Shared Sacrifice: A Future with Hope- Generosity
06-07-09
Tracy Stevens is anti-car. She doesn’t own one, and she doesn’t want one. However, she does drive. Living in Portland, Oregon, she has found that there are some everyday errands that are simply too difficult to carry out using buses, bicycles, the Metro Area Transit system, or her own two feet. In those situations, Tracy uses a Flexcar. Have any of you heard of the Flexcar? Founded in 1998, the concept of the Flexcar started in Portland, Oregon. Here’s how it works: It’s a Saturday at 8 a.m. Tracy walks into a parking lot, near her home, and slips into Flexcar— an immaculate forest-green Honda Civic. This Flexcar is shared by a couple of dozen people for a $25 lifetime fee and a monthly charge, such as five hours for $35. Tracy has booked it for two hours. She adjusts her seat and punches a code into a black lockbox to get the ignition key. Firing up the engine, she’s off: first to a nearby drop-box for used clothing, then to the grocery store. She returns to the car with bags of food, loads them in and then races off to another store for olive oil and wine. Then it’s home to unload and back to the Flexcar lot, racing against the clock. She makes it, three minutes before her time is up. Frank McEldowney then arrives a bit after 10, and repeats the same basic ritual. And so it goes throughout the day.
Flexcar. For many city dwellers, this sharing of an automobile is the perfect way to keep their abundance and their needs in balance. The concept is similar to what the apostle Paul is talking about in his second letter to the Corinthians. Only instead of a Flexcar, he is talking about the concept of a FlexChurch. Now what do you suppose a Flexchurch is? A Flexchurch is a community of believers, so flexible, so sharing that the needs of both the church and its members are routinely taken care of. This is a big task, and not an easy one to complete! Paul challenges the church in Corinth to "excel in everything" — in faith, in speech, in knowledge and in utmost eagerness (2 Corinthians 8:7). But at this particular point in time, he wants them to excel in one additional way, in what he describes as a "generous undertaking": a collection for the Christians of Jerusalem.
Let me provide some historical context for you. Corinth at Paul’s time was a booming economic center, prosperous and highly competitive, and the Christian church contained a broad cross-section of the city’s economy, with laborers and slaves sitting side by side with people of leisure, wealth and social influence. However, becoming a Christian in Jerusalem, more specifically, professing Jesus as the Messiah, often meant that a person or entire family was ostracized, consequently many of them lost there income and financial support. Paul makes an appeal to the Corinth community, consisting of the wealth and the poor, and asks them to contribute to a collection for "the poor among these ostracized saints at Jerusalem" (Romans 15:26). He believes that need and abundance should always be kept in equilibrium within the larger Christian community, and that those who have wealth are obligated to assist those who are in need.
Paul is not talking about a welfare program, Paul is talking about balance. Paul takes a surprising and unexpected stand when he suggests that the rich Corinthian Christians are indebted to the poor Jerusalem Christians. Even though the ancient and modern day Christian may bristle as such words, it is not a misprint, the rich Corinthians are indebted to the poor Judeans. They are not indebted just because they have more money than the other Christians, they are indebted since the Christians in Jerusalem were Christians first, despite the risks, and they shared their faith with the believers in Corinth (15:27). Because the Jerusalem crowd has sent spiritual wealth to the Corinthians, Paul believes that it’s only fair for the Corinthians to respond with a gift of material wealth.
Call it FlexChurch: the free and flexible sharing of spiritual and material resources. It’s the perfect way to keep a community’s abundance and needs in balance. Paul even goes so far as to set up a holy rivalry. In verse 8, Paul speaks to "earnestness of others". In this statement he is referring to the Macedonian Christians’ eagerness to participate in a collection for the poor in Jerusalem, despite their own difficult times. Paul is reminding the Corinthians that they are not just some band of believers disconnected from the rest of the world, and that there budget effects only their immediate needs. He is reminding the Corinthians that we are in ministry together, and by sharing what we are able, we help the love of God take hold in many lives.
"This is not to say that the Corinthians are anxious to pony up and put their hard-earned cash in the collection plate. Although it appears that they responded enthusiastically to Paul’s appeal at first, they then began to hit the brakes, and so the apostle has to put some pedal to the metal by saying, "now finish doing it, so that your eagerness may be matched by completing it according to your means" (v. 11).1 Paul challenges us to strive for balance. He wants us to be as fair and free and flexible as a Flexcar program, making sure that there are always resources and support available for members of the Christian community. It is a question of "a fair balance," says Paul, "a fair balance between your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may be for your need, in order that there may be a fair balance" (vv. 13-14).
Fair balance is the engine that drives a FlexChurch. In day-to-day life, this means simply sharing what you have. For example, you have five peaches, so you give away three, why not? They were going to go bad before you ate them anyway. Once you begin to behave in this way, you discover that the first step in ministry is simply sharing what you have in abundance. Sounds kind of like our Stewardship theme huh? Shared Sacrifice. It may be peaches or computers, or computers skills while eating a peach. It may be carpentry skills or child-care abilities or an ability to Sunday School. This kind of work turns into ministry when you begin to see that it is a way of achieving balance, balance between your own personal abundance and the world’s pressing needs. In time, you may find yourself buying five peaches and giving them away, because you know that there is a family in need and they really need fresh fruit. Your focus shifts from acquiring peaches for yourself to sharing peaches with others, so that both you and the people around you gain all the nourishment that is needed for a healthy life.
This concept seems so simple...and it is. So why is it easier said than done? We like to consume. We hold many more financial and time commitments than any Biblical person ever did. We like security. We have fought against the advance of systems like Communism. We try to maintain a certain standard of living. We like to know that what we offer to give or what we actually give will not be wasted.
All this talk of sharing and pooling resources, which is a lot about what Christian stewardship is all about, runs counter to our consumer-driven culture. We like to control our possessions. If we buy an immaculate forest-green Honda Civic and lock it in our garage, then we know that it is going to stand a chance of remaining immaculate. But if we rent such a vehicle through Flexcar, then we lose control of its cleanliness and its overall condition. We don’t know what kind of mess the previous driver will leave behind, or what kind of accident the next driver will get into.
Jumping into a Flexcar or a FlexChurch requires a tremendous amount of faith. We have to have faith that the car will be waiting for us when we arrive at the garage to drive it. We have to faith that the car we share will remain in decent working order. We have to have faith that a FlexChurch will meet our needs, as well as the needs of others. We have to have faith that our gifts of food to the hungry will be put to proper use. We have to have faith that our contributions of time and effort will bear good fruit in this community, and in the larger global community. It takes faith to trust that our monetary offerings to the church will truly support God’s work in the world. Perhaps the hardest thing to trust is that what we give away will not diminish us, but will give us greater balance and peace and purpose in life.2
Being a FlexChurch is all about balance. It is about Share Sacrifice. It is about finding joy in the midst of the struggle. It is about feeling and offering the support of Christian community. It is about hope for our future. Being a Flexchurch is not going to put more peaches in our fruit bowls or autos in our driveways, but it is going to give us the deep satisfaction of using our abundant gifts to meet the most pressing needs of people around us. Participating in a FlexChurch means sharing spiritual and material resources so that together we can do God’s will, and be a creative and committed community in an individualistic world. Jesus himself, Paul says was the Prototypical Sharer: "For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ," says, Paul, "that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich" (v. 9). Sharing reaps great rewards. Trust. Pray. Share. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Blessings,
Melissa
1Taylor, Bob, Flexchurch, Homiletics, June 2003.
2 ibid