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For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich. The text doesn’t tell us but this Jerusalem Aid was the centerpiece of a unity agreement, symbolizing a cessation of cultural hostilities in the early Christian church between ethnic Jews and non-Jews. How early was it? About 27 or 28 years after the crucifixion of Jesus. Most biblical scholars, including foremost Catholic scholar Raymond Brown, date our story of the morning from II Corinthians around 57 A.D. St. Paul, assumes that we know about this unity agreement reached some 9 or 10 years earlier, in which a “Council of Jerusalem” met to attempt to settle racial and cultural divisions in a highly diverse early Christian church which was rapidly growing among diverse ethnicities all over the Roman Empire, from Spain to Turkey and beyond the Empire into India. This Jerusalem Council addressed concerns brought by former Pharisees who had become Christians, who were insisting that Christian males become circumcised and all Christians be required to, “keep the Law of Moses”, (Acts 15:5) the complex set of Jewish religious traditions, such as keeping kosher. While it may seem odd or trivial to us, this issue in the early Christian church was as highly volatile and charged as is the issue of full inclusion of gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgender persons in the Presbyterian Church in the last 25 or 30 years. This demand from the Pharisee Christians to keep the Law of Moses was as offensive to the Greeks Christians as would be a demand by white American Christians to tell African-American Christians that they could be black but had to act white in worship, faith habits, lifestyle, or as offensive as requiring lesbians and gays to be straight in order to join the church or become officers or clergy. This is no small matter. The decision of the Jerusalem Council of 48 A.D. is codified in a highly brief form by Luke in the “Acts of the Apostles” and by Paul in “Galatians.” In Acts 15:19-20 Luke records the decision as: Therefore we [the Jerusalem Council] should not trouble those Gentiles who are turning to God, but we should write to them to abstain only from things polluted by idols and from fornication and from whatever has been strangled and from blood. Galatians 2:10 Paul says: They [the Jerusalem Council] asked only one thing, that we remember the poor, which was actually what I was eager to do. New Testament scholar Gunther Bornkamm notes, “The importance of this apparently trivial agreement is not obvious to us. But its [original] importance can be seen both from the terms in which it is couched and from Paul’s subsequent letters to the Corinthians”. (Bornkamm, Gunther, Paul, Harper and Row, c. 1969 . 40) In other words, Paul spilled a lot of ink on this issue. As a matter of fact, the pressure from the Pharisee Christians did not go away and later developed into a Christian “denomination” called, the Ebionites, a group condemned 100 years or so later as heretics. So the crux of the matter is this: St. Paul is urging Greek Christians to contribute significant sums of money to Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. With this Jerusalem Aid offering Paul intends to honor his commitment to the decision of the Jerusalem Council 10 years earlier, to “remember the poor”. “It’s important to understand that “in no sense was this collection a measure of public charity [like the United Way] to be undertaken by all churches alike. It was to be given by the Gentile Christian churches specifically to the mother church in Jerusalem. Further the offering for the “poor” is a word filled with double meaning. Poor can also mean humble and pious in addition to being in financial need. The offerings to be collected were intended for all of the folks in the mother church in Jerusalem as a token of her special status. They were an expression of thanks for the blessings that had gone forth from Jerusalem to the world.” (Ibid. pp 40 – 41) So, for some in the Jerusalem church, this meant pious Christians of Jewish ethnicity accepting, what they might have considered, dirty pagan money. Such a gift and such acceptance would be an “affirmation of the legitimacy of the Christian gospel without the need to keep the Old Testament law.” (Ibid.) Given these high stakes we can understand the staccato drumbeat of Paul to collect this Jerusalem Aid. Indeed, this offering is ultimately Paul’s undoing as the architect of the Christian church, because, in less than 2 years while Paul was personally delivering this offering to Jerusalem, he was arrested and sent to Rome as a prisoner. ( Floyd Filson, A New Testament History, p. 398) For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich. The pivotal the idea in the apostle’s treatment of this “Jerusalem Aid”, is the Greek word, "charis", from which we get our English word charismatic, but which is most clearly translated in the New Testament as the word “grace”. On one level, grace is the ability God gives to us to respond to the possibilities in life, to go beyond life’s limitations. Each of us has a different set of circumstances, different limitations. When we are asked to run the race of life some have to run in a wheelchair and some run in track shoes. We are not expected to get the same place at the same time. What we are expected to do, is to use the gift of grace that we possess because of Jesus Christ and grow in that grace. (II Peter 3:18) Now grace and generosity, Paul says, are very closely tied. We all possess the same amount of grace but we do not all possess the same amount of cash. Mindful of the fact that we do not all possess the same amount of cash, note that in our story for today, there are two economic classes of Greek Christians. There are the wealthy city dwellers of Corinth, who, says St. Paul, “excel in everything”, (8:7) and there are the poor, up-country Christians in Macedonia. As we read in the opening verses of our story, II Corinthians 8:1-2 We want you to know, brothers and sisters, about the grace of God that has been granted to the churches of Macedonia; for during a severe ordeal of affliction, their abundant joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. Paul is suggesting that it is God’s grace that has empowered the poorer Greek Christians in Macedonia to participate in Jerusalem Aid, despite their real poverty. Last year, you will remember, four of us went on a mission trip to Kenya. (Ry Foye, Ronna Grimes, Judy Gordon and I. Previously Robert Veitch had also gone.) There the grace of Christ was demonstrated to us again, again and again by our poorer Presbyterian colleagues in Kenya. There they showed us the grace of hospitality, the grace and generosity, the grace of fellowship. While we were there we wanted for nothing. Now we have taken up a collection for the Kenyans as part of our capital campaign. We could call this part of the campaign, “Kenya aid”. Another part we could call “New Orleans aid”. Another part could be Habitat for Humanity aid”. Another part will be “elevator aid”. And when the sanctuary sound system is improved it could be called “hearing aid”. As Professor Richard Ryan of the University of Rochester pointed out last Sunday in his adult education class here, there are lots of methods used to motivate people such as guilt, pity, loyalty, compulsion, envy. Paul disavows any of these methods. Of course, using the poor Macedonians as a precedent could degenerate into an envy provoking comparison. Instead the apostle places the liberal giving of the impoverished Macedonians clearly under the umbrella of grace. (8:1) Paul mentions the Macedonians, the poor up-country colleagues of those in affluent Corinth, not to command or bait the Corinthians, but to remind them, as we have said, that we all possess the same amount of grace but not the same amount of cash. But there is a deeper level of God’s grace than the ability to go beyond life’s limitations. Ultimately what motivates a loving and generous response from the Greeks to Paul’s appeal for Jerusalem Aid is what he calls the “grace of our Lord Jesus Christ”. The apostle is not off-track or getting vague or wifty. Who Christ is and what Christ does in the present is the rule of thumb which guides any understanding of Christian financial stewardship. This understanding is summarized by the five dollar word, “incarnation”. This incarnation of Christ is described by Paul with a metaphor about poverty and wealth. Christ’s incarnation is described as becoming poor. The son of God becomes poor, not in the sense of assuming earthly poverty, but in the sense of leaving his heavenly “riches” to become a human being. Thus, the purpose of Christ coming in the flesh is so that we might become rich. We have received the riches of salvation through Christ’s gracious act of divestment. Since we have been enriched by Christ’s grace we therefore have such a full bank account that we can freely respond to the needs of others. Grace changes those it touches. Those of us who have traveled to Kenya have been transformed by the grace and generosity of our Kenyan sisters and brothers. If grace is real in one’s life, Christians can share their resources with others across significant boundaries as rich and poor Greek Christians shared their resources with Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. So Third Church shares its resources with folks in Kenya, or homeless people here, or by sharing our resources with future generations who will occupy this space long after we are dead and gone. We do not have to become rich to give. We already are rich. “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that though he was rich yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.”
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