The Rev. Jerry Keucher
I’m Jerry Keucher, and I’m delighted to be with you today. I’m very grateful to Dean Pompa for inviting to work with the Cathedral this year on the annual giving campaign.
This week you will receive a mailing asking you to reflect on what you plan to contribute to the work of the Cathedral in 2011. Then two weeks from today, on All Saints’ Sunday, there’ll be a big ingathering of all the pledges and estimates that you’ll be making for next year. I’m here today to give you something to reflect on over the next two weeks.
I want to tell you a story about the first house we owned. We had it for three years before selling it for the place we’ve lived in ever since. It happened almost 30 years ago. Long before I was ordained, in June of 1980 we became urban homesteaders. We bought an abandoned house in a very iffy neighborhood on the North Shore of Staten Island. The large Victorian houses in the area had been converted into apartments and rooming houses by slumlords who had milked them dry, left them vacant, and then sold them to other people like us.
“Move-in condition” in the neighborhood meant that you could move in; it did not imply that any plumbing, electrical, or heating systems were operable. The man who sold us our house held a private mortgage because no bank would make loans in that area. The banks calculated that the value of the houses and lots was zero less the costs of demolition. The previous owner thought that the people buying his properties were fools.
By December I was wondering if he had been right because we could not make it. My partner, a priest and an artist, was not working as a priest and made next to nothing from his art. The wind blew against the sheets of plastic we’d stapled to the windows that we couldn’t afford to repair. The oil company demanded cash for its deliveries, so the tank was often dry. My job paid me once a month, so we were broke three weeks out of four.
I had already taken a second job as the organist at a parish in nearby Bayonne, but we still had to borrow money from a friend that month to pay the mortgage. Things were that serious. We were pledging what I thought was a generous amount, but we had fallen behind in our weekly pledge. It was just one more bill that we couldn’t pay. I had done all I could do, and it just wasn’t enough.
At an Advent Evensong at the church in Bayonne the rector took a liberty with the lectionary and preached on Malachi 3, beginning at verse 8, in which the prophet brings God’s accusation of theft against the people. “Will a man rob God?” the old language says, “Yet you are robbing me! But you say, ‘How are we robbing you?’ In your tithes and offerings!...You are robbing me…Bring the full tithe into the storehouse…and thus put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts. See if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing.”
I remembered my childhood. My mother had brought us up to tithe. I asked her once through gritted teeth, as I was putting ten percent of my allowance into the envelope for church the next day, “Why are you making me do this?”
“So that when you’re big you’ll tithe on your grownup income,” she said. “How do you know I’ll do that?” I asked, somewhat surprised that she could see the future. “I know you will,” she answered, “because ‘as the twig is bent, so the tree is inclined.’”
I’m not sure what I would have done without that sermon at that time and the memory of my upbringing. But that’s the great thing about God’s providence. God gave me the gifts of that sermon and that upbringing, so God gave me a way out of my financial difficulties in December 1980. My prayer is that God might be giving some of you a similar gift this morning.
“OK, God,” I said, “OK. I’ll put you to the test.” For the next few weeks I stopped thinking about the $15 a week that we were pledging. When I got paid at the end of that month, I wrote a check to our parish for ten percent of what I put into the bank. It worked out to more than twice our weekly pledge. I turned in the check and held my breath.
Nothing happened. That is to say, the windows of heaven did not pour money down on us, and our windows were still covered with plastic. However, something else didn’t happen as well. We didn’t go deeper into the hole. We paid back the friend the next month and still met our obligations. We were somehow, and I’m not entirely sure how, better able to make ends meet on 90% of our income that we had been on 100%.
In reality, everything happened, and it happened in us. Writing that check made me know and feel immediately that money is a tool: it’s just a means, not an end. And more or less of necessity, it raised my trust in God to unprecedented levels.
The gifts to the church are always the first ones I enter after the direct deposit hits the bank. (And — though this is just personal preference — our tithe is always on the gross. I figure if we’re not going to rob God, why chisel Him? And then the tax refund is free money that’s already been tithed on. But that’s just my preference. There’s no obligation here, just an invitation.)
I went back to tithing as an adult out of sheer desperation. But even if you’re not as desperate as I was, I think there’s still something you want. You want not to be anxious about the little things. You want a relationship with God. You want an experience of God. You want to get to the place where your will and God’s will are the same — where doing what you really want to do means doing what God wants. I think you want your heart to be with God. Why else would you be here?
So if you want your heart to be with God, here’s a way forward. Put your money where you want your heart to be. Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Your heart follows your money, not the other way around. We think it’s the other way around. We think we spend our money on the things that are important to us, but those things are important to us because they’re what we spend our money on. Put your money where you want your heart to rest, and your heart will move there.
So stop thinking about what you give as another bill that has to be paid, or as a tax, or as club dues, and for heaven’s sake, don’t let it be just a tip that’s less than you spend on lunches or your commute.
Make your gift a first-fruits offering. Set a percentage in your heart, and give that percentage off the top whenever you get money. And don’t give at other times. Break the tyranny of the weekly envelope. If you get money once a month, give your percentage once a month, and don’t sweat the other weeks. If you’re self-employed and income is really erratic, then just give back to God when God gives to you. Don’t worry about the weeks in between.
I’ve told you the percentage I give, but I’m convinced that the percentage doesn’t matter. What matters is changing the pattern of how you give. If you give a set weekly or monthly amount, you’ve turned your contribution into a bill. You factor it in with all your other obligations. If you think about your money they way most people do, when you sit down to pay your bills, you add them up and then see if you have enough to pay them. This increases your anxiety about money.
If you give a percentage off the top, the pattern is different. First, you look back and see how much God has given you since the last time you sat down to deal with your money. Then you make a gift to God that is in direct proportion to what God has given you. Then you see how you and God will deal with your obligations.
The point is first, make your gift a percentage of whatever you just received; second, give it off the top before you pay anything else.
This will change your life. Percentage giving off the top means that each time you sit down to pay bills, the first payment you make is a thank offering to God that is in proportion to what God has given you. You may think paying your bills is the least religious thing you do. Percentage giving off the top turns paying your bills into an act of worship because you’re putting your trust in God. It changes how you think about your life and what you have. It’s the most powerful way to use the powerful tool that is your money in the service of your spiritual transformation. I’m quite serious. This changed my life. This will change your life.
Percentage giving off the top: that’s my sermon. Have you noticed what my sermon has not been? I haven’t said a word about how much the parish needs your money. I haven’t mentioned budgets or capital needs. I haven’t browbeat you or played a single guilt card. I haven’t said ‘should’ or ‘ought to’ a single time. Look, you’re all bright people. You know perfectly well that if the Cathedral is going to thrive, it isn’t all going to happen with other people’s money. If you all don’t support your parish, why would anybody else? So I’m not going to dwell on that, because it’s obvious.
My point is rather different. I know that you want this parish to thrive. I know you want it to be here so that future generations can meet God here just as you have. I’ll bet most of you wish that you could do more. Well, I’m here to empower you. I’m here to tell you, and to show you, and to witness to you from my own experience how you can be as generous as you’ve wanted to be. And one of the most powerful tools you can bring to your spiritual transformation is sitting in your bank account.
