Leaven Leaven

Volume 1 Issue 1 Worship Article 12

1-1-1990

A Basketful of Joy: Deuteronomy 26.1-11, A Sermon A Basketful of Joy: Deuteronomy 26.1-11, A Sermon

Wayne Dockery

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Recommended Citation Recommended Citation Dockery, Wayne (1990) "A Basketful of Joy: Deuteronomy 26.1-11, A Sermon," Leaven: Vol. 1 : Iss. 1 , Article 12. Available at: https://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/leaven/vol1/iss1/12

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50 LEAYEN Winter 1990

~} A BASKETFUL OF JOY ~Deuteronomy 26:1-11 A Sermon

By Wayne Dockery

I sat as a child, the morning sun stream-ing in the windows to our left, in a little rockbuilding in rural Johnson, Arkansas. EverySunday I was there for worship-there was nochildren's worship. And every Sunday I soakedin the movements and phrases and songs andritual greetings there that were characteristic ofthat Church of Christ. And with it, I soaked upthe faith. I discovered in writing this sermonthat many of the words and phrases and move-ments and songs and people are still as vivid tome now as they were then. Some of thosememories surround the offering.

The Offering: A MemoryEvery Sunday at the same time, after the

white communion cloth had been spread backover the precious elements hidden there, one ofthe three men who had presided at the Lord'stable, the one in the middle, would turn aroundto a hollow enclave in the front of the massivewooden pulpit behind him and produce twowoven baskets. One he would hand to a personbeside him, and the other he would take in bothhands. And then he would say, "And now,separate and apart from our regular worship, wehave an opportunity to return a small portion ofwhat we have been given." (This always frostedmy Dad to hear this. He and Mom had decidedlong ago to give 15% of their income, off the top,to the Lord. They reasoned that even the Jewsgave a tenth; how much more blessed had webeen? So Dad thought it shabby to suggest onlya "small portion" be returned). Nevertheless,after this brief introit each Sunday, the manwith the basket in both hands would bow his

Wayne Dockery has served as a minister forchurches in Tyler and Denton, Texas. He hasattended Harding and Abilene Christian andholds a Master of Divinity degree from AustinPresbyterian Theological Seminary.

head over it, close his eyes, and say these words,"Our heavenly Father, thank you for the bless-ings you have blessed us with. May we now giveback a portion of that which you have given us.May this money be used in accordance with yourwill. In Jesus' name, Amen." Then the menwould procede to the front row-two on oppositesides of the building-one in the middle aisle,and the baskets would be passed down each rowuntil at the back, one man would stack them alland return to the Lord's table, his shoes makingan even, clomping rhythm on the hardwood floor,the wood creaking in response. He would raisethe cloth on the table, place the offering under-neath, and return to his seat. All this took placein silence, as did the communion service beforeit. The next words heard were, "Let's all standand turn to page such-and-such in our song-books, after which Brother so-and-so will dismissus."

These same movements and words andsounds were repeated Sunday after Sunday untilthey were a part of me. I wonder how many ofyou remember that same service when you weregrowing up? A few phone calls to other ministersserved to compare memories. I had forgotten "aswe have been prospered," and they reminded methat sometimes the offering was separate andapart "from the Lord's Supper" instead of from"our regular worship," and that often the wholephrase would be replaced with "as a matter ofconvienence, we now ... " But the basic litanywas the same in congregations of the Church ofChrist all over the nation. And in this manner Ilearned meaning for the offering.

The Offering: Another MemoryIsrael had it's memories of the offering,

too. One ofthese is recorded in Deuteronomy26:1-11.

It's a warm April in a rocky field on ahillside in Judea, a man and his sons are gather-ing the first harvest of the Spring. As they putthe sickle to the wheat, they can look up and see

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Dockery: A Basketful of Joy: Deuteronomy 26.1-11, A Sermon

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their neighbors on the hillsides and valley belowalso cutting wheat in great swathes across thefields and tying it in bundles and laying it inbaskets to dry. Much later in the year, in Au-gust, the same father and sons will be gatheringthe grapes in their vineyards, already green withlush growth, and making the juice into wine.And September will bring the sweat of beatingolive branches and pressing out the oil. It is atime of vigorous labor. Between these first warmdays of April and the end of olive season inSeptember, there will be "figs, pomegranates,dates, lentils, chickpeas, cucumbers, onions andleeks" to gather. There is hardly time for rest.Without the hard labor of these seasons, thelong-awaited harvest would be lost.

But this is the first day of the harvest. Itis a time of joy. Today they tie the first severalbundles with extra care and happy ceremony, forthese are reserved for the Lord, the Lord whogave them this good land, who has blessed themwith children and offspring for their cattle, andwho gave them this harvest. These bundles areset aside in special baskets, the best grain of theentire crop, the first to feel the sickle. For 50days from today is the Feast of Firstfruits orFeast of Weeks, a time of grand celebration andjoy.

Finally the day arrives. The wholevalley is abuzz. The harvest of grain took weeks.The threshing floor had been heaped with moun-tains of golden, fragrant, ripened kernels. Butnow it is all safely buried, sealed in clay contain-ers, ready to be made into the bread of Winter.All, that is, except the baskets of first-ripenedgrain, the grain set aside for the Lord. Thewhole family helps to heave that huge basketinto the cart. And along with their neighborsthey start their pilgrimage to the nearest shrineto offer their gift to the Lord.

When they arrive, the older childrenalready know the words by heart, just as weremember the words from worship in our child-hood. When it is our turn to approach the priest,we step forward with pride and say to the priest,"I declare today to the Lord your God that 1havecorne into the land the Lord promised to ourforefathers to give them." And having heardthose words, the priest takes the basket heapingwith ripened grain, and we watch him as heheaves it up to his shoulder and carries it to thestone altar erected there and sets it down beforethe Lord. And when the altar is nearly coveredwith the baskets and baskets of wheat and milletand barley stacked in concentric rows and when

All things praise thee, Lord may we 51

all the gifts have been brought, the priests againstand before us, the afternoon sun hot on ourfaces, and we all say with one voice the wordswhich ring with power and faith and pride andjoy, "My father was a wandering Aramaen .... "(Would you stand and read it along with meplease, the last half of verse 5, through the firsthalf of verse 10). (Read in unison). And whenwe have spoken this rousing statement of faithtogether, and as we hear the last words echoeingback from the hills around, we all bow downbefore the Lord in worship and thanksgiving tohim. (You may be seated.) And when we havedone our obeisance, the priest lifts his voice andshouts, "You shall rejoice in all the good thingswhich the Lord your God has given to you and toyour household." And so the celebration begins,with singing and dancing and great quantities offood and drink, a great festival of play andgratitude to the Lord. And then we return hornewith high hearts, thankful to God for his bounty,thankful for the land we work, primed and readyto continue our long Summer's task.

0, and what happened to all that grain?The priests themselves went to work after thefestival, and carefully stored the grain. For thisgrain was their own food for the winter. It wouldalso feed the fatherless and widows and strang-ers passing through. And sale of some of itwould pay for the ongoing operation of theshrine. And the same was done with the tithesof all the produce brought in throughout thesummer months.

The Offering and Us?Well, its a nice story. But we are no

longer farmers; we no longer live in the hills ofJudah nor of Arkansas. What can all this meanto us? So what if the land belongs to the Lord;we're far removed from the land. So what if theIsraelites were led from bondage; what have weto do with them? Our worship is a far cry fromagricultural festivals of dancing and feasting inthe hot summer sun. And what in the worldcould we bring to the offering that could possiblycarry the weight of swollen bushels of ripenedcorn that had felt the sharp edge of our sickleand the toss of our winnowing fork and whichthe whole family could heft together into thehands of God? A check is a piece of paper, nomore than a few square inches. When we talk ofspiritual worship, money seems most mundane.What shall we do with the offering?

When the churches of our childhood said,"Separate and apart from our regular worship.

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52 LEA YEN Winter 1990

as strictly a matter of convience ... ," they weresaying, 'We don't know what to do with theoffering. We're not sure how this can be a part ofth e worship of God." And most of us still are notsure about including the offering fully into theworship of the church. Perhaps from this an-cient Israelite festival we can learn somethingabout the offering that may help us.

A Time of RememberingFirst it became clear as we stood a few

moments ago and recited together the Israeliteconfession offaith that the offering was for thema time of remembering. The Israelites stood atthe offering and remembered all the Lord haddone for them through the ages. They remem-bered that the land and everything they hadcame from the Lord. It belonged to him. It wasnot theirs to keep. It was not theirs to distributeas they saw fit. So too the offering is for us atime of remembering, remembering what theLord has done for his people over the ages andremembering the great good he has shown usand our family. And particularly in his sonJesus Christ.

This is surely why the offering, at leastas early as the second century, was placed inworship at the Lord's Supper. What more appro-priate time to offer thankful gifts? Beginningvery early, and continuing through the earlyReformation, the offering preceded the Supper.The earliest detailed accounts of worship tell ofgifts of bread and wine and other gifts beingbrought in procession to the table. This was apowerful action of worship as mundane breadstill hot from hovel hearths became a sacredfeast. This way of celebrating the offeringcommunicated how the worshipers, their gifts aswell as their lives, however insignificant, weretaken up by God and transformed for his holyuse. Their own lives and gifts became part ofthe story of God's redemption which they met toremember in the breaking of the bread. Duringthe Reformation, when communion began to becelebrated infrequently, the offering drifted toother parts of the service and sometimes wasdivorced from the memory of God's graciousness.

Perhaps our childhood churches had goodintuitions about where the offering belonged inthe service of worship when they celebrated itimmediately after the supper. But they had justforgotten why, so they apologized for it everySunday as though it didn't belong. But it does!This is a joyful response and participation in thewonderful works of our God remembered and

celebrated in the Supper.

Giving Our Best: The Labor of OurHands; The Finest Ministry

When we look at the offering, all we seeis a basket passing by and in it are checks andbills and change. So we reach in our pockets andproduce the same. And when we do, our imagi-nations may picture little more than churchledgers and unpaid bills. But when the Israel-ites heaved those baskets of ripened grain intothe hands ofthe priest, they saw first the best oftheir own work, the most prized of their crops,the very choicest of what they could produce.And second, they saw the food they were giving,the food that would feed the needy, and wouldfeed the priests, and would be exchanged forneeded items for their place of worship. Whenthey gave their grain they saw the ministry thatwould happen because of their free gift.

We have a problem here, it's hard tothink of money in terms of quality. "Look at thisfine dollar bill; I think I will give it to the Lord,"makes little sense. Money has to do, by defini-tion, only with quantity, not quality. Written onthe checks and bills are only numbers. While thebasket of wheat was not far removed from thesweat and toil of planting and reapings, it takesprayer and planning and serious thought aboutour work to be able to say about our weekly giftplaced in the basket, "I'm giving God the best ofmy life, the choicest I have to offer." In manyChristian traditions, the offering is a time whenpeople also offer themselves to God anew. It isoften used as an occasion for members to offertheir gifts of music to the church, when solosand other special music are heard. These areprofitable insights and practices to which wewould do well to listen. But we need not toforget that the medium of exchange in ourculture is money. We should have no ambiva-lence about money's place in worship. Thegiving of our money to God is a spiritual worship;it can be a lavish outpouring of gratitude forwhat God has done. The gifts of our money canbe the giving ofthe best fruits of our work toGod.

Also, it is very difficult to see ministry inmoney. In fact, there has been a growing skepti-cism in America about donations to the churches.This reticence has to do with a general distrustof institutions. It has to do with our rugged indi-vidualism that says, "I know best what to dowith my own money." And it has to do with akind of dualism that says money is less than

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spiritual, and to talk about money at church issomehow sacrilegious. But the Israelites laidtheir corn at the feet of the priests and saw in ita joyful gift to the Lord, for they were able to seemore directly than we the ministry that resulted.For us, it may take constant reminders to enableus to see the needy who are feed by the benevo-lent ministry, the grieving who find solacethrough the hospital chaplaincy ministry, thefellowship which is enhanced, the children whoare taught, the nurture which is made easierthrough the maintaining of our buildings, thepeople who at last know the joy of a Christiancommunity because of various missions, thepeople who will have the opportunity to readscripture because of the work ofthe World BibleTranslation Center, the teens who are strength-ened and exposed to straighter paths throughspecial attention. And don't forget the priest andhis family-that's me-who are clothed and fedand housed and provided for. All of this occursthrough the offering! And this is not spiritual?Mundane as it appears, the offering of our moneyis a way for the congregation as a whole to offeritselfto the world in ministry. Because themoney is used for building payments and utili-ties and purchase of worship and educationmaterials does not somehow taint our offering.The Gospels tell a story of a woman who boughta fabulously expensive bottle of perfume, brokeit, and poured it out on Jesus' feet. ''What ariduculous waste of money," the disciples com-plained, ''Why that should have been sold andthe money given to the poor." But Jesus insistedthat there is room in the kingdom even forfoolish extravagance in the joyous giving for him.Our sharing together in the offering makes it

All things praise thee, Lord may we 53

possible to join hands and watch as our individ-ual gifts are mutliplied by his hands into a lavishoutpouring of ministry we could by ourselvesnever hope even to begin. Is it possible, as thebaskets are passed, for us to begin to see therichness of ministry that comes from the sharingof our tithes and offerings?

A Celebration of JoyThe practice of the Israelites shows they

considered the offering to be a time of great joy.The firstfruits were carefully reaped and laidaside in a spirit of festiveness. They werecarried to the priest with thanksgiving. Theywere laid at the alter in a great celebration of allthe good that God had done for their people.Sometimes it seems we think of the contributionmore as we do of taxes, a sort of unwelcomeintrusion into our lives and into our worship.But with the help of God we can come to knowthe great joy there is in giving freely of what wehave to him, relinquishing control, placing it inthe hands of others, and, knowing the great goodthat will result, rejoicing mightly in our gift.

The offering in our worship every Sun-day says that his lavish love for us demands aresponse of commitment. It is one of the mostactive times of our worship. The offering is notto be hidden in embarrassment in a corner of ourworship; it is a celebration of God's love, anoutpouring of sharing toward a common ministrybigger than ourselves. It is a time when wefreely recognize that all we have comes fromhim, and we take of the best he has given us andjoyously place it into his hands. To his glory.Amen.

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