St. Mark's Lutheran » law and gospel

Stewardship 5: The Tithe – where it comes from and what it means

Parson Brown — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 19:35:38 +0000

This is a link to post #1 in this series.
This is a link to post #2 in this series.
This is a link to post #3 in this series.
This is a link to post #4 in this series.

In our prior posts we talked about three things:
1) Stewardship or how we use our possessions is part of the sanctified life. Christians strive to be faithful in their walk with God.
2) A key part of faithfulness in stewardship is the concept of “firstfruits”. The offering to God comes from the first part, not the remainder.
3) The final goal of stewardship is for Christians to recognize and trust God’s providence.

Now in this post I promised to look at some brass tacks. One of the toughest words to mention in many churches is tithe. What is a tithe and why is it so contentious? Simply put, a tithe is a tenth or 10% of the income or increase in any given period. As we will see, in its original usages, the time period was usually a harvest season. Probably your grandfathers, could still relate to that. I remember my grandfather’s stories of bringing in the tithe at harvest season. For him that meant dropping a large check into the plate once a year after he had delivered the crop to the mill. He would joke about 90% of his rural church’s offerings coming in on three Sundays. By the end of his farming career with the advent of futures much of that had changed. More so with regular salaried work, but I do wonder given the increase in freelancing and other forms of self-employment if the next generations will look more periodic in income.

But none of that explains the source or purpose of a tithe. The Ur-stories or deep bedrock stories of the tithe come from Genesis. Abraham in Gen 14:20 is reported to have given a tenth of the spoils of war to Melchizedek – the priest of God Most High from Salem (Ur-Jerusalem). It is interesting the writer of the book of Hebrews in the new testament also mentions and interprets this story in Heb 7:1-10 where Melchizedek is a picture of Christ. So, the first recorded tithe is from Abraham – the father of all the faithful – to an obvious Christ figure. It was given as a recognition of victory and who the victory came from. The second Ur-story of the tithe is Gen 28:22. Jacob, on the run from Esau after tricking his Father, sees his vision of the ladder. But the real import is not that image but the promise and the response. God promises Jacob the same thing he had promised the other patriarchs – descendants, land, and blessing. When Jacob awakes he is a new person in regards to God. A boy who had grown up in the tents of the Patriarchs declares – “Surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it”. Jacob has received the promise and now believes it. The first thing Jacob does in the morning is build an altar and make a vow to return a tenth a tithe. The response of faith is worship and faithful stewardship. A tithe or 10% becomes a symbol of that faithfulness.

Now that isn’t the only place a tenth or a tithe appears. In Leviticus 27:30-34, as part of the Sinai covenant, God claims a tithe or a tenth of the grain and the tenth of the herd. Since everyone was a farmer or a herdsman that is a tenth of all produce. This tithe was given to the Levites – the priest clan. Levi did not receive an allotment of land when Israel entered, but instead lived dispersed as the local priests. (This is found in Numbers 18:20-32). The Levites themselves were not spared the tithe. They gave 10% to the Aaronic (what would become the Temple) priesthood. Also look at Deut 14:22-29 where some regulations regarding the tithe are put in place. At the initial gift all Israel shares a festival meal. The remains (i.e. the majority) is for the Levites. But, every third year, from that tenth the Levites were to care for the aliens, the fatherless and the widows. Unlike the tithes of Abraham and Jacob, these tithes were part of the Law of Sinai.

None of that mentions the offerings commanded as part of the sacrificial system. Those are listed in the first 5 chapters of Leviticus: Burnt offerings, grain offerings, fellowship offerings, sin offerings, and guilt offerings. Those were in addition to the Levitical tithe and were given directly to the temple. They were also largely consumed in the altar fire, although parts would be saved for the temple priests.

So, that is an OT overview of tithes. When stewardship is being talked about, churches talk about tithes because it is deeply grounded in the Old Testament. We take the law as the way that God intended things to be. We cannot fulfill the law, but it is still good and wise. The law demands a tenth of the income for God. Read Malachi 3:1-12 to get a glimpse, even at a late prophetic date, what God felt about those tithes. Not bringing them in was stealing from God. So the tithe was a part of the law, but it was also a part of the gospel. Abraham was not commanded to give 10%, nor was Jacob. Both freely brought 10% as a response to the grace of God.

There are a bunch of smaller questions regarding the tithe that often get asked. A popular one: Is it on the gross or the net? That makes sense in a modern salary world. And you can read about God warning about a second tenth being taken by the government in 1 Samuel 8:15-17, but that Kings’ tithe doesn’t remove the responsibility for God’s tithe. The OT tithe is clearly talking about the full harvest or the gross. 10% would be given to God, some would be taken in taxes, some would need to be set aside as seed for the following year and the rest consumed.

I’ve gone exceedingly long here, so I will continue next time with a new testament view. Review Acts 5 and the story of Ananias and Sapphira, take a quick look at Matt 23:23, but focus on 2 Cor 8-9, with the core passage being 2 Cor 9:6-11.

Religion and Truth in a Pluralistic Culture

Parson Brown — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 13:21:31 +0000

This short write up is well worth the 3 mins on Pope Benedict’s conception of interfaith or ecumenical interaction. Its starting point in an event that just took place in Assisi. 25 years ago the previous pope was at the same place involved in prayer with “Buddhists chant[ing] to the accompaniment of gongs and drums, Zoroastrians tend[ing] a sacred fire, and an American Indian medicine man in traditional headdress smok[ing] a peace pipe and call[ing] down the blessings of the “Great Spirit.” Benedict has a different view, even if the picture nearby might not say speak that.

The great religious question of our age is inclusivity vs. exclusivity. Were all those people praying to the same God, or was it an example of syncretistic worship on the level of ancient Israel’s “high places”? (1 Kings 12:27-32) Do all roads go up the same mountain, or is Jesus Christ the way, the truth and the life? (John 14:6) Let’s make it real clear. We read it in worship a couple of Sundays ago. Isaiah 45:5 – “I am the Lord, there is no other, beside me there is no other.” If the bible counts as your scripture, you can’t hold the “all roads view”. And holding worship services with people chanting, tending and smoking to other dieties hopelessly confuses things. It is no wonder people might just assume that there is no truth in any of them. Then Cardinal Ratzinger said as much:

The cardinal later wrote that “multireligious prayer” of the kind offered there “almost inevitably leads to false interpretations, to indifference as to the content of what is believed or not believed, and thus to the dissolution of real faith.”

Such prayer should occur only rarely, Cardinal Ratzinger wrote, and to “make clear that there is no such thing . . . as a common concept of God or belief in God, that difference not merely exists in the realm of changing images and concepts” but in the substance of what different religions claim.

It is the now Pope Benedict’s next step that is almost uniquely Lutheran.

As he told a European ambassador last week, social justice is based on norms accessible to all, derived not from divine revelation but from “reason and nature”—that is, from “universally applicable principles that are as real as the physical elements of the natural environment.”

He is using Catholic natural law language there. A Lutheran would appeal to two concepts: a theology of two kingdoms and the fundamental law and gospel distinction. We are able to work together in social justice areas because social justice is part of the law or part of the kingdom of the law. The law is universally written on all hearts. (Romans 2:14-15) And the law is good and wise. There is a righteousness that comes from the law – a civil righteousness. But the civil righteousness is not the saving truth of the gospel. In worship – we are separate. Because all roads don’t lead to the same place. Because we proclaim Christ crucified, risen and ascended as Lord. He is Lord, there is no other. Confusing law and gospel only leads to loss of faith.

What do you think about the Christ?

Parson Brown — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 03:31:04 +0000

Sermon Text: Matthew 22:34-46
Full Text of Sermon

The text is the last in a sequence of questions that the various leaders of the Jews in Jerusalem were quizzing Jesus with. In the Synoptics (Matt, Mark and Luke) Jesus is only in Jerusalem once, and the leaders are testing him. Finding out where he falls. The first of the questions is tricky and political. The second by the Sadducees was just the sniggering expression of a cynical elite. But this last one by a representative of the Pharisees is serious. What is the summary of the law?

And Jesus treats it seriously. He doesn’t cryptically answer it or just swat it away. He gives an answer. Love God; love your neighbor as yourself. We don’t always see it, but there are three loves in there: God, others and self. The core of the law is to love them all.

We all have more or less success with that, but the law only goes so far. In the middle of the puzzlement of how do I balance those, Jesus asks a question. What do you think about the Christ? The Pharisees answer – he’s the son of David. A King. A representative of the law. But Jesus pushes them. Why does David, the highest law – the great king – admit to another Lord? And he leaves the question hanging.

I try in this sermon to put that same hanging question on the hearer. What do you think about the Christ? Does he fulfill the law? What does it mean to call him Lord? The answers are yours. I think that is the difference between a theology from above and one from below. If you are working with a theology from above, you proclaim the majesty and Lordship. (And the hymns for the day did that proclamation for us.) If you are working with a theology from below, you invite, you portray, you ask people to observe and draw conclusions. Both can bring forth faith in the hands of the Spirit. The first invites the Amen! The second challenges to thought. Look deeper. Put aside the standard answers and come up with your own. Work out your salvation with fear and trembling (Phil 2:12). The church needs both. The Christian needs both – the amen and the reflection.

Stewardship 1: The messy side of the gospel

Parson Brown — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 14:02:15 +0000

One of the planks of our vision statement says that we grow and engage the faith. The church has many euphemisms. It also has many fine words. Too often what I have found is that fine words also have euphemistic meanings. And the church has worked to promote the euphemism because it is easier than the hard work of teaching the good word. It is easier until it isn’t. And when it isn’t, things have stopped working. We are teaching the good words and wrestling with them.

One of those fine words with a euphemism is stewardship. The euphemism that we all know is: 1. It is budget time and the pastor’s salary is at risk. 2. A pet project needs some money. 3. We will talk about time, talent and treasure, but what we really want is your treasure.

The good word is much more complex. Something like: the proper use of what is not actually yours.

Good stewardship is a theologically deep and complex problem because it lies on the messy side of the gospel. Lutherans like to talk about law and gospel or one big theological word – justification. The entire reformation split was over justification – how God makes us right with himself. The reformers answer was pure grace. The law shows us our sin and the gospel pronounces the grace of God over that sin. So, there is a sense that we can say that we are saints. We are baptized, and in baptism God has connected us to His son Jesus Christ. We are justified, declared righteous, in Jesus Christ through baptism. End of story, right?

Well, it would be if at baptism God also decided to rapture you. But then there would be no one left to baptize the next person. No, we live in tension that we are now saints, but not yet fully realized. Christ has already won the victory over sin, death and Satan, but we still struggle. One little word can kill them, yet they seem so strong. Welcome to the messy side of the gospel.

The big theological term for this is sanctification. When Luther would write in the small catechism his explanation to the 3rd article of the creed, “…the Holy Spirit has called me by the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, sanctified, and kept me in the true faith…” he was compressing the Christian life. All too often the churches of the reformation fight the last battle. Constantly on the lookout for anyone who might be teaching works righteousness we miss that fact that if surveys are to be trusted – nobody is worried about God being judgmental and having to appease him or thinking they can. In other words they’ve accepted the gospel, but it is not the costly gospel of Jesus Christ but a cheap gospel substitute. We get scared away by the messiness of sanctification and retreat back to the bright line justification. In the words of the writer of Hebrews – we stay with the milk. (Heb 5:11- 6:3)

Stewardship is squarely on that messy side. We confess the creed. We believe our justification. How then do we live? Stewardship is really a word that describes how we use money (and other good things from God) in a sanctified way. Our entire lives are a form of stewardship.

I promise to get more concrete as we move into this series, but before that I’d ask you to read two biblical stories: either Matt 25:14-30 or Luke 19:12-27 and the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4.

This is a great visual

Parson Brown — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 14:53:22 +0000

This was an interesting picture from Strange Herring…

And if Lutherans weren’t invisible in American religion, this is how Lutherans see everyone else…

I’m getting old (or pop-culture landmarks meet law and gospel)

Parson Brown — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 20:19:37 +0000

Nirvana’s Nevermind was released 20 years ago. I caught this NPR story on the radio this morning that brought it to mind. I wouldn’t want to treat essentially ephemeral things with weighty seriousness, but occasionally something breaks through. Aesthetically would anyone put Smells Like Teen Spirit next to say Bach – no. But that isn’t what pop music is about. Its about catching a vibe. You get the pop music you deserve. Stuck with Katy Perry and Britney Spears – look in the mirror. Of course I would say the same thing to oh my am I getting old about Michael Jackson and Debbie Gibson. Trust me – Katy sounds really good now, and you will still bop along when you embarrass your kids 20 years later, but you’ll just be putting on a brace face. Back to the point. Pop music catches a vibe and occasionally goes deep. Nevermind…that is the deep end of the pool.

Here is why. Pop music is ultimately the law. (Even the stones cry out.) In expressing a vibe of the day it is expressing the wants, desires, actions and works of its singers and listeners. If you want to know the status and sins that any given culture is experiencing, listen to its pop music. There are really only three ways that pop expresses the law: 1) a glorying in breaking it. (Rom 1:30) This is long an glorious vein and most of the truly fun and playful pop songs are here. Say what you want about Katy – her songs can be fun…at least for a while, until you actually try and live them. 2) A rundown of the effects of breaking the law. This is every pop song in the vein of Seger’s Against the Wind or the road songs like Journey’s Wheel in the Sky, Bon Jovie’s Wanted or the Eagles’ Tequila Sunrise and Fast Lane or more recently Coldplay. There are memories of fun, but the fun doesn’t seem fun anymore. And the bills are coming due. And road seems hollow.

Then then you get to #3. 3) This game is rigged and I ain’t playin’ it no more. The Stones’ Gimme Shelter and almost every track on Nevermind. These are the pop songs that you can play 20 years or 40 years later. They sound from their time, but they also transcend it, they still sound current because you can hear the human condition. They are not just breakin’ the law or recovering from it. Every generation does that in its own way. These are at the end of that spiral. They are looking for more. “It’s just a kiss away.” “I swear I don’t have a gun.” When you are there…the gospel might be heard.

I fought the law and the law won…

Parson Brown — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 23:39:43 +0000

Full Text

What does the law of Moses mean to a Christian? I think that is what Paul is trying to answer in Romans 7. And the text for today talked about the ditch to the right side of the road and the ditch to the left side of the road. On the right, you fall into legalism. You fall into the error that the law still has some role in your justification. Paul takes an analogy from marriage, but compared to Galatians, Paul is subdued in this response. He just reminds us that in Christ we are freed from the law, contrary to legalists everywhere. On the left side the ditch is antinominanism or the thought that the law itself has been banished. It is against this that Paul gets really tough. Boiled down he says – you need the law, you need it to show you just how lost and condemned you are.

Another way I thought about it this week is the right side is religious without being spiritual – the problem in the 16th century. The left is spiritual without being religious – the bigger problem today. Paul takes each in turn and says go back.

Next Sunday’s text looks at Paul’s via media on the law. But to stay out of the ditches both that law we can’t keep and the Spirit in us point toward Christ. Its His way that we walk.

Its like watching a trainwreck, the horror doesn’t stop…

Parson Brown — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 14:44:08 +0000

I can’t really recommend you read this. It has got to be the most cringe inducing thing I’ve read in a long time. Status obsessed, shallow, vain, conceited, silly…and still heartbreaking.

But given all of that, it is a remarkable roadmap for how to kill your Faith or blaspheme the Holy Spirit. It is a modern example of 1 Tim 1:19 when St. Paul talks about Hymenaeus and Alexander making a shipwreck of their faith.

The author starts out at a good place: creed and a recognition that something is wrong with her dealings with God. But instead of dealing with God as those creeds would say (neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance), the author hypothesizes two Gods. Inevitably the Good Jesus and the Bad judgmental guy. Marcion did something similar and so have many others. She is actually not that far from Luther’s key insight. God deals with us in two ways – his law and his gospel. His law does condemn us. His gospel saves us though not from anything in us. To the author’s credit she doesn’t dismiss the law, but instead of living through the grace, she attempts to keep the law or run from it in a variety of ways.

First she just tries to “be good”, then she runs away “during her college years”, then she finds a church that connects her guilt to “racism and structural inequality”. Yes, there is racism and structural inequality. Yes, Christians are called to do something about it. But, no, that is not the gospel. It might be the gospel in motion, expressed through love, but it is not the gospel itself. The author was still trying to keep the law – “talking about Jesus asking us to do good work, waiting for us to make the world a better place.” Eventually, she does what is the ultimate expression of the religious law – “God called me to be a priest”. Because where else could you work harder? This is heartbreaking.

From there it gets worse. She is obviously very smart – after all, Harvard Divinity School accepted her. At Cambridge “her relationship with God deepened”, but “she quits going to church”. [Hint, leaving the body of Christ is never a way to get closer to God.] She “learns” all kinds of theologies, but “quotes the bible less”. “Her congregants didn’t mind she said”. [Yes, they did, but they'd seen it before. They knew where this narcissism train was heading and did there best to find something in the thin gruel offered probably while praying for you.] Eventually she finds a “guru” and art. [If her guru really cared about her, Dr. Kaufmann from the Harvard school would point out her error and ask her to repent. He might even say those words with her realizing that it was his teaching, God have mercy. He might point out to his bright student that grace is given to those with low IQs and simple theologies as well. He's probably too busy being celebrated and flown around to notice.]

And so she ends up “breaking up with God…I know he’s not the right God for me. I try to remember that.”

The ultimate horror is that Jesus is the right God. She’s just never heard the most important word.

Reformation Day Sermons

Parson Brown — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 13:09:31 +0000

Full Text

Two choices with any Special Day sermons, preach the day or preach the text. Preaching the day is by far the more popular. People expect it. It is actually easier (maybe why it is more popular) – no translations to do, find some simple stories preferably cute about the people involved. But I think that puts the cart before the horse with most things Christian. The text or the Word drives the Christian story…drives the Christian. Preaching the day drains it of its vitality. The day becomes just another museum piece. One more birthday, anniversary or commemoration to remember. Preach the text and the living Word might show up.

Russell Saltzman here has heard or given one to many sermons on the Day. He gives some great examples of the species. It is also a great example of loss of hope. When the day has lost its vitality, it can’t inspire hope. The Word that inspires is absent.

Red flag of the parsons own views here – we made/make too much of the politics and the piety that came out of the reformation, and not enough of the original insight. For centuries the camps of Catholic, Lutheran and Reformed have gloried in their people and places and documents. And those things are important, but they don’t capture the complexity of the people – their tragic incompleteness. The original reformation insight allows for that incompleteness, and lets God complete things. And that insight came from the Word.

For no one is justified by works of the law…but now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the the Law – the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ (Rom 3:19-22).

If you read Saltzman’s last paragraph – he put his hope in the wrong place. Even the church, which will be protected until the end, is an imperfect and incomplete vessel – waiting to be made complete…waiting for the saints to be revealed…waiting for the righteousness of God through faith.

Rabbi Shmuley says…

Parson Brown — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 23:51:12 +0000

If you haven’t seen Rabbi Shmuley, you haven’t seen TV in a bit. He’s an orthodox Rabbi that had his own show called Shalom in the Home. If you can imagine such a thing, he’s your wise and caring downhome uncle Rebbe. This is an interesting article that probably catches many religious people’s views on homosexuality.

It is kinda all over the place. As an orthodox Rabbi, he doesn’t deny the Levitical ban on homosexuality, but interestingly he want to pull a Christian move; he writes…

Homosexuality is a religious, not a moral, sin. A moral sin involves injury to an innocent party. Who is harmed when two unattached, consenting adults are in a relationship? Homosexuality is akin to the prohibition against lighting fire on the Sabbath or eating bread during Passover; there is nothing immoral about it, but it violates the divine will.

Rabbi Shmuley says homosexuality is a Sabbath or Ceremonial law. He’s bound to those. Christians say they’ve been fulfilled in Christ. While the moral law is binding, the ceremonial has been put away in the face of the new covenant. And Rabbi Shmuley wants to say just ignore that rule. Concentrate on the other 611 laws. That’s enough.

What I wonder is for Shmuley, what is gained by calling homosexuality a religious sin? Sure, he gets to put the uncomfortable fact of his opposition on an unreasonable God, but he still ends up pointing out the problem with the entire law. We can’t keep it. Not a jot. Not a tittle. You don’t have to be homosexual to be in the same position. Lightening the load of the law is not the problem. The problem is denying its answer. Reconciliation in one person, Christ, on the cross.

It is easier to grant everyone basic humanity when we are all under the cross.