Barns

Barns

Barns
a sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey

DOWNLOAD A LIVE RECORDING

Audio from worship at the 11 AM Worship Service July 10, 2022
at Valley Presbyterian Church, Bishop,CA

edited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions all errors are mine.

 Luke 12:13-21 

 

Sermons also available free on iTunes

If greed is your politics, this is a political sermon. I hope it’s not a political sermon, and that greed is not your politics. Because you may think from the beginning that the sermon is about or the scripture’s about Jesus said I’m not going to be a divider or an arbitrator. I’m not going to be your financial counselor or your family intervention specialist. I’m not, just like with Martha and Mary the last time I preached about telling the other sibling to do what I want, well, I’m not going to tell you and your brother how to get along with money. But later on Jesus says to everybody, he really knew what that was about. It wasn’t about fairness or judicial process or financial planning or any of that stuff. It was about greed. And he tells the story about a man with the land that produces very well, and what does he do about it.

Now, some people will hide their greed, not so much in dividing their inheritance among their brothers, but they will say this. Have you ever heard this? Have you said it? Don’t raise your hand if you did because it’s a bad thing. If you said “The church needs to run like a business.” You ever hear that? “We have to run the church like a business.” Or “We have to run the country like a business.” That is usually a cover-up for greed. Because what is the business, then, if you say the church, or the country, or the nonprofit, or the family has to run like a business? Who’s the customer? What’s the product? Who do you serve? Well, yeah, if you’re running a government like a business, well, then you have the product of governmental services and graft and corruption and all that. And you give it to the highest bidder, the one who will pay you the most, and the rest of you forget about it. You know, hey, if you want some government services, how about giving some money? You know, this is a business. I’m not in it for my health.

The same thing with the church. Running a church like a business, that usually means I’ve given a lot of money to this church, and I’m not getting a lot back. You’ve got to run like a business, you know, take care of your paying customers. That’s not with the church is about. The church is one of the only institutions that exist primarily for those outside the institution. And that’s not very business-y.

12 Step has this tradition, as well. 12 Step’s tradition, you probably wonder in a 12 Step group, any of the recovery groups, you may say to yourself, hey, what’s a recovery group for? Well, it’s for those folks that go, those poor folks that go to the recovery group to recover. That’s their purpose, their meaning, and their mission. I mean, they’re the paying customers; right? No. It says right in every recovery group the tradition is that their number one purpose is for those that are still suffering. That’s not very business-y. It’s for the other people, not the customers.

It’s not so much the problem with money or with riches. You say, oh, well, he’s just all against the riches. He’s all about terrible awful things. But no, it’s not about that. It’s about who does that serve? Who is it for? The little zing right at the end, you know, man, those things you have prepared, who will they be for? You know, that is a good question to ask before you die. All these things that I have prepared, who are they for? Who is my life for? Who are my riches for? What am I here for?

Warren Buffett, who we talk about, has a philosophy. He’s one of the world’s, I don’t know what number he is, he’s like eighth or something. He’s getting up to $100 billion. He says his money is not his. And he tells other billionaires and millionaires, the money is not theirs, it’s just entrusted to us while we’re here. He knows, and he thinks about the next generations, about what’s going on with the money.

And running things like a business doesn’t work for the government. The government does things that no one wants to do, that no one can find a profit in, that no one can find enough people to do it. And there’s all sorts of things that only the government could do. The interstate highway system is an absolute loser in terms of building projects and things. To have an interstate highway system that goes from coast to coast, up and down, north and south, maintained, is a government job no nonprofit business would ever take on because there’s no money in it. You can’t have enough tolls to keep backing the money. They keep trying to do that, and they keep failing. But, you know, once we got the interstate highway system, boy, trucking really took off. Shipping really turned out. Amazon would not be possible without the interstate highway system. And the government does that.

Ever heard of the Internet? Nobody wanted to do the Internet. It was ridiculous. Nobody wanted to do that. There was no money in there. I remember in 1990 they were saying, what’s the good of the Internet? Who’s going to look at this stuff? But the government saw something in it and put it in there. AT&T wouldn’t do it. There wasn’t any money in it. They had plenty of money in the telephone and in their leased lines. They’ve got plenty of money. And they had no interest in getting the Internet to everybody. Who wants that? There’s no money there.

The government did it, called Arpanet, and set it up and made the protocols and promoted it and did that. When I started using the Internet, imagine if you will how old I am. When I started using the Internet, you were not allowed to talk about money. You were not allowed to talk about products. You were not allowed to talk about prices or anything. It was like community radio. You couldn’t make money on the Internet because it belonged to the government.

ATTENDEE: So un-American.

REV. RAMSEY: I know. But then the government says, okay, we got it going. You see how great it is? We got it done. Go for it. And gave it over to private industry. But the private industry, the government as a business would not have done that because it was a big money loser to make it. Ever heard of Hoover Dam? Nobody wanted to do that project. Way too much money. The government did it and electrified the nation along with other projects. Rural electrification, no one wants to run electric line to little towns and little farms and everywhere. The government, in rural electrification and co-ops, they made electricity go out through the entire country.

The same thing we’re trying to do with telecommunications today, to go out through the entire country. There’s no money in it. There’s no profit in it. Who’s the customer? They can’t pay. If all the government had to do – Obama said this and got into so much trouble because he didn’t know what he was doing. Obama says, if I just had to make widgets or an app, that would be easy because I would just have to worry about satisfying my customer about whether they would buy the app or not. But when I make a widget or an app, I’m in the government, I have to worry about everybody. I have to worry about the poor people who can’t afford the widget and the app. What are they going to do? I have to worry about unintended consequences about the environment, about our society, about economics, about the next generations. I have to worry about a lot more than selling the widget at the store.

And I just can’t go bankrupt and walk away. It’s a lot harder to be good government than it is to be business because it’s not all about greed. It’s about asking the question, who is this for? Is it for the paying customers? The one that has the money? Or is it for everyone, for the next generation, for the greater good, for the culture, for all that. Look at what he said in that scripture. Back to scripture. I knew you never thought I’d get there. But look at all the scriptures he said, “What am I going to do?” How many times does he say “I” and “my”? What am I going to do? What am I going to do with all this? What am I going to do? Say to myself – he even talks to himself. He talks.

The only other person he talks to is himself. He says to Saul – now, I don’t know about economics and farming business back in Jesus’ time. But I’m thinking there’s a couple people working that land. I’m thinking maybe one or two. I’m thinking there were some people selling the stuff. I’m thinking there were some people keeping track of the ledgers and all that. I’m thinking there were some people driving the wagons to market. I’m thinking there’s a lot of people. How about those people? How about the people that built the barns, or tore them down and built bigger ones? What about them? What did they do? He didn’t say anything about them. You know, you fool. The things you have prepared, who would they come from us?

Now, if your politics are about greed, you’re going to say this is a politician story. But I want to tell you that the idea of what do we do with our wealth is very biblical. About person-wise and with society. What do we do with our wealth? Do we build bigger and bigger barns so that less and less people can have more and more? There’s all sorts of statistics. But the one I like is pretty close. It would be nice if it was exact. But it’s really close to 50% of the world’s wealth, 50% of the world’s wealth. You got a barn. 50% of the barn go to 1% of the people. All right? 50% of the world’s wealth goes to 1% of the people. Well, they earned it. Or I don’t know, whatever you want to say. But I don’t know. Is that the way we want it? Is that the way we want to do that?

Wonder how the other side, there’s another 51%. Did you know that? 1% of the world’s wealth. 1% of the world’s wealth. Remember that 1% of the people had 50% of the wealth. If you look at the other end, the 1% of the wealth pretty much goes to 50% of the world. So 50% of the world’s population is dividing up 1% of the wealth. while 1% of the people is putting in a big barn of 50%. Is that the way we want it? Is that the way Jesus wants it? Is that showing that we’re not into greed, that we’re thinking about that?

There’s a wonderful quote. And remember why did that guy build bigger barns? It was for security. Wasn’t it? He says, “What am I to do?” And he says at the end, goes “Whoa, I’m set now. I can eat, drink, and be merry. I’ve got all I want. That’s my security.” And what he feared was the loss of security.

But let’s take a look at the video. 

 Stored Locally: extrachristy.com/storage/video/Wealth_Inequality_in_America.mp4

There’s a chart I saw recently that I can’t get out of my head. A Harvard business professor and economist asked more than 5,000 Americans how they thought wealth was distributed within the United States. This is what they said they thought it was. Dividing the country into five rough groups at the top, bottom, and middle three 20% groups, they asked people how they thought the wealth in this country was divided.

Then he asked them what they thought was the ideal distribution. And 92%, that’s at least nine out of 10 of them, said it should be more like this. In other words, more equitable than they think it is. Now, that fact is telling, admittedly, the notion that most Americans know that the system is already skewed unfairly. But what’s most interesting to me is the reality compared to our perception. The ideal is as far removed from our perception of reality as the actual distribution is from what we think exists in this country. So ignore the ideal for a moment. Here’s what we think it is again.

And here is the actual distribution. Shockingly skewed. Not only do the bottom 20% and the next 20%, the bottom 40% of Americans barely have any of the wealth. I mean, it’s hard to even see them on the chart. But the top 1% has more of the country’s wealth than nine out of 10 Americans believe the entire top 20% should have. Mind-blowing.

But let’s look at it another way because I found this chart kind of difficult to wrap my head around. Instead, let’s reduce the 311 million Americans to just a representative 100 people. Make it simple. Here they are. Teachers, coaches, firefighters, construction workers, engineers, doctors, lawyers, some investment bankers, a CEO, maybe a celebrity. Now let’s line them up according to their wealth, poorest people on the left, wealthiest on the right, just a steady row of folks, based on their net worth. We’ll color code them like we did before, based on which 20% quintile they fall into. Now, let’s reduce the total wealth of the United States, which was roughly $54 trillion in 2009, to this symbolic pile of cash. And let’s distribute it among our 100 Americans. Well, here’s socialism, all the wealth of the country distributed equally.

We all know that won’t work. We need to encourage people to work, and work hard to achieve that good old American dream, keep our country moving forward. So here’s that ideal we asked everyone about. Something like this curve. This isn’t too bad. We’ve got some incentive, as the wealthiest folks are now about 10 to 20 times better off than the poorest Americans. But hey, even the poor folks aren’t actually poor since the poverty line stayed almost entirely off the chart. We have a super healthy middle-class with a smooth transition into wealth. And yes, Republicans and Democrats alike chose this curve. Nine out of 10 people, 90%, said this was a nice ideal distribution of America’s wealth.

But let’s move on. This is what people think America’s wealth distribution actually looks like. Not as equitable, clearly. But for me, even this still looks pretty great. Yes, the poorest 20 to 30% are starting to suffer quite a lot compared to the ideal. And the middle-class is certainly struggling more than they were, while the rich and wealthy are making roughly 100 times that of the poorest Americans and about 10 times that of the still-healthy middle-class.

Sadly, this isn’t even close to the reality. Here is the actual distribution of wealth in America. The poorest Americans don’t even register. They’re down to pocket change. And the middle-class is barely distinguishable from the poor. In fact, even the rich, between the top 10 and 20 percentile are worse off. Only the top 10% are better off. And how much better off? So much better off that the top 2 to 5% are actually off the chart at this scale. And the top 1%, this guy, well, his stack of money stretches 10 times higher than we can show. Here’s his stack of cash restacked, all by itself. This is the top 1% we’ve been hearing so much about. So much green in his pockets that I have to give him a whole new column of his own because he won’t fit on my chart.

1% of America has 40% of all the nation’s wealth. The bottom 80%, eight out of every 10 people, or 80 out of these hundred, only has 7% between them. This has only gotten worse in the last 20 to 30 years. While the richest 1% take home almost a quarter of the national income today, in 1976, they took home only 9%. Meaning their share of income has nearly tripled in the last 30 years. The top 1% own half the country’s stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. The bottom 50% of Americans own only 0.5% of these investments. Which means they aren’t investing. They’re just scraping by.

I’m sure many of these wealthy people have worked very hard for their money. But do you really believe that the CEO is working 380 times harder than his average employee? Not his lowest paid employee. Not the janitor. But the average earner in his company. The average worker needs to work more than a month to earn what the CEO makes in one hour.

We certainly don’t have to go all the way to socialism to find something that is fair for hard-working Americans. We don’t even have to achieve what most of us consider might be ideal. All we need to do is wake up and realize that the reality in this country is not at all what we think it is.

All right. That was, like, 10 years ago. And it’s worse now, if you can imagine. Now, is that political? Well, if your politics is greed, yeah. Yeah, it’s political. So what are we going to do? Remember that our guy in the scripture was about security, and worried about security, and he built bigger barns for security and said, “Eat, drink, and be merry.” I used to, when I was more annoying than I am now, I know it’s hard to imagine, but I used to go around and say, you know, “Eat, drink, and be merry” is in the Bible. It’s right there in the Bible. I’d tell everybody that, and they go, oh, yeah, really? I go, yeah. The next verse it says, “And then God said ‘You fool.’” Right after. So you’ve got to kind of read more than one verse in the Bible. That’d be good.

All right. But Ernst Bloch says this. In fact, he’s back early in the 1900s. “The most tragic form of loss isn’t the loss of security. It’s the loss of the capability, capacity to imagine that things could be different.” The most tragic form of loss is not what that guy felt in the story of Jesus, that loss of security. It’s a loss of the capability, the capacity to imagine that things could be different. Do we have that? Are we tragic, more tragic than the person in our story that had everything and then died the next day. We could even be more – it’s not Bible, but I think that’s true. We can imagine things.

How could things be different? Well, on an individual level, certainly, we can spread the wealth around. We can do things that are not concentrated. Maybe, just maybe, oh, my gosh, it’s so easy to order from Amazon, but maybe we don’t want Jeff Bezos to have traveling to Mars money when other people don’t have traveling to the grocery store money. Maybe we don’t want to buy everything on Amazon. Maybe. Maybe could do other things, too, about choosing where we spend our money, choosing who.

Maybe we tip more. You know? Tip used to be To Insure Promptitude. Did you know that’s what it stood for? To Insure Promptitude. I think that was a reverse engineer. I don’t think it started that. And it came out, well, it came out with Prohibition, and the bars quit selling drinks, and they figured out they weren’t making money, so they cut the wages of the workers, and the workers didn’t have any money, so they had to say everybody throw some money to the worker because we’re not paying them anymore.

But now I think tips are To Insure Poverty. Because if you’re working for tips, you’re going to be in poverty. So we were at a conference. All the big, big thinkers of the Presbyterian Church had a conference for training. And, you know, we were at a conference center, and they said, “Shall we leave something for the housekeeping staff when we check out?” And the person says, “Well, you know, the tip is included in your registration fee. And we do put on a gratuity. But I want to tell you, none of these people are making too much money. So if you want to leave something, go ahead.” Maybe you want to do that.

But how about some more specific examples, Christy? Well, there’s Warren Buffett. Have you heard of Warren Buffett? I talked about him earlier. That man is, even though he’s having so much trouble giving away his money, you know how much money Warren Buffett has given away in his lifetime? What do you think? What would be a lot of money to give away, if you were really rich? What do you think? How much?

ATTENDEE: One million.

REV. RAMSEY: One million. Do we have any – it’s higher. Anybody?

ATTENDEE: 10 million.

REV. RAMSEY: 10 million. Higher still.

ATTENDEE: 50 million.

REV. RAMSEY: 50 million. That’d be a lot.

ATTENDEE: Billion.

REV. RAMSEY: Million, yeah. He’s given 42 billion with a “b” dollars away in his lifetime. The man still has almost 100 million, can’t stop making money, poor guy. In fact, Warren Buffett has so much money that he’s hired Bill Gates, who’s a billionaire on his own, to spend his money. He actually gives money to Bill Gates, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to go ahead and spend it for him on things like Third World health and all that.

In fact, Warren Buffett is behind something called the Giving Pledge. And what that is, he invites millionaires and billionaires to pledge, it’s not a legal contract or anything like that, but they have a letter, and it’s all public and all that, you can look it up, GivingPledge.org. And these people pledge to give away half of their fortune during their lifetime or when they die. At least half. He’s getting a handful of billionaires and millionaires to sign up, you can look it up on the website, and they have a little letter about what they’re doing and how they’re giving away their money. So maybe…

But Christy, you say. We’re not billionaires. We’re not millionaires. We’re barely scraping by. Come on. What else can we do? Well, there’s a guy and his wife in Akron, Ohio – Akron, Ohio, where they shoot black people with 60 bullets if they run away from the police, my hometown – Duane and Lisa. Duane and Lisa just had a heart for ministry and decided they needed to do something for race relations and poor relations. And so they took their family of four – hello – and bought a house in the poorest, awful-est, most neglected neighborhood in Akron, Summit Lake. Summit Lake, during the 2008 when everything fell apart, money and all that, you could buy a house in Summit Lake for one dollar. They had one dollar houses at Summit Lake because no one wanted to live at Summit Lake. One dollar.

Well, I don’t know what he paid, but he got a pretty good deal. But that was later on. It was early, around 1998. He moved his family there and started working in the community. He started out with the bike shop and brought the neighborhood kids in, got some donated bikes, and says, hey, you work enough hours on fixing these bikes and learn how to use the bikes and being a good person, you can take the bike home with you. And he’s still doing this now, 25 years later.

But also it’s moved into, it’s higher, what they call reentry ministry, in that they take the people, and in fact they’ve got a little building, it’s called The Front Porch. It’s a café. It’s a coffee shop. It’s a rehabilitation center. It’s within walking distance of the jail. And a lot of folks come right out of the jail, they don’t have a job, they don’t have prospects, they don’t have anything, and go to The Front Porch. And The Front Porch finds them a job, gives them a job, puts them to work, does something. They have a recovery meeting on Sunday.

And that is his retirement. I mean, that’s what Duane and Lisa did with their money. They made The Front Porch. And they got the foundation, they got employees, and they’ve got things, they got the 501(c)(3) in about 10 years. But they started out the ministry, and they moved to the worst neighborhood in Akron. And, oh, they’re a couple good white people. And lived there, and gained the trust of the community, and worked with community, and bought a ministry. That’s a barn heat bill.

What about something a little closer to home? We’re not all from Akron, Ohio, Christy. Although everybody could be, should be, and it’s a sad thing you are not. But we have Carson City. 10 years. I’m in my 10th year at Computer Corps. Computer Corps is run by Ron Norton. Ron Norton is an amazing guy with great talents, former Army drill instructor, among other things. So he’s got a little of that sprinkled in there. And what he did when it was time for him to retire, he took his retirement, and he, if you will, founded Computer Corps. He got donations, and he got a house, and he started making computers available to senior citizens. Because back then seniors didn’t know about the mouse and graphics and back there 25 years ago. He started out with that.

He started refurbishing computers. He started saying, hey, give me your old computers. He got old computers, taught people how to refurbish them, and then sell them at a cheap rate to people that don’t have computers. Twenty-five years later, he’s got four different locations. He’s got over 1,000 computers a month coming in. They’re refurbished, and they’re sent out, and they’re sold, and people are rehabilitated. People, again, are coming out, even before, instead of jail, they get to go to community service at Computer Corps. He feeds them six hot meals a week, daily lunches. Has a food pantry runs there, rehabilitation things.

And I said, “Ron,” you know, the man’s getting old. I mean, I’m old. He, yeah, really there. And I said, “Ron, you know, what are you going to do? And how long are you going to do this?” You know, he’s there, six, seven days a week because on Sundays he’s up there rolling supplies in. I said, “Ron, Ron, what are you going to do?” And he goes, “Well, this is my retirement. I took all my retirement money, and that’s what you see around here. I got nowhere to go. This is what I’m retired from. This is what I’ve got to do.” He lives at the original house, along with other people in various modes of employee, volunteer, rehabilitation. And that’s how he built his barn, and how he invests, and how he answered the question: When you’re gone, whose would this be?

Maybe that’s all you need to do, you know, to overcome our propensity to greed and security and material things is to ask yourself, all these things I have prepared, if my life was gone today, whose would they be? What have I done for others? How am I rich toward God, as the commentators that wrote the Bible put in at the end. Those are good questions. Then you get yourself in the place where God calls you a fool. Never, never a good thing.

So what can you do? You can refinance. You can say I’m not like the billionaires and the millionaires. Anybody can do this. I mean, right now I’m in Valley Bishop, and I don’t want to say I’m a saint or nothing. I’m not. In fact, this is what I do because I’m not a saint. I’m here in Valley Bishop, and my church home is an Episcopal Church in Carson City, and I’m rarely there. In fact, it’s getting so they have to pay me to be there. They have to hire me for a Sunday. And I go, well, I got that Sunday, great. But every Sunday my tithe is there, my contribution is there.

And you can think about that. One of the cures, if you will, treatments for greed is to start percentage giving. It doesn’t have to be 10%. Doesn’t have to be a tithe. I haven’t done the math yet. I really need to do that. But if you can commit yourself to a certain percentage of your income going to other people, the church is fine, nonprofits, whatever, any of that would help your greed and your barn building. Just by thinking about percentage giving to something that will go on beyond you. You can reinvest. And like Warren Buffett says, and he should know, he’s got more money than most of us, than about everybody but seven people in the world, you could say, “This isn’t my money. I’m just holding on to it while I’m here.” And move it to other people. So you can set up automatic giving. You’ve got to watch out. There’s some dangers in that and some things.

And also, if you notice, that was in Episcopal Church, and I’m a little embarrassed because I am giving money to the Episcopal Church when I’m Presbyterian. So I also give money to the Presbyterian Church PC(USA) Mission. I have a missionary I support. And that’s not because I’m wonderful. It’s because I’m horrible. If I didn’t set that up automatically, I wouldn’t do it. And I didn’t do it. And I would go to the Episcopal Church, and I would look at Betty Lynn, I’d go, we haven’t been there in two months, and we owe this. Oh, my gosh, I’m not writing that check. Ow. So we do that.

So you can reinvest your money. And pledge to yourself, like even – you don’t have to be a billionaire. You can pledge to yourself. Pledge. It is not a legally binding contract. Oh, there it is again. You can say to yourself, you can even write yourself a little letter, don’t have a website, but you can say I’m going to give this much away. Doesn’t have to be 50% like the billionaires. But can it be 2%? Can it be 1%? The important thing is that it’s going to be regular, it’s going to be a percentage, and you’re going to commit. You know, if last year you gave to something $1000, maybe you’re going to go by percentage, and that turns out to be $800. I think that’s a better gift. Not just if you’re in the mood, just saying I’m committed, and I’m going to do that. Reinvest.

You can also rebuild. I didn’t say rebuild, but at Computer Corps they rebuild. And what they do, they take chances on all sorts of people. When I showed up there, imagine, if you will, I showed up there, minister without a church, coming to Nevada without a job. That is very suspect. Why were you kicked out of the church? Who hates you? What have you done? I mean, that is an obvious question. And they gave me a chance. And after a year I got the key to the place. I tried to not take it; but no, I still have it.

But rebuild. And they just don’t rebuild computers. They take people there who have never had a job, that have never been outside their home, and they take them in, and they show them how to work a time clock, and they show them how to show up and how to leave, they give them a lunch, and they show them how to clock out for lunch and clock in for lunch. And there’s a lot of people don’t know how to do these things. And then when they leave, they’ve got one line on their résumé. And they’ve got a reference from Ron. And so many people have gone through there. And our best volunteers we lose because they go out and get somebody to pay them for what we train them to do.

So you can refurbish. You can invest in other people. Invest in other people that don’t really – maybe not worth the investment. And we’ve had some bad things. That happens. You can also, oh, it’s kind of like reentry, as well, in that you let people back in to life, figure out how they to get back into life. That’s what they do at, I didn’t say it, Southside Ministries in Akron. They figure out how to get people back into things. Maybe you’re in recovery. Maybe you support someone in recovery. Maybe you host a recovery group at the church or somewhere. But maybe we can figure out how to get people back on their feet again, and what could be done to help people instead of blame them.

There’s a little program up in Carson City called Circles. And what the Circles does is not so much giving money to the poor people, but they have the poor people and the people that are struggling, the people that almost have the first and last month’s rent, almost, to come and to – they have dinner, and they have training, and they asked them, what do you need to do to get a job? One time they said, “Everybody wants us to know PowerPoint. We don’t know how to do that.” Or “We don’t have a computer.” So we had a class in PowerPoint. Everybody learned how to use PowerPoint, and they can have another thing on their resume. Reentry.

Where are you putting the stuff of your life? What barns are you building? When you leave, the things you have prepared, who will they be? Think about that, and God and Jesus will not call you a fool. You will not be a fool. You will be blessed. Amen.

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Barns

Serving Size

How Much Do You Tip God? Christy thinks about tipping and tithing. Read on to learn how to be a cheerful giver, free of complusion.

Serving Size
a sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey

Preached at South Lake Tahoe Community Presbyterian Church on November 29, 2015

Based on Genesis 14:17-24 and Luke 19:1-10

Sermons also avaliable free on iTunes

How much do you tip?  I never know.  Have you noticed, how long ago did they start printing the little tip amounts on the check?  Have you noticed that?  Ten percent, 15 percent is this much, 20 percent is this much?  I’m looking at that, I go, what?  Oh, you think I’m going to forget to tip?  And then I got to thinking, wait a minute, maybe they think I forgot math.  I don’t know which is more upsetting.  They might be right about the math stuff.

How do you know how much to tip?  Well, you might tell me, some of you, you know, “Well, you know, Christy, depends upon the serving, you know, how they’re doing.”  Well, actually, they’ve actually studied tipping.  And one of the things they discovered is that service only accounts for about 4 percent of the variation in tip.  So everything else comes in, and only 4 percent of the difference is the actual service.  It’s more to do with the weather, whether you’re the opposite gender of the server.  You could go – the server gets an extra buck if they squat down when they talk to you.  If they say their name, tip goes up.  Yeah.  All sorts of things other than the quality of the service.  So tipping, amount is not related to the service.

Well, why do we have so much tipping?  You know, America’s one of the top tipping places.  We’ve got something like 31 professions that we tip.  It goes down from there.  Canada’s got 26 or 27.  Scandinavians are in the teens and below.  Japan is four.  They only have four professions that they tip.  And Iceland is zero.  Zero in Iceland.  That’s the way they are.

So you think about, well, how did we get so tippy; you know?  Why did we even start this stuff?  You know, it used to be un-American to tip.  It was un-American to tip.  Times, no less than the Times had an editorial about how terrible and un-American tipping was because we’re all about not having classes, and everybody’s equal, and everybody gets treated the same.  You know, America, you know, the way America’s supposed to be.  Everybody’s the same, equal to equal.  And you just can’t, you can’t just buy to be special.  Also we didn’t have classes like good old, bad old Europe, you know, we didn’t have the rich, you know, pouring, trickling down some wealth on the other classes, the unfortunate.  No, not in America.  We didn’t do any of that.  No, zero, dumb, no.  In fact, tipping was outlawed in several states.  You weren’t allowed to do that.

Well, what happened?  Strangely, Prohibition.  Prohibition brought back tipping.  And that’s why 70 percent of who we tip are in restaurants and hotels, because that’s who lost out in Prohibition.  They took away the alcohol, they took away all that money, and the hotel and bartenders and taverns were going [gasp] what are we going to do?  We’ve got to get every money we can, do the tipping thing.  You know.  And so, you want to get paid, you’d better get some more income.  And so that’s how tipping came back.  Accidentally, from Prohibition.

Well, is it so bad?  I mean, isn’t it nice to give money?  You know, sometimes we’re not allowed to tip.  Sometimes it’s against the law to tip.  Have you ever tried to tip a police officer?  They don’t appreciate it.  They take it very poorly.  Judge, government officials are prohibited.  In fact, the esteemed folks at – Geek Squad agents are not allowed to be tipped.  I got $20 once, had to turn it in.  I was in so much trouble.  Agh.

And remember Iceland?  What was Iceland?  Who, quick, zero.  Right, it was a guy from Iceland who studied tipping.  You know how this is going to go.  This is not going to go well for tipping.  A guy from Iceland, and his name is Magnus Thor Torfason – you know, I had to use him because Magnus Thor, not just Thor but Magnus Thor, yeah, I love that – he had a study of tipping.

And he plotted out tipping on one, you know, how much tipping there is in a country, and how much corruption.  And he found they just matched up pretty well.  The more the tipping, the more the corruption.  Because, you know, it’s just a step over to bribery.  And if tipping’s okay, why not a bribe?  So maybe there is a problem with tipping.  At least according to Magnus Thor.  Can’t trust Magnus Thor, who can you trust?

Are we talking about a lot of money?  I mean, it’s just, you know, restaurants, hotel.  I don’t go out to eat that much.  What does it matter?  Well, how much money we talking about, Christy?  Well, you know, it adds up.  NASA, NASA went to the moon, space station, flying, you know.  NASA, they go for like 20 billion a year.  That’s how much we spend on NASA.  Tipping, 40 billion.  So that’s two NASAs! 

Now, to be fair, you know, that 40 billion, churches get a hundred billion, about, somewhere around that.  And then all charities, you put churches and everything all together, you get like 300 billion.  So the 40 billion.  But, you know, a billion, you know, a billion here and there, it really starts to add up.  So you’re talking to some money.  Tipping.

Well, let’s turn that over, inside out, upside down, and all around.  Because if we take that percentage, and we change it all around, we get tithing.  Now, tithing is a tenth.  Straight up, that’s what the word means, tithe, tenth, straight up.  But for me, for now, I’m just going to talk about percentage, just the percentage part, you know that – on the little thing, 10, 20, 50.

We get the story of the kings coming up to meet Abram, who’s later Abraham.  The choir was worried that you wouldn’t know that.  So there you go.  Later on they’re always changing their names in the Bible.  Don’t know why.  So Abram/Abraham’s out there, and they get a tithe.  You know, they’re just – the king comes up, oh, you’re great, you’re great.  Here’s 10 percent of everything I’ve got.  Oh, great.  That’s what they did back then.  They did a tithe.  You know, you’re so great.  I’m so great.  I’m happy to – it was like, well, they couldn’t take selfies, you know.  So it was kind of like the selfie of the time, you know, oh, look at us, we’re here together, and we’re great.  You know.  They did that, but they did the tithe thing.  That’s what they did.

And it wasn’t all about you did wonderful things so here’s a little something for you because you did good service.  It was inside out.  It was like who I am, who you are, I want to say something happy, I’m glad to be here, this is coming out of my heart, and I’m just proud to know you.  Boom, here’s 10 percent.  Here’s a tithe.  See, it’s not about service and how you’re doing and the weather and whether you squatted down when you took the order, and if you said your name and all that stuff.  It’s like, this is who I am, and I’m happy to be here with you.  Here’s 10 percent.  It’s a tithe, 10 percent.

Now, it’s not always 10 percent.  Well, you know, yeah, there’s all these rules back in the Old Testament, 10 percent for the temple, 10 percent here for that support, and there’s a whole big system to support the temple, and also the orphans and widows and charity.  That was the 10 percent going off with the tithes there.  And also there was some tithe that you got to keep and have a party with, like a Thanksgiving.  You know?  Where you came in, and you go, hey, we had a good year, woohoo, you know, it’s Thanksgiving.  They did some of that, too, with the tithe back then.

But once you get over to the New Testament in Acts, they changed a little bit.  In Acts, especially those early chapters, avoid those.  Oh, my gosh.  Because you know what they do there?  Everybody comes, and they give everything.  They sell everything and give it to the church.  In fact, there was two that really missed the stewardship whole campaign idea kind of thing.  And they got struck dead.  You know, you guys are worried about an extra letter, maybe a phone call if you miss the pledge.  But geez, back then, oh, my gosh, you missed it, boom, down you went.  Oh, that was something.

And, now, Jesus said to rich young ruler, remember him in Luke 18, the rich young ruler, you know, that said, hey, I’ve been good, I’ve done good, what do I got to do to get [indiscernible]?  He said, “No problem.  I love you.  Sell everything you have and give to the poor.”  [Gasp]  Oh, a hundred percent, again, hundred percent.  I didn’t see that on my bill, hundred percent, whew.  Yeah.

Well, we got Zacchaeus.  Now, he’s not a hundred percenter.  Okay.  You know, he’s a 50 percenter.  Still pretty good.  Pretty good tithe.  You know, he’s a 50 percenter.  Behold, half of [indiscernible], boom, to the poor, right here and now, [doom?], out it goes.  You know?  And that’s 50 percent, and that’s pretty good.  And then he says, I’m not saying I did, but if I happened to accidentally, you know, steal from somebody, I’ll repay it.  I’ll replace it fourfold.  I’ll give them what I took and then three more times over.  So fourfold, that’s pretty good.

You know, Leviticus, there’s actually a law, if you steal from someone, you’ve got to give it back.  There’s actually a law.  And it says you’ve got to give it back plus a fifth.  There’s that 20 percent.  So in the Bible you have to tip if you steal from someone.  You have to restore it, plus here’s a little something, here’s another 20 percent.  The tipping, right there in the Bible.  But Zacchaeus doesn’t start at 20 percent.  He goes 300 percent.  I mean, I’m glad he didn’t give me the bill, you know, well, there’s 10, there’s 20, and there’s 300 percent, if you want to do that tip, that’d be fine.  Zacchaeus checks out the 300 and goes right over that.

Well, you know where I’m going.  Are you a tither or a tipper?  It’s a horrible day to join the church.  You think, oh, Christmas, candles, got to be – what could go wrong?  So for maybe some new people, and maybe some people that, now, let’s talk about that.  Let’s talk about that thing.  Hundred percent, Christy, you’re crazy.  Fifty percent, you’re still weird.  Twenty percent, I don’t know, I didn’t steal nothing.

Well, what do people normally do?  Well, in 1968, Presbyterians gave 3.1 percent of their income to the church.  High watermark for the Presbyterian Church USA, 3.1 percent, 1968.  But ever since I’ve been a minister, since the ‘80s or some, we’ve always been bebopping around 2.2 percent, somewhere around there.  We took a little step back to 2.1 percent.  Part of that is because, God bless us as Presbyterians, we’re not – we support all sorts of things.  Not just the church.  We do all sorts of good things.  And some of that money goes to things we think we’re going to make a difference, that people who are making a difference, and it makes a difference if we help them, those two things.  So but we’re about 2 percent.  Two, 2.1, 2.2, somewhere in there is where we are.

So what to do, then?  Should I just – now, here’s what I think, what I would recommend you do, because I’m nothing if not practical.  That’s what they say about me – never.  But 2.2 percent, I’m thinking, if you’re thinking about what you’re giving, thinking about what you’re giving, don’t be a tipper.  You know what a tipper is?  Tipper is the one who figures out what’s needed, what’s customary, what’s necessary, what’s printed on the bill.  What am I getting for this?  What has it done?  How’s the church done for me?  How’s the people gone?  Heck, fire, they don’t even have a preacher.  What do they need money for?  That’d be a tipping.  That’d be tipping thinking.  You know, what have I gotten out of this, and how much do I owe?  That is tipping God.  And then, you know, that’s fine.  That’s fine.

Now, in the Bible, in the Scriptures, in 2 Corinthians 9:7, it says, you know, give what you have made up your mind to, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for the Lord loves a cheerful giver.  We all know that one, I hope, cheerful giver.  But I also want to tell you, I want to witness to you that God accepts grumpy gifts.  He’s perfectly fine with that, too.  So if all you’re doing is tipping, that’s fine, too.  I ain’t putting you down.  Tipping is good if you want to go that way.

But I want to talk to you, want to consider moving on over to percentage giving.  Not tithing, because, oh, we’re crazy.  Not tithing, but percentage giving.  And the way to do this, figure out what you gave last year, figure out what the percentage of that is, and commit the same, not the same amount, commit the same percentage.  No more money out of your pocket, but different kind of head.  I’m going to give that percentage.  Not that amount, that percentage.  Just submit that change this year and see how that goes.

Now, if you already are a percentage, or you’re feeling a little bit, I need a little bit more than that, I can do better than that, and you look at it, and you say, whoa ho ho, I’m below 2 percent, yeah.  Maybe you want to go up to that 2 percent, 2.2 percent, somewhere around there.  Maybe you want to do that and move on over to that percentage.  And if you’re already giving percentage, God bless you, maybe you want to consider, you know, I could do another percent.  I think I could do another percent this year.

And remember, it’s not about the bills.  It’s not about the expenses.  It’s not about the service.  It’s about who you want to be.  Who do you want to be?  Do you want to be reluctant and under compulsion?  Because that’s an option.  You can be reluctant and under compulsion.  People can tell you how much the church needs, and how much everybody should pay, and everything would be great, and how we need the money, and how it’s cold out there, and how we’ve got this bill, we’ve got that bill.  Now, that’s reluctant and under compulsion.  You can go there.

But I can get you out of that.  And that’s Scripture.  All you’ve got to do to be a cheerful giver is do the first part.  Give what you’ve made up your mind to give.  Make up your mind.  Say I’m going to give 2 percent.  I’m going to give 3 percent, 4 percent.  Heck, I’m giving 10.  Make up your mind.  And look what the Bible says.  You’ll be cheerful.  You’ll be a cheerful giver.  Isn’t that better than reluctantly or under compulsion?  It’s about who you want to be.  Do you want to be reluctant and compulsory, or do you want to be cheerful?  Do you want to be a tither, a percentage giver, or a tipper?  It’s up to you.

So Barry Creech is a strange duck.  He’s a Baptist that works for the Presbyterian Church USA.  He’s right under the people that’s in the headlines.  There’s, like, him, and then Linda Valentine, him, he’s a big, big cheese.  And we’ve been buddies for a long time.  I actually applied for a position with Barry Creech.  I had a really good argument and paragraphs and all this stuff about why I should be hired.  And he wrote back, you know, and it’s saying, you know, hire for General Assembly.  I wanted to go the General Assembly and them pay the bill, you know.  So I had all this thing written up.

And he wrote back to me, he goes, “Nah.  Nah, we’re not going to do that.  But come anyway.  We’ll pay.”  What a great guy.  So I came, and we worked.  We were friends.  We’re going out to eat.  We went out to eat, and did you – have you noticed about serving sizes?  If you’ve been around, they kept getting bigger, aren’t they?  They’re, like, huge now.  They’re, like, huge.  Just go out and ask, could I please have a six-ounce steak, please?  I mean, that’s a normal serving.  They’ll say, no, we don’t have six-ounce steaks.  How can they not have 6 ounces if they have 12? So they get huge things, and we had huge amount of foods.

And I said, “What are we going to do with all this food?  We live in a hotel.  We don’t have a refrigerator.”  And Barry said, “Let’s take it with us, and we’ll have something to give to the homeless on the way back.”  And sure enough, a guy came up to us and said, “Hey, can you help me out?”  We go, “Here you go.”  Wow.

Do you want to be reluctant and under compulsion and give God the leftovers?  Upset?  Or you want to say, you know, I got enough.  I don’t have to get sucked into all the compulsion and eating everything before me.  I don’t have to go and consume and take everything.  You know, I’m a kind of person that thinks about God and others first.  And I’m going to give back to God.  And I’ve got enough right here.  Because what are you going to do when you come to the empty plate?  You say, oh, my gosh, I need to go get more.  You say, no, that was enough, or I put that off.  I’m good.  Then you’ll be cheerful.

For those of you who are keeping count, we’ve done stewardship, Thanksgiving, and new members.  We now have Advent.  This is my last sermon this year.  All inspiration must go.  So there’s going – this is Advent.  And Joseph and Mary are looking for a place to bring Christ into the world.  Some places don’t have room.  They don’t know who these people are.  They may not be safe.  There’s no room for some places.  Zacchaeus had room.

But, you know, it wasn’t Christ come into the house that brought salvation there.  It was when Zacchaeus changed.  When he turned, as we heard our new member said, turned from evil and turned to Christ and said, “Look here, right now, I’m giving half of what I got to the poor.  And if I have defrauded anybody, I’m giving them four times back.”  And Jesus said to the crowd, he didn’t say it to Zacchaeus, he said to the crowd, “Today salvation has come to this house, for he, too, is a child of Abram.”

Be a cheerful giver.  Welcome Christ, and let him turn your life around.  Amen. 

---

Transcipt differs from the recording with Linda Valentine and Magnus Thor Torfason correctly identified, getting the Rich Young Ruler into Luke 18, correcting the number of tipped professions in various countries, the additon of chapter and verse to the 2 Corinthians reference to the cheerful giving, and best guesses where I mumbled.

Much of my information about tipping came from the Freaknomics program on tipping and links from that podcast.

Transcription done by edigitaltranscription.com Recommend for fast, accurate, and patient transcriptions.

Christy Ramsey. Some rights reserved. This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.