What have you got to give?

Maybe a provocative question for us there today, maybe an uncomfortable one to sit with – 

What have you got to give?

How do you answer that… We hear about being LIVING SACRIFICES today from Paul in our second reading from Romans – what is a living sacrifice? What is it to be living and what is it to sacrifice, ways we might break that down.

And we also heard in our gospel reading today how Jesus asks another question – pretty much the same question we thought about last week if you remember back – Jesus asks ‘who do you say I am?’

Last week we had the question ‘Who is Jesus to you?’ 

This is pretty much the same question, except today it’s coming from Jesus himself!! Maybe the stakes are a bit higher if its Jesus asking the question!

So first let’s look at what it is to be living, and what it is to sacrifice…

LIVING >

Being alive, pretty simple! 

But not only ‘existing,’ not only ‘occupying space’ or ‘making up the numbers’ – none of us are any of those things in God’s eyes. 

In God’s eyes we are his own creation, unique people he has made himself, with a purpose to do ‘good works he has prepared in advance for us to do’ as we know from Ephesians 2. 

To be living in God’s eyes is to have purpose, to have a function, whatever stage of life we’re in > and the simplest and most important purpose or function we have? Being a child of God. Knowing he is our father and we are loved by him. All else flows in and out of that.

What about SACRIFICE >

Might be a bit trickier this one, what is this all about?

We know the Old Testament image of giving a literal sacrifice to God, an ‘offering’ made to him that we still continue today as we give, we offer out of our own pockets what we have first been given in financial terms. Our freewill offering is probably the most obvious link we have in our worship to what was done in Old Testamant times, but of course there’s been an ultimate sacrifice between then and now, and our offering is not just about giving money to a good cause…

So that’s a bit on LIVING and SACRIFICE, what about the question we started off with today: 

What have you got to give?

Let’s take this question in 2 parts, starting with ‘What have you got?’

So what have you got?

I wonder how you would answer this… What things come to mind when you think of what you have?

Start small… We’ve got the clothes on our back, some of us have hair on our heads and some of us don’t, we each have a seat to take up in our church building here today. 

We have the opportunity to hear from God’s word, to hear from him and to speak with him alongside brothers and sisters in Christ. 

What else do you have? Maybe a car parked outside, a home to go back to after church, people to catch up with, obligations and responsibilities to carry out, bills to pay maybe mouths to feed all that sort of stuff. We can start building a pretty long list of things we have can’t we.

As we know there are people who don’t have these things, who don’t have things that we do have – we might even have an abundance of things that other people having nothing of at all.

So we can say, actually we’ve got quite a bit! We have a lot of good things, a lot to the thankful for, to be grateful for.

If we add on the ‘to give’ part of this question, so it goes from ‘what have you got’ to ‘what have you got to give,’ what do end up with there…

We’ve got a few things to give don’t we. All of what we have, all of which is a bonus on top of the most important thing I mentioned before: being a child of God. 

If you’ve got a house and a car and money in the bank, you’ve got something to give.

And if you don’t have any of those things, you’ve still got something to give, something that’s been given to you.

Because God says so. To be a child of God is to have something to give, not only something but more like everything.

As children of God, what are some of the things we have to give?

I’ll pull out 3 things from what Paul says, 3 gifts according to the grace given to each of us:

Serving, encouraging, giving. We can all do those things. 

We can all SERVE.

We are called not to be served but to serve, just as Jesus did. He has served us with his life no less, we are called to serve others with ours. 

It doesn’t stop with us > if we know Jesus, if we’ve received what he has to give us, it can’t stop there! It flows out of us in what we do next, good works are produced in and through God’s children by the work of the Spirit. Good works like serving, encouraging and giving.

We can all ENCOURAGE.

Encouragement is probably one of the most underrated of God’s gifts! 

When the checkout operator at the shops says to ‘have a good day!’ When a friend gets in touch with you to see how life’s going. When you hear a thank you from someone who you’ve just served, all examples of little encouragements that can actually make a big difference.

And the last one, even if we don’t think we have much, we can all GIVE.

We can give our money, we can offer our homes and our possessions in hospitality to others, we can support good causes like the work of our local church, we can raise money, we can keep the doors open and the lights on. All good things, but not actually the main things.

There’s more to it: If we think, ‘ok I’ve given my donation, and now my giving is done,’ that is not it. 

It’s more like, ‘now my giving can begin!’ Giving is about what we do with our lives, not just our stuff. It’s about what God does with our lives, not just what we do. Giving takes many forms, and those forms might look different depending on who you ask/if you have the receiver in mind.

This makes me think of the petrol station analogy I think I’ve used a few times > we go to the petrol station to get fuel, we pay to fill up, and then does it stop there? Of course not! 

From there we go and actually use the fuel we’ve just loaded up on > 

That’s what going to church really is, not the extent of our giving but the filling up on what we have to give into our church community, into the lives of our loved ones, and out there in the world around us. All of us are givers > not measured by how much we put in the offering bowl, but by how much our God has given to us. 

So if we put that altogether, serving, encouraging and giving as children of the living God, we can understand being a LIVING SACRIFICE not as an abstract concept but as real thing we get to do everyday.

We get to be LIVING SERVERS.

We get to be LIVING ENCOURAGERS.

We get to be LIVING GIVERS. 

How does that sound to you, does that make sense?

You are a living server, a living encourager, a living giver. We all get to be that because we all get to be God’s children. What a life that is, what purpose, what function what meaning and also what joy and hope there is in all that!

Anything we have to give is only what was first given to us.

The Son of the living God as Peter calls him, as we call him, has served us. He has encouraged and continues to encourage us on the journey. He has given us not only a portion, not only a percentage but his whole entire life, for us. 

What have we got to give? Thanks to Jesus, we’ve got everything //