If I were to announce that today’s sermon is about tithing, you would likely expect that my main point would be that we should all do it, right? But what if instead, I said, tithing is just a concession to how far we have fallen from whom God made us to be? What would you think then?
Actually, today’s sermon is not about tithing. In fact, it’s not about money or the church budget, though you may want to apply it that way. But I want to start by talking about tithing, and I do mean to say that tithing is a concession to our sinfulness.
Consider that in the Garden of Eden before the fall of humankind, there was no mention at all of tithing. God certainly didn’t tithe. He put Adam and Eve in a beautiful garden and said, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden.”1 God went on to warn them away from one tree, “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” but that was not because God wanted it for himself, but because it was not good for them: “for in the day that you eat of it,” God told them, “you shall die.”2 God is giving generously, you see, withholding not one good thing.
But one result of the fall is that that generous spirit does not easily flourish in humankind; it is more natural for most of us to consider how much we can keep for ourselves. Thus, God gave the instructions about tithing so that when we are calculating how little we can give away and still consider ourselves as righteous, we have a figure to work with.
And we need some guideline, for in our world, there are serious issues of supply and demand — often not enough supply to meet the demand — or at least not enough that is routed by those who control it to meet every need. And thus, thousands of people die of hunger around the world every day while others try to figure out how to keep from eating too many calories.
But in the beginning, it was not so. In that place of no sin, there was no need to talk about tithing, and there was plenty for everyone. That was the ethic of the garden.
Back to the garden ethic
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