First Fruits

Deuteronomy 26:1-11

November 15, 2009

Preached by Rev. Trina Zelle

Let me tell you about the worst children’s sermon of my entire career.  I knew exactly what I was going to say – that wasn’t the problem.  The problem was, I thought I knew how the children were going to respond as well.  So it was with great confidence that I gave them what lawyers call “a hypothetical.”  Suppose there was a farmer who let you come in and pick all the strawberries you wanted.  There isn’t any charge for what you pick.  All the farmer asks is that you give him a little bit of what you’ve picked once you’re ready to leave.  That’s fair isn’t it?

What a stroke of genius.  This was going to be a brilliant reprise of “out of the mouths of babes.”  This would put the adults to shame as the children revealed their own innocent generosity with their answer.

Wrong!  The children were incensed at the suggestion.  “If that farmer wants strawberries, he can just go pick them himself.”  To a child, the response was one of indignation.  “What I picked, belongs to me!”

I don’t remember how it all finally ended.  I do remember a lot of hearty laughter from the adults and relief when the children finally left for church school.  What had started out as a simple lesson on stewardship turned into an object lesson on the corrosive impact of a materialistic culture on our children – or put another way: original sin. 

At least that’s how it seemed at the time.

Then I learned that such a reaction isn’t universal.    

A couple of years after the ill-fated children’s sermon, our family moved to Hawaii and I found myself serving in a large, multiple staff church in downtown Honolulu.  One of my colleagues – our youth minister – took the youth group on a mission trip to the Marshall Islands (that’s where Hawaiian youth go for mission trips – the south Pacific!) 

Anyway, part of their service to the people of the Marshalls involved running a vacation bible school for Marshallese children.  One day’s lesson included telling the story of the Rich Young Ruler who had “gone away sad” because Jesus had told him that, if he really wanted eternal life, he needed to sell everything he had and give it to the poor.

The Marshallese kids were confused.  “Why was he sad?” they asked.  “Why wouldn’t he give away everything he had to the poor? -- What other reason is there for having things than to give them away?”

Now it was the turn of the Central Union youth group to be confused.  How could anyone think that giving away possessions was the point of having them?

Our attitudes about possessions and the nature of gift giving may vary from culture to culture but one thing is certain – our need to give.  Selfishness may or may not be in our DNA but the need to contribute, to give to something larger than ourselves is what makes us flourish as human beings.  This morning I want to talk about three ways that giving does this.  First, giving confers dignity.  Second, giving recalibrates our priorities.  Third, giving connects us to the rest of God’s world.

Julie Salamon, the woman who wrote the book, Rambam’s Ladder, which is quoted in today’s bulletin about the levels of charitable giving, makes this point.  She tells the experience of Ronald Williams, the program director for an Adult Day Care Program that targets the homeless women and men of the Bowery area in lower Manhattan.  Many of these folks are mentally ill or addicted to drugs or alcohol or both.  They show up to his program for mental health services or to detox or sometimes, simply to take a shower and have a safe place to sleep.

As some of our junior high youth know – because they’ve been to Andre House and Central Arizona Shelter Services as part their summer urban mission trip – homeless shelters like this can be unnerving if you’ve never been there before.  A slightly shabby building surrounded by a teeming mass of individuals, most looking pretty beat up by life; many looking totally disconnected and out of touch with their surroundings.

Ronald Williams told Julie Salamon how he was in his office on this particular Tuesday morning when one of his homeless clients came running from his usual corner hangout and tapped on Williams’ outside window.

“Mr. Williams,” he said.  “I think something is wrong.”

Even though years of experience made him suspect that this man was probably just disoriented or intoxicated, Ronald Williams also sensed from his agitation that something was, indeed, terribly wrong.

He brought the man into the reception area where a television happened to be on and soon everyone was standing mesmerized in front of it, watching the terrible newsflash about the planes hitting the Twin Towers not all that far from where they were. 

Shortly after that, people, office workers, started coming towards the program offices from the direction of the World Trade Center, walking fast.  At first they looked normal, Williams reported.  Then covered in debris and some covered in blood.

What happened next, surprised him – and after fourteen years of working with the homeless mentally ill in the Bowery, he had thought he was beyond surprise.

“My clients, people who were homeless, people who were at the lower end of society, were making suggestions to the staff.  We put chairs outside.  We had a hose attached to a faucet.  A nurse came out with what first aid we could muster.  When people started coming by covered in stuff, we hosed them off.  A lot of people just wanted to sit down and get a drink of water.  My clients were the ones doing this.  They were out offering water, offering help.  The clients just pitched in as if they were staff.  They were sad because of what was going on, but they were glad to be part of something, to be doing something.  They were there.”    

Salamon comments:  “The homeless people on Lafayette Street found themselves, through their charity, part of the community that day.  Usually ignored or avoided, or recipients of aid, they had been invited, through disruption of the normal order, to participate in the human exchange as equals. They had, momentarily, dropped the anonymity imposed on them by circumstance and had been noticed for their good work.”

Giving confers dignity and lets us carve out a place in the world, however briefly.  And this story from Rambam’s Ladder makes me wonder if the Israelites’ offerings described in today’s readings, were not only about showing gratitude for God’s mighty acts but a way for them to take their places as free persons living new lives.  As slaves, they had been utterly dependent on the whims of their owners.  Nothing could really be said to belong to them. And now, here they are, capable of making a contribution from the fruits of their own hard work.  Giving confers dignity.

And, giving recalibrates our priorities.  This is not the same claim made by prosperity gospel preachers who link personal wealth to patterns of giving.  What it does mean, at least to me, is that there seems to be a link between generosity and contentment.  A sense of being satisfied with what I have rather than wanting something more and more.  I remember a particularly difficult time in our family’s life when one of our children seemed almost beyond reach.  There were a lot of related bills and I felt that there just weren’t enough resources to make a pledge that year.  Well, that year, there just never seemed to be enough.  We struggled to make ends meet.  Then something clicked.  All of a sudden, it no longer made sense to wait to give until things were totally stable.

We started giving again. And it’s not really that things got better all of a sudden.  But we felt better.  Looking beyond ourselves and our own situation actually made that situation more bearable and went a long way in removing our sense of being victimized by circumstance. 

And finally, giving connects us to the rest of God’s world.  As Jesus said, where your treasure is, there shall be your heart also.  When we invest time, and energy and talent and money into an endeavor, we start caring about what happens.  We develop a sense of ownership.  Like everything, this can go over the top, but the fact is, if you want to feel connected, give part of yourself away – time, treasure, or talent.  Giving connects us.

I know I said, “finally,” but there’s one more issue to address here.  First fruits.  The Israelites are specifically told to bring the first fruits of their harvest – rather than the best of their harvest after it has all been gathered, inspected, and packed away.

Why first fruits then?  Because It’s all about faith, which is, at its core, trust.  Trust that there’s more where that came from. Trust in the One to whom they are giving.  The first three reasons for giving are simply statements of fact rather than acts of faith.  Giving confers dignity, it recalibrates priorities, it connects us to the rest of the world.

But giving off the top bears witness to trust. Trust that we’ll always have a job or that we’ll never suffer a reversal of fortune?  No, no more than the Israelites would have believed that giving their first fruits would stave off future hailstorms or  locusts.  That would be what’s called propitiation – I’ll give this and in return you won’t let bad things happen to me.  That’s the worst reason to give.

Rather, giving off the top says that we believe that the One to whom we make our offerings, wills our good and promises to be with us every moment come what may.  I believe this to be true for our community of faith as a whole as well as for our individual lives.  In a time of transition, as UPC is now, it is tempting to hold back and say, we’re not going to commit until we see what happens.  Until we see whether we like the new pastor that gets called or whether the programs we like are going to continue.

The ironic thing about this kind of attitude is the impact it will have itself on the future church we are moving towards.  Like the hymn says, time like an ever flowing stream, bears all of us away.  Away from now and into a future that our trust – or lack of it -- will have a hand in shaping.  Amen.