Generosity and Giving
Sermon on Generosity and Giving | Exodus 19.2-8a, Matthew 9.35-10.8 | 14 June 2026
‘Freely you have received, freely give’ (or in the more prosaic language of today’s translation. ‘You received without payment, give without payment.’)
The Christian Gospel is built on the foundation of God’s generosity. God gives to us everything we have and everything we are, and wants us to live with the same generosity towards one another. The Biblical word for this divine generosity is grace, translating the Greek word ‘charis’ - linked to ‘charity’ in its broadest sense. Grace plays an enormous role in the theology of salvation in Paul’s writings and other parts of the New Testament. We are saved, brought to salvation, through God’s grace, and not as a reward for our own works or deeds.
Nothing very exceptional about that. Some of you will have heard it in many sermons. Yet it is still startling and in some ways counter-intuitive. It doesn’t reflect the way we experience the world which seems much more to be based on negotiation. You do something for me. I’ll do something for you. Calculation comes into it all the time. There was that song ‘Money’ performed by the Beatles which came out in 1963 and began with the words:
The best things in life are free But you can't keep 'em for the birds and bees
Now give me money (that's what I want)…
It’s curiously illogical because there’s no hint in the song that there was any reciprocity it all, money is what I want, and I want it for free. I just don’t want to share it or pass it on. What’s mine is mine. And sometimes we bring this attitude into our relationship with God and the Church. If we believe what we have belongs to us, rather than being a gift, then we can start thinking we are doing God a favour when we donate to some good cause. Or we expect God to reward us for giving. Or when things go wrong we ask, ‘What have I done to deserve this?’ As though the things that happen to us for good or evil through our own lives are narrowly calculated by some sort of divine accountant, who rewards us in precise proportion to our goodness and punishes us likewise.
Yet again and again scripture suggests that in the divine economy things do not work this way. God’s ancient people, the Jews, are chosen not because they are specially good or virtuous but simply from God’s grace. They are to be a model of how God loves everyone; to reveal God’s goodness to the nations by showing how God sticks with them through thick and thin, peril and triumph and disaster. He bears them up ‘on eagles’s wings’ – a lovely metaphor of caring and protection.
When Jesus sends his disciples out to announce the kingdom of God, he commands them not only to preach it, but to live it, making themselves dependent on those they are sent to, living examples of the way taking risks and being vulnerable is creative in ways that careful calculation never can be.
It’s in the light of this that I want to say something about cathedrals and their place in our national life, and this cathedral and its place here in Portsmouth. Cathedrals are risky enterprises. I find it quite extraordinary how some of our great cathedrals were built by people who knew they would never see them completed. They built them out of faith, excitement and generosity, to mark the landscape with signs of God’s hope and promise. Last month I went to Cathedrals conference – the Dean and Vice-Dean were there as well, and we heard about a report by the think-tank Theos on the role of our forty-two cathedrals. The report made the point that cathedrals were among the most visited of historic buildings in the country and suggested that they offer something quite unique in our secular landscape; a space to explore faith and spirituality, a shelter from the storms of life, even an anticipation of heaven. Think back to how it felt when our cathedrals and churches were closed in lockdown… During the first few weeks of the COVID crisis, Canon Angela, looking out of her study window saw a man in huge distress beating on the door of the cathedral here, desperate to be let in. But of course we were shut down at the time and his need for shelter, space, the presence of God could not be met.
There are many ways in which the Christian gospel continues to impact on our lives; and that challenge; ‘You received without payment, give without payment’ is still spoken to every one of us. Jesus invites us to a new kind of economy, one based not on calculation, not on just deserts, not on penny pinching economics, not on a slavish insistence on the cheapest option but on a recognition that the love of God is without limit and that the law of love is grace and freedom. As today’s Collect says: ‘Love (charity) is the true bond of peace and of all virtues.’
Most of our cathedrals are short of money and that includes us. But even if we didn’t have a deficit – after a lot of cuts and a lot of effort to increase revenue – I would still be encouraging you to give, because giving is good for us. It changes our attitude and it changes us. We have had some amazing generosity here, not least in a recent gift to reach the £50,000 mark to start the tower works this summer. So this morning and next Sunday is an invitation to reflect on your giving, on how much you are prepared to enter the Gospel economy of gift rather than calculation. Of course there are many calls on your capacity to give and you must make the decisions in the light of where you think God is calling you to give. Perhaps you can start giving regularly; perhaps you can increase the amount you give if you haven’t done so for a while, to help us keep up with inflation; perhaps you might be moved to give an extra one-off gift as a thank offering. But let your response be generous, thankful, grateful to God for his claim on your life, and his gifts to you in life. And among all the financial calculations you have to make year by year, think of what this holy space, this sacred place, means, not only to you, but as a sign of God’s loving and saving presence to all who walk through its doors. Freely you have received, freely give. Amen.
