Radical Generosity

INTRODUCTION

We are back in our series today called Great Grace, and it’s all about how the church, this community that meets together on Sundays and serves one another and teaches the Bible and goes out on mission together, how all of this is the work and product of Jesus living within us, filling us with his Spirit, guiding and directing our movements, and leading us to show the world how the kingdom of God is invading earth, one Christ-filled moment at a time.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote an amazing book on the life of the church in 1939, and he begins with this profound statement that hit me especially hard this week:

Christian community means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. There is no Christian community that is more than this, and none that is less than this. Whether it be a brief, single encounter or the daily community of many years, Christian community is solely this. We belong to one another only through and in Jesus Christ.

I will explain in a bit why this statement just steamrolled me. Today, we are talking about the radical generosity of the church. We’re talking about how the church gives and shares, how the people of God’s family bring what they have to serve, love and multiply the Kingdom of Christ.

Now first, let me say that we rarely talk about giving here. In my four years as the lead pastor, I believe this is the second message I have ever given on giving. We don’t talk about it much here. Second, let me say that I apologize to you deeply for that. We don’t talk about giving and generosity nearly enough as a church community. This idea that the members of a church give to the greater body through tithes and offerings, that they share meals with one another, that they willingly sacrifice their own personal gain so that others may find relief and comfort and joy and peace? People don’t do that. Not on their own. It’s our nature to strive for the ideal self, for the vision of the good life that brings us the most comfort and enjoyment through our gains and our glories. But to enter into a life marked by grace and mercy and utterly sacrificial love so that others might see the kingdom of God played out in the world? That’s the radical way of Jesus, that’s the nature of the gospel, and so it’s got be something we talk about, not just today, but all the time.

You have a vital role in the church, and that is to share. When the church shares with one another, the church flourishes, and the kingdom of God expands and bears fruit.

How do we get there? How do we get to experience the absolute joy of the Radically Generous life? Let’s open up Acts chapter 4 and take a look.

PRAY

I’m always struck by the absolute simplicity of the church here. There is no obvious structure enforcing church faithfulness, just the natural flow and movement of grace inspiring, informing, and releasing generosity and love for one another. According to Acts, there are three keys to unlocking this: Surrender, Unity, and Trust.

SURRENDER

The first key to unlocking Radical Generosity comes with Surrender. Check out the passage. What is the first descriptor of these people in the church? They believe. They are hearing the testimony of the Jesus’ absolute closest followers, those who knew him the best, who watched him work wonders and teach with authority, who watched him get arrested and beaten and crucified and killed, and who were there when he conquered death and walked among them and commissioned them to take on his mission as their own. Those twelve men share their story, and the people hear and receive and believe. They surrender their version of the good life, of personal satisfaction and achievement and fame and glory, and they trade it for the eternal, abundant life that Jesus offers instead. And everything changes.

Radical Generosity starts with surrender. Now here’s what I mean by this, because I think surrender gets a bad name sometimes. Surrender is not just giving up the things that make you happy so that God will be pleased with you. But instead, I’d like you to think of surrender differently, not by what you give up, but by what you are making space for. People all around us—you, me, everyone—are driven by this obsessive need to fill every square inch of our lives with pursuits and passions, fulfilling careers and meaningful relationships and a nice house and a car and a degree. Every commercial we have ever watched promises our happiness based on these criteria, and everyone hopes against hope that their dreams will be realized. I don’t know if you know this, but we now have a word in the dictionary that defines this obsessive pursuit: FOMO, Fear Of Missing Out. FOMO stifles generosity. It inhibits surrender, because we become so enslaved to our passions, to our dreams, to our expectations, to our experiences. Everything we do—our work, our play, our toys, even our religion—becomes the means to our end, which is to see our every desire fulfilled. So let me ask you, if FOMO drives your life and fills every nook and cranny of your time, your energy, your wallet, then where is the space for God? What capacity do you have to operate in the radical generosity of the kingdom of heaven?

See, your surrender depends on the conviction that Christ is sufficient. He is enough. By that, I mean Jesus provides all the joy you could ever ask for, all the comfort you could ever desire, all the relationship fulfillment you could ever dream of. If Christ is all of this, if having him in your life meant you would never need anything else to bring you meaning and fulfillment, wouldn’t you do whatever it took to create space for him? Wouldn’t that be worth giving up on your social advancements, your bigger and better retirement, your endless search for… whatever? If surrendering you life to Jesus meant giving him control over the stuff of your life, and letting go of the outcome, isn’t that worth it as long as it means more of the rest and joy and hope that Jesus brings? That’s surrender. It’s banking on the sufficiency of Christ.

Here’s a lesson I have been learning recently. I need the sufficiency of Christ. I need to rely on the fullness of Christ surrounding me and filling me with life and joy and peace. If I don’t, if I choose to fill up with anything else, it changes what I can offer my family, my church, my community. If I rely on the success of the church, I will teach and organize out of that, I will give out of that. If I rely on affirmation, I will give out of that. If I have any expectation for a return on my investment, I will give out of that. And what I have found is that the quality of my offering diminishes drastically if Christ is not my sufficiency. My offering has more and more strings attached, it becomes more tired, more weak, more tasteless.

I have realized, in fact, that my offering to the church, my gift, has been substandard lately. There is a lack of life to my teaching, a lack of spark in my pastoring, a lack of vision in my leadership. And it has come down to the fact that I have not been filled with Christ as I should. I have not surrendered his church, I have not surrendered my role, I have not surrendered my direction and my ministry, I have not surrendered my financial gifts. Oh, I keep coming and teaching and directing and ministering and giving. But I fear that Christ is not as present in them as he should be. And my fear comes because I know that I have not made space for him. I have not made space for him to fill me. I have not made space for him to speak to me. I have not made space for him to comfort me or give me joy. And my inability to surrender has limited my generosity.

I have to repent of that. Of my disbelief, of my resistance, of my substandard gifts. I’m sorry, church family. Because I now know how much greater my generosity can truly be if I’m holding nothing back from him. To be satisfied by Christ means I don’t need your approval, I need success, I don’t need greatness, I just need him. This last Sunday, I found myself in an unknown church building, 500 miles north of here. The church was worshiping, praying, singing, and I was struggling. It was like I wanted to worship, I wanted to be just present, but I couldn’t, not for the longest time. I kept looking about, thinking, deliberating, planning, all the while going through the motions. And I realized just how long I’ve been in that mode, unable to break free from the job of church, and just give God space in me to work. Behind me, one of the pastors came behind me and Bethany and prayed for me right there, while everything else was going on. Without knowing anything about us, he spoke directly to the condition of my heart. And something broke free in that moment. And I got to worship Jesus like I haven’t been able to in years. And you know what excites me about that? Now, I get to come and testify to the goodness of Christ, to the sufficiency of Christ, to the freedom found in Christ. Not in theory, not in abstract, not in Greek or theological terms. But in real, honest-to-goodness truth: Jesus gave me what I needed that night, as I was finally able to surrender everything. I made space in my head, in my heart, for him to take up more residence. And because of that, I get to give. I get to proclaim the good news of Jesus today. I get to tell you how much he loves you, how you can have everything you need in him. How you can give freely and generously because you have received so, so much, more than you could ever dream of, you have so much to share and offer, and you don’t need to hold on to that stuff of earth like your life depends on it, because it doesn’t

Not anymore. Remember Bonhoeffer?

Christian community means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. Whether it be a brief, single encounter or the daily community of many years, Christian community is solely this. We belong to one another only through and in Jesus Christ.

Surrender unlocks your Generosity. I cannot speak to you of giving to the church as a duty or an obligation without first speaking of your surrender. You cannot give what you haven’t first received, and you cannot receive without making the space to receive it. I want to see the church flourish and grow. I want to see the church give sacrificially and powerfully, I want to see generosity so radical that the world doesn’t know what to do with it. But I don’t want you to use giving as the means to the end of growing close to God. I want you to see the God of the universe knocking on the door of your heart, urging you to make space for him to come and dwell with you. I want you to come with your offering, not in your own strength and ability and power, but in weakness, humility, frailty, utterly trusting in the sufficiency of Christ to sustain you.

I’ll close with a word from the apostle Paul. He’s writing to the church in Corinth about all of the hardships he has had to face over the years, and how he’s been utterly beaten down for the sake of the gospel, yet somehow he lives and speaks and ministers. He is radically generous with his gifts. And here’s what he has to say about that:

2 Corinthians 12:6–10 CSB

For if I want to boast, I wouldn’t be a fool, because I would be telling the truth. But I will spare you, so that no one can credit me with something beyond what he sees in me or hears from me, especially because of the extraordinary revelations. Therefore, so that I would not exalt myself, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to torment me so that I would not exalt myself. Concerning this, I pleaded with the Lord three times that it would leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness.” Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may reside in me. So I take pleasure in weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and in difficulties, for the sake of Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

UNITY

The second key is Unity. Back to Acts 4. First, they believe. Then what? They were of one heart and mind. Slow down for a moment and think about that image. Imagine you shared a heart with another human being. Every beat, every flutter, totally synced up with someone else. When a loved one walks into the room, your heart races the same way. When you get scared, or discouraged, or anxious, when you are laughing or crying, you feel the same. Your desires and hopes and dreams are shared, because you share one heart. Strange right? But that’s what’s going on here.

What if you shared the same mind? Your synapses fired the same, your brain waves moving in perfect unity. The way that you think about the world, about God, about relationships, about right and wrong, good and evil, all the same. Your worldview, your process, your decision-making, all in sync. You learn the same, speak the same, understand the same. One mind. Weird, sure, but that’s what’s going on here.

There’s all kinds of verses in the Bible about how God gives us a new heart and a new mind. Here’s are a couple of my favorites:

Ezekiel 36:24–28 CSB

“ ‘For I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries, and will bring you into your own land. I will also sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your impurities and all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will place my Spirit within you and cause you to follow my statutes and carefully observe my ordinances. You will live in the land that I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God.

Romans 12:1–2 CSB

Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your true worship. Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.

I’ve never noticed this before. The Bible talks about how God works to replace the old calloused and selfish heart with a selfless and loving one. The Bible talks about how my mind will be rewired and made new so that I will think God’s thoughts after him, so that I will know his will and what it means to have goodness reign. I can see that, I’ve experienced that, but honestly I only ever thought about that on a personal level. But watch what Acts 4:32 says: they were of one heart and mind. That new heart, that new mind, we actually share with one another. One set of desires and loves, multiplied among the people of God. One set of knowledge and understanding, multiplied among the people of God.

What does this mean for us? How does this unlock Radical Generosity? It means that when we surrender our hearts and receive that share heart, when we surrender our minds and receive that shared mind, which I genuinely take to mean the heart and mind of Christ, we live and act and move as one. When you feel pain, I feel pain. When you feel joy, I feel joy. When you are scared or confused, I am scared and confused.

We belong to one another only through and in Christ.

Unity means no one is left behind or alone. No one is left in the dark, no one is left hungry or forgotten. Unity means that we share a common love and will, and we act out of that. A unified people are acutely aware of the needs among us, the lacks, the hurts. And that awareness leads to compassion and grace and action.

Look how this plays out when it comes to giving in the church—just imagine it playing out in our own community!

No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but instead they held everything in common (Acts 4:32).

There was not a needy person among them because all those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the proceeds of what was sold, and laid them at the apostles’ feet (Acts 4:34-35).

It’s easy to somewhat pass over this because of the society we live into day, but slow down, take off your Crocs, and put on your first-century sandals for a moment. No one had any needs. Why? Because those who had land or houses sold them and gave the proceeds to the church. In this time period, people lived in tiered society. Here’s a picture of the different strata. The top is just a tiny fraction of the people: The king, or the emperor, and the governing class. Then from there, the group widens to include merchants and artisans, and religious leaders. These are the home owners, the land owners, those who own businesses and can actually make their own wages and give their kids an inheritance and give their families everything they need to be successful. Then you have day laborers and slaves, who are better regarded because they can contribute to society, but they have nothing to share, nothing of value that they own. Finally, you have the unclean, the blind and lame, the expendables. These are people who no one cares about, no one needs, no one loves. They can’t contribute in any way, they have zero value to the society, and so they cast away. They are nothing but needy dependents, barely hanging on to a life not worth living.

Watch what the church does. They share one mind and heart.

You don’t come to the church to receive. In Jesus, you have received everything you need. Instead, you come and share. You bring food, so the hungry will be fed. You bring money, so the impoverished will be relieved. You bring spiritual gifts, so the body will be encouraged.

TRUST

The third and final key to unlocking Radical Generosity is Trust.

Giving is an act of trust

Trust that God will use it for his glory and your good

Trust that spiritual leaders are walking in wisdom, and the witness of the church carried out through your gifts

Different seasons call for different expressions of church stewardship

As God fills our vision with spiritual direction, we trust that he will provide through a gracious and generous community to help us get there.

The church is with you, and it is for you. But it is not about you.

Resist the urge to let personal preferences and expectations drive your vision of the church or determine your generosity or your giving.

Bonhoeffer: Life Together