Replace Tithing with Generosity

Sunday, October 13, 2024

Scriptures: Matthew 6:19-23, 24

• Sermon Summary

  This week we tackle our relationship to wealth. In the final message in the series, Jeremy explores the complex relationship between faith, wealth, and generosity. First, Jeremy acknowledged how wealth has historically corrupted religious practices, from extravagant displays by religious leaders to more subtle forms of financial manipulation. He then addressed common misconceptions about tithing, explaining how the biblical concept of giving is much more layered than our modern interpretation of 10%. In the Hebrew Scriptures, there were multiple tithes intended to do three things: support the religious cast, fund community festivals, and care for the marginalized.

  Jeremy critiqued the idea of generosity as a religious obligation.

  Then talking about the concept of perceived or planned obsolescence, he first introduced the concept of "memetic desire" taken from the work of sociologist René Girard. The theory is that much of our desire is driven by imitation—what we see others doing. And how mimetic desire is at play in the societal pressures of consumerism that we all experience, and that is often expressed in planned obsolescence.

  Then Jeremy talked about Matthew 6:19-24, where the "good eye" refers to generosity, and the "evil eye" represents greed. Comparing the two eyes, Jesus is not just talking about visual clarity but about how our attitude toward wealth directs our path in life.

  We are invited to cultivate a generosity that flows from a healthy, inner sense of gratitude, rather than from obligation or societal expectations.
  Faith involves seeing wealth as a tool for making the world better, rather than something that controls us.

• Discussion Guide

  Community is shaped by the conversations we share. These questions and reflections are a tool to help you meaningfully engage with the themes of this week's teaching.

  Connect: Take a moment to think about a generous person in your life, or a story of generosity you’ve witnessed or have been part of. How has that person or that story impacted you and your experience or understanding of wealth?

  Share: about what you think about the biblical concept of tithing as Jeremy explained it? How helpful was it to learn about the various types of tithes in the Hebrew Scriptures (for Levites, festivals, and marginalized people)? And how did this perspective on tithe challenge or confirm your understanding of giving?

  Reflect: The concept of "perceived obsolescence" suggests that we are often driven to replace things before that’s truly necessary. It plays on our propensity to want and desire and imitate.

  
  How do you experience this societal push? Do you feel it strongly, or only in some contexts, e.g. when watching TV or Instagram influencers or interacting with your peers? What are the sources of those wants for you?

  And how does that societal pressure affect your spending habits? What are some ways you can resist or already resist  this pressure? And why?

  Engage: What do you think about Jeremy’s take on what Jesus means when he says, "The eye is the lamp of the body" in Matthew 6? Have you heard that perspective on the translation of that verse before?

  And how does this metaphor - “good eye” (generosity) and “evil eye” (greed) - challenge or change the way you see your relationship to money?

  Here’s a quote for you to engage with if you’d like:

  “A good eye is the kind of eye

  That is not reacting to the expectations placed on us (religious or otherwise)

  That’s not driven by memetic desires that distract us from growing as individuals

  But instead

  is actually guiding us through the world

  Lighting our path

  Helping us to see and engage with opportunities to be generous

  as an expression of the essential gratitude that grounds us…

  Jesus is not talking here about giving enough away to assuage your guilt

  That’s actually a bad eye.

  Jesus is talking about choosing a path that can actually free us from the control that wealth and desire want to exert over us…”

  Takeaway: The sermon mentions that generosity can be a tangible source of faith. How have you experienced generosity—whether giving or receiving—as a source of spiritual growth in your life?

  Prayer from the sermon:
  Gracious God of every good and generous gift,

  Help us we begin to do the hard work

  of separating our imagination of what is possible

  from what is offered us as inescapable

  We are not our status — nor our bank accounts

  Our value is not defined by what we can offer

  Our failings not defined by what we cannot

  And yet we want to learn what it means to live imaginatively and generously

  To give freely and openly of ourselves and our resources

  To carry our stories with a sense of community and care

  And to hold what we have been given with an open hand…

  We trust that you are the source of all that is good in our world

  And we believe that you are not finished with us — or our stories— yet

  Teach us what it means to play a part in your imagination for this world

  And to do it all with a profound sense of purpose and joy.

  In the strong name of the risen Christ

  we pray

  Amen

• Service Songs & Prayers

  CALL TO WORSHIP Psalm 95

  MUSIC Curated by Nathan Funk
  Hillsong Worship - In God We Trust
  Hillsong Worship - The Passion
  Kristian Stanfill - In Christ Alone
  Hillsong Worship - Fresh Wind
  
  BRAIDING THANKSGIVING
  A prayer for thanksgiving Sunday by Bobbi Salkeld

  For Canadian Thanksgiving, I’d like to invite you into a prayer with three prompts from the Indigenous writer and botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer.

  We will centre gratitude, the sacred, and the gifts of the land. Let us pray.

  [PRAYER]

  We begin by acknowledging the longing that we have to live in a world made of gift. (Braiding Sweetgrass, p. 32)

  As farmers pull in the harvest,

  Gardens are cleared for the winter,

  And buds form on the trees reminding us that spring is already hinting its arrival —

  Creator, we are grateful.

  For aurora borealis beauty in the night sky,

  The sparkle of frost in the morning sunlight,

  The food that brings pleasure and sustains bodies.

  Thank you.

  We turn to the power of ceremony to transform the mundane into the sacred. (Braiding Sweetgrass, p. 37)

  As elders practiced ceremony on the land long before we were here,

  As traditions are passed through faith communities,

  As we welcome the ways awe sustain us —

  Christ, who turned water into wine,

  And the hurting into the healed,

  We reach for you again to enliven our hearts for holy encounter

  Everywhere.

  We close with the intention to seek the threads that connect the world. (Braiding Sweetgrass, p. 42)

  For the creative ways that we form community,

  For traces of the natural world making existence possible,

  For oxygen, gravity, DNA, adaptation, consciousness, and death —

  Spirit, you dance through it all,

  Connecting us in ways we cannot fathom,

  Making beauty of the past, present, and future.

  For all the good, we are grateful.

  Amen.
  
  SERIES BUMPER
  How I Hold on to Faith