Luke 11:41 But rather give alms of such things as you have; and, behold, all things are clean to you. When we read this verse in connection with those that immediately precede it, the meaning of it appears to become clear and unquestionable. The Pharisees, in whose company our blessed Lord was sitting at meat, had remarked upon His not first washing before the dinner; for they themselves, and all the Jews, by their example, except they washed their hands often (or to the elbow) ate not, "holding the tradition of the elders" (Mark 7:3). Ye fools, do ye then hope to deceive God by cleansing the outside, while your reward hearts are thus full of all extortion and greediness? Nay, rather purify the inside; change ravening into mercy, and stinginess and grudging into almsgiving; and, behold, every part, both the inside and the outside, will become clean unto you. The praise of almsgiving, then, which is contained in this passage, seems to be that when it is duly done, it is better in the sight of God than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices; that it has a more cleansing efficacy than any ceremonial worship; that it is an inward cleanness, and as such is acceptable to God beyond any outward punctiliousness or exactness of service. I am led to select this topic of Christian instruction, my brethren, in addressing you to-day, in order to make a few observations on the benefits of the sacred offertory of the Holy Communion. 1. Let it be observed then, first, that the holy offertorial gift is a gift of peace. "If thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift" (Matthew 5:23, 24). How shall any one, then, who is unkind, or quarrelsome, or unforgiving, be able to offer the sacramental gift? Be it ever so small, it is the token and symbol of peace. Think, then, my brethren, whether, even in this respect only, the offertorial gift have not a very strong and important reference to your own lives and habits. Think whether there be not many ways in which you are tempted to infringe the law of Christian charity and courtesy towards one another; whether mutual kindness and considerateness, in great and small things, in matters of all sorts, in deeds, in words, in nicknames, in insults, in injury of feelings or property; whether such minute considerateness and kindly courtesy, be not a duty of which you greatly need to be sometimes reminded. And think again whether you are not apt sometimes, in treating those whom God has placed in a lower rank than yourselves in life, to offend against the same law. 2. Secondly, the offertorial gift is to be regarded as the first-fruit of alms. Whatever a man may give in alms between communion and communion is to be considered as all offered to God in the offering of this the first-fruits. Thus the little gift of the communion is, in fact, greater, even in amount, than it seems; for it represents all that a man Christianly gives for similar pious and charitable uses till his next communion. It is as the libation, sanctifying all the feast. As Christian alms then, the offertorial gift may be of most various and unconceived effects. Who knows what sorrows it may alleviate, what pains it may soothe, what wants it may supply? Who knows again how many thanksgivings it may awaken, how many prayers for blessings on the giver, what hearts it may touch to repentance? Who knows what consequences, never to be known on earth, but surely to be declared in the Judgment, a little gift with God's good blessing on it may produce beyond our power to trace or think? how it may bring glory to God from men on earth and from rejoicing angels in the highest heavens? Thus then, in the second place, I would urge you to prize the offertorial gift as opening to you the privilege of sacred alms-giving. But I have hitherto spoken only of the outward aspects of the offertorial gift. It is to the inward ones, if I may so express myself, that the text of St. Luke particularly refers, and to which I rather desire to direct your attention. Consider, then, how many ways there are in which men need that money, in its various uses, should be sanctified to them. You know in what remarkable terms the Holy Scriptures constantly speak of money: how they seem to identify it in a very particular way with evil and the powers of evil; how our Lord calls it by the name of the unrighteous mammon, and telling His disciples that they cannot serve God and mammon, seems to put the false god of money for the evil spirit; and to say that he and his dominion are so separate and distinct from God and His kingdom, that whosoever is subject to the one cannot possibly be subject to the other also. What, then, I desire to set before you is this: that you, too, in your present state of life are beginning to be tried in respect of money; that the false god of money, the unholy mammon, solicits you in various ways, as well as those whose pecuniary trials are larger and more notorious; that you have many such dangers even now, which you must learn to escape in these early days of springing Christian strength, and that the secret of your strength and safety is to be found in your communion offerings. There, while you dedicate the little first-fruits, you must intend to sanctify the whole. There, while you directly consecrate a little, you must resolve that there shall be none unconsecrated; that Christian devotion and duty shall accompany you even in the most distant and secular uses to which the rest may be applied; that the manner of spending the rest shall be appropriate to this beginning. 3. Consider, then, how entirely inconsistent with the offering of communion gifts is all incurring of debt. How can any person venture to approach the altar of God with what he pretends to be a gift, while, in fact, the very piece of money which he offers belongs of right to another, and is not his own? Let no one, then, think that he shall honour God by making an offering at the altar of that which he owes. It is, according to the expressive idiom of the Latin, "another man's money"; and little indeed can we think that God will be glorified, or that blessing will follow on the gift, which is rather an additional sin than a manner of sanctifying our other actions. And let all remember that to offer at the Holy Communion is, in fact, to forswear and abandon the practice of incurring debts. 2. Think, again, of wastefulness and luxury, and consider whether you are not commonly tempted to spend money, often very hardly spared by those who supply it to you, in self-indulgence of the most wanton and needless kinds. 3. Again, how impossible it should be for one who offers a gift at God's holy altar to be dishonest, whether that dishonesty be shown in the coarser and more unquestionable ways of theft or cheating, or in the less obvious, but not less guilty devices, whereby advantage is often unfairly taken, and some enriched to their neighbour's loss! 4. And again, as connected with the last topic, consider whether it be possible for those who desire to make their offertorial gift in true earnestness and devotion, to endeavour to gain money in gambling or betting of any kind. And who that ever saw the gambling passion strongly exhibited in any person can doubt of what manner of spirit such a man is while the passion is on him — the Spirit of God, or the spirit of mammon? 5. And, lastly, let me ask you whether it be possible for one who brings his offering to the altar, and desires thereby to make all his other pecuniary dealings clean unto him, to purchase any things that are themselves unlawful, whether they be unlawful by the universal law of God, or unlawful by the laws to which they are now subject, and which they must obey, as they hope to please God in the state of life to which He has called them? Plainly, it is not possible. It would be an attempt to give God a little and Satan much. These, then, are some of the ways in which the Holy Communion offering ought to be of benefit to you in these years: so true is it that if we would act up to all the precepts and directions of the Church we should find that they bear in many unexpected ways upon our lives, and cannot be neglected without much and heavy loss. The offertory gives the sacred Church rule of spending money; and there is no part of the subject, however remote or secular, to which the rule thence derived will not apply. (Bishop Moberly.) Parallel Verses KJV: But rather give alms of such things as ye have; and, behold, all things are clean unto you. |
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