“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’
“But the tax collector
stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his
breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
“I
tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God.
For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble
themselves will be exalted.” (Luke 18:10-14)
We began a Bible study on
generosity in my Sunday School class, and today’s passage was the teaching text.
It’s a story of two men who went to the temple to pray. Two men who both stood
apart from others, the pharisee because he didn’t want to associate with sinners,
and the tax collector because no one wanted to associate with him. In some
translations, the pharisee is described as praying to himself instead of by
himself, but when Jesus told it, the shock to the listener would have been that
the tax collector, who would have been seen as a traitor because he collected
money for Rome and would have been seen as extorting money for himself. Good
stuff.
Now, the passage isn’t
really about generosity, it’s about self-righteousness, but the pharisee’s
self-righteousness included the area of giving. I should also point out that
Americans (on average) give about 3% of their income to charity, so the pharisee
was being a good guy. He was being more
generous than a lot of people in society now.
The video teacher
discussed all this and went on to describe money as just one sort of currency. Anything
you can give or withhold is a kind of currency: yourself, your home, your time,
your attention, your praise, your emotional support, physical
support/assistance, … feel free to add to the list. This is where I started
struggling. I have been thinking about some of this, though not in terms of
generosity (and not for the first time.)
For years while spending
winters in Florida, I tried to figure out how the park I was in felt like a
community and why where I live up north doesn’t. I came to the conclusion that
a big part of it was that we had two clubhouses- what one might consider a huge,
shared space where we could come together. The neighborhoods in Erie don’t tend
to have lots of community centers – at least not my neighborhood. We have
churches, but the church I attend draws people from probably 20 miles away, and
it’s seven miles from my house.
Now that I’m in Erie
full-time, I’ve been chewing on the question of community building in terms of hospitality
and involvement at church (among others.) First, the good news. I’m finding that
being in Erie only 6 months per year is part of the problem. In Florida, most
people were only there for six months (at most.) But, a yellow alert sounded. It’s
not that I give X, Y, and Z, look how good I am. It’s a combination of other
ideas: My house isn’t in good enough condition, clean enough, etc. I don’t have
time to give because I’m trying to write a book, homestead, find a job, make
crafts (partly to donate to others!), etc. I’m no good as a host. No one will like
me – for any number of reasons. I’m not hording, I don’t have the currency to
share.
And a good question comes
to mind:
Who told you that you were
naked? (Genesis 3:11b)
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