OUR SACRED PORTION

A Sermon by Bill McDonald from Deuteronomy 26:1-19

October 14, 2007

Deuteronomy 26

¹When you have come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it, ²you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the LORD your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his name. ³You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, “Today I declare to the LORD your God that I have come into the land that the LORD swore to our ancestors to give us.” ⁴When the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the LORD your God, ⁵you shall make this response before the LORD your God: “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. ⁶When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, ⁷we cried to the LORD, the God of our ancestors; the LORD heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. ⁸The LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; ⁹and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. ¹⁰So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O LORD, have given me.” You shall set it down before the LORD your God and bow down before the LORD your God. ¹¹Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the LORD your God has given to you and to your house.

¹²When you have finished paying all the tithe of your produce in the third year (which is the year of the tithe), giving it to the Levites, the aliens, the orphans, and the widows, so that they may eat their fill within your towns, ¹³then you shall say before the LORD your God: “I have removed the sacred portion from the house, and I have given it to the Levites, the resident aliens, the orphans, and the widows, in accordance with your entire commandment that you commanded me; I have neither transgressed nor forgotten any of your commandments: ¹⁴I have not eaten of it while in mourning; I have not removed any of it while I was unclean; and I have not offered any of it to the dead. I have obeyed the LORD my God, doing just as you commanded me. ¹⁵Look down from your holy habitation, from heaven, and bless your people Israel and the ground that you have given us, as you swore to our ancestors—a land flowing with milk and honey.”

¹⁶This very day the LORD your God is commanding you to observe these statutes and ordinances; so observe them diligently with all your heart and with all your soul. ¹⁷Today you have obtained the LORD’S agreement: to be your God; and for you to walk in his ways, to keep his statutes, his commandments, and his ordinances, and to obey him. ¹⁸Today the LORD has obtained your agreement: to be his treasured people, as he promised you, and to keep his commandments; ¹⁹for him to set you high above all nations that he has made, in praise and in fame and in honor; and for you to be a people holy to the LORD your God, as he promised.

Just sign on the line, your full name, right where it says Client; it’s been highlighted for easy visibility! I don’t know about you but whenever I have to sign a contract my palms get sweaty and my stomach gets that sinking feeling. There is all that small print, all those unfathomable tangled phrases, all that legal-ese. How do I know everything is covered in this document, that it isn’t full of loopholes? What if I have just agreed to some hidden scheme that is going to cost me a ton of extra money? What if I should have included stuff I haven’t even though of?

We need agreements, contracts, for our interrelationships to work properly. Got to have them for our own moral structure—you do this and I’ll do that. Commitments to one another and to self, trust between people—we have got to have agreements and contracts. But we need to understand our agreements. The youth group at one church had expanded to where we were borrowing four station wagons to take the kids on mission trips. (For those of you under 30, a station wagon is a kind of lower, flatter SUV.) We signed a contract with a Chevy dealer and ordered a 15 passenger van. While waiting the 3 months for it to arrive, I spotted a brand new Chevy van in a mall parking lot. Wanting to see what ours would look like, I peeked in the windows of that van and…there were no inside walls! You could see the skeletal support, the braces and beams, and the back of the outside metal shell. No walls. Does your car have interior walls? Of course it does. I rushed to the phone and called our dealer to check that, certainly, our van would have interior walls. Who ever heard of a van without walls? He responded, “You wanted walls?” I had not understood the agreement.

Well, let’s take a nice Hebrew couple, Moses and Miriam, in the 13^th century B.C. who are shopping for a God. Not just some household icon, not a nice concrete image to sit in the garden, not a shrine at which you can burn candles and incense, but a Life-Guider, a Blessing-Bestower, a Character-Checker, the Source of all Existence, the Ground of all Being, the Ultimate Reality. They wanted the one and only Almighty God. And God was willing to take them on…but there was an agreement, a contract to be signed. It went like this: “Today you have obtained the LORD’S agreement: to be your God; and for you to walk in his ways,…and to obey him. Today the LORD has obtained your agreement: to be his treasured people,…and to keep his commandments;…and for you to be a people holy to the LORD your God, as he promised.” In short God agrees to hold Moses and Miriam as treasured people and in return they agree to walk in God’s ways and keep God’s commandments. Hmmm…sounds good to me. To think that I am God’s treasured child…to receive the care and nurture that that relationship implies! In return M & M are supposed to live the kind of lives that bring them honor and harmony, that make their community stronger, that give them a sense of inner fulfillment. It doesn’t take Howie Mandell to know that this is a great deal! In our own time, arising dripping wet from baptisteries of small town churches, emerging sodden from lakes and creeks, standing at baptismal fonts with water cascading down our foreheads, in our own time we have signed the same contract: you be our God and we will be your people. It is an agreement that we have made with the Lord our God. And it is bound together by our sacred portion.

Why is this portion sacred? Verse 1: the land that the LORD your God is giving you…. Verse 2: which you harvest from the land that the LORD your God is giving you…. Verse 9: he brought us into this place and gave us this land…. Verse 10: I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O LORD, have given me…. Verse 11: you shall celebrate with all the bounty that the LORD your God has given to you and to your house. Verse 15: well, you get the idea…everything we have has been given to us by God. The portion we return is sacred because it already belongs to God; it is set aside to serve God; it upholds the agreement.

Let’s not get caught up in how much this portion weighs or what size it is. Our portions vary with the level of blessings we have received. Besides if we are thinking today, “How much should I give the church?” we are asking the wrong question anyway. Alvin was a multi-millionaire, the king of chicken processing in the Southwest. Alvin figured that he made too much money to tithe. His ten percent tithe alone would more than run the church to which he belonged. The thought it would take away the opportunity for other members to feel needed. That’s too much money for the church to handle, he decided. So he gave less. Alvin was asking the wrong question. He didn’t understand the agreement. Tom tithed, gave ten percent though he didn’t make much, just netted $25,000 a year. Then he got a huge promotion. His net income tripled to over $75,000 but, Tom thought, gee, $7,500 sounds like a lot to give to something as inconsequential as a church. Tom didn’t understand the agreement. He was asking the wrong question. Ben said, “We are going to cut back on our giving because we don’t use the church as much as we did when the kids were small.” Ben didn’t understand the agreement. He was asking the wrong question. The question is not “How much should I give to the church?” The question is, “How much should I give back? What is my sacred portion?”

To the fellowship dinner Bethel always brought the same thing. Sweet lady, Bethel—came to every church dinner, brought the same thing. I don’t mean she brought the same prepared dish, I mean she brought the same thing. She brought an unopened can of pickled rutabaga. She placed the can, still unopened, amidst all the casseroles and salads, all the meat dishes and desserts. Then she loaded her plate with the bounty of the table and ate her fill. After the meal, she would check her can of rutabaga and, seeing that since it was still unopened obviously no one had wanted any, she would then take it home to place in the cupboard, awaiting the next fellowship dinner. Our sacred portion. History tells us that no Hebrew male ever went to a tithing feast empty-handed, but instead brought for himself and his family a portion proportionate to how well they had done, how blessed they had been. Same old can or a true measure? Our sacred portion.

Deuteronomy called for Moses, Miriam and all the other Hebrews to declare before the LORD their God: “I have removed the sacred portion from the house, and I have given it to the Levites, the resident aliens, the orphans, and the widows, in accordance with your entire commandment that you commanded me.” It’s got to come out of the house, you see. But “charity begins at home” the old adage goes. Not in this agreement. Got to remove the sacred portion from our houses. Can’t count a new car in which to drive to church. Housekeeper raised her fees and since cleanliness is next to godliness…no, out of the house. A new widescreen TV could bring Robert Schuler into the den in high definition! No, the sacred portion has to be removed from the house. And shared with the Levites who were charged with taking care of the temple and so couldn’t farm or provide a living for themselves, had to spend their time tending the temple. Same thing today. Have to keep the church doors open, the programs vibrant, staff paid, take care of the Levites. A sacred portion to be shared with the aliens, the strangers from other towns and other nations living among us with no land of their own. A sacred portion to be shared with the orphans and the widows, the needy among us whose material blessings have been meager. So that all “may eat their fill within your towns.”

You read about that homeless man who died on the bench in Woodland Park. No one could stop him. Family knew he was drinking himself to death. Right in the middle of a crowded music festival, people all around who would have gladly done something, he just sat there and died on that bench. He’s been worrying me, that lonely man. I keep thinking that I have seen his name somewhere. Hard to read all the small print but I think maybe, maybe, I saw his name in our agreement with God.

A sacred portion that acknowledges God’s ownership of everything, that supports the church, that cares for the needy. I think I can sign that agreement; how about you?