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A Proportional Response                          Luke 15: 1-10                 September 16, 2007

I miss The West Wing.  For more than two years, Kris and I would look forward to it each week.  Wednesday evening at 9:00.   We’d actually plan our activities around it.  For example, I was traveling a lot in those days and I knew, if I was on the road, not to call home during that hour, because the phone would go unanswered.

And Kris and I were by no means alone.  Church meetings and other obligations would be efficiently planned so people could be home in time to watch the latest episode.  Sometimes we would have friends over, even though it was the middle of the week, so we could watch together. 

For that hour, every week, Jed Bartlett was President of the United States.  Even if you don’t agree, I think you can understand why that would be appealing for the many of us who were not exactly thrilled with the real-life administration occupying the real-life Whitehouse.

Actually, I think it was the last prime-time, network television show that captured the attention of both the men and the women we knew.

Anyway, like so many television dramas, the best episodes were aired during the first few years – in fact, the series won several Emmy and Golden Globe awards during that heyday period.

The show produced many memorable scenes, to be sure.  And one of the best, in my view, was in the third episode of the first season.  If you’re a West Wing fan, you might remember it as the episode when Charlie Young, played by Dulé Hill, was hired on as Assistant to the President.  The new Bartlett Administration was just settling in, and the new President was trying to deal with his first crisis. 

The setup to the scene is this:  A military doctor, who also happens to be the personal physician and close friend of the President, is killed while on a visit to Jordan.  Military intelligence confirms that the Syrians are to blame.  

Seventy-two hours after the incident, the President is edgy that nothing has happened, nor has there been a response scenario drawn out.   His conversation with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff goes like this:

One of the Joint Chiefs, an Admiral, tells the President that any US response needs to be “proportional,” and Bartlett asks: “What is the virtue of a proportional response?”

“I’m sorry?” the Admiral responds.

“What’s the virtue of a proportional response?” the President asks again. “Why is it Good?  They hit an airplane, so we hit a transmitter, right?  That’s a proportional response?”

“It’s not good,” the Chief of Staff responds, “there is no good. It’s what there is. It’s how you behave if you’re the most powerful nation in the world.”

Clearly, President Bartlett is not happy. He wants revenge, not proportionality.  His friend was shot down and killed and he wants to punish the people responsible. But in the end, he agrees to the “proportional response.”

I love that scene.  Not only is it great television, but it raises a great subject.  A subject that you are going to be hearing a lot about over the next few weeks:  Proportionality.  Responding, to God in our case, in proportion to the way God has acted toward us.

You see today, my friends, is the first week of our annual Stewardship campaign.  More specifically, it is the start of the second phase in a two-phase program that began last year and will conclude four weeks from today when we join together for what our Stewardship Committee is calling “Covenant Sunday.”

Next Sunday we will be hearing from Peter Diehl, a lay member of the District Stewardship Commission; the following Sunday we will have a stewardship drama as part of our morning service; And today, my job is to set the whole process in motion, to get us all thinking and praying about what it means to be a good steward of the many resources that God has entrusted to us.  To get us thinking about what it means to respond to God in proportion to the way God has blessed us.

Well, my friends, Here’s the whole point, as plainly as I know how to say it: God has made us, and God has, at the most basic level, given us everything we have.  We can really not take credit for anything. 

Without our God-given talents and our God-given intellect and God-given health and strength, we would not be able to put clothes on our backs or food on our tables, to say nothing of being able to enjoy the many luxuries which we Americans take for granted and a staggering percentage of the people in the world can only dream about. 

Or to put it even more succinctly, without the grace of God, our lives would be nothing short of miserable.  We owe God everything.

And while nothing could be clearer than that, most of us do not respond to God’s incredible grace with anything remotely close to a proportional response.

It’s not because we don’t understand what President Jed Bartlett called  “the virtue of proportionality,” by the way.  On the contrary, examples of proportional thinking are literally everywhere.

There are big, important examples like the military response I referenced earlier that was so well dramatized in West Wing, or the bedrock principle of our justice system – the notion that the punishment should be proportional to the severity of the crime. 

And there are small, insignificant, examples like the number of sugars we need to put in our coffee – a decision made in proportion to the size of the cup.

In fact, I would argue that most of us have a pretty well-developed “proportionality calculator” more or less hardwired into our brain – so much so that we make proportionality decisions – like how much force to put on the gas pedal of our car or how much tip to give the person who cuts our hair – without giving it much thought.

Which may be part of the reason we Moravians, in general, with some notable exceptions to be sure, but still, in general, are not particularly good financial supporters of the work of our church.

We make so many proportionality decisions without thinking, when it comes to giving to the Church, we do what we’ve always done – often without much in the way of careful thought.

So, this year, during out stewardship campaign, you are not going to hear us talking about the budget of the congregation or the cost of meeting our spiritual needs and keeping our educational programs running.  Our intent, you see, is not to ask you raise your gift because we need to keep the lights on, our intent is to ask you to give proportionally.  To give back to God in proportion to the blessings you receive every day.

As I’m sure you know, this is not, by any means, a new idea.  The notion of proportional giving, of giving God a portion of what we have earned, is as old as scripture itself.  In the Old Testament, the notion of giving God the first tenth – the “tithe,” as it is called in English – was established all the way back in the book of Genesis when Abraham was commanded to give a tithe to Melchizedek the High Priest.

And in the New Testament, the giving standard is even higher.  Jesus said it well.  “I came not,” he told his disciples, “to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.” 

We, as members of the Body of Christ, are called to give, as Paul writes, “not reluctantly or under compulsion, but cheerfully.”

In other words, in Biblical terms, if the check we are writing or the amount we are placing in our offering envelope each week doesn’t make us happy, we are not giving enough!

Paul also points out that we are blessed when we give.  “God will provide you with every blessing,” he writes to the church in Corinth, “so that by always having enough of everything, you may share in every good work.”

Proportional giving – giving a percentage of what we earn – is, then, above all else, a spiritual discipline. 

Jesus was not shy when it came to talking about money.  Many of his parables – including the one we read this morning for our Gospel Lesson – have a connection to money.  The lost silver coin, in our text, was obviously of great importance.  So much so that when it was found the woman in the parable calls her friends together and celebrates.   Jesus clearly understood that there was a connection between a person’s spiritual health and his or her attitude and actions toward money.

As you might expect, much has been written about the spiritual discipline of giving.  Most of it comes down to this: if you and I are to keep things in proper proportion, the experts tell us, our goal should be to manage our money as follows:  roughly 35% of our take-home income should be spent on housing, 20% on transportation (car payments and such) 15% for debt relief (paying down any accumulated bills) and 10% on other living expenses like food and clothing. 

If we can learn to live that way, we should have no trouble giving the first 10% away (to the Church and other charitable causes) and putting 10% into a savings program.  If you do the math, that adds up to 10% for God, 10% for future emergencies (for the classical “rainy day”) and 80% for our current expenses.

Some have suggested that this 10-10-80 formula is God’s plan for us.  Frankly, I don’t know if I’d go quite that far, but I will say this much, everyone I know who has followed this model – or at least committed to work toward it as a goal – has been blessed beyond their wildest hopes.

So, what the Stewardship Committee is asking us to do, over the next four weeks, is to give serious thought and serious prayer time to how much God has already blessed us and to the percentage of that tangible blessing – our income – we are giving to God. 

The key is to avoid starting with a dollar amount - $25 a week or $50 a week or even $100 a week.  Rather, start with a percentage – a proportional gift – and work back from there to a dollar amount.  If 10% is more than you can handle, then start with 5%.  If that’s too much, start with 3%. 

Remember, the dollar amount is not the important thing.  For someone of modest means even a few dollars is the proportional equivalent of hundreds for someone who has already been blessed with significant wealth.

The goal for this campaign, you see, is not to fund the budget – as important as that may be.  Our goal, this year is to help every person in our congregation to begin to experience the joy of generous, proportional giving.

And if you and I are willing to give the Spirit a chance to move us together toward this powerful discipline, there is no doubt in my mind that our congregation will be richly blessed – beyond our most optimistic expectations.

Peace be with you, my friends.             

                                                                        AMEN