The election is now behind us. I guess it’s safe for me to talk about Warren Buffet’s secretary. In case you’ve been on a deserted island somewhere cut off from all media, Warren Buffet, one of the richest men on earth and a prominent Democrat, caused quite a stir sometime back when he said that his secretary pays a higher percentage of her salary in taxes than he pays. That is because wages are taxed differently than are investments, and wealthy people have a clear advantage in accumulating more wealth because of that inequity. Some people were horrified by his example. Others just shrugged their shoulders and said, “That’s the way capitalism works.”
But now that the election’s over, finally here’s the truth about Mr. Buffett’s secretary: If Mr. Buffett’s secretary is like most of the secretaries in this world, she probably gives more money to her church proportionally than her boss does. Now I know that Mr. Buffet is a very generous man. In fact, under the influence of Bill and Melinda Gates, Buffet has been giving away vast sums of money for a variety of good causes. But the principle remains on a percentage basis, those in the lower echelons of society give more of their income to serve Christ than do the people who employ them.
Pierce Harris, a legendary pastor of the First Methodist Church in Atlanta, Georgia many years ago once did something that caused quite a stir in his church. He decided that once a year he would publicly post the annual contributions of his church members. Don’t worry we’re not considering that here, but that’s what Pierce Harris did. Harris said, of course, that he had planned it so he would be in Europe for the two months following the posting. Discretion is the better part of valor. But on the bulletin board and in the church newsletter there was listed the name of every church member, and beside that name the amount of contributions for the last year.
He said a lot of people got mad. Some left the church. But, he pointed out, it was only those who did not tithe who walked away. Those who were faithful in their giving were not ashamed or threatened. The rest simply did not want everyone knowing just how stingy they really were. It was embarrassing, he said, for people to discover that a secretary gave more than her wealthy boss, that the man who rode around in an expensive automobile gave less than the widow who was sending her son through college on a pension. (1)
Now, in the words of an old joke, some of you are thinking, “Oh, no, he’s quit preaching and gone to meddling.” But that’s what today’s text requires of me.
Jesus and his disciples were in the temple courts where Jesus was teaching. They were in an area near the treasury. Scholars tells us that the Temple complex was made up of various courtyards which became increasingly exclusive the closer one came to the religious heart of the Temple the Holy of Holies: the place where God dwelt. This particular story is set in the Court of the Women one of the outer, less holy areas. In this area stood 13 trumpet-shaped, brass receptacles. There were little signs on each of these receptacles denoting how the money thrown into that particular receptacle was to be used. One said, for example, building maintenance; another said rabbis’ salary; another said widows and orphans fund, etc. The room would have been absolutely jammed with people who had come to offer sacrifices during the feast of Passover.
From their vantage point, Jesus and his disciples could see what people were putting into these receptacles. There was a long line of rich people. They loved making a show of their giving. And some of them did, indeed, throw in large amounts of money. However, Jesus’ attention was drawn to a poor widow. She came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents.
Jesus called his disciples over to him and said to them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything all she had to live on.”
Here’s our first principle: When it comes to giving, people are impressed by how much you give; God is impressed by how much you have left over. God isn’t impressed by a sham sacrifice. This poor widow gave everything she had. She didn’t have anything left over. That’s faith. She evidently didn’t worry about tomorrow. She knew that God held the future and she trusted God to take care of her in the future just as He was taking care of her today.
When Dr. Scott Weimer first came to the church he is now serving, he received in the mail a very unusual financial gift for his church. The gift was a money order made payable to the church in the amount of $5, along with a personal note of gratitude.
At first he thought the note and the gift were some kind of a joke. Who sends a money order for $5 as a stewardship pledge to a Presbyterian church?
In the note, a woman named Lillian Hafer, from Washington, D.C., wrote of how much his church meant to her. She believed in the mission and ministry of his congregation, she wrote, and it gave her great joy to send her offering. The note was hand-written, clearly written by an elderly person who had difficulty writing.
No one in the church seemed to recognize Lillian Hafer’s name. However, each year for ten years she sent a money order for $5 with a similar note of gratitude. Then, after ten years of faithful giving, Weimer received a phone call from a coroner’s office in Washington, D.C. Lillian Hafer had died and had listed their congregation and him personally as her “next of kin.” She had lived and died in a government-sponsored retirement home with no possessions or money to speak of. The coroner simply wanted to confirm that someone at the church knew who she was.
Dr. Weimer says he believes that Lillian Hafer was like the widow in the Temple. She owned very little. She lived simply. Yet, her life was characterized by the same genuine heart for God and grateful spirit that motivated her to give with a generous attitude of giving. He says he believes that Jesus would point to Lillian and say, “That’s what I’m after! Follow her example!” (2)
The devotion of this widow is not an isolated example. Over the ages there have been many like this widow who only had a few coins to give, but they have given them gladly.
Do you recognize the name Oseola McCarty? Oseola was a washerwoman in Hattiesburg, Mississippi who was dirt poor by our standards. She took in bundles of dirty clothes, washed and ironed them. She started her work after dropping out of school in the sixth grade. She continued long into her eighties. McCarty never owned a car; she walked everywhere she went, pushing a shopping cart nearly a mile to get groceries. She rode with friends to attend services at the Friendship Baptist Church. She did not subscribe to any newspaper, considering the expense an extravagance.
Oseola never married and had no children. All through her life she rarely spent any money. She lived in her old family home and wore simple clothes. She saved what money she could until her life savings grew to an amazing $150,000.
Then to everyone’s surprise in Hattiesburg, she gave her entire savings to the state’s Black College Fund. She wanted to share her wealth with young people before leaving this world. Before her death in 1999 she was able to witness many of the students who were awarded scholarships graduate from college with the help of her financial support. (3)
Again, that is not an isolated example. There are many people with very limited means who give sacrificially to the Lord and do so joyfully.
Dr. Scott Weimer tells about a Kenyan woman who was a member of his church. Her name was Lydia. Weimer says this African woman loved the congregation of his church, but she really missed certain aspects of her home church, especially parts of the worship service. Weimer asked her what she missed the most, and she told him something he’s never forgotten.
She said, “I miss the offering. In Kenya, we would sometimes dance down the aisles during the offering. We didn’t have much to give, but what we did have we gave with much joy. What a privilege to give back to God!” she said. (4)
We’ve talked before about the custom of African people dancing to the altar to bring their gifts to God. The devotion of this widow to whom Jesus drew his disciples’ attention is not an isolated example. The secretary who gives far more to her church than her wealthier boss is not an isolated example either. In fact, it is the rule, not the exception.
Prosperity and high income, as a rule, don’t help people become generous. In fact, it generally works the other way. Wealth can be a narcotic; the more you have, the more you feel you need. The craving never stops.
Henry Ward Beecher, the father of novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe, warned that prosperity and high income could actually make people less likely to give. He said, “Watch lest prosperity destroy generosity.”
Author John Maxwell notes that people in the United States live in the most prosperous country in the world during the most prosperous time in its history. Yet the average American donates only 2.5 percent of his or her income to charitable giving. That’s lower than it was during the Great Depression (2.9 percent). And 80 percent of Americans who earn at least $1 million a year leave nothing to charity in their wills. (5) We’ve talked about it before, but is an insidious thing that each of us needs to watch out for. Money is like a recreational drug the more you have, the more you crave. There is never enough, even when you have all you will ever conceivably need.
In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, C. S. Lewis told of boy named Edmund who sampled a drug which Lewis called Witch’s Turkish delight. Then Edmund sacrificed all that was good in his life to get more of it only to find that the more he gorged himself on it, the sicker and less satisfied he became. Randy Alcorn in his book, Money, Possessions and Eternity writes, “We fail to realize that the bait of wealth hides the hook of addiction and slavery.” (6) In our materialistic society we don’t like to think of wealth as a dangerous drug. But it can be, and it costs many people their soul.
Theologian John Piper helps us envision the final irony of materialism:
“Picture 269 people entering eternity in a plane crash in the Sea of Japan. Before the crash there is a noted politician, a millionaire corporate executive, a playboy and his playmate, a missionary kid on the way back from visiting grandparents. After the crash they stand before God utterly stripped of MasterCards, checkbooks, and Hilton reservations. Here are the politician, the executive, the playboy, and the missionary kid all on level ground with nothing, absolutely nothing in their hands, possessing only what they brought in their hearts. How absurd and tragic the lover of money will seem on that day,” says Piper, “like a man who spends his whole life collecting train tickets and in the end is so weighted down by the collection he misses the last train.” (7)
This is all to say that the way we regard our possessions is a basic spiritual issue. This is why Jesus talked more about money than any other single issue. It wasn’t because he and his disciples were trying to raise big offerings. Jesus had no need of offerings, but he saw what money could do to people. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God,” (Matthew 19:24) he said on one occasion. That’s pretty pointed. That’s hyperbole, of course. He didn’t mean that literally a wealthy person doesn’t have a chance to get through the pearly gates. We are saved by grace, not by how much or how little we have in our bank account. He was simply warning us of the dangers of wealth and reminding us that we do not fool God. Is our giving a real sacrifice or are we simply giving God an anemic tip for services granted?
An interesting item appeared many, many years ago in a church bulletin. You will know it was many years ago by the amounts cited. The author was an unknown agent from the I.R.S. It’s whimsical, but it will make you think. I quote this I.R.S agent:
The other day I checked a [strange tax] return. Some guy with an income under $5,000 claimed he gave $624 to some church. Sure, he was within the 20% limit, but it looked mighty suspicious to me. So I dropped in on the guy and asked him about his return. I thought he’d become nervous like most of them do, but not this guy.
“Have you a receipt from the church?” I asked, figuring that would make him squirm.
“Sure,” he replied, “I always drop them in the drawer.” And off he went to get his checks and receipts.
Well, he had me. One look and I knew he was on the level. I apologized for bothering him, explaining that I have to check on deductions that seem unusually high.
As I was leaving he invited me to attend his church.
“Thanks, I belong to a church myself,” I replied.
“Excuse me,” the man replied, “that possibility never occurred to me.”
As I drove home, I kept wondering what he meant by that last remark. It wasn’t until Sunday morning when I put my usual dollar in the offering plate that it came to me.
All the wealthy men were lined up throwing large sums of money into the receptacles of the Temple. They knew they would never miss it and they enjoyed being in the spotlight. But there was a poor widow who had only two small coins, but gladly she gave those coins to God. Only one person noticed her gift, but that one is the only One who really matters. She was not a slave to material possessions as many people are. Now you know the truth about Warren Buffet’s secretary.
1. Jamie Buckingham, (Lake Mary, FL: Creation House, 1991), p. 123.
2. http://day1.org/1555-what_god_values_in_stewardship
3. God’s Little Lessons on Life for Women (Tulsa, OK: Honor Books, 1999).
4. The Rev. Dr. Scott Weimer, http://day1.org/1555-what_god_values_in_stewardship.
5. U.S. News and World Report, December 22, 1997. Cited in Today Matters (New York: Warner Books, 2004).
6. (Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1989).
7. Desiring God (Portland, Oregon: Multnomah Press, 1987), p. 156. Cited in Alcorn, Money Possessions and Eternity.