Alms, Tithing, and Following Jesus

In the early 1990s, I was an awkward teenage boy sitting in the back of Junior High School band playing trombone – the same trombone Drey now plays on in high school. Little did I know that sitting next to me was another awkward teenage boy who would become a life-long friend. Among our immediate group of friends in those early teenage years, he and I were the only ones who were religious. Over decades, we’ve had many conversations about religion, shared articles and papers on religion, and watched a Catholic priest he met convert to our Church, then later convert back to Catholicism.

Now, 30 years later, my friend is Head of Strategic Initiatives of the Catholic Dominicans in the Western U.S. His family often went to Blessed Sacrament - Catholic chapel just off of I-5 next to one of our ward houses from the North Seattle Stake. If you go there, you can see a painting and shrine dedicated to St. Margaret of Hungary that his family donated.

We still catch up over lunch from time to time. In one of those lunches, the topic of tithing came up. We found we had lots of common ground and both felt that the biggest blessing of tithing is how it changes our relationship to money and wealth.

The topic today is “How can tithes and offerings lead us to Christ”. In order to follow Christ, it’s important for us to consider what path Christ is on. To do so, I’m going to focus on some of the core of Jesus’s teachings in the Sermon on the Mount and what those can teach us on giving, wealth, and tithes and offerings.

The Sermon on the Mount: A Foundation for Discipleship

While I’ll be reading from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, I won’t have time for a comprehensive treatment of it. But I wanted to provide a brief overview.

In the first half of Matthew chapter 5 (v1-16), we have the 9 Beattitudes:

“blessed are the…” - poor in spirit, they that mourn, meek, hunger/thirst after righteousness, merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers, persecuted for righteousness’ sake, reviled

And the call for disciples to live these teachings as “salt” or “light” of the world

live the gospel, don’t just preach it

Then, in the latter half of Matthew chapter 5 (v17-48) Jesus frames the new law as a fulfillment of the old:

“Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time __, but I say unto you ____.”

In the first half of Matthew chapter 6 (v1-18), Jesus gives guidance on proper worship:

prayer, fasting, alms-giving

And in the latter half of Matthew chapter 6 (v19-34) he describes the attitude or way of discipleship:

treasures and heart, let your eye be single, you cannot serve two masters, take no thought, the lilies of the field, God knows what we have need of, seek ye first the kingdom of God

Finally, in Matthew chapter 7, Jesus warns about judging, and calls His disciples to seek wisdom:

judge not (v1-12)

seek wisdom (v13-28): strait gate, false prophets, good fruit, doing the will of the Father, wise man and foolish man

Alms giving when Jesus describes proper worship is the most direct mention of the topic today, but I want to show how various parts of the Sermon on the Mount can draw us closer to more of Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount and how those relate to alms, tithes, and offerings.

I’ll only have time to give a few examples:

1. Contentment vs the Pursuit of Wealth

From the Beatitudes, several attributes describe an attitude of contentment (Matthew 5:3-5, 8):

3 Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 4 Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. 5 Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. 8 Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.

These attributes - poor in spirit, mourning, meekness, pure in heart, receiving persecution for testimony of Jesus - are not attributes that are promoted in guides today on how to attain wealth. When we sacrifice to fast offerings, tithing, or charity we lessen the power of vices of wealth such as stubbornness, indifference, and pride which pull us away from Christ.

For example, the Church recently donated 32,000 pounds of food to our local community food bank. This required working with others not of our faith, acknowledging the suffering of those who lack food, giving without expectation of return, and seeing how serving others is a service to God. The more we or the Church engage in that kind of work, the more we cultivate these attributes.

The Book of Mormon repeatedly showed how wealth corrupted the Nephites. Jacob prophetically warned the Nephites early in the Book of Mormon when he said:

30 But wo unto the rich, who are rich as to the things of the world. For because they are rich they despise the poor, and they persecute the meek, and their hearts are upon their treasures; wherefore, their treasure is their god. And behold, their treasure shall perish with them also.

This is similar to later in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 6, where Jesus warns about wealth’s effects on us:

19 Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: 20 But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: 21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. 24 No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

The scriptures warn, “for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” and “their treasure is their god”. This was something my friend and I discussed in our lunchtime conversation. We both felt, and I still feel today, that charity, fast offerings, and tithing are opportunities for us to asses where our hearts are, what we treasure in life, and whom do we worship.

2. Generosity vs. Self-Centeredness

Going back to the Beatitudes, we read (Matthew 5:5, 7, 9):

5 Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. 7 Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. 9 Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

The pursuit of wealth so often leads us to vices opposite what Jesus taught here. Impatience, ruthlessness, and the conflict of zero sum games are often what drives wealth. And with it we attach the value or worth of people to the wealth they have attained.

Hugh Nibley gave at talk at BYU in 1973 titled, “Waiting for Zion” later included in the “Joseph Smith Lecture Series” publication that year which expounds on the ethics Jesus taught here. He said:

“…the work ethic, which is being so strenuously advocated in our day… is one of those neat magician’s tricks in which all our attention is focused on one hand while the other hand does the manipulating. Implicit in the work ethic are the ideas that (1) because [someone] must work to acquire wealth, work [and wealth are equal], and (2) that is the whole equation. With these go the corollaries that: a) anyone who has wealth must have earned it by hard work and is, therefore, beyond criticism; b) anyone who doesn’t have it deserves to suffer - thus penalizing any who do not work for money; c) since you have a right to all you earn, that the only real work is for one’s self; d) any limit set to the amount of wealth an individual may acquire is [evil] These editorial syllogisms we have heard a thousand times, but you will not find them in the scriptures… The whole emphasis in the holy writ is not on whether one works or not, but what one works for: “The laborer in Zion shall labor for Zion; for if they labor for money they shall perish” (2 Nephi 26:31). “The people of the church began to wax proud, because of their exceeding riches. . . [and] precious things, which they had obtained by their industry” (Alma 4:6) and which proved their undoing, for all their hard work.

As Jesus said in Luke 9:25:

25 For what [are the wealthy] advantaged, if [they] gain the whole world, and lose [themselves]…?

A hundred years later when the epistle of John was written, Christians had internalized this (1 Jn 3:17):

17 How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?

Tithing, fast offerings, and charitable giving are each practices which require us to uncenter ourselves in relation to our wealth, center another, and reflect what it is that we are working for.

3. Love for Others vs. Exploitation

In the first year of Jesus’ ministry he announced his life’s mission in his home town’s synagogue - and was rejected. For that announcement, he chose to read from Isaiah 61:1:

1 The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the [poor]; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound

That is part of the starting book-end to his life and ministry.

At the other book-end, in the last week of his mortal life, Jesus saw how corruption in the temple was an affront to his life’s mission. In Jesus’ day, large numbers of Jews streamed to Palestine and Jerusalem - “out or every nation under heaven” as it says in Acts 2:5. They brought with them significant sums of money in foreign currencies. Over time, a system to exchange foreign coins along with deposits formed by Temple authorities in the Temple treasury (Matt. 21:12). This meant the Temple had a sort of central stock and exchange market. The business of money exchange was carried out by some temple authorities (shulḥani - “exchange banker”), who charged a fee (agio) - which was onerous for poor people.

And what does Jesus do after clearing the temple? He invites in those that the system of the money exchangers had been exploiting or excluding (Matthew 21:14-15):

14 And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple; and he healed them. 15 And when the chief priests and scribes saw the… things that he did, and the children crying in the temple, and saying, Hosanna to the Son of David; they were sore displeased

So, what has this got to do with tithing, fast offerings, and alms? Our tithing money goes to building temples - fortunately we don’t have a system of exchangers at the front desks of temples exploiting the poor otherwise we might need to practice our table flipping skills. But this episode should cause us to act such that our contributions, time or money, align with what Jesus stood for, and who he stood with.

While our Church isn’t perfect, God never said it was or will be, in our Church, we have funds for feeding the hungry, funds for providing education or training, prison ministry programs, donations to global vaccination efforts, and, within wards, fast offerings. In my time in the Church I’ve had the opportunity to serve as a ward clerk. Some of the most Christlike actions I’ve seen at Church were made possible because of fast offerings. I saw homes heated, bodies healed, pantries filled, and people kept off the streets.

If you want to draw nearer to Christ, and what he stood for, our efforts to support our Church towards the poor, the brokenhearted, the captives, and the bound through tithing and fast offerings can be a way to do so.

Conclusion

My hope in spending time focusing on the principles in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is that we can more clearly see how our alms, tithing, and fast offerings not only matter, but that they can move us towards Christ and what and whom He stood for. I pray that we can follow the mission of Jesus Christ towards the poor, the brokenhearted, the captives, and the bound and use our time, energy, and resources to do so in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.