Abraham Part 5 - Melchizidek

This is the view from Masada - the fortress of Herod the Great, and it offers magnificent views across to the Dead Sea. And it's the scene of today’s chapter in the story of Abram, though 1500-2000 years earlier.

And today’s reading needs a wee bit of background to help set the scene. As we join the story this morning, a confederacy of four Eastern Kings has been subjugating the cities around the Dead Sea. Their homelands were in modern Iraq and Iran and possibly Turkey, so these Dead Sea towns were probably at the outer reaches of their influence.

But they wielded enough power there to frighten the locals into submission for 12 years until their Kings summoned their courage and decided it was time to throw off the yoke of the oppressor and offer some resistance.

But their rebellion was short lived and soon crushed. The Eastern Kings marshalled enough troops to ride in and pillage the towns where the resistance had started, and carry away their wealth and their people.

And among the captives was someone we last saw heading off towards the cities of the plain with a spring in his step – Abram’s nephew Lot.

Up until this point in time, Abram hadn’t got involved. But when Lot was taken, things became personal.

Although Abram was still a stranger in the land and had no formal rank or status, he’d become a big player. He was a man of substance, with flocks, wealth and a sizeable entourage travelling with him, and his intervention made all the difference.

With several hundred men at his disposal, as well as cunning and local knowledge, Abram managed to pursue the enemy forces as they retreated, overcoming them in a night-time attack and chasing them all the way to the outskirts of Damascus.

Not only that, he managed to recover the people and the goods that had been taken away, including his nephew.

So on his return, Abram’s become something of a local hero. And we’re told that two kings went out to meet him at the Valley of Shaveh. The King of Sodom, whose name we’re never told, and the King of Salem, whose name was Melchizedek.

And the contrast between those two Kings couldn’t really be greater. One’s out to get while the other one’s out to give.

Already in Genesis, we’ve had a marker put down about Sodom.  In Genesis 13:13, as Lot heads off down into the fertile valley and the cities of the plain, we read:“Now the people of Sodom were wicked, great sinners against the Lord”.

The extent of their decay becomes clear in a few chapters time, but lest we think it’s all down to sexual immorality, it’s worth pausing to hear these words from the prophet Ezekiel.

Personifying Sodom as a woman, God says this of her, through Ezekiel: “She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen..”

So according to the Scriptures, Sodom’s demise was as much down to her arrogance and her neglect of the poor as anything else.

And that, perhaps, gives us a clue to the character of the man who was Sodom’s King.

Look at how he comes out to meet Abram. He arrives empty handed to meet the man who’s saved the day, and the first word we hear from his lips is ‘Give’. Give me the people, but keep the loot for yourself.

Now at first that has the appearance of generosity. But according to ancient custom the spoils were Abram’s already, by right of conquest. And given that he’d just defeated the forces who’d sacked Sodom, the King of Sodom should have been at Abram’s mercy and deep in his debt. He was in no position to be negotiating with him; but even in defeat, his arrogance was undiminished.

A lesser man than Abram might have jumped at the chance of increasing his wealth, because the goods taken from Sodom would have been among the best the ancient world had to offer.

But Abram had little time for them; he had no need for the luxuries of the plain as he made a life for himself in the hill country. And he was wise enough to see the hook that was hidden beneath the bait of this offer. If he took these goods, he’d be bound to the local Kings, and they’d always be able to claim that they’d made him who he was. And Abram valued his independence and his faith too much for that.

“No.” he said. “I solemnly swear before the LORD, the most high God , maker of heaven and earth, that I will not keep anything of yours, not even a thread or sandal strap.”

So the King of Sodom leaves with everything he’d lost returned to him, and yet somehow strangely diminished. Having had to rely on this foreigner who refused even to take so much as a sandal strap from him in payment.

It’s a marked contrast with how Melchizedek deals with Abram.

The first thing it’s important to realise is that Melchizedek owed Abram nothing. Salem, which scholars think was an ancient name for Jerusalem, doesn’t seem to have been touched by this dispute. The King of Salem wasn’t one of the local Kings who led the resistance, and Salem wasn’t one of the towns affected by it.

Personally, Melchizedek owed Abram nothing, and it seems that the only reason he came out to greet him was to show gratitude for the part that he’d played in setting things right, locally.

The King of Sodom brought nothing but a command. “Give” he said. Melchizedek brings out bread and wine – a celebratory fellowship meal for the victors in which we can’t help hearing overtones of the Lord’s Supper.

And that’s compounded by the disclosure that Melchizedek, as well as being a King, is also described as a priest of the Most High God.

And that in itself is puzzling and fascinating.

We know that the Old Testament, and the New, are peppered with references to priests and their duties. There are swathes of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, which go into minute detail about their role and function. A whole tribe of the people of Israel, the Levites, were given the task of overseeing the priestly function of the community.

But all that is ahead of us. There were no Israelite priests at this point in the story.

As far as we’re aware, Melchizedek was a Caananite. We couldn’t even call him a Jew, because that term originated with Abram. It was his family and entourage who became the Jews.

So in all likelihood, Melchizedek was a priest in a whole other religious system. And yet here he is, described as a priest of the Most High God – the very term that Abram himself used of God.

So what’s going on? Well, the scholars suggest that Melchizedek has understood that the Most High God of the Canaanite pantheon, and Abram’s God are one and the same, and in Abram’s victory he perceives and celebrates that High God’s activity.

And that is why he brings his blessing:

“May the Most High God, who made heaven and earth, bless Abram. May the Most High God, who gave you victory over your enemies, be praised!”.

And Abram, we read, responded by giving him one tenth of everything – presumably meaning the loot that he’d recovered after the raid.

Why such generosity?

Well, we’re left to speculate at this point. but a couple of reasons come to mind quite readily.

Firstly, simple gratitude.

Abram and his men would have been tired and hungry after their escapades. They’d ridden through the night, fought hard, and then lugged all the goods and the captives back to where they came from.

When you’re tired and famished, there is no greater gift than simple hospitality. Somewhere to sit down in comfort. Something tasty to fill your belly.

And when it’s a stranger who unexpectedly blesses you in that way, it’s even more of a gift.

Perhaps Abram was becoming used to the cold shoulder in that part of the world. The promised land wasn’t yet his, and though his prospering was a blessing, it would also have attracted envious stares and suspicion from the establishment. Men like the King of Sodom.

So to have been greeted in this way by a local King, out of generosity and not obligation, would have meant a great deal to Abram.

It might seem early to be talking about Christmas, but it’s only another four weeks ‘til Advent begins. And for this year’s Right Christmas campaign, we’re going to change the focus a little.

Rather than trying to raise money, we’re going to try and raise generosity. We’re going to be encouraging you to give gifts of time and effort to someone, and we’re asking you to think hard about how you might be able to bless someone whom you don’t know very well.

It’s all well and good blessing kith and kin; we already do a lot of that at Christmastime. But to paraphrase Jesus – ‘even the pagans do that’.

How might we go the extra mile and bless someone we don’t know very well, and to whom we have no real obligation? It’s those kinds of gifts that can make the greatest impact.

I offer that just to get you thinking – more ideas will be surfacing as the weeks go on.

Getting back to the story, I Abram was generous because he was touched by Melchizedek’s generosity.

But I think he also found in him a kindred spirit.

Remember the story so far. God’s call comes to Abram in a distant land. He journeys hundreds of miles to Canaan, then to Egypt, and then back again, gathering people and possessions as he goes, but all the while feeling strangely alone. His faith sets him apart.

But then, out of the blue, Melchizedek arrives on the scene not just to feed him, but to bless him in the name of the Most High God.

It must have been like hearing someone speak a few sentences in your own language after months of living in a foreign country. Here was someone who knew; who understood. Someone else who acknowledged Abram’s God. And in offering his blessing in the way that he did, Melchizedek affirmed that Abram was still on the right track. Still in the centre of God’s will. And how he must have valued that assurance.

He valued it enough, the writer tells us, to give away a tenth of everything.

If you have a good memory, you may remember that way back when we began Abram’s story, one of the things God said to him was “I will bless those who bless you”.

Here we see that promise coming to fruition. Melchizedek blesses Abram, and is blessed in return.

And the more I go on, the more it seems to me that that is how the economy of God works.

If we are mean with our time, talents and money, we’ll find little reward in living. If we’re generous with them, and we use them to bless others, we’ll enjoy them far more and our lives will be richer for it.

Two men came out to meet Abram. One wanting to get, and one wanting to give.

One is forgotten about. His way led to destruction. The other is celebrated and remembered for his generosity.

100 people gather for worship. Are we here to get or to give as we take the Lord’s Supper? Is our being here some kind of grudging acknowledgement of a debt that’s been paid for us? A nod in the general direction of God before we head home to forget about him and go our own sweet way again?

Or do we come to this table with generosity and gratitude; not only to receive a blessing, but asking how we might serve and become a blessing?

In this season of stewardship, when all our members are being asked to consider raising their giving in a testing time when prices don’t stand still for the church any more than they do for you and me, what’s our attitude as the bags come round?

Is what we give back to God’s work in the world our first priority, or our last? Does God get the first fruits of our labour, or the fag ends? What does that choice say about how much we value him?

Two men came out to meet Abram in our story this morning. One wanting to get, and one wanting to give. Which one are you today?

The Widow's Mite - Mark 12:41-44

There’s a story told of a minister in a city church which was always struggling for money. They were having real problems with their roof and unless something happened quickly, the church was going to have to close down.

But then one day the minister was visited by one of the local gangsters, whose brother had just been killed in a fight. And he said “Minister, I’ll give you the money for your new roof, but only if you agree to tell everyone at the funeral service that my brother was an angel”

Now of course, that put the minister in a real dilemma because he knew that both these brothers were bad news, and he was being asked to stand up and tell the congregation a pack of lies.

But he thought about it overnight and he rang the hoodlum the next morning to say that it was a deal provided he put the cheque in the post that day. Which he duly did.

And so, the day of the funeral came round, and the minister climbed up to the pulpit to begin the service.

“Dear Friends, he said, we’re here today to bury Knuckles McGraw. And as all of you well know, McGraw was a crook and a thug and a womaniser, not to mention a drunk and a layabout. But you see compared to his brother, he was an angel!”

Today I want us to think about a subject I don’t often preach on, and it’s the business of how we support the church financially.

Last year’s General Assembly instructed all congregations to run a stewardship campaign, and in Belhelvie we’ve decided to make stewardship something we reflect on every year. One year we’ll think about money, the next year time and then talents. And then we’ll begin the cycle all over again. That way, every year we’re reminded of the promises that we make in membership, and how we should be stewarding the things we’ve been blessed with in life.

And this year – at the Assembly’s behest – we start with finance, and I’ve chosen two readings for today, both of which get to the heart of the one question every thinking Christian asks him or herself when it comes to this issue. How much is enough?

The Story of the Widow’s Offering is one that you’ll probably know quite well, and it’s often referred to in discussions about giving. There’s something about the imagery that grabs us; the picture of the wee old lady, bent over, dropping her two coins into the collection almost unseen, while the rich process in with pomp and ceremony, making sure that everyone knows exactly how much they’re giving.

And the commentators fill in a lot of the background for us. They tell us that there were 13 collecting vessels in the Temple, shaped like upended trumpets, and each of them had a sign telling you what that particular vessel was financing – wood for the sacrifices, maintenance on the building and so on.

And workers in the temple would actually stand beside the vessels and announce to all and sundry who you were and how much you were offering. And that was part of the pay-off for the wealthy.

How do you fancy that system at Belhelvie Church!

But here’s the question. As Jesus watches the widow put in her two coins, and draws his disciples’ attention to what she’s done, what’s going through his mind?

You see it’s often argued that he’s commending her for giving away everything she had to live on. But I’m not sure that he is.

Read the passage again in your own time if you don’t believe me, but it’s quite possible that Jesus is watching this not with approval, but with anger. Anger at a system that would make an old woman think that she had to give away all she had to live on. As though that were what God required or expected.

“Beware the teachers of the Law” he says, in the verses just before this: “they take advantage of widows and rob them of their homes.”

Jesus is often found defending the cause of the powerless and the poor and you don’t get much more powerless and poor than an elderly widow with just a couple of coppers to live on.

Perhaps she wanted to make the sacrifice – that was her choice. And Jesus is unambiguous that her offering, small though it was in real terms, was actually far far more than the offerings of the wealthy. She gave 100% compared to their 1 or 2%.

But none of that means that God required it of her, or indeed of us.

As Christians we need to hold our wealth lightly, realising that everything we have, we have on trust from God. But we understand too that God is not unreasonable or unjust. If all of us gave away all that we have to live on, we wouldn’t be able to live for very long!

Nowhere in Scripture do we find giving away ‘all that we have’ being held up as a model for regular Christian giving.

So to summarise, we need to get this story straight. In this incident, Jesus is showing us that what really matters is not how much we give - £1 or £10 or £1000.  What matters is the proportion of our income that we choose to give. She gave more than all the rest, he says. Why? because proportionately she gave far far more. Maybe too much.

So there’s one end of the spectrum. A woman who offered all she had to live on. And it’s my sense of the text that Jesus, though touched, wasn’t commending that kind of heroism to everyone.

In our old Testament reading, we go to the opposite end of the spectrum.  

King David wants to build an altar to God at the threshing place of a man called Araunah. And being a good and loyal subject, Araunah says – ‘My King, please take what you need! Take the place, and the animals to sacrifice, the wheat as an offering and the threshing boards to burn”.

And David says ‘”No. I will pay you the full price. I will not offer to the Lord a sacrifice that costs me nothing”.

An offering that costs us nothing, or next to nothing so that we hardly even miss it, isn’t really an offering at all. It’s unworthy of God.

Let’s say you’re hosting a dinner party, and as one of the guests arrives he smiles and reaches you a half-empty bottle of flat Irn Bru as he’s taking off his coat. Do you feel valued by this gesture? Do you get a sense that this individual has gone to some trouble to bring this along to the evening’s festivities?! No. You think he couldn’t care less, and you’re probably quite right. Especially if you happen to know that he’s got a nice stash of wine tucked away under the stairs for his own personal consumption.

I will not offer to the Lord a sacrifice that costs me nothing.

If we don’t notice what we put on the plate or in the envelope, quite simply it’s not costing us enough.

So there are the two extremes – an offering that doesn’t cost us enough, and an offering that costs us too much.

And in terms of our giving to the church, we need to be somewhere inbetween those two poles.

But where?

Well, luckily, or perhaps you’ll think ‘unluckily’ the Scriptures do give us some guidance about this.

Ten percent. That’s what God thinks is a reasonable amount of your income to channel back into his work in the world. Ten percent. Not nothing. Not 100%. Ten percent.

That principle goes right back into the Old Testament when Israel were an agrarian society. This from Leviticus 27 is typical ³⁰“ ‘A tithe of everything from the land, whether grain from the soil or fruit from the trees, belongs to the Lord; it is holy to the Lord ³²The entire tithe of the herd and flock—every tenth animal that passes under the shepherd’s rod—will be holy to the Lord..

A tenth was what was expected by way of offering from God’s people. And though the term tithe isn’t used in the New Testament, it’s clear that giving in the early church was both generous and sacrificial.

I wonder how 10% sounds to you this morning. I have a fair idea, especially in the middle of a recession.

But here’s the thing. If I asked, this morning, if you could live on 90% of your present income, I’d guess that most of us could just about manage. We’d have to cut corners; a few things would have to go or be done differently, but most of us could get by. It wouldn’t be easy, but we could probably do it. It’s not as impossible as it sounds.

So if 10% sounds preposterous maybe that’s a sign that we’re sailing too close to the wind in terms of our finances. Maybe we’re overcommitting ourselves.

Or maybe it only sounds ridiculous because we get everything else in place first – mortgage, car, holidays, luxuries, and then we see what we can give God out of what’s left, and by that stage there’s precious little left. The only way to sort out that problem is to factor in our giving at the beginning and then cut our cloth according to what’s left over.

If you want some guidance on giving, 10% is what the Scriptures say. How you respond to that challenge is between you and God, but that’s the teaching. And the simple truth is – we get the church that we’re prepared to pay for. I’m reminded of that every time I pass that new church building down in Balmedie. Buildings like that don’t build themselves.

My colleague Matt Canlis is in the States just now at a conference for Presbyterian pastors and just out of interest I got him to do some research for me. I asked him to find out how much a congregation the same size as ours would be pulling in, financially. He mailed back to say that a congregation of 400 would expect to be bringing in around £300,000 per year, employing three full time pastors for preaching, pastoral work and youth, and also two part-time ministries in music and administration. And it's not because the congregations are necessarily wealthier than ours. It's because they have a culture of tithing - the norm is for people to support the church sacrificially.

Perhaps I’m preaching to the converted here today. By dint of being here, I’m assuming you’re among the folk who take their financial commitment to this church seriously.  But I do know that these words from the Scriptures have something to day to all of us, regardless of our circumstances.

There is a giving that’s too much, and God does not ask that of us. There’s a giving that’s too little, and God’s unimpressed with it. And there’s a giving that’s right – a giving that costs us without crippling us. And it’s for that we need to be aiming.

CS Lewis was once asked what proportion of our income we should be giving to God's work, and rather than put a figure on it, his reply was that we can only be sure that we're giving enough when it starts to hurt a little. 

"I will not offer to God a sacrifice that costs me nothing."

The question for all of us to take away and think about this morning is “What does it cost me to put that money on the plate each Sunday? Does it hurt a little? Because if it doesn’t that’s a sure sign that we could be giving more”.

I’ll leave the last word to the Apostle Paul as he writes to the church in Corinth about this very issue.

"Remember this”  he says. “Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each person should give what they have decided in their heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver”

As we begin to think about financial stewardship this year, may God help us all to offer what we can to his work in the world; and to give with generosity and with joy. Amen