“Money:The Widow’s, Seekers’ and Yours” by Patricia Nemore

What motivates you to give your money away –to individuals, to organizations, to Seekers and to the myriad places you can to engage in consumerism? How do you think about money generally?

This sermon is my effort to sort though the work I’ve done, how I experience Seekers’ work with money and how, if at all, it relates to the extravagant gift of the poor widow.

And I am aware of how very addicted I am to them. 

you are making bad choices that I don’t want to support.  And helping another, especially financially, can change the nature of the relationship with that person, because of the power imbalance.  While I have a lot of power, I also have a lot of moral ambiguity.  I don’t like moral ambiguity.

Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.  . . .  There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold.  They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need. Acts 4:32-35 

This passage certainly offers the picture of an economic system in stark contrast to the one in which the widow lived and the one in which we all live today.

does include amounts for helping each other as I’ve just described but has other components worth looking at as well.  How Seekers gathers and spends its money is interesting to me.  First, we do not have a pledge Sunday, as the church of my childhood did.  We do not ask anyone to tell us in advance what they plan to give for the coming year.  We do ask Stewards, as a practice to which they commit, to “give proportionally of income, beginning at ten percent.”    The ten percent – or tithe – has been much discussed in Stewards for more than twenty years.  Some consider it an unfair burden on people with modest incomes that is not supported by the Gospels.  Others argue that it can be a goal for people to work toward as a spiritual discipline.  The language remains.  But even with that commitment by Stewards, our budget planners still do not have a lot of information, because the language does not define income – it could be gross income, taxable income, income after necessary living expenses– and if you lose your job mid-year, you may have no income at all with which to meet that standard.  So the commitment creates an individual spiritual practice, but not much of a budget planning tool.  The income identified in the budget is determined mostly from FOG’s assumptions about how close to this year’s giving next year’s will come (there are a few other sources, but our own giving comprises about half of our income).  But what’s also really interesting about Seekers’ budget is our commitment to spend only about 50% of our income on ourselves – on the building maintenance, salaries and general church-related expenses.  We give away – through domestic and international giving programs as well as a few line items for partners such as Dayspring – about half of all we get. And here’s another cool thing:  every one of us gets a chance to give some of Seekers money away to an organization we’re directly engaged with.  Every one of us.  Anyone who wants to can join either of the giving groups (domestic or international) to have input into the process for choosing which grants to make, but even if you don’t join one of the groups, you can make a proposal for a grant.

What we can and do know is that money matters, whether we have a lot or a little, and that it behooves us to take stock periodically of where our own treasure is, for so there our heart shall be.

Amen