Lenten Almsgiving: Reflecting God’s Generosity
Dear Hope Church,
This past Wednesday marked the beginning of the season of Lent. At our Ash Wednesday service, we heard the word of the Lord from Isaiah 58:
“Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of wickedness,
to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover him,
and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?”
This true fasting is set against false fasting that God rejects – fasting that is self serving, oppressive, and insincere. Instead, God calls on us to extend hospitality to the hungry and the homeless, to not turn away from our neighbors, who are our “own flesh.”
Over the past five weeks, as we have highlighted the Making Room for More campaign and focused our preaching and worship on renewing the vision of Hope church, a question that has been on many of our hearts and lips is: How do we take the resources that we’ve been given and use them to serve the community? This is exactly what the Lenten practice of “almsgiving” aims to do, and I think that we are uniquely positioned in our worship and outreach to engage in this practice in a vibrant way this season.
For the next six weeks of Lent, we will use the Prayers of the People and Offering portion of our service to focus on different ministries and service opportunities that our church is engaging, particularly through Hope for the City. We will pray specifically for those ministries, the folks they serve, and the people from our congregation who serve them. We will collect an offering that will specifically go to those ministries. The goal is to bring our fasting and our almsgiving out of the individual and private sphere of personal piety, so that our generosity and prayers flow out to our neighbors through our corporate worship.
Practically, this could look like fasting from a meal during the week or skipping a coffee or drink and bringing that money in to the offering. We can give of our time, our talent, our treasure, our pantries. In doing this, we are connecting our worship and our spiritual practices to the mission of the church to love and serve the world as those who have been loved and served so generously by our Savior. Almsgiving is a responsive act. It is not a way to gain favor with God, or prove our righteousness. The God of abundance has blessed us with every spiritual blessing, and our responsive acts of generosity allow us to be a conduit of that generosity to others, and in doing so praise God, from whom all blessings flow.
Wilson
