A conversation the other day about churches, Christians, money – and the relations between the three of them. Well actually, since we were talking of those who confess Christ, and who seek to embody the life of Christ in their living, and through the witness of Christian community, the relation of all three to Christ. The particular issue was the way Christians often want to do things, or have things, on the cheap.
Now for communities of people who believe that grace is undeserved favour, and who 'have no problem' with Paul's theological extravagances in Ephesians 1, all of this puzzles me. For example – "God who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing…according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us..and the riches of His glorious inheritance among the saints…". And so on, using words like lavished, immeasurable, incalculable and climaxing in the great Evangelical cry, "For by grace you have been saved…."
So how does it come about that followers of Christ, themselves receivers of the most extravagant, reckless, arithmetic-free generosity, can often sound as if the spending and giving of money, the cost of celebration, the creation of beauty and the investment in human wholeness, joy and friendship, should all be subject to budget considerations, financial reality checks and the communal and personal self-interest that considers money more valuable than giving?
I'm not arguing for financial irresponsibility – but for instinctive generosity, for a recovery of the Christian default response of giving rather than saving, of sharing rather than keeping. I wonder where in the care of our churches, in the support of our ministries, in the setting of priorities for spending, in our love for God's world and the people in it, in the key decisions we all make about what to do with what we've been given, I'm wondering – where is the place of extravagance, generosity, that lavish uncalculating, joy-discovering , grace-driven, Christ-inspired gift of giving. When did Christian stewardship move from generous costly gift to prudent wise planning? Where in all our budgetary balancing, do phrases like those used by Paul feature as primary levers for the kingdom – "abundant joy and extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity…" and this rooted in the key evangelical principle "He was rich yet for our sakes became poor that we through His poverty might become rich".
Anyway. My own heart has its own constraints, its own inner resistances. As a follower of Jesus maybe I need less stewardship and more generosity, less responsibility and more responsiveness, less prudential giving and more prioritised generosity, not saving but giving. What would happen in our lives, communities, neighbourhoods if as followers of Jesus, words like lavish, extravagant, generous, graceful, were amongst the first to be used of how as Christians we live our lives, and bear witness to the One "from whose fullness we all have recieved, grace after grace after grace …" (John 1.16)
Here are some wise words from an unjustly obscure saint:
There are two ways
of bringing into communion
the diversity of particular gifts:
the love of sharing
and the sharing of love.
Thus the particular gift becomes common
to him who has it
and to him who has it not:
he who has it
communicates it by sharing,
he who has it not
participates by communion.
(Baldwin of Ford, quoted in Esther De Waal, Seeking God, page 125)
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