Deuteronomy 15:10-11, 14
The Rev. Dr. Robert S. Langworthy, preaching
November 8, 2026
If we truly treasure God’s gratuitous generosity to us, won’t we be gratuitously generous in response? If we deeply appreciate God’s extravagant goodness to us, won’t we want to return thanks for His lavish liberality in blessing us by our blessing others with the same lavish liberality?
Why, maybe, our fervent gratitude will even move us to give to meet physical and spiritual needs, with such loving abandon, that we’ll sacrifice some things to be more generous! And, maybe, with a bit of faith, we’ll make those sacrifices with the cheerful hope that God rewards all who voluntarily incur losses for love’s sake! In fact, if we relish our riches in God’s grace enough, we will be as little concerned over those losses as Warren Buffett would over losing a one-dollar bill.
Speaking of Warren Buffett, he noted that generosity is not measured by the amount given but by the proportion of one’s wealth the amount represents. When a reporter saluted Buffett for giving $26 billion to the Gates charitable foundation, he shrugged his shoulders and remarked, “My gift has not changed my lifestyle one bit. I still go to all the movies I want and eat at all the fine restaurants I want. But what about the person who gives a gift that means they’ll not go to the movies or eat out much for a while? They’re the true givers, the real heroes.”
That means that, whatever our income level, we can be extravagantly generous in our own way.
In today’s scripture, Moses commands the Israelites to be extravagantly generous in remembrance of God’s being extravagantly generous to them. After all, He’d brought them out Egypt and its oppression into a homeland overflowing with milk and honey. It’s only right then that they “give liberally” with an “open hand”.
For example, in a time when a person could pay off a debt by entering into servitude to his lender, Moses here tells lenders whose servant has fulfilled his obligation not to let the person leave “empty-handed” but to share with him out of their flock, threshing floor and wine press, “thus giving to him some of the bounty with which the Lord your God has blessed you”. In other words, they’re to be generous like God.
Being good to someone out of gratitude for God’s having been good to us is always the best reason to be generous; but Moses welcomes those who do that to keep an eye out for God’s fulfilling a frequent promise of His, repeated again at the start of today’s scripture, that He will liberally bless those who liberally bless others.
Sometimes the promise of such a payoff has been perverted into a “prosperity gospel” that claims that good deeds insure a financial and/or professional return. But thousands of years of history has refuted that idea. There’s not always a material reward for generosity.
But there’s always an inner one. For when we generously share our money and time, our hearts are uplifted and our spiritual life enriched.
I think of a deacon who, about this time of year, was alone at her church and locking things up for the night, when a disheveled woman approached her and asked for water and bus fare. The deacon gave her a bottle of Dasani, some cash and a ride to the bus stop. On the way there in the car, the woman asked the deacon about the church, and the deacon told her its people tried to imitate God in His generosity. The woman stared at her and then said, “You have been God to me today.” Later, the deacon said, “I guess I blessed her, but I got the bigger blessing. It was the best gift I got the whole holiday season.”
Generous giving blesses, not only the recipient, but the giver as well. The blessing boomerangs back to them.
We give thanks for God’s generosity by being generous to meet the needs of others, both physical and spiritual. But our being generous in turn blesses us anew, which gives us yet another reason to give thanks and to meet need all the more extravagantly.
AME Pastor Vernal E. Simms Sr. grew up in a family of nine children in a rough Boston housing project called Columbia Point. His prospects for making something of himself seemed meager, but he believed God had called him into the ministry and wanted to use him in a significant way. Simms’s mother often said, “Pray, and God will make a way.” So, with just a little money but a lot of positivity, he packed up his stuff and took a 100-mile bus ride to the college and seminary he hoped to attend. Sleeping on a dorm lobby couch and eating all the free food he could find, he showed up at every orientation meeting and talked with many a professor; but still lacked the money to pay for tuition or to buy his books. Then, somehow, out of nowhere, a multimillionaire found out about his plight and covered all his educational expenses.
When he graduated, he went to his benefactor’s office to thank him again and to ask what he could do to repay him. The rich man replied, “Bless others.” And Simms has spent the rest of his life doing exactly that in thanks for the gratuitous generosity that blessed him. For decades now, in both the drug-ridden, crime-infested inner city and the well-manicured suburb, he’s given his time, talent and money to meet physical and spiritual needs with extravagant generosity. And, in the boomerang of God’s grace, Simms says, he’s been extravagantly blessed by blessing all those folks.
Next Sunday, in both in-person worship and in online worship, those who wish to participate can make a faith promise to practice extravagant generosity to meet physical and spiritual needs, and to be blessed in the boomerang of God’s grace. They will do that by making a pledge of financial support of Covenant’s 2027 mission.
If you’ll be in worship physically, you’ll be given a pledge card to fill out. If you’ll be in worship virtually, you can use the online card or the one mailed to you.
Until then, we only ask that you prayerfully listen to God to find out how He wants you to respond to this opportunity, and then obey His will as you’ve heard it. The church is in the hands of its Lord.
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