As I consider dusting off this blog and recommitting to regular writing and publishing, I am adding recent email newsletter content shared with my congregation. This post was originally published on June 28, 2024.
Every three years we read from Mark 5 – the Bible story after which my wife and I named our first child, Talitha. It is a powerful story of Jesus’ healing power, but also of his compassion and grace for two women – a long-hemorrhaging woman and a girl who took ill and died. I love Jesus’ compassion, and how his acts not only heal these women but restore them to fullness of life and community. When this reading comes up I usually preach on it.
But this year I’m drawn to preach on the Epistle reading – 2 Corinthians 8:7-15. Saint Paul’s writings are rich and layered, and some of them can come across as complex. Sometimes I think that his writings are better suited for discussion in Bible Study than for a 15 minute sermon, to give its complexities and layers their due. Still, Sunday’s passage from 2 Corinthians is worth our attention this Sunday.
Saint Paul urges the Christians in Corinth to be generous in their financial support for the church in Jerusalem. Paul reminds his audience that God’s provision is one of equity, for in the wilderness God provided manna from heaven so that all of the Israelites could eat. None had excess, none went without. “The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little” (vs 15, referencing Exodus 16:18). In Sunday’s Epistle Saint Paul references this equity characteristic of God’s provision as a guide for our own generosity.
“It is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need” (vss 13-14) Paul writes, highlighting that they – the Christians in Corinth – have an abundance that can benefit the Christians in Jerusalem. Paul also tells them that in their act of giving they would receive from the spiritual abundance of the Jerusalem Church. “It is a question of 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” (vss 13-14). There’s a kind of exchange going on, it seems, but it’s not a marketplace barter or a quid pro quo.
No. This exchange is fundamentally rooted in the nature of Jesus himself. At the top of Sunday’s Epistle reading, Paul speaks about Jesus’ own generosity. “For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.” Let’s unpack the exchange that Paul is outlining here:
- Jesus was rich – in power, divinity, heavenly glory.
- Yet he became poor – took on our human nature, became vulnerable, endured suffering and death
- We might become rich – so that we might learn Jesus’ “better way” of love, receive the promises of the kingdom of God, be grafted into his death and resurrection, and live eternally with Christ.
Thus, when Paul talks about the poverty of the Jerusalem Church being an abundance that will bless the Christians in Corinth, he is talking about the nature of Christ himself. Drawing close to the Jerusalem Church – through a generosity of gifts – makes the Corinthians Christians spiritually rich, just as drawing close to Christ makes them rich in God’s gifts. And, drawing close to the Jerusalem Church with their financial gifts allows them all to live closer to God’s intent for equitable provision for all people: “The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little” (vs 15).
God is the source of all that we have, and in the time of the Exodus the LORD’s gifts were shared equitably among all. By Saint Paul’s time we see that equity went out the door – human sin will do that, even in communities of faith – and there were wealthy churches and poor churches. Paul is urging the believers in Corinth to trust in the God who is generous with them to now be generous with others, for in such generosity they participate in the very nature and essence of Christ.
The Lutheran Zephyr 