Theological Truth: “First-fruits” giving helps keep us connected to who we are and whose we are.
In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
When you’re paddling a kayak in open water, it’s easy to get off course. The slightest breeze will push you just ever so slightly on a different trajectory, and the longer it takes you to realize you’ve strayed from the path, the harder it is to get back on course. And then once you’ve gotten back on track, the process of remaining there begins again.
Welcome to Lent.
On Ash Wednesday we lamented our sins and acknowledged our wretchedness. We checked our spiritual compasses and admitted that we’d veered off course. We repented, which is to say we had a change of heart. We turned — re-turned actually — to God. We committed to getting back on track.
But how do we stay there?
Staying on track is hard for all people of faith, even Jesus. Consider today’s Gospel:
…even though Jesus has just been baptized…despite the fact that he’s full of the Holy Spirit…Jesus faces forty days of intense temptations and testing in the wilderness. He is tested to see if he will remember who he is and what he’s been called to do.
We all face this possibility of forgetting who we are and Whose we are.
We all have the tendency to get off course.
We all go astray.
“Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love” is how we sing about our tendency to forget our identity as children of God and disciples of Jesus. We give up on, or grow impatient with, or get distracted from, this way of sacrificial love and total surrender.
So how can we maintain this connection with God? Are there ways to “bind our wandering hearts to God” as that Robert Robinson hymn pleads?
Today’s reading from Deuteronomy provides us with a way for our hearts and lives to be bound to God through the wilderness of our temptations. Deuteronomy is Moses’ farewell to the Israelites before they enter the promised land. They have completed their forty years of wanderings and temptations in the wilderness. But before they enter the promised land, Moses gives them some final instructions because he understands this human tendency to wander. To help maintain their connection to God, he gives them this liturgical ritual:
“When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess…you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go the place that the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name” (Deut 26:1-2).
Moses knows that to continue their awareness of, and reliance upon, God’s grace and mercy alone, they’ll need to commit to this “first-fruits” approach to giving. By ritually, liturgically, literally, and financially giving the first of what they make or grow, the Israelites will be more likely to remember their connection to the Source of all Life, Bounty and Abundance.
Notice how many times Moses reminds them, “That the Lord your God is giving you.”
By giving of the first fruits, every year, all the time, they take their place in the story of their wandering Aramean ancestor and acknowledge all that God has done for them. They remind themselves that all they have is gift from God. They are less prone to wander into the wilderness of self-interest.
We all need this way of binding our wandering hearts to God.
Giving our first-fruits back to God helps us remember that all things come from God. Everything we have—from food to family, health to wholeness, money to mercy, comes from God’s abundance and bounty. First fruits giving is why we say at the offertory, “All things come of thee, O Lord, and of thine own have we given Thee.”
This constant and consistent practice of first-fruits giving maintains our awareness of God’s mercy and generosity towards us. It binds our wandering, self-centered, self-congratulatory hearts to the source of true and lasting life.
To adopt this sort of “first fruits” approach to maintaining connection may not seem as far-fetched as it sounds. I know of someone who takes it quite literally. They’re not a farmer, but they apply the concept to their paycheck, along with any other forms of income they receive. They give the first ten percent of the income to their church or some other charitable cause. After a while, it has changed the order of their math calculations. Instead of giving ten percent away, they now operate with the grateful, joyful knowledge that they’ll receive 90 percent. That changed perspective creates a sense of gratitude for what they have and maintains the awareness of, and trust in, God’s abundance and bounty.
The same can be said for all of you here today, whether in person or online. You are offering this first part of this first day of this first week in Lent back to God. This week that the Lord our God is giving to us, we are giving the first portion back to God. By doing so, we are intentionally remembering that God is the source of our lives and well-being.
Many people do the same thing each morning. When our first waking thoughts are directed towards thanking God for the night’s rest and the day’s labors, we are offering our life that day to God. We are binding our hearts, day by day, week by week, blessing by blessing, to the Source of all of our days.
Moses was right — first-fruits giving maintains our connection to God despite all the temptations in the wilderness of our lives. It helps us remember who we are as recipients of God’s generous loving kindness, and whose we are as heirs with Christ in the Kingdom of God.
It’s a spiritual discipline worthy of consideration. For Lent. For Life.
— The Rev. William “A.J.” Heine, Rector, Trinity Episcopal Church of Staunton
Readings this week: Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16; Romans 10:8b-13; Luke 4:1-13
