My wife and I returned from China on a slow and relentless descent into desperation. I was fighting a childhood-trauma-induced depression – a struggle that precipitated our return. Shortly after, the Great Recession hit, and Kim and I went without work or income for a couple of years. With four teenagers in tow, we burned through all available resources and then some.
Finally, Kim and I found jobs, albeit low paying and part-time. Gradually our pay increased and the hole we had been digging stopped getting deeper. Ever so slowly we clawed our way out. Along the way we encountered remarkable generosity. One resource that proved of help was something called the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). The EITC, a refundable tax credit, helps low- and moderate-income working families by reducing their tax burden.
Later, having righted our financial ship, I testified at a legislative hearing on behalf of the state’s EITC, sharing how much it had helped us. I told the legislators that I, as by then an executive in a nonprofit, was honored to speak in favor of the tax credit as it had benefited my family so much during our hard times. My objective, I said, was to help others as I had been helped.
I knew Senator Mark Hass, the committee chair, personally because he was my state senator. When I finished my testimony, he responded, commending my wife and me for the work we were doing and the children we had raised. He said all that was evidence the EITC had been put to much good use.
Recently I spoke at a local Presbyterian church. I enjoy the challenge of assignments where you are given the lectionary text. It forces you sit with the text and the Spirit to hear what the Spirit has to say to the congregation on that day.
However, the text in the lectionary, 2 Corinthians 8:7-15, is an awkward passage to share with a congregation you don’t know. Thus, the thrill of doing it.
First, the Apostle Paul talks about giving, which makes people uneasy. Second, it uses words like “equality” which make Americans uneasy. But there it is. As I firmly believe all Scripture is given for our benefit (also a teaching of Paul’s), well, then I better listen to what this passage has to say and not evade the source of unease.
When Paul wrote that letter, much of the ancient Roman world, the world in which Paul lived, had been suffering from an extended and severe famine. The mother church in Jerusalem was particularly hard hit. Some of the churches that Paul had started responded with significant financial assistance. Paul eventually took those donations to Jerusalem, a journey which led to his own arrest. The church in Corinth, having already initiated its fundraising effort, had seen its own momentum wane over time.
Writing to them a year later, Paul starts with the example of the church in Macedonia. Nothing like talking about how good someone else is doing to raise your competitive hackles. But there goes Paul. The Macedonian church had been through severe trial and yet gave with overflowing joy out of their extreme poverty, giving far beyond their means. Such amazing generosity, Paul exalts!
Way to lay it on the Corinthians, Paul!
And he does, challenging the Corinthian believers to excel in the grace of generosity. He doesn’t tell the Corinthians to exceed the generosity of the Macedonians or even match them, but he uses the Macedonians’ example to motivate the Corinthians. I get that this kind of pitch will inspire some people. I also know a lot of people who would be turned off by it, but pitch Paul does.
He continues to lay it on, no less, bringing out the Big Gun. “You know how our Lord Jesus Christ became poor so you could become rich,” Paul writes. By this he means that Jesus left the riches of heaven so that we mere mortals could inherit eternal life. Try arguing with that! We tend to separate spiritual intangibles from tangible money you can bank on, but Paul throws them all together into one big pot.
An even greater surprise comes in verses 13 and 14 where Paul says the end goal of all this generosity is equality. Sounds Communist – or at least French. Either way, the word conjures up all sorts of reactions that entice us to narrow text application to near oblivion.
Paul keeps moving right along, ignoring all the 21st century American handwringing over equality, using an example from the Old Testament. When Israel was wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, God fed them with bread (manna they called it) which appeared with the morning dew. They were to gather only what they needed and not hoard any of it. As a result, everyone was taken care of. An amazing feat that a people who were on the brink of starvation and invariably cranky could share and share alike![1]
Let those who have share with those who have not, so that both may be provided for equally.
And yet we fear.
We fear others won’t use the shared blessing appropriately. Or that they don’t deserve it. Neither concern seemed to bother Jesus in sharing with us.
We also fear we will suffer by being too generous. Paul ignores such moaning and reminds his readers that we never lose by giving out of what we have been given by God. Generosity begets mutual sufficiency, abundance for all.
It is the law of reciprocity. Not only does everyone benefit individually, but such mutual benefitting has a way of bringing us all together, thus enhancing the whole, something Paul writes about often as of great value to God – and to us.
Paul states that the Corinthians’ current plenty will supply what those in Jerusalem so desperately need – and that in turn the Corinthians will benefit from the generosity of those in Jerusalem. The principle of reciprocity may not make for an entirely altruistic arrangement, but both Paul and modern secular social psychologists recognize it as wholesomely advantageous to the human race.
Not too long ago, my wife and I were selling our house and needed to borrow from our home equity to help us prepare the house for sale. We approached a local credit union to see if they would be willing to provide a loan. As we walked into the credit union, we didn’t know anyone working there and were assigned to a cubicle where someone could assist us.
As we talked through what we needed with the loan officer, I kept thinking he looked familiar. But I couldn’t place him – and the name plate on his desk had been skewed so I couldn’t see it. Finally, I blurted out, “You look really familiar.”
He replied, “And so do you.”
In short order, we put it all together. We had met a decade before. “Bob” had been an unaccompanied, houseless teenager – a kid trying to complete high school without the benefit of family or a place to live. Through his school, he connected with our Second Home program which places students in homes of volunteer host families. These host families provide a safe and comfortable place to live, healthy meals, and other resources, all with the goal of enabling the student to graduate from high school – at a 94% graduation rate, mind you.
Often, as in Bob’s case, the host family continues to provide a sense of family for the student years after graduation. A decade on and married with a little son, Bob was still taking his new family to that host family for holidays.
But now, the tables had turned. Whereas earlier a program I oversaw helped Bob find much needed security in life, Bob was now the generous loan officer helping Kim and me solve a financial problem.
The law of reciprocity. It works on a macro level as well. The French helped the English colonies during the American Revolution and gifted our nation with the Statue of Liberty. The U.S. returned the favor during the two world wars and in rebuilding after.
An even more significant example in the faith community comes to mind. For generations, churches in the U.S. have been providing generous support of time, funds, and personnel to build up churches and assist with material needs in other nations. More recently the church in the U.S. has been on the decline as secularization has taken root.
Look at church statistics and something startling comes to light. Certain churches – I’ll use two of the more outstanding examples – the Roman Catholic Church and the Assemblies of God – have gone against the decline trend and either leveled off or continued to grow, significantly even.
Drill down into those stats and what do you discover? The homegrown – basically white – population of churchgoers has continued to decline, even as total numbers have not.
What has made up the difference? Immigrants coming from countries that had been on the receiving end of that extensive missions effort. As this reverse flow of missions has hit the U.S., it has revitalized many churches, whole denominations even, helping leaven our nation’s secular society as well.
The law of reciprocity.
Paul writes a few verses later, “Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously.”[2] We really don’t have to worry about losing out by being generous.
But more importantly, we don’t give to receive; we give because God has given to us. As Paul quotes from Psalm 112:9, “He [God] has scattered abroad his gifts to the poor; his righteousness endures forever.” Scriptures add elsewhere, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights…”[3] No one pulls themselves up by their own bootstraps!
The Christian law of reciprocity is that we give because we have been given so much. Kind of like paying it forward.
Paul writes that while, “at the present time your plenty will supply what they need…in turn their plenty will supply what you need.” Yet I am not aware that the Jerusalem church ever repaid the Corinthian church in kind. Not long after, the city of Jerusalem was destroyed by Roman forces and the Jerusalem church scattered like seed to the winds.
How was the Jerusalem church going to reciprocate the Corinthian’s generosity?
Paul has in mind that reciprocity isn’t always straightforward. First, the Corinthians aren’t paying it forward to the Jerusalem church as much as repaying Jerusalem for sending them the gospel in the first place.
Second, Paul, thinking spiritually as well as tangibly again, understands reciprocity on a more cosmic scale. As Ralph Martin writes in his commentary, the Corinthians’ giving to Israel is a part of the process of God moving history to its appointed goal. And that goal benefits everyone, including the Corinthians.[4] Something cosmic is playing out in the universe.
We never really know how the good we do impacts others. As the writer of Ecclesiastes 11:1 expresses it, our good is like bread cast upon the waters that in time comes back to benefit us. Paul had another way of saying it in the first of his letters to the Corinthians where he writes that one sows and another waters. The point being, it is God who brings the harvest, as all benefit, regardless of what role we play.[5]
That is how the Kingdom of God works. We are all recipients of God’s abundant grace. As that grace flows through us, we benefit one another, including those for whom the gospel is yet to be received. Moreover, as we give generously, we continue to be blessed beyond measure.
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Public Domain photo: Γεώργιος Βέζας, Wikimedia Commons, Apollo Temple, Corinth
[1] Exodus 16; see especially verse 18.
[2] 9:6
[3] James 1:17
[4] Ralph W. Martin, 2 Corinthians, World Biblical Commentary, Volume 40 (Word Books, 1986), p. 268.
[5] 1 Corinthians 3:7-9