The Offering

That’s what a tithe is...giving ten percent for the support and maintenance of the church and its workers.
And no cheating, says God. Don’t bring the leftover sour stuff for the Levites. Farmers, bring ten percent of your best crops. Shepherds, don’t go bringing diseased animals...bring the good ones, the best ones. And so the practice of the tithe began. People brought tithes and they also brought offerings, which were additional gifts, above and beyond the tithe to help the poor and needy. That is why each Sunday when I ask the ushers to come forward, I instruct them to bring their tithes and offerings. They are distinct things...tithes support the maintenance of the church and the offerings are given to those in need.
That was still the system in Jesus’ day, and after Jesus’ death and resurrection, the early church gave it still more meaning. In the early days of the church, after Jewish Christians had been booted from the synagogues and before the church was established as an institution, there wasn’t really anything like the Temple to be maintained. “The church” was simply gatherings of people in different homes where they studied together, told the good news about Jesus, and shared in a meal together...which they brought, potluck.
They didn’t really need a tithe to support a building or workers anymore, but they did still need offerings...they needed to care for the poor and the widows and orphans. We see in the book of Acts, that Paul travels to the churches in Asia Minor, asking them to contribute to an offering for the poor back in Jerusalem.
This is a gross oversimplification, but hundreds of years went by, and finally the Roman Emperor Constantine decided that Christianity should be the official religion of the Empire. Freed up from persecution and officially supported by the state, churches could really put down roots...build cathedrals, support schools for religious training, and all sorts of things. Voila. Now there is again a need for maintenance. There is still a need to give to the charitable work of the church, however, so the need for the tithe returns and the need for the offerings remains.
Up until the last couple hundred years, however, the “offering” time in the worship service was completely tied to the sacrament of Communion. As Cyril Richardson describes in his book The Church Throughout The Centuries, “Each Christian brought some bread and wine and this was collected by the deacons and consecrated by the bishop or elders, so that the united offerings of the people became one sacrament. At the Eucharist they also gave freely of their substance (in kind as well as in money) for the aid of the shipwrecked sailors, orphans, widows, captives, and unemployed. All Christians in need were cared for and nourished from this liberal treasury. Their corporate devotion and their practical life of love were knit together in real unity.”
What all of that meant is that, during a worship service, the offering of the people was a direct response to the offering of Christ for us. The passage we read this morning from first John says that we love because God first loved us. That is the reason we give as well. We give, because God first gave to us.
When the offering is a response to what God has already given to us, then we are in a better position to understand the practices of some cultures where