“Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.
“So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
In Matthew 6, Jesus talks about the three great acts of devotion that were recognized and practiced in some way by all first century Jews. Those three acts were: giving to the needy, prayer, and fasting.
We often talk about fasting during Lent or giving something up. But sometimes we forget that we give up in order to have more room to give. When we give to the needy, we are of course giving to other human beings. When we pray, we are giving ourselves to God. So as we enter into Lent, it might be good to ask ourselves not only: what are we going to give up, but what are we going to give to God and others?
Tonight, I want to talk with you about the first of these three ancient acts of devotion: giving to the needy. But the principle Jesus announces in Matthew 6:1 applies to all three acts of righteousness. We are not to do our acts of righteousness in order to be seen by other people. If our only motive in giving, praying and fasting is to be seen by others as being righteous, then we may receive the applause of human beings, but we will have no applause in heaven.
Jesus gives two vital commands in regard to giving to the needy. The first command is: do not announce it with trumpets.
We don’t know if anyone actually announced their acts of charity with trumpets in Jesus’ day. Jesus may purposely be drawing an exaggerated and humorous picture to make a point. But J. J. Wetstein quotes an eastern custom from ancient times:
In the east water is so scarce that sometimes it had to be bought. When a man wanted to do a good act, and to bring blessing on his family, he went to a water-carrier with a good voice, and instructed him: “Give the thirsty a drink.” The water-carrier filled his skin and went to the market-place. “O thirsty ones,” he cried “come to drink the offering. And the giver stood by him and said, “Bless me, who gave you this drink.”
That is exactly the manner of giving to the needy which Jesus condemned. Jesus called it “hypocritical”. A “hypocrite” was a Greek play actor, one who wore a mask. Jesus is condemning the person who play-acts, the one who wears a mask of piety, whether that person does so in the presence of the synagogue or on the street corner. Jesus condemns the person who gives to the needy simply to receive the applause of human beings. Jesus says that person has already received their reward.
A startling example of this wrong motive in giving was reported in The New York Times. During the construction of a new six-million-dollar children’s zoo, the administrators of the project received some bad news. The couple who had agreed to donate half of the money decided to keep their promised gift.
“Why?” you might ask. There was a problem with the plaque. The administrators decided on a plaque two inches tall. There would be similar plaques nearby acknowledging another couple who had given half a million dollars to build the original zoo thirty-six years earlier. The couple giving the new three-million-dollar gift wanted the plaque for the original donors eliminated. When the administrators refused to do that, the new couple withdrew their gift.
This couple even said to The New York Times, “We were not talking about neon lights. We were talking about a very modest plaque that would give acknowledgment to a very sizable gift by anybody’s standard.”
Of course, in the secular realm people donate to causes all the time expecting some sort of recognition. But Jesus says if we do this as his followers, then we will miss out on a bigger reward we could have had.
So that is Jesus’ first command with regard to giving to the needy: do not announce it with trumpets. Jesus’ second command is: do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.
This is a much harder command to obey than the first. Jesus is saying that not only should we keep our giving to the needy secret from others, we should keep it secret even from ourselves. How do we do that? After all, we can’t close our eyes while writing a check.
Well, once again, Jesus is drawing an exaggerated picture to make a point. And the point is this, as John Stott has said: “Christian giving is to be marked by self-sacrifice and self-forgetfulness, not by self-congratulation.”
This sort of secrecy in giving was well illustrated by the life of Charles Feeney. For years this man gave money to universities, hospitals and other charitable organizations and some of his gifts were as large as thirty million dollars. But the recipients never knew who was giving the money. The gifts always came in cashier’s checks.
Charles Feeney’s secret giving was forced out into the open when the sale of his company, Duty Free Shoppes, led to a lawsuit. It was disclosed that over a fifteen-year period, Feeney’s two charitable foundations gave away some six hundred million dollars, leaving Feeney with only five million. Even the proceeds from the sale of his business, some three and a half billion dollars, went into Feeney’s charitable foundations.
When asked about his secret giving Feeney reluctantly explained the reason for his generosity: “I simply decided I had enough money. It doesn’t drive my life. I’m a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of guy.” The lawyer who helped Feeney set up his charitable foundations revealed more: “He doesn’t own a house. He doesn’t own a car. He flies economy. And I think his watch cost about fifteen dollars.”
The amazing thing about Feeney was not so much the size of his gifts but the secrecy. As someone once said, “Anonymous giving, giving that is not dependent on ego, is just really rare.”
What is even rarer is to give to the needy without being self-congratulatory. Only the Lord knows whether even Charles Feeney had the right motive in giving. But Jesus says when we do give out of the right motive, when we give to please our Father in heaven, then our Father in heaven will reward us.
What is that reward? Out of fifty-four appearances of the word “reward” in the Bible only one reveals what God’s reward is to those who serve him. In Genesis 15:1 we read:
After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision:
“Do not be afraid, Abram.
I am your shield,
Your very great reward.”
As Helmut Thielicke once wrote, “God does not reward us with things (and certainly not with such a monstrosity as a big cumbrous crown); he rather rewards us with his heart.”
C. S. Lewis once said in a sermon, “The proper rewards are not simply tacked on to the activity for which they are given but are the activity itself in consummation.” (The Weight of Glory, p. 4)
How is the vision of God the proper reward for secret giving to those in need? Do you remember Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goats? In that parable Jesus tells us that when we give to the needy, we are giving to him. In the parable, those who give to the Lord even forget that they have done so. Again, there is a self-forgetfulness in Christian giving because we are caught up in the needs of the other, not our own need to be recognized.
Think of it: when we give from the right motive we actually see the Lord in the naked whom we are clothing, the hungry whom we are feeding, the prisoners whom we are visiting, the strangers whom we are welcoming, the sick for whom we are caring.
Once again, I think C. S. Lewis puts it so well. He writes:
It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours… Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat—the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden. (The Weight of Glory, pp. 18-19)
As we enter Lent, let us think not only about what we are going to give up, let us think about what we are going to give to God and to our neighbor, with Christ’s help.
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