This lectionary-based resource is here to help you preach confidently not just about money, but about generosity in every sense.
Preaching Generosity is a new, weekly, bite-sized preaching resource, produced by the Diocese of Rochester in partnership with St Augustine’s College of Theology and the National Giving Team of the Church of England.
Each week, a short sermon idea drawn from one of that week’s Common Worship lectionary readings will be made available to give preachers the tools to become comfortable and confident in preaching about generosity.
For weekly inspiration direct to your inbox our inbox, please register here
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January 2024
How can we freely share the gift of life in God’s Spirit with the world?
‘We have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.’
Can you imagine the shock on St Paul’s face when the Ephesians said this? These people were Christians, but they hadn’t even heard of the Holy Spirit!
Their problem was that they were stuck with just the first part of the Christian message. Remember John the Baptist’s words: ‘I baptise with water for repentance, but one will come who will baptise you with the Holy Spirit.’ This new baptism is not just about repentance but is also the gift of new life in the Holy Spirit.
Jesus freely gives this gift to his disciples and Paul shares it with the Ephesians.
Having been given the gift of new life in the Spirit, the starting point of Christian generosity is to ask ourselves: how can we freely share the gift of life in God’s Spirit with the world?
Joshua Townson is Generous Giving Adviser in the Diocese of Oxford.
An opportunity to look at our lives and the gifts we have been given.
In the rhythm of our life as a church, the autumn term comes to us as a gift in the form of our Stewardship (Generosity) Season. I welcome it with real joy because it gives us an opportunity to regroup as disciples of Jesus and to have a kind of spiritual MOT. An opportunity to look at our lives and the gifts we have been given; We take time to ask:
Lord what is your purpose for me now?
What will you have me do with the time that I have?
What will you have me to do with the gifts you've given me?
What will you have me do with the money you've given me?
What is it about my presence in this place that you want to use for the advancement of your Kingdom?
It’s not surprising that this is the lens through which I read this Psalm. I see here a declaration of the kingship of the Messiah. The meditation of my heart can only be: may he reign forever, and Lord start with me.
Long may he live!
May gold from Sheba be given him.
May people ever pray for him
and bless him all day long. Psalm 72.15
Esther Prior is the vicar of St John’s, Egham, vice-chair of Church Pastoral Aid Society Patronage Trustees, serves on General Synod as Pro-Prolocutor and the Crown Nominations Commission. She is a contributor to God’s Church for God’s World: Faithful Perspectives on Mission and Ministry, published by IVP.
It takes a certain generosity of spirit to hand over ‘our’ ministry – but it can have far reaching effects.
It takes a certain generosity of spirit to hand over ‘our’ ministry to someone new and untried. Can you imagine what went through Eli’s mind, when he realised that God was calling – not to him, the priest – but to Samuel, a young lad who ‘did not yet know the Lord’?
In a time when ‘the word of the Lord was rare’ in the land of Israel, Eli could easily have been tempted to keep his knowledge of God to himself. He could have begrudged young Samuel his call from the Lord, nursing resentment that his own sons had been rejected from serving as priests because of their bad behaviour. Eli could have told Samuel to be quiet and go back to sleep, holding on to the things of God for himself and his sons – scoundrels though they were.
But he didn’t.
Instead, he taught Samuel how to respond to the voice of the Lord: ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’ So the word of the Lord came to Samuel; and through him, to all Israel.
It takes a certain generosity of spirit to hand over ‘our’ ministry – but it can have far reaching effects.
Rev. Dr Miriam Bier Hinksman is a curate in the diocese of Canterbury. She has written an academic tome on Lamentations, as well as Reading Hosea: A Beginner’s Guide, available here: https://grovebooks.co.uk/collections/biblical/products/b-108-reading-hosea-a-beginner-s-guide
Spread the generous invitation with others.
One of the images that runs throughout the Bible is that of a wedding. That may well be why the first of the signs in John’s Gospel is set at a wedding.
Weddings are wonderful, but not if you are left out. Yet in Revelation an angel says, “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb”.
You are invited. Not just to the wedding of the year. The biggest of royal or celebrity weddings has nothing on this.
This is what all history has been working towards. And you are invited.
And not just a guest to stand at the back and gawp at the bride’s dress. You are invited as a part of the bride. And you are called to go spread that generous invitation with others.
What could you do, what could you give to share that invitation?
Tim Edwards is Rector in the Benefice of Knockholt with Halstead in the Diocese of Rochester. .
Trust that God will fulfil his promise to care for us
Simeon is often portrayed as an old man. He’d waited his whole life for the fulfilment of the promise God had made to him, that he wouldn’t die before seeing the Messiah.
Can you imagine how he felt holding Jesus in his arms? Can you see the tears on his cheeks as his faith is finally rewarded?
Simeon’s generosity is expressed through his trust in God’s promises. He gave his whole life in service to God, trusting that he would see the Messiah with his own eyes.
Sometimes when we are asked to give, fear can hold us back because we’re worried we won’t have enough, but Jesus promises us that he will always care for us, even when life is difficult.
Giving away our material possessions, including money, can be an expression of a generous-hearted trust that God will fulfil his promise to care for us.
Joshua Townson is Generous Giving Adviser in the Diocese of Oxford
The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.
The first part of Psalm 24 celebrates God’s power over the cosmos and the world – the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it. The second celebrates the temple as the microcosm of the entire universe. The worshipper ascends to worship in an attitude of awe and reverence towards God, preparing their heart and life to enter the sanctuary.
Yet they are assured at the same time that the one who truly seeks the LORD will receive good things, blessing, from God. The third part dramatizes God’s victorious entrance or advent into the temple.
As Christians we know that Jesus has come as the temple and centre of gravity of the universe, the place where we can meet with God in trust and without fear.
What a fitting Psalm for reflections on generosity. It is fuel for our prayers that each time we go out into the temple of creation, we live and work for Jesus’ final coming as the glorious king of the nations. This involves the giving of our lives in worship of the One who gave it all in the first place.
The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it,
the world, and all who live in it
Esther Prior is the vicar of St John’s, Egham, vice-chair of Church Pastoral Aid Society Patronage Trustees, serves on General Synod as Pro-Prolocutor and the Crown Nominations Commission. She is a contributor to God’s Church for God’s World: Faithful Perspectives on Mission and Ministry, published by IVP.
February 2024
Faced with a creative, playful God, how can we not rejoice and sing God’s praise?
If you can possibly squeeze in the entire psalm – do! But if not, you at least need to begin at verse 24 for the rest to make sense:
‘O Lord, how manifold are your works!
In wisdom you have made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures.’
The picture is of a world teeming with life, all of which is created and sustained by God.
God gives to all creatures with an open hand, but one is singled out for special attention: the sea monster, Leviathan. You could have a lot of fun with this in an all-age service. Try flipping to Job 41 and drawing Leviathan from the description. What is Leviathan meant to be? A dinosaur? The Loch Ness monster?
Then notice this: in the psalm, Leviathan is formed to play in the sea. That’s it. This great sea creature is just for fun!
God creates and sustains all life, yes. But God does not just give the bare necessities of life, God also gives the delights – the fun, the playfulness, and the joy.
Faced with such a creative, playful God, how can we not rejoice and sing God’s praise?
Rev. Dr Miriam Bier Hinksman is a curate in the diocese of Canterbury. She has written an academic tome on Lamentations, as well as Reading Hosea: A Beginner’s Guide, available here: https://grovebooks.co.uk/collections/biblical/products/b-108-reading-hosea-a-beginner-s-guide.
God who created light in the beginning still shines light into people’s hearts.
Paul writes that our gospel message is ‘veiled’ to people.
Doesn’t it just feel like that?
We share something about the Lord Jesus that seems so clear, so compelling, and our friends or family members just don’t get it.
If it were just that they didn’t see why we are into something, like a love of bagpipe music, that would be their loss, but not especially serious.
But those to whom the gospel is veiled are ‘those who are perishing’. Not seeing the beauty, the splendour, the glory of Jesus has eternal consequences.
Happily, God who created light in the beginning still shines light into people’s hearts, as he did for us.
He does that as we clearly and simply share the message of Jesus and lay down our lives for others.
How can you do that this week? And for whom will you be praying that they will see God shining a light into their hearts?
Tim Edwards is Rector in the Benefice of Knockholt with Halstead in the Diocese of Rochester.
When we share, we work together to show Christ to the world and express his love.
‘To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul. O my God, in you I trust; do not let me be put to shame.’
This psalm is soul-wrenching; imagine David filled with fear, his enemies closing in, having nowhere else to turn except to God. He breaks down and simply prays ‘I know you love me Lord. Help me!’
What a beautiful expression of hope in the face of fear! This is what the church offers to our broken world. The church – the Body of Christ – is Jesus’ representative on earth and he calls us to hear the cries of those in despair and to generously offer them the hope of God’s love.
Giving to church is about enabling this response. We share what we have as individuals with our church community so that we can work together to show Christ to the world and collectively express his love.
Joshua Townson is Generous Giving Adviser in the Diocese of Oxford.
We allow the sovereign Lord to shape us into open-handed people.
You can’t escape the recurring theme of the sovereignty of God in the Psalms of the day for the last couple of weeks. Today is no different. For dominion belongs to the Lord and he rules over the nations. There will come a time when all peoples and all nations will acknowledge this.
There is an underlying invitation for us to line up with his rule. Honour him! Revere him! Be a part of his open-handedness towards all he has created. Today, as we reflect on the call to generous living, to hear the call to remember the poor. What a wonderful vision captured in one little phrase: The poor will eat and be satisfied.
According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, around one in five in the South East are currently living in poverty - that's 1.9 million people behind this statistic, in our churches, and in our communities. As we allow the sovereign Lord to shape us into open-handed people, we will be caught up in the sweeping story of his reign and our lives will praise him.
The poor will eat and be satisfied;
those who seek the Lord will praise him—
may your hearts live forever!
Esther Prior is the vicar of St John’s, Egham, vice-chair of Church Pastoral Aid Society Patronage Trustees, serves on General Synod as Pro-Prolocutor and the Crown Nominations Commission. She is a contributor to God’s Church for God’s World: Faithful Perspectives on Mission and Ministry, published by IVP.
March 2024
Through Jesus Christ, everything essential has already been given to us.
‘Stop making my Father’s house a market-place!’
How many of us will admit to being essentially selfish? It’s not easy, sometimes, to acknowledge that our motives for coming to church, or serving God, can be mixed. At our services there can be a whole lot going on that is not just to do with preaching and living out the gospel. There can also be an element of what’s in it for me?
The animals being sold in the temple were needed for the Passover sacrifices. Moneychangers were needed for coins from faraway places to be exchanged. All this was necessary for the proper sacrifices to be made in worship. But somewhere along the line, all this buying and selling activity had become a profit-making exercise, with the buyers and sellers forgetting that the whole point of it all was worship.
Through Jesus Christ, everything essential has already been given to us. Why, then, do we feel the need to turn our acts of worship and service into opportunities for personal gain?
As long as we are human, our motives will be mixed. But let us remind ourselves, again, that Jesus has turned the tables, and turned the world upside down.
Rev. Dr Miriam Bier Hinksman is a curate in the diocese of Canterbury. She has written an academic tome on Lamentations, as well as Reading Hosea: A Beginner’s Guide, available here: https://grovebooks.co.uk/collections/biblical/products/b-108-reading-hosea-a-beginner-s-guide.
God gives his Son, the only eternal Son, whom the Father has loved for eternity.
John 3:16 is the most famous verse in the Bible.
It highlights three things about God’s generous love:
Whom does God love? The world. The emphasis is not on the breadth of the world, or its beauty, but where things have gone wrong. The world is ‘us’ as we reject God and his good rule.
How does God love? He gives – not flowers or kind thoughts – he gives his Son, the only eternal Son, whom the Father has loved for eternity.
How to receive this love? Everyone (every single person – including those who think this could never include them) who believes, who grasps who Jesus is, is not condemned (no matter what anyone may have done), but receives life.
The most important thing is to see God’s love – we are than changed to share and show that love – but it starts with receiving it for ourselves.
Do we know this love?
Tim Edwards is Rector in the Benefice of Knockholt with Halstead in the Diocese of Rochester.
Let your light shine before others.
David, having asked God to renew his heart, shares a hope that by what he does, people who’ve fallen away from God will return to him. Remember Jesus’ words: ‘let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.’ By what we do we show people what it means to have a relationship with God, which is why we are called to be generous – so that we can be reflections of the Father’s generosity to the world.
Being a Christian is not something we do alone, though, but as members of the church, the ‘Body of Christ.’ When we give our money and time to church we commit to working together to build up our Christian family so that, as a community, we can show the world what it means to have a relationship with God through faith.
Joshua Townson is Generous Giving Adviser in the Diocese of Oxford.
Christ’s sacrifice on our behalf enables our salvation.
Christ has opened a way for us, enabling us to enter the gates of the righteous. His sacrifice has won him the label, a ‘man of sorrows who is acquainted with grief.’ He took upon himself our pain and bore our suffering. As Isaiah puts it:
He was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
This sacrifice on our behalf made him our chief cornerstone as Christ became our salvation. As we reflect on generosity through the lens of this Psalm – the sacrifice of the rejected one brings to mind the words of the great hymn:
Were the whole realm of nature mine,
that were a present far too small.
Love so amazing, so divine,
demands my soul, my life, my all.
The one who is the gate to righteousness invites us to mirror his generosity in our own lives. The invitation to walk the way of righteousness is an invitation to a life of self-giving love.
I will give you thanks, for you answered me;
you have become my salvation.
Esther Prior is the vicar of St John’s, Egham, vice-chair of Church Pastoral Aid Society Patronage Trustees, serves on General Synod as Pro-Prolocutor and the Crown Nominations Commission. She is a contributor to God’s Church for God’s World: Faithful Perspectives on Mission and Ministry, published by IVP.
Generosity, is an act of defiant hope, declaring our trust in God through thick and thin.
Our Stewardship (Generosity) Season in 2022 was buffeted by the gathering storm of the ‘cost of living crisis’. At the time we were uncertain about how fuel bills were going to affect us, as individuals and as a church. It felt counter-intuitive to be talking about generosity at a time of such great uncertainty. We felt the call to generosity, though, was prophetic in assuring us that it was not the time to hunker down. It was a time to ‘lengthen our stride and widen our embrace’ (1 Chronicles 11.9 Message). We were able to heed this call because we knew in whom we had believed.
The Psalmist is mired in his own crisis. He cries out to the Lord in his distress, not mincing his words. I have become like broken pottery, he says. Such a vivid image of a shattered life. In the end, when all is said and done, his very real troubles do not extinguish his trust in God. More and more, I am convinced that Christian Stewardship, with its inbuilt call to generosity, is an act of defiant hope, declaring our trust in God through thick and thin.
But I trust in you, Lord;
I say, “You are my God.”
My times are in your hands;
Esther Prior is the vicar of St John’s, Egham, vice-chair of Church Pastoral Aid Society Patronage Trustees, serves on General Synod as Pro-Prolocutor and the Crown Nominations Commission. She is a contributor to God’s Church for God’s World: Faithful Perspectives on Mission and Ministry, published by IVP.
God’s incomparable love goes out to the ends of the earth.
Who is salvation for?
For whom will the Lord set a table groaning with rich food and well-matured wine?
Who will benefit from the destruction of death, that we celebrate on this resurrection day?
One word rings out from the Isaiah reading today – all.
All peoples and all nations.
From the women who first witnessed the empty tomb, the message of God’s incomparable love continues to go out to the ends of the earth.
And so it is that the apostle Peter is able to say, ‘All the prophets testify about him, that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sin through his name’ (Acts 10.43).
How will all the people who come through the doors of your church today know that God’s forgiveness and salvation is also for them?
Rev. Dr Miriam Bier Hinksman is a curate in the diocese of Canterbury. She has written an academic tome on Lamentations, as well as Reading Hosea: A Beginner’s Guide, available here: https://grovebooks.co.uk/collections/biblical/products/b-108-reading-hosea-a-beginner-s-guide
April 2024
Can we believe, even when we can’t see?
What does it mean to believe? With religion there can be an assumption that we believe without any actual evidence. In this reading, Thomas wants to see the evidence. He isn’t prepared to take anybody else’s word for it. He didn’t believe till he saw Jesus. He didn’t trust the word of the disciples. Why didn’t he believe them? Why didn’t he trust them? Trust is risky. When we trust someone, we open ourselves up, make ourselves vulnerable. And that can be scary. It is easier to doubt – to be sceptical. But in that vulnerability is a generosity in which we are giving ourselves to others.
Thomas believed in the end, and that belief allowed him to be generous. Thomas trusted in God, made himself vulnerable and committed to Christ. He spent the rest of his life preaching and baptising. He went as far as Kerala in the South of India. Thomas’s name is ubiquitous in Kerala. His “yes” to God has echoed down the centuries.
How does the story of Thomas speak to you about belief? Doubt? Trust? How do you feel about risk? Do you believe that all things are possible for those who believe? Are you willing, like Thomas to become vulnerable and commit to Christ?
Liz Mullins is Generous Giving Adviser in the Diocese of Rochester
God has brought joy and abundance.
This passage is awash with joy, excitement generosity and hope. Have a look at the language: ‘sing aloud’, ‘rejoice and exult’, ‘he has turned away your enemies’, ‘he will renew you in his love’.
If you look further back to the first two chapters of Zephaniah though, this joy has come out of times of trouble and difficulty: ‘I will sweep away everything from the face of the earth declares the Lord’. 1:2; ‘I will stretch out my hand against Judah and against all who live in Jerusalem’.1:4
A generous God has forgiven, has brought his people together and given hope. Disaster has gone, shame becomes praise, God will bring the people home and restore their fortunes.
These words speak of abundance; of plenty. Too often in our churches we have a mindset of scarcity. There isn’t enough money. There aren’t enough volunteers. Anything we have needs to be saved for a rainy day. Everything’s a mess. But as we trust God and believe in a generous God who provides, then this narrative is turned upside down and we are freed to be joyful, to exult and to be generous.
Liz Mullins is Generous Giving Adviser in the Diocese of Rochester
Jesus is the driving forces behind our sacrificial giving, even when our resources are lacking.
Why do we give to others? Why do we extend generosity to family and friends? What compels us?
"...By what power or what name did you do this?" (Acts 4:7)
“know this, you and all the people of Israel: It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth” (Acts 4:10)
One name—JESUS—is the driving force behind our sacrificial giving, even when our own resources may seem lacking.
Each day can feel like it begins with a deficit—a lengthy list of tasks to complete and sometimes I have procrastinated and deferred responsibilities to the next day. I rely though on the Holy Spirit to guide and support me through the trials of each day. Often, something simple or significant occurs, which we might overlook if we are not attuned to God. When we recognize that Jesus is wanting to be part of our day, we can find ourselves ending the day with unexpected acts of kindness from others. I am deeply moved when this generosity comes from the most surprising places. Lord, what have I done to deserve your grace and mercy? Psalm 23:6 reassures us, "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life."
Therefore, with a heart overflowing with gratitude for the undeserved favour I receive, I turn outward to others. This is how we grasp the true essence of love: Jesus Christ sacrificed His life for us, and in return, we sacrifice for our brothers and sisters (1 John 3:16).
Busola Sodiende is founder of Bearings Point Media, a digital publishing media firm working in partnership with bloggers, influencers and creators, and @dyshmedia. She is a Church Commissioner for England and a member of the PCC at Holy Trinity Brompton.
God will provide for us beyond our imagination.
The sacrifice which God demands from Abraham seems exceedingly cruel, and Abraham’s journey to Moriah utterly agonising. Is God not the LORD of the covenant, after all – promising to create abundance out of the ‘nothing’ of Abraham’s and Sarah’s childlessness? Is God taking it all back again, just like the other gods?
Reading the story in the light of Easter doesn’t make things any easier, with new tough questions emerging: if the ram provided by God is a type for Christ, the ultimate sacrificial Lamb offered for our sake, doesn’t that just take the cruelty of the story to a new level? And why does God demand this sacrifice in the first place?
Fortunately, the Scriptures contain many other stories with which to tackle such questions. Meanwhile, as we read this story, we may hold on to the conclusion which Abraham himself reaches, as he names the place where he was put to the test: ‘The LORD Will Provide’. God is the same after all – the LORD of the covenant, standing by his promise of offspring as abundant as the stars. There is nothing God needs from us, whereas God will provide for us beyond our imagination.
Dr Guido de Graaff is Tutor for Christian Doctrine and Ethics and Director of Studies at St Augustine’s College of Theology. His doctoral thesis was published as Politics in Friendship (T&T Clark, 2014). Other research interests include Dietrich Bonhoeffer – in particular the theme of vicarious representation in his theology and ethics – and environmental theology.
May 2024
Welcome generously
What does it mean to be a diligent disciple? For those hosting Peter, their diligence required circumcision to physically mark out the depth and extent of their commitment to follow Jesus Christ. Imagine their shock, then, when the Holy Spirit shows up for everyone, including those who are definitely uncircumcised. The text does not linger on their responses as the silence moves us quickly to Peter’s words: an abundant welcome through baptism in the name of Jesus Christ. That welcome enables the faithful disciples to move beyond division, discrimination or prejudice that can create a culture of us and them. No longer does the text distinguish between the circumcised and uncircumcised believers when they invite Peter to stay. The generosity of welcome transforms this emerging community and builds a shared recognition that honouring the love of God is most important thing: they demonstrate the practice of loving one another, as well as loving Peter, the stranger amongst them. This powerful account of the arrival of the Holy Spirit challenges our preconceptions about how and with whom God can, and does, work. May we be encouraged to open ourselves up to welcome anew God’s abundant, generosity and fellowship.
Dr Jo Henderson-Merrygold is Director, Centre for Discipleship and Theology at the Queen’s Foundation, Birmingham.
Abundance looks outwards and is generous with time, care and attention.
Acts 1. It may be relatively easy for us to imagine Jesus moving around with a group of twelve men following along, it’s a bit of a crowd but somehow manageable. However, we know from the Gospels that he was frequently accompanied by far more, for example numerous women or the group of 72 etc. Here we have the names of two who were with Jesus throughout his ministry from his baptism through to his death and resurrection.
To say that Jesus gave generously of Himself is an absurd understatement, but I wonder whether we even consider what that looked like in his daily life. In a society where we value our privacy and personal space, especially since Covid, this might seem very challenging, but how willing are we to share our lives in order to disciple others? Shared meals? Shared knowledge? Shared time and space?
According to Ps 1, those whose roots go deep into the things of God, whose hearts are set on Him, will be fruitful (v. 3). That sense of abundance is not necessarily of material things but of a deeply rooted character that is outward looking and generous to others in time, care and attention. The kind of person we all want to hang out with, in fact, a person a bit like Jesus.
Margaret Wooding Jones is a Licensed Lay Minister. As well as serving in her local parishes, she works with the Spirituality Network in Rochester Diocese and regularly leads Quiet Retreats and training days. She is hoping to publish a book shortly.
We reach out to embrace the stranger.
"And it will come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved" (Acts 2:21).
I reminisce, even as early as five years old, nestled beneath my blankets, gripped by the fear of the night's darkness, reaching out to God, imploring for His comforting presence with me. Throughout my teenage years, I drifted away from God, gradually distancing myself until it became painfully apparent that I was slipping into despair. In my desperation, I cried out, "Lord, if you are there, please come and rescue me." The book of Ezekiel serves as a poignant reminder of how the prophet of God spoke and prophesied for dry bones to spring back to life. Similarly, my own journey of renewal commenced in a gentle, gradual manner. I discovered solace within a nurturing small group where mutual support and uplifting prevailed. The pivotal decision to immerse myself in a community of faith marked a profound turning point. Four decades have elapsed since then, yet akin to a child, I still find myself calling out, "Lord, help me."
Consider the community around you and within your church. Is there anyone who feels adrift, yearning for fellowship? How can we embody the compassionate hands and feet of Jesus, reaching out to embrace the stranger and uniting in harmony to strengthen their faith in Jesus?
Busola Sodiende is founder of Bearings Point Media, a digital publishing media firm working in partnership with bloggers, influencers and creators, and @dyshmedia. She is a Church Commissioner for England and a member of the PCC at Holy Trinity Brompton.
To live by the Spirit is to be liberated from scarcity and fear.
To live according to the flesh is to live by the desires of the flesh. That sounds like a tautology, but it contains an important point: flesh is self-absorbed. Flesh is a creature tempted to think they can be ‘like God’. But to give in to this delusion, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer points out, is to cut oneself off from divine grace which sustains all of creation. Flesh, then, is a creature condemned to survive on its own resources, with other creatures reduced to the status of competitor, threat or environment to be exploited.
To live according to the flesh, then, is to live in fear: fear of scarcity, fear of others, fear of death – and ultimately fear of God, who will not let flesh go on living in its self-absorbed state forever.
But when God calls us to account, it is in order that we might live once again as the creatures God intends us to be. To live by the Spirit is to be liberated from scarcity and fear and united with Christ. Led by the Spirit, we are no longer deluding ourselves we are ‘like God’, but instead are made ‘heirs of God’ – sharing in everything that is Christ’s.
Dr Guido de Graaff is Tutor for Christian Doctrine and Ethics and Director of Studies at St Augustine’s College of Theology. His doctoral thesis was published as Politics in Friendship (T&T Clark, 2014). Other research interests include Dietrich Bonhoeffer – in particular the theme of vicarious representation in his theology and ethics – and environmental theology.
June 2024
Generosity of Response. Are we open to God’s word speaking to us today?
The Word of God is to be treasured, whether whispered at night in unrecognizable ways or hidden in clay jars. It is likely to surprise and confound, especially when the presence of God seems distant or rarely recognized. To read, even in Samuel’s call which is a story familiar to many, that the Word of God was rare can offer us reassurance that God’s call to us warrants something remarkable in our own responses. Jesus himself reminds us that our responses need not be bound by what our friends, peers, colleagues, or those whose respect we value (or want to respect) think is acceptable. Eli could so easily have responded with harshness to Samuel’s unknowing persistence just as Jesus is met with condemnation and shaming for transgressing the conventions around honouring the sabbath. Some things, though, are more important than the human rules and expectations we carry. So, the questions for each one of us remain, are we open to God’s word speaking to and through us today, and what human-made boundaries are we willing to transcend in order to honour that vision?
Dr Jo Henderson-Merrygold is Director, Centre for Discipleship and Theology at the Queen’s Foundation, Birmingham.
God’s generosity brings all of us into a family of faith.
Families come in all shapes and sizes with such a mixture of relationships, some are good, life-giving and nourishing, others can be painful, disappointing and a source of anxiety, hurt and shame. Most lay somewhere in the middle.
In this account from Mark we see Mary’s mother-heart coming to care for her son whom she perceives as being over-wrought and harassed by religious authorities. She brings along her other sons for additional support.
Jesus’ response to her care is, at first sight, somewhat startling (vv. 33,34). Was He really casting Mary and His brothers aside, or was He demonstrating the reconciling power of love and a depth of care and compassion that those who follow Him are capable of extending to one another? Far from ignoring their care, Jesus is generously including those who are close to Him and in relationship with Him into His own family. God’s gift to His people does not diminish our natural, familial relationships, it enhances them, but it also sets each one of us, no matter how alone or lonely, within a family of faith. If you saw yourself as a brother/sister, father/mother to members of your church, what might change?
Margaret Wooding Jones is a Licensed Lay Minister. As well as serving in her local parishes, she works with the Spirituality Network in Rochester Diocese and regularly leads Quiet Retreats and training days. She is hoping to publish a book shortly.
Generosity can be seen by our willingness to wait.
In today’s reading from 1 Samuel, we have the anointing of a new king, David, the replacement for Saul, a significant moment in the life of Israel. Samuel makes assumptions about who God will ask him to anoint based on their appearance, but God encourages him to wait and trust that whilst others might look at people’s outward appearance, the Lord looks at the heart.
Samuel has to wait until he has clearly heard from God, and in a society where instant gratification is widely available, waiting and being patient can be hard. Nonetheless, demonstrating patience and allowing for extra time can show profound kindness, offering insights into the character of the one who waits patiently for God and for others.
Today’s reading from Mark also helps us to remember that the Lord works to his own timetable and not to ours, with the parable of the growing seed illustrating the timing of the Kingdom of God. Acknowledging God’s timing and learning to wait patiently can be an important part of our worship of God and service to others. Our generosity can be seen through our willingness to wait, whether that’s waiting for others to arrive, waiting for things to grow and develop, or waiting for people without passing judgment or making assumptions.
Busola Sodiende is founder of Bearings Point Media, a digital publishing media firm working in partnership with bloggers, influencers and creators, and @dyshmedia. She is a Church Commissioner for England and a member of the PCC at Holy Trinity Brompton.
Reflecting God’s abundance, fellowship and friendship will flourish.
In the passage from 1 Samuel 18, we encounter a story which exemplifies a sad yet all too familiar pattern in human relationship: faithfulness and friendship choked off by jealousy and distrust. Whatever the ‘evil spirit’ that went into Saul was (see 16:14), it certainly made him see everything through the lens of suspicion: the presence of this talented young man at his court, David, including his budding friendship with his own son. And the sad thing about distrust is that it’s self-fulfilling: if you treat the other as a threat, taking what you think is yours, then a threat they will become. Soon, Saul’s jealousy will turn his son-in-law into a mortal enemy.
Psalm 133, meanwhile, appears to give us the exact mirror image of the tragedy unfolding at Saul’s court. In extolling the blessing of ‘brothers dwelling in unity’, the psalmist (David himself, according to the traditional attribution) reaches for images of abundance: precious oil, not just touching Aaron’s forehead, but flowing all over his head, soaking his clothes; or refreshing dew, in a matter of hours covering entire mountains.
A strong hint, perhaps, that fellowship and friendship can only flourish if rooted in generosity, reflecting God’s abundance.
Dr Guido de Graaff is Tutor for Christian Doctrine and Ethics and Director of Studies at St Augustine’s College of Theology. His doctoral thesis was published as Politics in Friendship (T&T Clark, 2014). Other research interests include Dietrich Bonhoeffer – in particular the theme of vicarious representation in his theology and ethics – and environmental theology.
Generosity in adversity
Today’s readings are threaded through with sadness and loss. David mourns the loss of Jonathan, the person he most clearly and consistently expresses love and affection for. In the gospel passage, the inherent risk and scariness of life is apparent as a twelve-year old child’s death is announced while Jesus unexpectedly encounters a woman who has been debilitated by persistent hemorrhaging for the whole of that child’s life. The Psalm too calls out in agony for divine redemption: ‘Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord’. How, then, do we recognize generosity in the face of adversities such as these? Not all our experiences will lead to the literal resurrection of a child, nor the miraculous healing of a long-term health condition. We find that generosity comes through taking our pain to the God whose love holds us and our pain, and in finding solidarity, companionship and genuine love in our relationships with one another. In Christ we find someone who shares in the fullness of our adversity, our loss, our frailty: and who assures us of the constant, generous companionship of the Spirit who meets us where we are, in the fullness of our humanity.
Dr Jo Henderson-Merrygold is Director, Centre for Discipleship and Theology at the Queen’s Foundation, Birmingham.
July 2024
How to express our delight and joy in His goodness?
Here we have 3 readings all oozing with abundance and generosity!
We have the image of King David being so single-minded in his worship and delight that he dances exuberantly and without restraint. His joy is mirrored by his extraordinary generosity towards the entire crowd. A shared fullness of heart.
We also have the image of the fullness of the earth, the abundance of creation which God has graciously given us to enjoy and out of that fullness He blesses those who seek Him (vv. 5&6).
Finally, in Ephesians we have numerous references to God’s abundance and generosity towards us. See specifically vv. 3,6,7,8 & 14 but the whole tone of the passage is one of generosity and there is much that could be drawn out of each verse.
It begs the question, how excited are we by God’s immense generosity towards us as we see His heart revealed to us through these Scriptures? How could we express our delight and joy in His goodness in more exuberant ways?
Margaret Wooding Jones is a Licensed Lay Minister. As well as serving in her local parishes, she works with the Spirituality Network in Rochester Diocese and regularly leads Quiet Retreats and training days. She is hoping to publish a book shortly.
We lift our voices in joyful praise to the Lord.
Recently, I had the privilege of hearing a friend share a touching story about a woman who, despite mourning the loss of her husband, seemed to overflow with God's peace. Even in her darkest moments, her inner light continued to shine brightly. In reflecting on this, I was reminded of the passage from 2 Samuel 6, where the ark of God was joyously returned to Jerusalem. David and all of Israel with him celebrated with immense joy and fervor before the Lord, using various instruments to express their praise and gratitude for his goodness. David, in his exuberance, was also deeply generous to those around him, not only providing animals for the offerings but also giving to each person present a loaf of bread, a cake of dates and a cake of raisins. Everyone rejoiced and received.
We also find this same sentiment of joy and praise in Psalm 24, a psalm that pictures worshippers approaching the mountain of God, where a cry goes up of, ‘who is this King of Glory’ and the resounding answer comes, ‘the Lord Almighty, he is the King of Glory.’
Sometimes, our generosity can be seen through our response to God in worship as we lift our voices in praise to the Lord. In these moments our knowledge of the love and peace of God can seem to shine or flow out from us. How then, when we are caught up in praise of our loving God, can our generosity enable and encourage others also to respond in worship of almighty God?
Busola Sodiende is founder of Bearings Point Media, a digital publishing media firm working in partnership with bloggers, influencers and creators, and @dyshmedia. She is a Church Commissioner for England and a member of the PCC at Holy Trinity Brompton.
Can we be generous when the world demands too much?
There’s too much to do. Whatever we do, whenever we do it, it isn’t enough. There are demands from the kids, demands from the boss. Email is a wonderful thing, but it really does make it impossible to switch off. There’s pressure on finances, no time to nurture relationships. The traffic is heavy and the trains are crowded and late.
All we want to do is to stop. To get away. To rest.
The Apostles must have felt a bit like this. As they gathered round Jesus and told him what they had been up to they complained that they hadn’t even had time to eat. Jesus’ response was to say, ‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest awhile’. He recognized that it was too much for them. That they were drained from doing so much of his work. Here, Jesus was offering respite and calm in the middle of their busy lives. How must the Apostles felt at those words?
But it wasn’t to be. The crowds and their demands followed Jesus and the Apostles. Jesus could have turned round and said ‘no!’, ‘enough!’, but he didn’t. He must have been feeling the same pressure as the apostles, but his generosity in saying yes to the crowds, and healing the sick changed the lives of many people.
Are we willing to be generous, even when life is difficult, when we have too much to do, when we simply want to rest?
Liz Mullins is Generous Giving Adviser in the Diocese of Rochester
In 2 Samuel 11, we see the beginning of the downfall of the House of David. Where previously Saul had let his court be destroyed by distrust and jealousy (see 23th June), David does the same with this brazen act of abuse and adultery, covered up with deceit and murder. Underlying his many and various crimes, though, is greed. And isn’t greed – like Saul’s jealousy – ultimately borne of fear? The fear of not having enough, which mysteriously seems to increase rather than decrease as people accumulate wealth and power.
And yet, this fear doesn’t prey on the rich and powerful only. The economy of scarcity affects the poor as much as the rich, albeit in different ways. The story of Jesus feeding the five thousand – here in John 6 (and in similar passages in the other gospels) – gives us a glimpse of what it looks like when the Kingdom of God breaks into and overwhelms this economy of scarcity: there is, it turns out, more than enough.
It’s perhaps no coincidence, then, that the Bible repeatedly describes fellowship with God in terms of a meal, a banquet – or indeed, like here in John 6, a mass picnic! At God’s table, there’s more than enough.
Dr Guido de Graaff is Tutor for Christian Doctrine and Ethics and Director of Studies at St Augustine’s College of Theology. His doctoral thesis was published as Politics in Friendship (T&T Clark, 2014). Other research interests include Dietrich Bonhoeffer – in particular the theme of vicarious representation in his theology and ethics – and environmental theology.
August 2024
Generosity in the aftermath
What happens when you’re left to pick up the pieces? The week after a familiar reading, several weeks into ordinary time, when the unsaid thing has been uttered aloud? How do we find the resources to be generous when we’ve run out of energy, or need the food whether spiritual or physical that can only come from God, but we find ourselves needing to look like everything is just fine? It’s reassuring to see that even Jesus has a moment where he seems to feel exasperated – you’re not listening to my teaching, you just want my food. Even in that moment, though, the exasperation soon moves from frustration to generosity: a generosity that recognizes the wholeness of both each individual person and the wholeness of the Church. We always encounter God, and seek to share God’s abundant love and grace, bringing with us all that has gone before. When someone whose conduct is as egregious as David’s in orchestrating the murder of Uriah, can remain cherished and forgiven, we have confidence that God recognizes our frailty and capacity for error but cherishes and forgives us too. Our challenge, therefore, is to hold to Christ’s teachings to us: to love generously, including loving ourselves as we trust in our God who loves and forgives us.
Dr Jo Henderson-Merrygold is Director, Centre for Discipleship and Theology at the Queen’s Foundation, Birmingham.
“Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbour, for we are all members of one body.”
It can be easy to read this verse thinking it doesn’t apply to me, after all, I don’t lie. The truth is though that we don’t have to lie to be deceitful.
There are some churches where expressing doubt or disappointment is viewed as a lack of faith and consequently people may say ‘everything is just fine’ even when it’s not. There are other churches, often in areas of greater deprivation, where the opposite is true - what you see is what you get! People are breathtakingly honest about their lives, creating a real depth of relationship and care. On reflection, we can see the masks worn in some churches can keep people apart, preventing us from being real with each other.
Sometimes people can work so hard to present a perfect image, appearing to have ‘the perfect house’, the ‘perfect marriage’, the ‘perfect children’, but this can set a bar so high that others around feel they cannot approach. In reality though, many people are actually really struggling to negotiate through the circumstances and challenges of their lives. In hindsight, what we notice is a gift in ‘being real’, when honesty about our struggles can be a real encouragement to others in their faith journey.
It may seem strange to suggest being generous with reality, but honestly to hide it is a form of deceit.
Margaret Wooding Jones is a Licensed Lay Minister. As well as serving in her local parishes, she works with the Spirituality Network in Rochester Diocese and regularly leads Quiet Retreats and training days. She is hoping to publish a book shortly.
How do you grow in generosity?
We are told to live as wise followers of God, using our time wisely. But how much time do I/we waste? Where am I not living wisely? When we live in the world, we tend to covet what others have! This started in Genesis, where Eve coveted the knowledge of God (Genesis 3:4-6), we see it where the disciples start to covet who is the greatest (Luke:22:24) and happens today where we want bigger homes, the latest gadgets or more knowledge. How can we change this? We can look to God, to be filled by His spirit. We can look at what He has and what He has provided. All we have is provided by God, even the breath in our lungs. When we realise and start to always give thanks, even in hard times. We have a heart transplant with God’s heart, and we become more like God who is generous!
Stephen Read is from Ambassadors Football who share Jesus through football. He helps new missionaries/workers to build teams around them, who partner spiritually and financially so they can be sent into the harvest.
We are blessed because God is near.
There is an apparent contradiction in this Psalm. We begin with lovely imagery of dwelling comfortably and securely in the Temple close to the altar, the symbol of God’s presence, like a bird safely in its nest. Yet, next, we are out in the wilds on pilgrimage soaked by the autumn rain, dodging puddles of water in the Valley of Baka. What links them is that God is present in both. The ultimate generosity of God is to share His very self with us, to be the sun that warms us and the shield that defends us whether in a place of sanctuary or journeying onward in pursuit of the divine purpose for our lives. We are blessed because God is near. God is both our strength and our home, the reason for our stepping out into the unknown and the relief and comfort on our return. It is better to be stationed on the threshold of God’s house than enjoy luxury and excess with those whose ways contradict the Lord’s. For in trusting God, we will know favour and honour, and no good thing will be withheld. That is a promise that can be relied upon today and forever.
Andrea Campanale is the first Licensed Lay Pioneer in Southwark Diocese. I work as a Project Officer for the Methodist Church, teach Mission, and Evangelism for St Augustine’s College of Theology and Pioneer Ministry for Cliff College.
September 2024
Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.
Take a moment to think of some of your favourite things. I suspect these are unlikely to be brown paper packages tied up with string. They could though be heirlooms. Maybe a stuffed toy you had as a child. Maybe a signed piece of sporting memorabilia. Now think of all the other stuff you have. The home tech. The clothes. The semi-disposable Swedish furniture. Which is more valuable to you?
When we think of the stuff we have around us day to day it’s hard not to feel attached to it. So, to be asked to think of the things we have worked for, and likely saved for, as a ‘gift’ doesn’t actually come that easy to us. We need something more valuable to help put the giftedness of what we ‘own’ into perspective.
In the letter of James it is ‘faith’ itself that is pictured as the inheritance that puts all things into perspective. For James, faith begins in recognising the giftedness of all we have. God gifts us life. God gifts us wisdom. God is generous to us. In a unique way to us, in the ways God knows that we need. Compared to this generosity other things might now seem less valuable. Be that our sense of importance, our stuff, our money.
Dr Nick Shepherd works in the areas of strategy development and change for the Church of England. Nick is a Visiting Scholar in the Centre for Ministry Formation at Sarum College and an Adjunct Associate Professor of Ecclesial Change with NLA College, Bergen. Nick can be followed @theonographer on X, but be advised most posts are Crystal Palace related…
The Israelite pilgrims are Mount Zion – trusting, generous, abiding for ever!
Following the longest psalm in the psalter (119 with 176 verses), there are a series of very short, punchy psalms, the next 15 (120 to 134) average only 6 verses each. Number 125 is a shortie, 5 verses, and titled a ‘Song of Ascents,’ likely sung by Israelite pilgrims as they ascended to Jerusalem to celebrate festivals and holy days like Passover, Tabernacles, and Weeks. The vast majority of these pilgrims were not rich, deClaissé-Walford says ‘they were victims of injustice in their daily lives; they most likely felt crushed.’ And yet they sing of their trust in the LORD, the one who ‘enfolds’ (or surrounds) his people. It has been often noticed that the most generous people in society are the poor, for poverty, ironically, grinds in an empathy comfort cannot. In the honour-stakes you cannot go lower than nothing, so what comes one’s way is shared, giving is honourable and is honoured. These ones really, really trust, and God really, really loves ’em (Lk 6.20). Note the contrast: Mount Zion is immovable, unchangeable, and mute. Yet its pilgrims dance, and sing, and go home with altered lives. They are Mount Zion – trusting, generous, abiding for ever!
Canon Dr Neville Emslie is Director of Mission and Ministry in the Diocese of Canterbury.
Are you generous to God?
Jesus was addressing the crowd and His disciples. Am I a disciple of Jesus or just part of the crowd who looks on? Can we tell? In Matthew 6:21 it says, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” The disciples treasured Jesus and you can see this by where they spent their time and money. You can see where anyone’s treasure is by looking at where they spend their time and money. Am I stingy with my time for God? Do I offer my money and what I have for His glory? Or am I treasuring things of the world, which leads to forfeiting my soul (v36)? We are called to lose our life for Jesus, for the Gospel and by doing this we will save our life (v37). The disciples often failed and so do I. But by His grace I am forgiven, and knowing this helps us strive to be generous with all we have for God!
Stephen Read is from Ambassadors Football who share Jesus through football. He helps new missionaries/workers to build teams around them, who partner spiritually and financially so they can be sent into the harvest.
The first must be last and the servant of all.
We can only imagine how confusing it must have been for the disciples closest to Jesus. It’s easy for us, who know the end of the story, to wonder at their lack of understanding. But a lot of the time he spoke in riddles. Here in this passage, we see Jesus foretelling his own death and resurrection, and the disciples are too afraid to ask what it means. Yet, they know enough to keep quiet when he asks them what they were arguing about on the road! Because of our own insecurities, we too easily get sucked into the world’s way of judging who is best and most worthy of reward. But, in God’s Kingdom the values of the world are turned on their head. In a foreshadowing of him washing their feet, Jesus tells the disciples that the first must be last and the servant of all. God’s generosity to us is as children, vulnerable and also curious, playful, hopeful and trusting. To know a parent’s unconditional love and acceptance enables us to live free from envy and fruitless comparisons. Today know you are not only welcomed as a child by God, but that He delights in you.
Andrea Campanale is the first Licensed Lay Pioneer in Southwark Diocese. I work as a Project Officer for the Methodist Church, teach Mission, and Evangelism for St Augustine’s College of Theology and Pioneer Ministry for Cliff College.
Money can be used to minister to others.
I once had the privilege of meeting an angel. They seemed very ordinary. Though over the last few years they had helped others achieve some extraordinary things. This particular angel was active in the world of finance. They were an ‘angel investor’.
The person I met had made a tonne of cash in Tech. It was at an event where we were discussing faith in business and what being a Christian in the work of finance looked like. Their ability to finance things was for them a ministry. They were very blunt that their work was all about the money. It was the money that made a difference.
The person had a couple of rules for their investments. The first was that the person or produce they invested in had to have a recognisable social good. Second that they did not want to be identified, so funds went through a broker.
We may not have the type of sums that this person had, but our money can still be used to minister to others. A small regular donation as a sponsor. An envelope through the door for people we know with a particular need.
Dr Nick Shepherd works in the areas of strategy development and change for the Church of England. Nick is a Visiting Scholar in the Centre for Ministry Formation at Sarum College and an Adjunct Associate Professor of Ecclesial Change with NLA College, Bergen. Nick can be followed @theonographer on X, but be advised most posts are Crystal Palace related…
October 2024
An amazing, majestic, creative God generously bothers to deal with, and even care for, humanity.
At the heart of all love is a certain enthusiasm for the beloved one. You may love how she makes you laugh, you may love how thoughtful he is, you may love how much she enjoys nature. Yet at the core of it all there’s a fundamental delight that this unique person is there at all, is alive, is available for you to enjoy.
Maybe loving God can begin with the sheer delight we take in the fact that God exists at all. It can begin in the wonder we feel when we try to wrap our minds around the very idea of God. It can begin with having enthusiasm for the God who created such a galaxy of wonders and who then loved us enough to plunk us down smack in the middle of it all. We begin by loving the sheer existence of God and we go from there.
Psalm 8 is the only one of the 150 psalms that’s a direct address to God throughout the entire poem. Psalm 8 enjoys God rather than trying to explain who God is, especially because this amazing, majestic, creative God generously bothers to deal with, and even care for, humanity.
Canon Dr Neville Emslie is Director of Mission and Ministry in the Diocese of Canterbury
Selling all we have?
The Rich man, despite having many possessions (v22) still came to Jesus to ask Him how to inherit internal life. Based on what we read, he seemed like a good man who had kept the rules since birth (v20). But despite being good and having lots of possessions he must have still sensed unease or that he was lacking something. He wasn’t fulfilled! Then Jesus, who looked at him with love and NOT judgment, gave the challenge of selling all he had and giving to the poor. When he heard this, he “was shocked and went away grieving”. How would I feel if God told me to sell everything I had? Would I do it? Jesus saw that the rich man was trying to earn is way into heaven by himself. He was holding on to his life but what God requires is for us to offer our life as a living sacrifice. All we have for Him. The challenge is for those who have wealth, as the more we have the more we care for it and start to own it. But we are called to be generous, to offer all we have to God, to be used for His kingdom and to bring glory to Him.
Stephen Read is from Ambassadors Football who share Jesus through football. He helps new missionaries/workers to build teams around them, who partner spiritually and financially so they can be sent into the harvest.
In Jesus’ suffering we are changed into the likeness of the Son.
The writer of Hebrews is giving good instruction to those taking on the role of priest. We are to be selected from amongst the people and appointed to be a representative. We are to deal gently with those who are struggling ever mindful of our own weaknesses and failings. For the honour does not belong to us, it is a gift from God. Even Christ did not take on this glory, it was bestowed upon him by the Father. Jesus is our model. We learn his impassioned prayers to God, who could have saved him from death, were heard, but did not result in that cup being taken from him. Rather, they helped him learn obedience through suffering and he was made perfect. It is hard to think of suffering as an expression of the generosity of God, but it is how we are changed into the likeness of the Son. It is comforting, however, to know our prayers are heard and part of a divine process of transformation, even if they are not answered in the way we expect or hope. So, be assured, God always hears you, and is working out a purpose that will ultimately be redemptive.
Andrea Campanale is the first Licensed Lay Pioneer in Southwark Diocese. I work as a Project Officer for the Methodist Church, teach Mission, and Evangelism for St Augustine’s College of Theology and Pioneer Ministry for Cliff College.
Reflecting God’s abundance, fellowship and friendship will flourish.
The story of Job is part of the Wisdom literature of the people of God. If, like me, you find much of it perplexing, provocative, and puzzling we are likely in good company. Passages from Job invite us to reflect on the profundities of life and the deep mystery of how God acts in the world.
Today’s reading is from the very end of the story. In spite of all that has befallen Job he has remained faithful to God and not ‘cursed God’ for his missed fortune and his misfortune. His friends haven’t faired so well. At times they have been encouraging, but mostly they have ‘encouraged’ him to give up on God. That God is either punishing him or not interested in human suffering.
Having endured the hardship, grief and tempting, Job lives to see his fortune restored and the remainder of his life become comfortable and blessed. But how was this fortune restored? I had never spotted this before, but maybe part of this restoration came through the eventual generosity of friends and family who having journeyed with him, in v. 11 each give a piece of silver and a gold ring.
One of the things that most provokes me about generosity today is people’s generous response to Gofundme.com pages when tragedy strikes. I wonder how the story might have faired if this is how Job’s friends had responded to the tragic and incomprehensible suffering they witnessed. Perhaps giving has a deeper wisdom than we recognise.
Dr Nick Shepherd works in the areas of strategy development and change for the Church of England. Nick is a Visiting Scholar in the Centre for Ministry Formation at Sarum College and an Adjunct Associate Professor of Ecclesial Change with NLA College, Bergen. Nick can be followed @theonographer on X, but be advised most posts are Crystal Palace related…
November 2024
You receive everything you have from the hand of God.
Possibly the last words Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote before his execution on April 9, 1945, were those of a commentary on Psalm 119, his favourite psalm. The manuscript breaks off at verse 21. Bonhoeffer urged ‘a very slow, quiet, patient advance from word to word, sentence to sentence,’ for in such a way we develop a ‘love for God’s Word,’ and for one another. The first word is ‘happy,’ and Bonhoeffer points out that ‘happy’ in Hebrew is the same word that Jesus used which is translated as ‘blessed’ in Matthew, ‘not because you lack nothing, but because you receive everything you have from the hand of God.’ Those who walked in the wilderness certainly knew their daily bread came from God, but when the Son of God provided it was by his own hands (Mt 14.19). The happy ‘walk in the law of the Lord,’ and ‘seek him with their whole heart.’ Let us push the metaphor; if a heart walks, how does it do so happily? The word ‘companion’ literally means ‘with-bread,’ i.e. those with whom we eat bread. Who are our companions we walk with? Do we, also sons and daughters of God, have a generous gait, a loving lope?
Canon Dr Neville Emslie is Director of Mission and Ministry in the Diocese of Canterbury.
Have you ever reflected on your giving/generosity?
Jonah disobeyed God when he was first called to Nineveh. As a result, he ended up being swallowed by a fish. When he was called a second time to go, he obeyed God (v3). He was going to Nineveh to warn them of their disobedience. If they continued the way they were going then it would lead to God’s judgement. Both Jonah and Nineveh realised the consequences of disobeying God. They were warned and had the chance to reflect. They were both forgiven (v10) when they confessed their sins. Have you ever asked where you’re disobeying God? Have you ever reflected on your walk with God? What about reflecting on your giving/generosity? A recent report by Stewardship said that “On average, 53% stated that they ‘Don’t know/Can’t remember’ or have ‘Never’ reviewed their giving. When asked a further question, 54% said that they had not been invited by their church to review what they gave to their church in the last two years. As Ninevah returned to God, could you offer your giving to God and ask Him to help you review your giving and see if you have the capacity to increase it? https://www.stewardship.org.uk/news/launch-stewardship-generosity-report-2024
Stephen Read is from Ambassadors Football who share Jesus through football. He helps new missionaries/workers to build teams around them, who partner spiritually and financially so they can be sent into the harvest.
We are protected in God’s generosity.
This prophecy from Daniel is picked up again by Jesus in Matthew 24:21 and is reminiscent of similar passages throughout the book of Revelation. By referring to the Archangel Michael, the writer is taking us back to chapter 10 verse 13 where he assists Gabriel against the demonic “prince of the Persian kingdom”. Here, Michael is described as, “the great prince who will protect your people.” Thus, we are made aware of the ferocious battle fought by the forces of evil against God and us, the chosen people of God, which will reach an unholy crescendo at the end of time with unprecedented destruction and distress. But, in the generosity of God we are not left unprotected. We are promised the aid of this experienced, valiant spiritual defender when that time of tribulation comes. We can be additionally confident in our deliverance because our names are recorded in the book of life. Even those who are already long dead and buried will rise again in bodily form. And, them that impart wisdom, will shine with heavenly brightness and the reward for those that lead others into righteousness is to be like stars brilliant in the night sky for eternity.
Andrea Campanale is the first Licensed Lay Pioneer in Southwark Diocese. I work as a Project Officer for the Methodist Church, teach Mission, and Evangelism for St Augustine’s College of Theology and Pioneer Ministry for Cliff College.
It matters how we steward our gifts, time and money.
A few years ago some of the youth group we led were very dastardly towards a couple of the leaders who got married. They decorated their car with ‘just married’ paraphernalia. They also hid a kipper in the air vent. An hour into the journey they stopped to take the items off the car. As they carried on however, they began to notice a smell. The whole car stunk of fish. To this day when they smell fish it reminds them of their wedding day!
Today we mark the feast of Christ the King. We celebrate how, through the Cross and Resurrection, Jesus is above all ‘earthly’ rulers and authorities, and commenced the coming of his Kingdom that cannot be reversed.
Over the preceding weeks the lectionary gives us clues into this mystery. The Kingdom is like a weed you can’t get rid of (Matt 13). It’s like salt that flavours everything (Matt 5). It’s like yeast, invisible but for the effects (Luke 17). Maybe, it’s like smoked fish hidden in your car.
This matters when we think about generosity. How we steward our gifts, time and money towards things that see the Kingdom come into being is not easy. We might be drawn to things that look obvious, bright and shiny, but what else might have your attention? What areas in the life of your church, or connections in your community might you keep being drawn back to? Might you have just caught a sniff of the kingdom?
Dr Nick Shepherd works in the areas of strategy development and change for the Church of England. Nick is a Visiting Scholar in the Centre for Ministry Formation at Sarum College and an Adjunct Associate Professor of Ecclesial Change with NLA College, Bergen. Nick can be followed @theonographer on X, but be advised most posts are Crystal Palace related…
December 2024
Love is a joyful, generous gift.
Paul writes to the Thessalonians to celebrate ‘all the joy that we feel before our God because of you’. Do we feel we cannot thank God enough for all the joy we feel in our companions in faith? Picture them now. Yes, especially her. And him. And them. Perhaps you feel that someone needs to ‘restore whatever is lacking’ in their faith. Then you might be able to enjoy them more.
But Paul feels joy because ‘we abound in love for you’. And the more we love someone, the more joy we feel because of them. And the more we want to thank God for them just as they are now. And the more we desire to do whatever we can to restore anything that might be lacking in their faith, or indeed their lives.
Except, of course, we may find that it is they who will restore what is lacking in our faith, they who will encourage and sustain and enjoy us. Through them, we will learn to love. Truly, what a generous gift are those who are bound to us in faith. We have God and we have each other: we lack nothing.
Canon Dr Neville Emslie is Director of Mission and Ministry in the Diocese of Canterbury.
Generosity is a grace and a bounty that brings to our lives an overwhelming joy.
Today's second reading speaks of Paul's gratefulness to a generous God. He explains how we can emulate God's generosity in a way that brings us collective joy through 'partnership in the Gospel from the first day until now'.
Paul's God is the ultimate source of generosity. Generosity is a special quality of the Christian life. A marker of Christianity, it is also intuitive in the community of genuine believers. We don't have to think about being generous. We are generous.
Paul tells us that he holds us - his listeners - in his heart. 'Holding' is significant. Generosity is not something that you do once and let go of. Rather it takes root in us. Hence Paul is able to say: 'I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Jesus Christ'.
The surprising thing is that generosity is not sacrificial, but rather is indulgent. It's actually its own gift. It is a grace and a bounty that brings to our lives an overwhelming joy that has nothing to do with a ‘holier than thou’ righteousness. That's why we don't compare our generosity to those of others but with them we are 'partners in God's grace'. And it is God's grace that allows us to be generous as a people
Michael Mullins is a former editor of online magazine, Eureka Street for the Australian Jesuits. He lives in Sydney and Paris.
Share what we have and be satisfied with less.
The 80/20 rule was developed by Vilfredo Pareto, a 19th-century Italian economist. His insight was that just 20% of the world’s population controls 80% of the world’s resources while 80% of the world’s population has to make do with only 20% of the world’s resources. We inhabit a culture that encourages us to have more than we need and yet we are also surrounded by reminders both locally and internationally that many people do not have enough.
This was also true of the world in the time of John the Baptist, and John deliberately addresses those who have more than they need or who have the power to enrich themselves at the expense of others: people who own two coats or have plenty of food, the tax-collectors and the soldiers. John is calling people to live in the light of the coming Kingdom, and he advises them to live in a markedly different way from those around them. Live more simply, take only what you need. Many of us are aware God has been generous to us and given us more than we need, but we sit by while others lack the things we take for granted. Just as John said to the people of his day, maybe we need to hear God’s challenge to share what we have, to not needlessly gather wealth, and to be satisfied with less.
Leah Vasey-Saunders is currently serving as Vicar of Lancaster in the Diocese of Blackburn. Previously she has served in a variety of different contexts both parishes and Cathedral from city to town and suburbs, predominantly in former mining communities. Leah is also Chair of On Fire Mission; a charity working to support and enable renewal in the catholic tradition of the Church of England.
God’s generosity willed for us to be made right.
In my last church, a few years ago, Christmas Eve fell on a Sunday. One parishioner came to the one ‘normal’ service we had in the morning before the Christmas Eve services (that began later in the day). On leaving the church, she said to a clergy colleague of mine: ‘That’s enough, right? Or do I have to come back again?’
If our Christian life, let alone our generosity, is based on ‘that’s enough, right?’ we might want to look again at why we do what we do.
Christ did not come in order to straighten us out in terms of how to make our sacrificial offerings. He did not give us a crash course in Levitical law, or point out the missteps we’d been taking in forgetting to go and offer the necessary sacrifice or for giving too much or too little. There was no nit-picking or micro-management.
His gift abolished the need for ritual offerings. Nothing more would ever be needed. His gift made us holy. The only answer to the question of what is enough is found on the Cross.
God’s generosity willed for us to be made right, to be made holy, and to leave ritual sacrifice behind. None of us were enough and yet, now, all of us are. No debt remains. No sin outstanding. And if that doesn’t change our accounting, whether spiritual or financial, nothing will!
Suse McBay is a tutor at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, and primarily teaches OT and preaching. Her website and blog can be found at susemcbay.com
Bear with each other, forgive each other, love each other, be thankful. Have a generous heart.
Generosity comes in different forms. There’s financial giving of course, but we can be generous through how we use our time, or our resources, or many other ways, and we can also be generous just in the way we are. This reading is a great reminder of this. We can choose to think of others before ourselves, we can choose to think the best of people, we can choose not to criticise others when we are unfairly criticised. We can have a generous mindset as well as doing generous acts.
In this reading, Paul offers us a template of what a generous community looks like. He also shows us that it is not always easy to be part of a generous community. When people gather together, they can also fall out with each other (as many families will testify to at this time of year). But if we are serious about sharing God’s generosity with others, and serious about reflecting God’s generous character, then we need to be part of a generous community. It is immeasurably harder to do it as a solitary pursuit.
At their best, communities help us up when we fall, encourage us when things are hard, celebrate with us when we live out our generous calling. So, we need to find ways to be together, to rub along with each other, and to learn from each other. And Paul reminds us how – bear with each other, forgive each other, love each other, be thankful. Have a generous heart.
Jonathan de Bernhardt-Wood is the Director of Giving for the Church of England. Previous to this role, Jonathan was Generous Giving Adviser for the Diocese of Oxford. He has held senior leadership, fundraising and governance roles within the charity sector for over 30 years. He is a full member of the Chartered Institute of Fundraising as well as a Lay Canon at St Edmundsbury Cathedral. He recently presented a discipleship course on Living Generously with RightNowMedia. He is the author of The Porcupine Principle (and other fundraising secrets) and has a Certificate in Management and an MA in Applied Theology. He is based in Suffolk.
January 2025
Being faithful to the Gospel means living a life that is about giving in all its forms.
The Ephesians reading spells out our life in Christ as 'a plan for the fullness of time', as if it is a financial plan, but one that has us secure not just until we die, but for eternity.
We all might try different things to prepare for our own financial futures, maybe thrift, or a savings account, or an investment if we are able, because we recognise the challenges of retiring without much to live on. If we're lucky, we may also benefit from an inheritance from our parents or someone else who has cared about us and considers us worthy of their financial blessing.
As it happens, the letter to the Ephesians tells us that we are all fortunate enough to have 'obtained an inheritance'. But this particular inheritance is a spiritual one that we have 'in Christ', as part of his 'plan for the fulness of time' for us, as we 'gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth'.
As we hear ‘the message of truth’ so we become included in Christ who is our good news. And when we believe in Christ we are marked with the Holy Spirit which, we are told, is like a deposit or down-payment, a guarantee of our inheritance from God. And so as we live our life in Christ we remain faithful to the Gospel, and doing this involves living a life that is about giving in all its forms.
Michael Mullins is a former editor of online magazine, Eureka Street for the Australian Jesuits. He lives in Sydney and Paris.
Generosity extends across cultures and communities, enables the Holy Spirit to flourish and the church to grow.
This is a story from the very earliest days of the Church after Pentecost. Persecution had forced some of the disciples to flee from Jerusalem to Samaria, where despite all their expectations the gospel had been received warmly and new church communities sprung up. If you know anything about how Jews viewed Samaritans you’ll realise how challenging accepting them as equals was for the early church. Maybe when Peter and John went to Samaria it was to see if the Samaritans were proper Christians. But when they saw the Samaritans had received the gospel, their immediate response was to pray that they would also receive the gift of the Holy Spirit – that they would have all the blessings God had poured out on the church in Jerusalem. These Jewish Christians were genuine in their desire to reach out and bless the new Samaritan Church. The early church demonstrates to us the many ways in which generosity can be expressed. We see here the gift of ministry: Peter and John sent from one context to another; the gifts of acceptance and welcome, and the gift of prayer, which was answered in God’s gift of the Spirit. Generosity is extended across traditions and cultures and to unknown communities and peoples. This expansive generosity saw an increase of the work of the Holy Spirit and enabled the church to grow. How does our generosity and the generosity expressed by our churches today, compare to that which we see in the early church?
Leah Vasey-Saunders is currently serving as Vicar of Lancaster in the Diocese of Blackburn. Previously she has served in a variety of different contexts both parishes and Cathedral from city to town and suburbs, predominantly in former mining communities. Leah is also Chair of On Fire Mission; a charity working to support and enable renewal in the catholic tradition of the Church of England.
We share our gifts boldly, knowing that whatever they are they glorify God.
Have you ever shown up to a party, say a bring-and-share meal, and feel like what you brought massively missed the mark? Maybe everyone else brought home-cooked delights and you showed up with a big bag of crisps and a slightly mediocre dip? They spent hours prepping but you just managed a quick trip to Tesco. Maybe someone saw your offering and raised a sceptical eyebrow.
The Corinthian church excelled at creating this kind of ‘less than’ feeling. They prized some gifts over others. The public, exciting and more ’spiritual’ kind of gifts. But the reality, Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12, is the opposite. Gifts are just gifts and, yes, there are a bunch of different kinds. But your gift doesn’t make you more spiritual than anyone else: if you can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ you have the Holy Spirit (v.3)!
Spiritual gifts are different and do vary. Some are pretty normal, and some can be surprising and we are each equipped differently to serve the body of Christ. But the one who does the giving never changes: the Holy Spirit. To go back to the bring-and-share meal analogy—it’s the Spirit who brings the food. The home-cooked ham and the beautifully iced cake. And the shop-bought crisps and hummus. He brings it all and then gives us each our part to serve. We need never feel less-than, because it’s not about us! It’s what God by His Spirit has given us to give—so we share our gifts boldly knowing that, whatever they are, they glorify God.
Suse McBay is a tutor at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, and primarily teaches OT and preaching. Her website and blog can be found at susemcbay.com
Enjoy good things, acknowledge God’s generosity and share with others.
This reading tells us something about the lives God wants us to lead, and particularly what generosity looks like. In this reading from Nehemiah, the gathered people are encouraged to ‘eat the fat and drink sweet wine’. They are not being called to an ascetic life, but to one where there is joy and good things which can be savoured. God longs for everyone to enjoy their lives, and that includes us.
But, if all we do is party, without a thought for others, it becomes self-indulgent and selfish. And so the people are called to ‘send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared’. There is an echo of this in Isaiah 58 and particularly Luke 14:13-14 when Jesus says ‘But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous’.
Banquets, celebrating, partying are not intrinsically bad – we can look back on our Christmas dinners with fondness you will be pleased to know. But what is bad is to do this and be thoughtless, to be selfish, not to acknowledge God’s generosity to us for what we have been given. And a good way to make sure that doesn’t happen is to make this thinking of others so ingrained it happens instinctively. It is like giving in Proverbs 3, woven into the warp and weft of Christian living, an intrinsic part of the living out of our faith.
Jonathan de Bernhardt-Wood is the Director of Giving for the Church of England. Previous to this role, Jonathan was Generous Giving Adviser for the Diocese of Oxford. He has held senior leadership, fundraising and governance roles within the charity sector for over 30 years. He is a full member of the Chartered Institute of Fundraising as well as a Lay Canon at St Edmundsbury Cathedral. He recently presented a discipleship course on Living Generously with RightNowMedia. He is the author of The Porcupine Principle (and other fundraising secrets) and has a Certificate in Management and an MA in Applied Theology. He is based in Suffolk.
February 2025
A gifted child gives flesh to a message which becomes the Christian Gospel.
The Presentation of Christ in the Temple stands out as one of the most recognised episodes in the Gospel of Luke. The Feast of Candlemas and the associated procession with lighted candles reflects Simeon's proclamation of 'a light for revelation to the gentiles'. Simeon's eyes saw salvation and the child's parents were amazed that so much was being put upon their young son. They marvelled at what was being said to him. Maybe not wholly understanding all that it meant, they held on to the words and returned to their home town of Nazareth in Galilee, to bring up the child in their ordinary circumstances.
The last verse of this reading is perhaps the most poignant, for how little yet how much it says about Jesus' formation: 'The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom, and the favour of God was upon him.' A gifted child! Indeed there was clearly a sense of propitiousness in the Nazareth air that endowed the child with what it took for him to give flesh to the message that became known as the Christian Gospel. He was able to endow his community, that became the Church, with a certain generosity that was to become one of its defining characteristics.
Michael Mullins is a former editor of online magazine, Eureka Street for the Australian Jesuits. He lives in Sydney and Paris.
How do we respond when we encounter God’s generosity?
This reading provides one of the more humorous interactions in the gospels - we have here the honest response of fishermen when an ex-carpenter cum rabbi comes along and gives them advice about fishing. Their natural first response is ‘I think we know what we’re doing.’ They have been fishing all night and caught nothing, and their expectations of what can and will happen are not unreasonably shaped by their experience. Who amongst us would not play it safe, pack up and go home when we have experienced failure, and things haven’t turned out the way we had hoped? But because it’s Jesus who asks they do it anyway. And all their reasonable and well-founded expectations are overturned. God confronts them with generosity on a scale that drives them to their knees. We should be careful not to misunderstand. The point of this story is not that God will always miraculously provide for us and therefore we should stop relying on our experience and common sense. The fishermen didn’t set up a booming fishing business on the back of Jesus’s fishing tips, rather they left their nets to participate in a more rewarding and challenging catch. The point is that our horizons can be broadened by encountering the generosity of God. From thinking ‘we’ve done it before and it didn’t work’, they were brought to their knees and then rose to follow their Lord and Saviour. How do we respond when we are confronted with God’s Generosity?
Leah Vasey-Saunders is currently serving as Vicar of Lancaster in the Diocese of Blackburn. Previously she has served in a variety of different contexts both parishes and Cathedral from city to town and suburbs, predominantly in former mining communities. Leah is also Chair of On Fire Mission; a charity working to support and enable renewal in the catholic tradition of the Church of England.
If you trust in a gracious God you can give freely, without fear.
In this short passage from Jeremiah 17, God presents two contrasting images. The first is the shrub in the desert, desperate for water, representing people who have trusted in the finite: in their own flesh and humankind. The second is a tree planted by water, with roots that can feed from the stream. Evergreen. Ever-fruitful. This second image reflects people who trust in the immortal one, namely the Lord. An image of fertile land and a flow of provision and food while the other is an image of effective famine and scarcity and desperate thirst.
While Jeremiah 17 isn’t directly addressing the question of generosity, it nonetheless reveals a lot about why we might hold back from giving and being openhearted to those around us. Do we live from the point of view of scarcity and lack or from overflow and grace? Famine or feasting?
Generous hearts and lives come from people who are secure. People who know they are safe on a foundation that won’t falter. They have come to know a gracious God who will provide and will keep them safe. People who have learned to trust only in themselves or those around them—people whose foundations have limits and can only offer so much—they will find it much harder to give.
If you have only a cup of water, you need to be careful about how much you give to another. If you live by a fresh spring, the true Source, you are able to give freely because you can give without fear.
Suse McBay is a tutor at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, and primarily teaches OT and preaching. Her website and blog can be found at susemcbay.com
Let’s focus on the miracle worker in our boat.
You can feel the disciples’ panic in this story. They are fixated by what they can see in front of them, and what they can see is an imminent threat to their lives – “we are perishing!”. That fear has clearly scrambled their brains, because they are forgetting that within the boat is someone who has already performed numerous miracles. Jesus has already healed the sick; he’s even raised the dead. So focused are they on the storm, that they forget the miracle worker in their midst. They can either look at the storm, or the Son of God. They cannot do both. Finally, then, they look at Jesus, who is not only unfazed by what terrifies them, but is sleeping through it.
This story is symbolic of many challenges we face as we live out our faith. We too can focus on the metaphorical storms, rather than the miracle worker in our midst. The storms can take many forms, and financial storms – unemployment or job instability, high inflation, mortgage worries, cost of living struggles - are among those. We can have them as churches too – how will we repair the roof? How can we pay for our heating?
If these sweep down on us like the gale on the lake, it is easy to fixate on the storm and not see beyond it. Just like the disciples, though, we need to focus on the miracle worker in our boat, to turn our eyes away from the storm and to the one who can silence it.
Jonathan de Bernhardt-Wood is the Director of Giving for the Church of England. Previous to this role, Jonathan was Generous Giving Adviser for the Diocese of Oxford. He has held senior leadership, fundraising and governance roles within the charity sector for over 30 years. He is a full member of the Chartered Institute of Fundraising as well as a Lay Canon at St Edmundsbury Cathedral. He recently presented a discipleship course on Living Generously with RightNowMedia. He is the author of The Porcupine Principle (and other fundraising secrets) and has a Certificate in Management and an MA in Applied Theology. He is based in Suffolk.
March 2025
We are invited to stop striving and to open our hearts in gratitude.
'The skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God.' Moses was transfigured.
Have you ever had an experience that has left you feeling like you were glowing? Maybe you have seen this with other people? It can seem to happen at very special moments in our lives, when we experience something out of the ordinary. Perhaps you have experienced such a moment when you were talking with God, that it felt completely extraordinary, a moment of transcendence.
Often when a moment like that occurs it is not something we had planned. It just happened. We couldn’t explain it. But because it is something that leaps out of the everyday we can’t manufacture it or will it into existence. If we seek transcendence it’s not likely that it will happen. And this can mean that often when we pray we are not overwhelmed like Moses was and we don’t appear from our quiet times with faces glowing so much that we need to cover them in front of others. Trying harder to create it by ourselves doesn’t work. Instead, we are invited to stop striving and simply to open our hearts in gratitude so that we can receive the consolation of the Lord. And as we receive all that God has for us, so we are transformed by him as he creates in us a generous spirit.
Michael Mullins is a former editor of online magazine, Eureka Street for the Australian Jesuits. He lives in Sydney and Paris.
We are called to give regularly, as we receive. Not as an afterthought.
Have you noticed the new trend of rounding up your card payment at the checkout with a gift to charity? Clearly it’s a great idea for the charities who use it - it makes giving easy and a few pennies here and there quickly mounts up. However, it might encourage us to fall into the trap of approaching our giving as an afterthought. Our giving is something we do with our spare change, what we have left over. This reading reminds us that if we look at things from the right perspective we should recognise that everything we have comes from God, that everything is a gift and not to be taken for granted. We therefore first consider what God wants us to do with what we have been given. It’s about not offering God our left-overs, but in the language of Deuteronomy, offering God our first-fruits. And then considering who God would want us to share it with. The law specifies that the first fruits should be shared with those who have little (the immigrant and the Levite who have no land to grow a harvest on). So our thankfulness to God for all we have received is then expressed in intentional generosity. We are called, instead, to plan to give regularly, as we receive, not as an afterthought with what we have left over, and as we give we can consider carefully who are the people in our context with whom we are called to share our abundance.
LeahVasey-Saunders is currently serving as Vicar of Lancaster in the Diocese of Blackburn. Previously she has served in a variety of different contexts both parishes and Cathedral from city to town and suburbs, predominantly in former mining communities. Leah is also Chair of On Fire Mission; a charity working to support and enable renewal in the catholic tradition of the Church of England.
What do you prize? What do you worship?
What you give worth to is what you worship. What do you prize? What do you value? That’s likely to be the place where you are happy to give the most. I know I’m more likely to give time, money and energy to something I believe in. I could say I ‘can’t afford’ to give to X, but then turn around and give that same amount to Y. Why? Because it’s not always about whether I can afford it (though not everyone will be able to) but about justifying it in terms of my priorities and that there are more important things that need my time, money or energy.
So what do you prize? In Philippians 3, Paul contrasts between the priorities of those who follow Christ vs. those who don’t. Their lives will look quite different! If all we’re living for is here on earth, we’ll be consumed with earthly things. We’ll use what we have to fill our bellies, indulge our desires and invest in things that will not last. But if we follow Christ, if we’re truly citizens of a heavenly kingdom, we will take the risk of giving and investing in those things that don’t necessarily reap a reward in this life, perhaps even the opposite. But they will bring glory in the next.
So what do you prize? What do you worship? Are they things of heaven or things here on earth? Are you waiting for your reward in the here-and-now or are you waiting for the day of the Lord?
Suse McBay is a tutor at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, and primarily teaches OT and preaching. Her website and blog can be found at susemcbay.com
We ask God to feed us with the spiritual gift of generosity.
This parable is often seen as one of the “tricky” ones. It all feels a bit brutal. However, I think within it there is a message of encouragement as we try to live generously.
Sometimes, left to our own devices, we can make little progress when it comes to living a generous life. We try, but it just feels too hard, we haven’t got it in us. And anyway, how generous is generous enough? We know in our heads we should be truly generous, we know “everything comes from you, and of your own do we give you” but it can be hard to live that out when we live in a society that believes the opposite.
In a way, then, we can be like the fig tree in this parable, where we cannot bear generous fruit by ourselves. We need a forgiving and patient gardener, who can feed us with what we need so we can bear that generous fruit. Happily, that is exactly what we have.
In Galatians 5 it talks about the fruits of the Spirit - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Generosity is a sign of the Holy Spirit at work within us, it is itself a spiritual gift. It’s the virtuous circle of generosity that itself starts with a gift.
So, if we are the metaphorical fig tree in this parable, we need not to look to ourselves to become generous, but first ask God to feed us with the spiritual gift of generosity. A bumper harvest awaits.
Jonathan de Bernhardt-Wood is the Director of Giving for the Church of England. Previous to this role, Jonathan was Generous Giving Adviser for the Diocese of Oxford. He has held senior leadership, fundraising and governance roles within the charity sector for over 30 years. He is a full member of the Chartered Institute of Fundraising as well as a Lay Canon at St Edmundsbury Cathedral. He recently presented a discipleship course on Living Generously with RightNowMedia. He is the author of The Porcupine Principle (and other fundraising secrets) and has a Certificate in Management and an MA in Applied Theology. He is based in Suffolk.
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