January 19, 2025
What Generosity Does to You
Proverbs 11:24-28, Luke 19:1-10
Rev. David German
Would that it were so simple as Proverbs makes it sound. There is deep wisdom in what David just read… but experience tells us that things are not always as straightforward when it comes to generosity and righteousness and blessing.
We’re in the midst of our stewardship season, planned for October and shifted to these first weeks of the year, and the sermon series is called Pathways to Generosity.
In addition to the sermons and faith formation classes, you’ll be receiving some mailings from the church, you’re receiving daily devotionals, sent from the church office to your email on Sunday afternoons, and you’ve heard and you’ll hear more Moments for Mission.
It’s a lot. But there’s a reason we think this is important enough to spend all this time and energy on the topic of giving and generosity and stewardship, and today this well-known passage from Luke 19 will help us explore that reason.
In Luke’s narrative, Jesus has set his face toward Jerusalem – that’s where he’s headed. Along the way, he’s healing people, eating with sinners and tax collectors, and telling lots of stories about God’s grace and about wealth and inclusion.
Listen for God’s Word.
“He entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax-collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, ‘Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.’ So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. All who saw it began to grumble and said, ‘He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.’ Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, ‘Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.’ Then Jesus said to him, ‘Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.’”
The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
This is one of the great Jesus stories that has such memorable details, and what feels like a fairly straightforward meaning. And I’m not going to say anything to challenge or radically reorient the obvious reading of the text, though as many of you know, I kinda like doing that. What I want to do is just sort of go through it, slow it down, so that we might deepen our appreciation for this incredible interaction, and see what it has to say to, and call forth in, us.
Here we go.
Jesus comes into Jericho, where a man named Zacchaeus lives.
He’s a tax collector. We have these; we know what those are.
IRS employees probably don’t introduce themselves that way at parties. If all the jobs in the world had a popularity contest… that line of work certainly wouldn’t win. But in first century Judea, it was far worse.
These people were thought of as sell-outs, traitors, informants. Think of someone whose job would make it nearly impossible for you to respect them. Imagine someone tells you what they do, and any desire you might have had to get to know them instantly vanishes. Think for a moment about a job someone has that would lead to that response.
Some of you might imagine a regional director for a political campaign for the presidential candidate you can’t stand. Some maybe a slum lord – a real estate tycoon who owns and rents dilapidated buildings in terrible neighborhoods and all they care about is collecting rent. You might imagine a price-gouging insurance company executive. You maybe thought of the owner of several payday lending stores, preying on poor and desperate by making them more of both. You may have thought of something else.
That’s a tax collector in 1st century Judea. Roman rulers recruited Hebrews willing to collect money from their fellow Jews, for the Roman government, who would encourage the tax collectors to feel free to take a little extra, for themselves.
Zacchaeus isn’t just a tax collector, he’s the chief tax collector.
So the temptation might be to say, well maybe he was one of the good ones, who really defied the stereotypes and thought he could change the system from the inside… no. This isn’t Finn the stormtrooper in The Force Awakens (have you all seen this? It’s one of the great Star Wars movies, definitely worth watching)… Finn is part of this evil empire against his will, clocking in and clocking out and doing all he can to resist and escape it. No, Zacchaeus, as chief tax collector, is more like General Hux, the slimy status-climber. You can’t separate his life and existence from the unjust, corrupt, oppressive system he benefits from. When someone has a lofty position in a system like that… we know something about them. You can’t be privately righteous and publicly shady.
Not only is Zacchaeus a chief tax collector… he’s also short. And this is before the rebranding of people like us – me and Zacchaeus and Tom Cruise – over the last several years, as “short kings.”
(Do you know this term? It’s so great. Seriously. It basically describes someone whose self-image and self-worth and self-confidence is not defined by their lack of height.)
But back then, we were just little guys, and that detail figures into the story, because Zacchaeus needed to climb the tree… but it’s also likely that this is included because his height was so remarkable and probably played significantly into who Zacchaeus was. He might have suffered from what we call the Napoleon complex, trying to compensate for his literal shortcomings by making himself big and powerful in other ways. And that doesn’t always work out well. As one commentator put it, “he’s spent his life looking down on the crowd, and now he can’t see over them”1.
But he’s not just the short, chief tax collector; he’s also rich.
That probably goes without saying, for a chief tax collector, but Luke says it. And what saying it, or writing it, does, is emphasize something that I think is relevant for Zacchaeus.
As a Hebrew, he would have known the text that David read, or at least been familiar with the message found in Proverbs and elsewhere throughout the Scriptures, summarized in this way by a seminary professor, Bruce Waltke, who says that Scripture continuously affirms that “‘the righteous are willing to disadvantage themselves to advantage the community; the wicked are willing to disadvantage the community to advantage themselves.’ The righteous say, ‘much of what I have belongs to the people around me, because it all comes from God, who wants me to love my neighbor.’ The wicked say ‘I can do what I want with my things.’”2
Zacchaeus had surely heard much about Jesus, who’d gained a reputation, as Luke reports, for someone who eats with sinners and tax collectors, often. On that front, Zacchaeus may have rightly thought: “I’m about the least lovable, least respected person in my community… but what if the stories are true, and that this is a man I can trust to not dismiss me because of what I do, or even for the bad things I’ve done?”
But he also would have been right to think: “And I’ve heard he talks about money and wealth a lot. ‘It’s harder for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle,’ he said. ‘Sell your possessions and give the money to the poor,’ he told that other rich guy. ‘You cannot serve God and wealth.’”
He would have been right to wonder: “Does my wealth make me unrighteous and irredeemable, even in the eyes of this person who seems so radically different, and grace-filled, and able to see the best in the people who others see simply as the worst. People like me?”
And so Zacchaeus likely measured those competing thoughts and wonderings, and took a chance. And he humbled himself, by climbing a tree, something no self-respecting 1st century Judean man would do in public… because I imagine he thought: “It’s worth the risk. This man seems to see worth in every person he encounters. I need to know if that can be true, even of me.”`
The surprise of the story, certainly to Zacchaeus, though maybe not the reader of Luke, by chapter 19… is that Jesus does see him. He truly sees him, calls him by name, invites himself over to his house for dinner – to the joyful welcome of Zacchaeus and the grumbling of the religious insiders, just as they grumbled when Jesus told his earlier stories about the lost being found: a lost coin, lost sheep, lost son – and then… Zacchaeus does what a true encounter with Jesus inevitably calls forth: he radically changes his life so that it’s aligned with the holiness of this divine man.
He promised to go far above what the law would require of him, giving away half his possessions to the poor, and repaying anyone he’s wronged, four times over.
There are cynical readings of the text, that you may be familiar with: that Zacchaeus was disingenuous; that he was just caught up in the moment; that he was relying on cheap grace, after a lifetime of wronging others.
But enough with cynicism. You know what Jesus doesn’t say? He doesn’t say: “IF you defrauded anyone, Zacchaeus?!” (Because surely he had). He doesn’t say: “You really think you can buy God’s forgiveness that easily, do you?” He says: “Here is a child of God, a child of Abraham, a child of blessing, for whom the kingdom is open.”
I want to invite you to think about Zacchaeus today, and this week, and the next several weeks, as you hear the word generosity, and think about what generosity might look like in your life. I don’t mean to suggest you need to give away half of what you have, or give the church four times what you did last year, or anything like that.
I mean: look at and meditate on what is at the heart of Zacchaeus’ response and his changed life.
Generosity isn’t just about giving away a particular amount, or larger and larger sums of money, though some might feel called to that. We all know that there are some folks living today who have this kind of unimaginable, absurd wealth, where they could literally give hundreds of millions of dollars away, and it wouldn’t affect their lifestyles at all. And we know that if they suddenly did this, ‘generosity’ wouldn’t necessarily be the right word to describe it.
Generosity is less about willingness to part with a certain amount of money or stuff, and more about willingness to part with our ability to and desire for control.
It’s less about choosing to give a particular amount, and more about letting go of the power to make every choice.
Generosity is a virtue, but there’s another virtue that is always behind generosity: humility. Generosity can’t exist without humility. In fact we could call it a tag-along virtue, with humility.
Without humility, giving money can be just a different expression of managed, controlled greed. We can’t be generous and proud.
I want to read this quote, from late author and pastor Tim Keller, (who I don’t agree with about everything, but that’s true for every person in this room, about every other person in this room, so we’ll be alright)… Keller wrote this:
“Some years ago I was doing a seven-part series of talks on the Seven Deadly Sins at a men’s breakfast. My wife, Kathy, told me, ‘I’ll bet that the week you deal with greed you will have your lowest attendance.’
She was right. People packed it out for ‘Lust’ and ‘Wrath’ and even for ‘Pride.’ But nobody thinks they are greedy. As a pastor I’ve had people come to me to confess that they struggle with almost every kind of sin. Almost. I cannot recall anyone ever coming to me and saying, ‘I spend too much money on myself. I think my greed is harming my family, my soul, and people around me.’ Greed hides itself from the victim.”2
Greed hides itself from the victim.
That’s worth pondering over a long sit with a strong pot of tea.
But I don’t want to close the sermon with the suggestion that deep down we might all be closet victims of our own greed.
(That IS what I’m suggesting… I just don’t want to end there).
So let me end, instead, with one more example, one more person you might think about, along with Zacchaeus, when you think about generosity, especially when it comes to stewardship, and financial giving to the church.
In a previous congregation, we had a semi-annual newcomer retreat, and we’d invite long term members to come share about various aspects of the life of the church. We’d always invite the same member to come talk to the group about stewardship, after he did it once and we realized it couldn’t be improved upon. We’ll call this man Barry… because that’s his name.
Barry is an older, single man, who, when I was at this church, had been there a couple decades. Barry would share vulnerably and openly about the specifics of his giving – his history and pathway to generosity (almost identical to the path that Donna will describe in her Moment for Mission today). He was an extravagant giver. But his sharing didn’t come across as showy or proud, because he would always say something like this:
“We’re often told we should give, out of gratitude, proportionally, sacrificially, of our first fruits… all good reasons. For me, giving is less about obligation, and more about love.
We give to our family because we love them and feel loved by them. I feel that way about my church family. I love the people in this church for who they are, AND for what they do, individually and collectively, as a community.
I derive more satisfaction, joy, and fulfillment from what I give to the church, and seeing what the church does with that money – from mission trips and youth retreats to congregational dinners, from support to local nonprofits that live out our values to keeping the lights on and paying our staff well – I get more joy and fulfillment from all of that and from watching the church seek to faithfully make those decisions, than I would if I’d simply spent the money on myself or gave it to my favorite groups.”
That’s humility.
Bringing along with it its tag-along virtue: true generosity.
That’s non-cynical, non-controlling open-hearted, open-handed love.
That’s what generosity does – it keeps us humble; it expands our love.
And that’s why this topic deserves so much of our attention.
It’s a perfect gauge for you, for me, in our lives, as we ask the question: God, am I serving you faithfully? As we ask it genuinely, may we listen intently and humbly, confident that the answer, whatever it is, will come from the one who sees us where we are, as we are, who loves us enough to draw near to us, and spend time with us, who wants to be seen with us. Children of Abraham, this God is seeking us out. May salvation today, come to this house. Amen.
1 Edwards, James R. The Gospel According to Luke. The Pillars New Testament Commentary. Eerdmans, 2015.
2 Keller, Timothy. Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters.
Penguin Books, 2011.