Rev. Dr. Christopher Carlson

Early one morning, in the year 1900, a Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel was shocked to read his own obituary.  It said, “Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, who died yesterday, devised a way for more people to be killed in a war than ever before, and he died a very rich man.”  Actually, it was Alfred’s older brother who had died; the reporter had gotten it wrong.  But that obituary had a profound effect on Alfred.  He decided that he wanted to be known for something other than providing a way to kill people and getting rich.  So, he initiated the Nobel Prize, the award for scientists and writers and other things.  He said, “Every person ought to have a chance to correct his epitaph in midstream and write a new one.”

I want you to pretend for a minute.  Pretend that a preacher is delivering eulogy for you and that preacher tells the absolute truth about you.  What will he say?  Will he say that the central them of your life was self-promotion or God-promotion?  Will he say the central theme has been taking or giving?

Today, of course, is Memorial Day Sunday and tomorrow we remember the sacrifices made by many over the years so that we can have the lives and the freedoms that we have today.  None of our lives just happened.  Our lives are built on the sacrifices, the gifts of others and many have given so much.  Someone once said, “We should never forget that our tomorrows were bought with a price, someone had to pay with their lives, their sacrifices so that we might be free today.” 

Today’s sermon is about legacies, or if you will, about memorials. Specifically it is about giving because the way that we leave a legacy, the way we leave a memorial about our own lives is to give.  I have chosen two scriptures for you today. The first one is from Joshua Chapter 4 and its representative of the fact that in the scriptures there are many kinds of memorials.  Many kinds of objects or structures or events established in memory of a person or event.  That is what a memorial is.  And in Joshua 4 we have the story of the Israelites going into Palestine and they’re crossing over the Jordan and just as God has split the Red Sea he stops up the Jordan so that its dry land and they walk across.  As they are walking Joshua gives this command to people he has chosen one from each tribe to take a stone from the middle of the Jordan and carry it on their shoulder to the other side and there they set up a memorial.  So that whenever anyone sees this pile of rocks for years to come and asks, “What is it there for?” they are to say, “It is to remind us of what God has done to bring the Israelites into the land, what God has given them.”  We see memorials throughout the scriptures.  The cross has become a memorial, a reminder of the gift that God has given us, the salvation that we have through Jesus Christ.  In the same way the Lord’s Table is often called a memorial of the Lord’s broken body and shed blood. 

The word of God first comes to us from Joshua 4:

1 When the whole nation had finished crossing the Jordan, the LORD said to Joshua,

2 "Choose twelve men from among the people, one from each tribe, 3 and tell them to take up twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan from right where the priests stood and to carry them over with you and put them down at the place where you stay tonight." 4 So Joshua called together the twelve men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe, 5 and said to them, "Go over before the ark of the LORD your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, 6 to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, 'What do these stones mean?' 7 tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever."

The message of the scripture as the Lord has given to us we are to give.  The second scripture has that message as well.  It is from 2 Corinthians.  The subject of this particular scripture is about money.  Paul is raising money for the churches in Jerusalem.  I want you to not only think about money, we’ll talk a little bit about that, but about your whole life and giving.  Paul says this:

6Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. 7Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. 8And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. 9As it is written: "He has scattered abroad his gifts to the poor; his righteousness endures forever." 10Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. 11You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.

This is the Word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God. 

Will you pray with me? 

Oh Father, we pray that as we hear this Word you would work in our hearts.  You would enter our minds and change them.  Help us Lord to become better givers and not takers.  Help us that in the end our epitaphs will be those who were servants for you and to others.  In Jesus name, amen.

It is a fact that the essence of Christianity is giving.  The Bible says that God is the biggest giver.  For God so loved the world that he gave His one and only son.  That whoever should believe in Him should not perish but have eternal life.  God wants us to give so that we will become like Him because He is a giver.  He has given to us and he wants us to be givers.  The Bible teaches that our giving is always in every case a response to what God has done for us.  We don’t give out of compulsion.  We should never give because it’s a guilt trip or someone shakes a finger at you and says, “You must do this. You ought to do this.”  All of our giving, whether it’s our finances or our actions, it’s always a response to what God has done for us. 

There is basically three ways that we respond.  The first reason, and it may be the greatest reason, is gratitude, thankfulness if you will, gratitude for yesterday’s blessings.  Paul says, “Each one is to give what he has decided in his own heart to give not reluctantly or under compulsion.”  That is, he says you shouldn’t give because you’re pressured to or because you feel guilty.  For God loves a cheerful giver.  The service you perform is not only supplying the needs of God’s people its also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God, there it is.  I have to say, we must not underestimate the power of gratitude.  So often we get up in the morning and we’re feeling kind of nasty, we haven’t had our coffee.  We are not too grateful for that dead end job that we’ve got or that spouse we have or those kids that bother us that stay up half the night.  We’re not that happy about this or that and the other.  But you know what?  Not having gratitude robs us of our joy, our cheer.  You will never be happy unless you’re grateful.  If you can’t be grateful for simply getting up in the morning for your lives and all that you’ve been given you need to weigh it out on a scale it would always come out in how much you have been given verses how much has been taken.  God is the source of all that we have, our lives, our families, our abilities.  We might think, “I have all this stuff because I deserved it.”  Really?  In the end you don’t and I don’t but God has given these things to us freely.  When we say thank you, we’re saying to God, “I love you, I’m grateful for all you’ve done.”

The second reason we give is it serves as a chance to examine our motives in the present.  You know I find that most people are just so desperate in their lives, so desperate to succeed in this life, so desperate to find fulfillment in this life, so desperate to stay comfortable  in this life.  But in our desperation to succeed we forget that God has said, “He who will be first will be last.”  In our desperation to find fulfillment we forget that God has said, “The greatest will be the least and the least greatest.” In our desperation to stay comfortable, we forget that God has said, “He who seeks to gain his life will lose it, he who seeks to lose his life will gain it.”  The ethics of the Kingdom are exactly the opposite of what we think.  The path to success is exactly the opposite of what we think.  The path to life is the opposite of what we think and believe and act. 

There is a story about a pastor about Joseph Ton who pastored in Romania before the Iron Curtain fell.  While he was in seminary in England other students urged him to stay there because if he went back Romania he would be persecuted.  He felt called to go back and he did. His friends were right, he was persecuted and harassed.  One day a policeman came up to him and threatened to kill him.  Joseph Ton responded by saying, “Sir, your supreme weapon is killing, my supreme weapon is dying.  Sir, you know my sermons are all over the country on tapes now.  If you kill me, I will be sprinkling them with my blood.  Whoever listens to them after that will say, ‘I’d better listen.  This man sealed it with his blood’.  My sermons will speak ten times louder than before so go on and kill me.  I win the supreme victory then.”  And listen to what he says, “For years I was a Christian who was cautious because I wanted to survive.  I had accepted all the restrictions the authorities put on me because I wanted to live.  Now I wanted to die, and they wouldn’t oblige.  Now I could do whatever I wanted in Romanian.  For years I wanted to save my life, and I was losing it.  Now that I wanted to lose it, I was winning it.”

Our tendency is to be like the man that Luke tells about.  A rich man who had a bumper crop and it was so big he didn’t know what to do with it and he said, “What will I do?  I know I will build bigger barns so that I will have enough for the rest of my life as long as I want.”  God says to him, “You fool. Your life is required of you tonight.”  All this man could see and say are “I” and “me” and “my”, “my barns”, “my crops”, “my everything”.  All he could see was himself.  The Kingdom is exactly the opposite of this.  It’s exactly the opposite of what we think.

There is another story about a farmer whose corn won the blue ribbon at the state fair every year.  One day a reporter made an interesting discovery while interviewing the farmer.  He found that the farmer shared his seed corn with all his neighbors and he asked, “How can you afford to share your best seed corn with your neighbors when they are entering corn in the same competition with yours each year?”  The farmer said, “Why sir, don’t you know the wind picks up pollen from the ripening corn and swirls it from field to field.  If my neighbors grow inferior corn cross-pollination will steadily degrade the quality of my corn.  If I am to grow good corn I must help my neighbors grow good corn.”  Giving allows us to examine our motivation in the present.

Here, I do want to say a word about money. In illustrations about giving money the Bible uses this thing called money time and time again.  The reason is because it is the last thing we like to give up.  Every time I’ve the image of someone reaching into my back pocket I always think of a mouse trap back there.  We don’t like anyone to ask us to give.  We don’t want anyone to take anything from us.  I am here to tell you this morning that God does not want your money.  I know some of you are going, “That’s what I want to hear from the preachers.” Ah, but here comes the zinger.  What he wants is what it represents.  He wants you.  He wants your life.  He wants you to commit yourself to him and then you can give in gratitude.  Jesus says, “If you are not faithful with money, God will not entrust you with true riches.  Spirituality and stewardship are absolutely linked together. One influences the other.  I have talked with many Christians who don’t understand why they aren’t growing or why God doesn’t seem to answer their prayers.  Why they don’t see any changes in their lives, maybe because they have never dealt with one vital area.  Who owns me?  That’s what stewardship is all about.  Who owns you?  Stewardship is about Lordship, who’s Lord?  In my own life I find that God has to teach me this at least once a month.  Who’s the boss?  My tendency is to go off and do my own thing. 

I am grateful for one thing though and that is being in the Army.  In the Army you have to learn one thing – they own you.  If you don’t figure that out or you don’t accept it you might as well not be in the Army.  In a bigger way, God owns us.  Jesus is the Lord of everything, time, money, everything.  So we give to express appreciation and we give to examine our motivation.  We also give because it is a demonstration of faith and the future.  Paul says this, “Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously.”  I find that in most people’s lives this is where it is so hard.  We only see the now, generally.  We only see ourselves, generally.  It’s hard for us to think about the fact that giving has a future ramification.  Jesus said, “Don’t store up treasures here on earth.  Lay up your treasures in heaven.”  That means investing for the future and he is not really talking about your retirement.  He’s talking about your real retirement.  It’s hard for us, it’s really hard.  We always think about what’s going on now, “I don’t have time to do this right now, do that thing for that person, or work in that thing in the church. I’m too busy doing this or that.  I just don’t have time.”  Or “I can’t give for this I’m saving up for retirement. I’m trying to pay for my kid’s education. I’m trying to put clothes on their backs and food on the table.” Or “I’m in debt up to my ears.”  We only see the now. 

How do we invest in the future?  It’s very simple.  We give.  The Bible says, “In everything is accounted for.”  I want to be very clear.  We are all saved by grace here.  God’s undeserved favor and love, nothing changes that.  But there are consequences for our actions, some negative, and some positive.  There are some things we have done in the past that we’re still paying for.  You can name your own thing.  I won’t ask you to raise your hand and give a testimony.  We all have examples of things, especially those of you who are young. You’ll make some choices that thirty years later you’ll be paying for.  It’s all true of all of us. 

The opposite of that is that God takes what we do and will always bring blessing through it whether it’s now or later.  I have said I many times, one of the most difficult things about being a pastor is that sometimes you don’t see what you do.  I love it when people send me cards and say, “Thank you.” I’m not lobbying for that by the way.  You don’t have to send me a card, you don’t even have to shake my hand but I’m just simply using that as an illustration that sometimes you just don’t know.  Maybe for most people that you touch. Sometimes you touch them in a negative way but sometimes it is quite positive and you just don’t know.  Maybe in the Kingdom we’ll find out.  It’s hard though because sometimes you don’t see what you’re doing or how you’ve done it.  That’s hard for us and I understand that.  But, giving has to be future oriented. 

How many of us leave the Kingdom of God in our wills?  I’m not simply lobbying for something for Faith Church, that would be great but I’m talking about just simply for God’s work in this world.  How many of us systematically give to God’s work in the world?  Many do, but many don’t.  How many of us think about what we are doing in that Sunday school class as an investment in that child’s life that may pay dividends thirty or forty or fifty years down the line.  The Bible says, “Everything is accounted for.  Everything is rewarded.”  Even if you give a cup of cold water in His name, it will be rewarded.  Giving shows our faith. 

I end with two questions for you.  What are you expecting God to do in your life?  How much do you want God to bless your life? How much you’re expecting God to act? How much are you believing Him?  If you want to answer that question just look at your giving.  The Bible says we reap what we sow.  You know God blesses us whether we give or not, I’ve seen that millions of times but it is more if we are givers and not takers.  Abundant living, someone said, begins with abundant giving.  We must want to be like the Canaanite woman.  We don’t know much about her but Jesus gave her this memorial, this epitaph that says something about her life, “Great is your faith?”  How great is your faith?

Secondly, what epitaph do you want in your life?  What memorial do you want in your life?  What do you want people to say about you?  I leave you with some words from Dr. Martin Luther King who said this: “Every now and then I think about my own death, and I think about my own funeral.  And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long.  Tell them not to mention that I have Nobel Peace Prize.  Tell them not to mention that I have three or four hundred other awards.  I’d like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King, Jr. tried to give his life serving others.  I’d like for somebody to say that Martin Luther King, Jr. tried to love somebody, say that I was a drum major for justice, for peace, for righteousness.  I just want to leave a committed life behind.” Amen.  May that be the memorial for all of us.  The epitaph we all have. 

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen.