Archives by: Gary Hoag

“Riches are not evil, but they are dangerous. Happy are those who are not beguiled by them, for they are few…Riches corrupt everybody who is in the least corruptible. God is merciful and can deliver the rich from the danger of being rich. But many of us do not want to be delivered. We say we trust God. But we act as though our trust is in riches, as indeed it often is. Riches undermine faith…

Let me level with you. I have never found mammon easy to get away from. While I renounced my allegiance to him many years ago, he continually sends his emissaries to tempt me. My ears are often deafened by the noise of his propaganda while my eyes swim with the attractive pictures he paints. When it comes to the crunch I know which side I am on, and I try to make the right decisions, but I cannot say the decision is always painless. At times I have to opt for heavenly treasure in the teeth of my yearning to possess. But I am grateful that I experience increasing liberty when I chose Christ.”

John White (1924-2002) in The Golden Cow: Materialism in the Twentieth-Century Church (Downers Grove: IVP, 1979) 61, 63-64.

“Henri Nouwen often wrote about the comparison between the life of openhandedness, which leads to joyful, prayerful service, and the contrasting life of the tightly closed, clenched fists of self-centeredness, which lead to inner tension and the desire to cling to those things that foster greed and create fear. He relates the story of an old woman brought to a psychiatric center:

“She was wild, swinging at everything in sight, and scaring everyone so much that the doctors had to take everything away from her. But there was one small coin which she gripped in her fist and would not give up. In fact, it took two men to pry open that squeezed hand. It was as though she would lose her very self along with the coin. If they deprived her of that last possession, she would have nothing more, and be nothing more. That was her fear.”

Although more dramatic than we care to admit, this image also reflects many of our own lives. We are clinging to possessions, experiences, even people with such a strong-fisted grip that we fear ever releasing them, not knowing what will happen if we let them go. Nouwen reminds us that unless we open up our hands and release all that we are and all that we have, we will not experience the abundant life of Christ. Jesus gave all that he was and all that he had in order that we might be saved from the bondage of sin and self-absorption.

The antidote to a life of fearful clenched-fistedness is prayer. 

“To pray means to open your hands before God. It means slowly relaxing the tension which squeezes your hands together and accepting your existence with an increasing readiness, not as a possession to defend, but as a gift to receive. Above all, prayer is a way of life which allows you to find a stillness in the midst of a world where you open your hands to God’s promises, and find hope for yourself, your fellowman, and the whole community in which you live. In prayer, you encounter God in the soft breeze, in the distress and joy of your neighbor and in the loneliness of your own heart.”

Henri Nouwen in With Open Hands (Notre Dame: Ave Maria, 1982), 12, 154, as quoted by Stephen A. Macchia in Becoming a Healthy Disciple: 10 Traits of a Vital Christian (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004) 229.

“The healthy disciple realizes that every resource comes from the hand of God and is to be used generously for kingdom priorities and purposes.

Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. John 12:24

All that we have is God’s, for it’s from his hand that we receive all our many gifts. In releasing our resources for the purpose of stewarding generously a life of abundance, we let the kernels of our resources fall to the ground and be left there to die. Then, as we release them, they take root and multiply themselves through the seedlings of new life, brought forth by our obedience to let them go. Then the harvest comes that only God through his grace can reap! This is how our life of abundance is multiplied in the hearts of others, founded on the example of Christ.”

Stephen A. Macchia in Becoming a Healthy Disciple: 10 Traits of a Vital Christian (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004) 217, 219.

Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful. 1 Corinthians 4:2

“A steward is responsible to be faithful to that for which he is accountable. We are not accountable for the set of responsibilities we wish we had, but the set of responsibilities we do have.”

Patrick Morley in The NIV Stewardship Study Bible illumination quote tied to 1 Corinthians 4:2.

The man with the two talents also came. “Master,” he said, “you entrusted me with two talents; see, I have gained two more.” His master replied, “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness.” Matthew 25:22-23

“The good steward is one who is faithful in “all” matters–including the little things and those things he does not like.”

Stanley Stuber in The NIV Stewardship Study Bible illumination quote tied to Matthew 25:22-23.

Tolstoy in “How Much Land Does a Man Need?” writes about a man, Pakhom, who farms the land given to him by his father. He wants more, so he saves and sacrifices until he expands his acreage, and even this is not enough. He hears about another region where more land can be bought with less money, so he sells his farm and moves his family across the country to the larger spread. Still, he is dissatisfied.

Finally, he hears about a place where the king is offering an extraordinary deal. If you give the king all your money, you may take possession of all the land you can personally encompass by walking around it in a single day. Pakhom imagines how far he could walk in a day, and all the land he could own. He sells all his property and pays the king in exchange for his chance to walk the perimeters of the land that will be his.

A stake is hammered into the ground before sunrise. Pakhom must return to the stake before sunset, and all the land that he circles before that time will be his. As the day dawns, he runs at full speed in order to cover as much territory as possible. As the day heats up, he slows down and begins to circle back, but he sees lush pastures that he must possess, so he extends his path to include them.

As the sun moves lower, he realizes that he has miscalculated, and he fears that he may not return to his starting place in time. He runs harder to reach the stake before sunset, pushing himself beyond exhaustion. He comes within view of his destination with only minutes to go. Pushing dangerously beyond his body’s capacity to continue, he collapses and dies within reach of the stake.

How much land does a person need? Tolstoy ends his short story by saying that “six feet from head to heel” was all he needed. Why are we discontent with what we have?

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) How Much Land Does a Man Need? short story retold by Robert Schnase in Practicing Extravagant Generosity (Nashville: Abingdon, 2011) 55-66.

No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money. Matthew 6:24

The word mammon is well attested in Jewish literature, with the meaning, “money, profit, wealth.” As used by the Jews it had no negative connotations, which makes the contrast in the present passage even more striking. Jesus’ words are concerned with property in general, not with possessions obtained by evil means…

“Money” is here personified as a power which enslaves the world…

For some, the main problem is how to speak of serving money, since men can only serve a person or God. Possible solutions are to say, “You cannot love and be devoted to both God and money” or “You cannot give your service to God and to gaining money at the same time.”

Barclay M. Newman and Philip C. Stine in A Handbook on the Gospel of Matthew (New York: UBS, 1988) 184.

Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. 2 Corinthians 9:7

“This study finds that people do not give to the most urgent needs, but rather they support causes that mean something to them…

Yet the methods used to encourage donations tend to assume that philanthropy depends on objective assessments of need rather than on [givers’] enthusiasms.

The tendency to overestimate the extent to which people act as rational agents results in fundraising literature that often focuses on the dimensions and urgency of the problem for which funding is sought.

The assumption underlying this approach is that donations are distributed in relation to evidence of neediness, when in fact much giving could be described as ‘taste‐based’ rather than ‘needs‐based’.”

Beth Breeze recently did a 2010 research study How Donors Choose Charities: Findings of a Study of Donor Perceptions of the Nature and Distribution of Charitable Benefit sponsored by the Centre for Charitable Giving and Philanthropy at the University of Kent, UK (2011) 9-10.

“Giving helps us become what God wants us to be. Giving is not merely about the church’s need for money but about the Christian’s need to grow in generosity. Generosity is a fruit of the Spirit, a sign of our spiritual growth. God uses our giving to change the world for God’s purposes, and God uses our giving to reconfigure our interior lives and to change us.”

…The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control… Galatians 5:22-23

Robert Schnase in Practicing Extravagant Generosity (Nashville: Abingdon, 2011) 7.

“The message of the Parable of the Talents is concerned not with how much we have at the outset, nor with how much we have to show at the end, but with how well we use whatever we have been given.” (Cf. Matthew 25:14-30).

John R. Bodo in Journal of Stewardship: Preaching Stewardship. Edited by Elizabeth Muir, Vincent Alfano (Indianapolis: ECSS, 1995) 45.