‘Why could we not cast it out?’ He said to them, ‘Because of your little faith. For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, “Move from here to there”, and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.’

They are perhaps asking, What happened to that Light, the Voice - The Wonder and the Awe of the mountain - why couldn't we have stayed there?? But as Jesus tells them, they have little faith. The plain fact is that the Light, the Voice, The Wonder and the Awe are all present, but veiled in human flesh. He is still Present to them, but they have little faith, they cannot See.

Jesus has his own Mount of Transfiguration experience - his Baptism. There are signs, the Spirit, the heavenly voice. How easy it must have been to ask to pitch tent by this place of blessing. But as Mark puts it The Spirit "drives" Jesus out into the Desert. This Work is Vitally urgent for Him and it is for us too.

As we enter Lent we are called to go with Jesus, to let go of other supports, ease and food, money (as we give alms) - for it is a time of testing. But all we are doing is going with Jesus and in the path of His disciples. Lent mirrors Jesus' 40 days in the Wilderness - we do not go alone. As He was as present amongst the demoniacs and the chaos of his disbelieving disciples, he is present in our Wilderness walk

One of his disciples saw the lights going out, yet spoke faith

 - ironically for he was known as the one who doubted - 

'Let us go also, that we might die with Him'

Whilst we still long to remain comfortable, 

whilst we have yet to learn to See him when humanly speaking the lights have gone out,

we need Lent