|
|
An Eye on Your Dollar
A sermon by Dr. Russell Dilday
First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, February 4, 2007
There’s a fascinating
little story that Mark, who wrote one of the gospel accounts of the life of
Jesus, included in his biography and I want us to use it as the text for the
message today. So, if you will, turn we with to the gospel of Mark chapter 12
beginning with verse 41. Let me read it for us and you follow as I read the
scripture of Mark 12:41.
‘And Jesus
sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the multitudes putting money into
the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. And a poor widow came, and put
in two copper coins, which make penny. And he called his disciples to him, and
said to them, “Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all
those who contributed to the treasury. For all they contributed out of their
abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, her whole
living.’
I am sure you are aware
of the fact that stewardship is a dominating theme in the New Testament. Half of
the parables Jesus told had to do with money and possessions and our use of that
money. In fact, one New Testament scholar said that one sixth or about 17
percent of the entire New Testament account deals with possessions, with money,
with stewardship. In fact, the New Testament gives us that word, steward--somebody
who takes care of the financial affairs of an owner. The steward was the
property administrator, a kind of financial executor, one who invested the
accounts of the owner. And the Bible says that’s our relationship to God. He’s
the owner, He owns everything. He owns the world, he owns your life and we are
merely users, responsible and accountable for how we accept and give and use the
gifts that belong to him. So stewardship is everything we do, after we say, “I
believe.” Stewardship is faith in action. It’s our response for what Jesus did
for us and forgiving us and providing us everlasting life. It is essential and
crucial to Christian experience.
So you saw my sermon
title today, “An Eye on Your Dollar.” A little bit sensational, I guess, and I
want to explain it to you. And to help me do that I want you to reach into your
pocket or into your pocketbook and pull out a dollar bill. Would you do that?
On the green side is an eye on your dollar. Have you ever seen it there on the
top of the pyramid? Thirteen stones representing the 13 colonies and right above
that unfinished pyramid is a eye—unblinking, staring, looking right out at you,
radiating light in behind it. Why is that eye on your dollar? Well, the internet
said there are lots of reasons and there are conspiracy theories about this,
sinister suggestions that it comes from iluminati or maybe the Masons or
worse than that, some aliens from outer space. You can read all kinds of stories
about it.
But the real answer is
that this is from the seal, the great seal of the United States and that the eye
looking out represents the all-seeing vision of the creator God who never
sleeps. Just like that other motto, In God We Trust, this symbol is there, the
eye looking out as the representation of the fact Proverbs says that “the eyes
of the Lord are in everyplace keeping watch over the good and the evil.” So
there’s an eye on your dollar. Now you may have thought that meant that the
First Baptist Church has its eye on your dollar. And there’s a sense in which
that’s true. We’re in the middle of pledge week. We are looking forward to
stewardship Sunday next Sunday when we support through your giving the mission
and work of this congregation around the world and the eye is on your
dollar for that.
But the theme actually
suggests that it is God who has his eye on your dollar, suggesting that
everything we do is in his sight. His unsleeping, his unblinking eye is upon us.
He’s aware of everything we have, everything we do, everything we give or don’t
give he knows, he’s watching.
And that’s the scene
here in this story that Mark included in his gospel—Jesus standing in the place
of worship watching people as they gave their offering. That’s kind of a
sobering thought, that Jesus has his eye on your dollar, on you and me, on what
we do he sees he knows.
We can reconstruct this
theme pretty accurately here because the ancient Jewish Talmud describes that
first century Jerusalem temple in great detail. It even gives us a floor plan.
We know where Jesus was standing when he first began to teach his disciples
here. There at the entrance to the temple enclosure a place called the royal
cloister. He met them there regularly and began to teach his 12 followers.
But then Mark says they moved in to a huge open courtyard called the court of
the women, an unrestricted area where anybody could come. Other places in
the temple were reserved for only a few, but this was where everybody could come
and there Jesus stood watching what was called the treasury of the temple. Mark
tells us about that. It lined one wall of the court of the women, 13
collection boxes made of brass. Each one with a Hebrew letter on it representing
a certain offering—the temple tax, the over-due temple tax, the gold for the
Mercy Seat, six of them offerings for freewill gifts--each of those brass
containers had an opening, a kind of receptacle shaped like a trumpet—not the
kind in your church orchestra, but the old Jewish ram’s horn, the shofar. The
receptacle to these boxes for the offering were a curved brass container that
let the people put their gifts in their as it circled down into the box.
It was a sight that
Jesus was watching as the people came through, crowds of people bringing their
offerings into the temple. All of their currency back then in the First Century
were metal coins, like this one I have, called a dinarius. This one was
actually uncovered in the city of Jerusalem in the ruins there.
Archeologists—and may well have been one of the coins dropped into these brass
offering containers in the temple of Jerusalem. It’s a very heavy coin. It’s a
representation of about a day’s wages for an ordinary laborer. The wealthier
people who came into the temple that day brought hands full of these dinarii,
pockets full of them. And the rich people had a way of throwing them into
those brass contains and clattering and clinking their coins into a (clinking
sound of coins) loud noise that everybody would look at and draw attention to
them as they gave their multiple gifts. They called that sounding the
trumpet. Putting their gifts into the trumpet opening so everybody would
look and OOO and AHHH.
Jesus may have had that
in mind when he said, “Don’t look be the Pharisees—sounding their trumpet
(clinking sound of coins) before them as they give their gifts.” It’s a lot like
those slot machines in Las Vegas. When someone hits the Jackpot all the money
falls into this loud container and everybody looks and is drawn in to the slot
machines—so I’ve been told.
So Jesus is there in the
temple with his disciples seated and he’s watching all of this going on. Crowds
of people, multitudes Mark says, coming in with their gifts. And the along came
this woman. Jesus said she was a widow. I don’t know how he knew that unless
it’s supernatural knowledge, maybe he knew her in the city, maybe her clothing
told that. She was a widow, alone, no one to share her life, she was poor and it
took a lot of courage for her to stand in that line of gaudy showoffs to bring
her little offering—two little copper pennies called lepta. A leptan
was the smallest currency in the city of Jerusalem during this Roman time. She
had two of them, each of them about one 1/64th of this dinarius.
She took two of them, combined which would have been a fraction of our penny and
put them in the offering plate.
You can almost those two
puny little pings as her small coins drop in. I’m sure there were smirks. I’m
sure there were patronizing smiles as she humbly and quietly disappeared in the
crowd. But it wasn’t only the crowd that was watching. Jesus was watching. He
called his disciples together and he said, this is a literal kind of
translation; he said, “Look! This woman, this poor one, this widow, she has
given more that all the rest.” And I think his words implied more that all the
rest combined. What a stirring thing that was for the disciples to see. And it
should be for us, too. Jesus watching. His eye on your dollar. And when he sees
our stewardship, this passage suggest that the motive behind your gift is more
important than the amount. That’s what happens when Jesus looks at your giving,
at your stewardship. There were a lot of wealthy people who gave gifts in the
temple that day and many of them from improper motives. Obviously, some of them
to show off and and feed their ego. Some of them gave out of custom and habit,
kind of mechanically, mindlessly. Some gave grudgingly, feeling a sense of duty,
but went ahead and did it. Jesus condemns those kinds of motives for giving, but
he honored this woman who gave, obviously, willingly, motivated by love,
motivated by compassion, motivated by sacrifice, lavishly and generously giving.
And when Jesus looks, his eyes on the dollar, and he knows that the motive
behind the gift is what really matters more than the amount.
I have a feeling that
years later the apostle Paul, when he wrote that passage in Corinthians that we
heard about earlier in the testimony, he may have had this woman, this story
from Jesus in mind when he said, you could give away everything you have, you
could give away your body to be burned; but if you don’t have love, it counts
for nothing. And this was Jesus’ way of saying that it’s the motive behind the
gift that really counts.
Let me quickly add that
duty, responsibility and obligation are noble motives. Nothing wrong with that.
In fact, that is why the Bible says that the tithe belongs to the Lord. That’s
why followers of Jesus, members of the church are under responsibility to share
and to give and to be a part of what the church is doing following God’s command
to go into all the world. This is Missions Week. We’re looking at the church’s
long history of accountability to obey the Great Commission and be sure that
through our giving people around the world, those to whom this mission team will
go, will hear about Jesus’ love. So we are under responsibility. It is our duty.
We are obligated to give. And that motive is very important. But, Jesus says an
even greater motive than that is the motive of compassion, and love and care.
I found in my experience
that people who love the church give willingly and invest in it. People who have
a lot of questions about the church, who deny its importance, who kind of
disdain it, who criticize it—they don’t support it, they take advantage of the
church, but they become ecclesiastical freeloaders. Everybody else pays the bill
and they don’t. The people who love give.
Somebody wrote this
parody of Shakespeare.
To pledge or
not to pledge, that’s the question.
Whether it’s
nobler to take the gospel free and
let another
foot the bill, or
sign a
pledge and pay toward church expenses.
To give, to
pay; aye, there’s the rub.
I’m wise.
I’ll wait, not work.
I’ll pray
and not pay and let others foot the bills.
And so I’ll
get the gospel free, you see.
Obligation and duty are
very important. But as we think about this week of mission and giving, his eyes
are on your dollar and through his eyes it’s the motivation behind the gift that
really counts. But his eyes on your dollar and through the eyes of Jesus,
spiritual dedication is stronger than economic status.
I’m impressed with a
contrast Jesus gives us in this story. He shocked his hearers when he looked at
that woman and says she’s given more than all the rest. And then he said, here
are these on one side have given great amount of money—and he put it this
way—out of their abundance. Literally, out of the overflow. Jesus said they gave
out of their leftovers, out of their pocket change, out of their discretionary
funds. And he said, here are people with economic advantage and they are giving
very little. But over here is this woman who gave everything she had—a
pittance—but it was everything. And out of her economic weakness, she gave so
much because her spiritual commitment, her spiritual dedication leaped over the
wall of economic disadvantage and in spite of it gave her gifts. She was poor.
She had an excuse. She had a reason not to give, legitimate reason. In fact,
some interpreters of this passage believe that Jesus was actually reprimanding
the people for allowing this poor woman, such a deprived and underprivileged
person, to come into the temple and risk her living by giving her gifts. They
see it that way; but that’s not what Jesus had in mind. This woman is the hero
of the story. She didn’t let her economic status keep her from giving and Jesus
watch those two contrasts. And when he measured stewardship, it’s not the count,
but the cost in his eyes. When he sees your dollar, it’s not what’s given, it’s
what’s kept that is important to him. It’s not the amount, but the proportion of
the gift.
Dr. Booker T.
Washington, that heroic educator who built Tuskeegee Institute, collected a lot
of contributions for his school. And in his autobiography he writes about that.
He said that he had the privilege over the years of receiving millions of
dollars, but there was one gift, he said, that stood out among all the rest. It
was from a former slave, uneducated, very poor. She came to him and said, “Dr.
Washington, I know what you and Miss Davidson is trying to do. I ain’t got no
money, but I want you to take these six eggs. Been saving them up day by day.
Put these eggs into the education of those boys and girls.” And holding back his
tears, Dr. Washington said, “Since the work of Tuskeegee started, it’s been my
privilege to receive many gifts for the benefit of the institution, but never
has any gift touched me so deeply as that on.”
And of all the gifts in
the temple that day, the one that touched Jesus deeply was the one given out of
a strong spiritual devotion that overcame economic despair.
His eyes’ on your dollar
and when Jesus sees your giving, the giver is more important that the gift.
Motive more important than the amount. Spiritual dedication stronger than
economic status. But the giver is more important than the gift. You see, the
fact that God had this woman’s pennies is really not the important thing. The
important thing is that he had her. She was devoted to him. She was totally
committed to him. She belonged to God. She had long ago made him Lord and Master
and that’s what Jesus sees as crucial and important. A lot of us are willing to
give marginally of our time and little bits of church attendance, snippets of
Bible study, a little here and a little there. But we are reluctant, though, to
give the costliest thing and that’s ourselves.
Paul commented about the
Macedonian stewards—those givers in the church there. He said they first gave
themselves to God and then brought their gifts to the needy people in
Jerusalem. That’s the first step. Costly step. Giving yourself to God.
Phil wrote about it in
the chorus we sang. “I give you all that I am to all that you are.” And if you
take that step, if you settle the matter of who’s boss, who’s controller, to
whom do you belong, who’s the Lord of your life—once you settle that, once you
give yourself to him then your contributions flow naturally, easily,
legitimately, logically out of your commitment to Christ.
In the eyes of Jesus the
giver is more important than the gift.
It’s a very important
time in the life of First Baptist, Richmond as we come to this year of financial
needs and as we think about missions. Next Sunday as we have an opportunity to
bring our gifts, our pledges. He’s still watching. His eyes’ still on us as it
was back then. Just as he saw her, he sees us. But we don’t have to worry about
all that need, and the budget and the mission needs if when we give we remember
how much he gave to us.
Emil Meador was a
British businessman who was a close friend of Albert Schweitzer. He had a
restaurant in London. In his cash register drawer, along with the currency and
the coins he kept a little rusty square-headed six-inch nail. People asked him,
“Why do you keep that there?” And he said, “Well, I keep that nail with my money
to remind me of the price Jesus paid for my salvation and how much I owe him.”
That’s what I want is to
remember today. He has his eye on your dollar, but you need to remember how much
he gave and is giving for us and for our salvation.
|
